Before You Write That Book: Ally Machate on Publishing, AI & Writing the Right Book

Everybody seems to be telling entrepreneurs to write a book.

Write it in a weekend. Use AI. Upload it to Amazon. Become a bestselling author. Watch the clients roll in.

Except…that’s not quite how it works.

This week on Casa De Confidence, Julie sits down with publishing expert Ally Machate, founder of The Writer’s Ally, to pull back the curtain on what it actually takes to write and publish a book that supports your business, serves your reader, and creates lasting impact.

With experience that includes working at Simon & Schuster and helping authors navigate the publishing process, Ally challenges one of the biggest assumptions in entrepreneurship: just because you can write a book doesn't necessarily mean you should—or that the book you're planning is the right one.

Ally explains why the first question shouldn't be “What should I write?” but rather “What do I want this book to do?”

Do you want it to attract clients? Generate speaking opportunities? Grow your email list? Establish thought leadership? Change the way people think about an issue?

That answer changes everything.

Julie also gets personal about her own publishing experience, including what she would do differently, the emotional reality of receiving developmental edits, and why publishing her book ultimately opened doors far beyond book sales.

In This Episode

What You’ll Hear

• Why not every entrepreneur needs to write a book
• The difference between publishing a book and publishing a book people actually want to read
• Why identifying your reader comes before writing
• How a book can support your larger business strategy
• Why your book is a product—not your baby
• What developmental editing actually does
• Why copyediting alone isn't enough
• Where AI can help authors—and where it still falls short
• How to create a transformational journey for your reader
• The “macrocosm and microcosm” approach to structuring nonfiction
• Traditional publishing vs. hybrid publishing vs. DIY self-publishing
• What Ally calls supported indie publishing
• Why distribution, ISBNs, Amazon KDP, and IngramSpark matter
• Why giving books away can sometimes be smarter than selling them
• How books create opportunities for coaching, consulting, speaking, and visibility
• Why becoming a bestseller isn't the only—or even necessarily the best—definition of publishing success

One of Ally's most important reminders?

“If you're talking to everyone, you're connecting with no one.”

Before investing months—or years—writing your book, get clear about the person you're writing for and what you want the book to accomplish.

Because the goal isn't merely to become a published author.

It's to write the right book.

🔗 Connect with Ally 

Website: http://www.writersally.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allymachate/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allysonemachate

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/allysonemachate

Free Offer

https://offers.thewritersally.com/dont-write-the-wrong-book-podcasts/

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to another episode of Casa Confidence, my friends. If you've ever dreamed of writing a book but felt lost in the sea of shady shortcuts, overpriced editing, gimmicks, and publishing promises that sound too good to be true, this episode is your lifeline. Today I'm speaking with someone who's seen it all, from the hollow halls of Simon and Schuster to championing first-time authors through the complex maze of book publishing. She's the founder of The Writer's Ally and a fierce advocate for authors who want to do it right without wasting time, money, or their creative spark. Whether you're pitching to publishing a good indie, she a good indie, I think that's what I meant to say. She's the ally you didn't know you needed. So let's just jump into the conversation. Welcome to the show, Allie.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Thanks so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

I am thrilled to have you here, specifically because you know, writing a book was something that I had in my bucket list for as long as I could remember. And then finally I published a book, but it wasn't easy. And I wish, you know, and I had great support. But looking back, it could have been different and it could have definitely for someone like was just starting out. I needed someone that was a fierce guide and friend that came alongside of me. And again, I uh Trevor, I love you. You gave me great support. And the epic author, you were fantastic, but you were more of a business coach. And I needed to really be able to have more of the support as I guess in in the other side of the coin, right? In the writing. And I I want to get real about this because I see so many people that are talking about publishing that have published, and I see many of my clients and friends now going through it. But let's let's be real. What are the biggest lies that you see uh inspiring authors or falling for in the publishing world right now?

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Well, I think that one of the biggest mistakes that new authors make or or myths that they kind of believe is being really exacerbated by AI, which of course is the new hot thing that we're all dealing with and talking about. And and this basic idea is sort of twofold. One, that everyone should write a book, right? That you need to have a book. If you have a business, you need to have a book. That's the first thing. Not at all true. And the flip side of that, of course, is that it should be something really easy that you can basically just vomit it out of your head in a weekend, and especially now with AI, maybe even not as long as a weekend, you know, and just sort of publish it, put it out there, and that just the fact that you are able to say you are a published author, that that somehow will help your business and will improve uh your credibility. And it's it's just absolutely not true.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Yeah, I agree. I I um, you know, I have to tell you, I have friends and well, they're colleagues, friends. They are creating an anthology book, and they asked me to participate and not the first time that this has happened, but I thought, if I'm going to do this, I I I gotta write it, right? It has to be my story. And uh it took me, I would say, a good six months to decide, yes, I'm gonna do it. And thankfully, you know, their timeline has been so flexible. But also, like, what value am I bringing to this thing, right? Because it's not just about like and and by the way, I got an email bunny. We should be talking about this. I got an email from someone, and I'm not gonna say who they are, but they're a very well-known copywriter, big time copywriter. And that was exactly what he was saying in the email. You can publish a book in the weekend and make tons of money as a book writer. And I'm thinking, why? I mean, like, I might maybe I'm I've been lied to, and maybe, I mean, maybe people are doing it, but there's a lot of stuff that goes into place, and I'd love for you to unpack for us what does it actually take to write, publish a book that sells, that creates an impact, and just beyond, you know, just uploading something into Amazon.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Yeah, I think you've really hit the nail on the head with the way you phrase that question, which is the difference between can I take a file and upload it to Amazon and have a book available for sale very quickly? Absolutely. You could do that within a number of hours, within 24 hours, Amazon will make your book available for sale. But that's not the same thing as putting up a book that will actually sell and that will get results and have an impact, right? Two very different things. Um, so you know, I talk a lot about the importance of writing the right book. Is the book the right tool for you, first of all, right? I always like to start from a place of strategy. One of the another another mistake that a lot of people make is they start from a place of, well, I want to write a book, or someone told me I should write a book. I have a bunch of content that I'm not using. I have old, you know, talks or blog posts, or um, everyone gets really excited when I tell this story. I should write a book about this story, right? And that's fine if that's the thing that gives you the initial spark. But when you start writing the book and you start thinking about selling the book, you have to be really clear on what you want that book to do for you out in the world. And that's beyond just selling books. Like that's kind of the gimme. Assume if you publish a book, you want to sell books. The bigger question is what do you want that book to do for you? Do you want it to bring you new clients? Do you want it to bring you speaking opportunities? Are you going to use it to grow your list, right? Like how exactly do you want to use it? And it's really important to get clarity on that because that question informs the second most important thing, which is who is the book for?

SPEAKER_00 6:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

And you can't really get clear on who the book is for if you don't know what action you want them to take. If you want people to do a certain thing, you have to know who is going to do that thing, right? Um, so this idea of like, well, I'll just write a really good book and it's good for everybody. Everybody will get something from this book. Um, first of all, it's generally not true. Not true, not true at all. That's the easiest way to kill a marketing campaign, right? And I always say if if you're talking to everyone, you're connecting with no one.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

With no one. No one. Oh, I wish so many other people would hear this. And again, you know, I I made that mistake even before I launched my book or I started coaching. And I I was in that place where I was getting ready to leave my career, go into entrepreneurship. And I remember, I will never forget, I went to the blogher conference in 2018. And uh Marie Forlio was actually speaking at the conference, and I met these amazing women. I still keep in touch with a couple of them, and we were just having a lot of fun, the four of us going through five of us going through this conference. And one of them said, Well, what do you do? And I said, Well, I'm in my corporate career, but I'm gonna go and I'm gonna do coaching and/or entrepreneurship. And I was so like all over the place. And she said, she asked me the golden question we all get asked all the time, who's your ideal client? No, she said, Who's your ICA? Talk about uh not knowing. I'm like, what is that? She's like, your ideal client, Avatar. I'm like, okay, I'm sorry. I've been in the business world for a long time and and I know a good fair amount of car marketing, but what the hell is that? And then she like proceeded to like explain. I'm like, well, I don't know. I could do, you know, well, I I'm I am an executive, I could teach leadership, I could teach in uh women in DEI, I could talk about I I am a mentor and a weight loss for a weight loss coach and I do this, and and she's like, you're not gonna get clients like that. You need to get clear on who it is. And I'm like, oh my God. And it took me a long time, 2018, right, to 2020 when I finally launched. And even when I launched, no idea. And at this point, you know, I'd been I'd been listening to Pat Flynn for a long time. He's someone I still consider my mentor. The niches are in the rich, the riches are in the niches, and that's been ingrained in me. But even in my first year, I really struggle with knowing who I was speaking to.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Sure, sure, yeah, exactly. And uh that reminds me of a really great story that I like to tell that I think really underscores the importance of exactly that point. So I met this woman years ago in a LinkedIn group. She was looking for help marketing her book. She had just released her first book, she was launching her coaching business, she wanted book marketing help. So I reached out, we had a conversation, and uh it turned out to be a really heartbreaking conversation. And the reason it was heartbreaking was because this woman had recently started her coaching business. Now, in some ways, she was very clear. So she knew she was starting this coaching business. She herself had overcome a lifetime of abuse, various types of abuse, and she wanted to coach women who had low self-esteem as a result of suffering from abuse, all types, you know, domestic, sexual, whatever. So that was great, right? She knew exactly who she wanted to work with. And of course, everyone told her, oh, well, if you're starting a business, you should write a book. That's how you'll get your clients, that's how you grow your business. So she decided, okay, well, the easiest way for me to do this is to do an anthology, to do a collection.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

And so she didn't have any clients. So she reached after her personal network and got a bunch of stories and put them together into this book. And what the book ended up being was a very inspirational, well-written, lovely collection of stories of women who had overcome all kinds of things. So the stories collectively were not specifically about women who had overcome abuse. They were not about women who had low self-esteem, right? So they were women who had overcome a variety of things. A variety thing, right? None of these women were her clients. She had no actual case studies to share. None of the women even worked with coaches. So she didn't even present coaching as a solution in general. And so ultimately, she had a very nice book. There's nothing wrong with the book, but it was 100% not going to help her build her business. There was nothing about this book. It wasn't going to attract the people she wanted to work with. It didn't highlight her ideas or her program. It didn't share her expertise. It didn't even talk about coaching. So, you know, that's a really great example, right? She thought, oh, I need a book to grow this business. And she absolutely wrote the wrong book.

unknown 10:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Yeah. And I have to say, you know, and I I want to unpack this and I and I'm sharing my experience in this show because I want you to see that, you know, I do have a book. I love my book, but I want you to see kind of behind the curtain. And Allie is going to kind of um guide us through because she she's our expert here today. But I I will tell you for me, um, always wanted to write a book, like I said, and I actually had a manuscript, and it was really more of a memoir, the the story of my grandparents. And the one advice I did get in the very beginning was that's not your first book. That's not your first book. Your first book is for the person who you help. Right. And what is your framework? And what is it that you teach? What is it that you're helping people do? And speak to them, give them the solutions. And I remember thinking, well, I know in my brain what I want the solutions to be, but what I started to do is, and I I conducted probably over a hundred and fifty interviews. Wow. And by the way, that was the biggest pain in the rear to like have to go through all these. And like thank God for Otter, even five years ago, I was able to go through some of the transcripts, but really just asking, like, what is it about habits and confidence that you struggle with? Because I know for me, my habits is what has given me the confidence to do the things even when I don't, right? When I'm not an expert, when I think I can't do it, I create that small momentum by showing up consistently and then creating the habits. But more importantly, I didn't just learn these on my own. I had people that really showed me what had worked for them and I adopted those, right? So that's the premise of my book, ultimately. But at the same time, I I honestly wasn't clear, like you're saying, like what is my message? I I knew that I I wanted to write this book. I wanted to help people in the same way that I had been helped. And that's but but it wasn't necessarily like I'm gonna use this to grow my list. Now, there's so many things that I think I missed the boat on, and and not that I've missed it because I still have a book, right? And I can relaunch and do all that. And it is related to your business, it is related to your business. It is, I mean, like nothing that I talk about in the book, and again, I'm gonna put it here, but I I mean it it really is, right? And it was a happy accident, I think, that I got to number one and that I did some things right. But I also think that I want people to know that there's other ways of pursuing this, and I think that there's also because you've helped authors throughout the spectrum, is there a mindset shift that separates the successful individuals from the ones who kind of get stuck in this? And I was, I was there for a long time that um manuscript purgatory, is there a different mindset?

SPEAKER_01 13:58

Yeah, I think that it is a different mindset. I, you know, I'll I loosely refer to it as the author success mindset, right? But there are a collection of beliefs and ideas that I do think really distinguishes people who just founder and get stuck in that purgatory or have lots of ideas and are frozen, don't know how to get started, so on and so forth. Um, and the people who do really, really well. So one of those things um is all this stuff that we're talking about, the idea that your book is a product, right? It's absolutely an artistic endeavor, but it is also very much a product. And you know, when I speak to authors, I tell them, listen, your book is not your baby, right? If you've ever referred to your book as your baby, knock it off.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Okay, I'm gonna make a note of that right now for myself because I know I've said that in the past. I don't think I've said it in a while, but I've said it. Okay, Julie, don't say that anymore.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Many authors have, it's extremely common. Like, you know, you spend you spend more time, right? It's months or years out of your life, so much energy. Um, but the reason it's important to make that mindset shift is that like you don't want to sell your baby, right? You want to sell a product. It's a shoe. That's right, it's a restaurant, it's a shampoo, it's a product. Oh, great. That's you have to think of it as a product. It changes everything. And and the follow-on mindset shift immediately onto that is the book isn't about you. So it's often something internal or even maybe other people telling you, oh, you need to write a book that gets you going. And again, that's totally normal, that's totally fine. Sure. But at some point, you have to make the shift from this is something I want to say, this is something I want to do, this is something people told me I should do, and start remembering that unless you're the only one who's ever going to buy that book, you have to think about your reader. Who are the people you actually are talking to? What do they want to hear from you? What do they need to hear from you? What do they need to believe about you in order to trust what you're telling them? You know, and making that shift from, oh, this is just something I think people need to hear. Like nobody buys a book because of what you think they need to hear. Yeah. They buy a book because they need something, they need an answer, a solution, information. So you have to make that shift from I'm writing this because of me. This is what I want to say to, these are the people that I'm trying to connect with. This is what they need.

unknown 16:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

Yeah. So wise, you know, and and I think that, you know, and I look back and again, what I I was told I I was at a B and I meeting at the beginning of the pandemic when I first launched my business. And someone said, Oh, you should write a book. You're a really good writer, because I had a journal that people had read. And I thought, oh, I wrote a book already. And of course, oh, you have a good voice. And right, it was more and again, not what I published, not what I shared with the world. But I really remember thinking, what is it that I would like to have known prior to being who I am today? Yeah. And what are the things that I learned that got me here? And how did that happen? And and I think that for me, that was really what became the North Star. But I always felt like, is this what I'm supposed to be doing? But I think that there's a lot of people that have a solid idea, but again, don't have a lot of experience. And what is the one thing that you would want individuals like I was four or five years ago? What is the one thing that you would want them to understand before they even begin writing one word?

SPEAKER_01 17:37

I think that I'd like people to understand both, like we said earlier, that a book may or may not be the right avenue for their ideas. So they have something they want to say or share. There are lots of ways to share ideas these days. Content can be shared in many ways, so it may or may not be a book. But if it is a book, that they shouldn't get too wrapped up in this feeling of, well, everything's already been said. What do I have to add? Who cares what I have to say about XYZ? And I think people sometimes tie themselves into knots and it stops people who do have really great things to share because they feel like, oh, well, you know, there's 500 business books on marketing. What am I going to add to the conversation? And they forget that even as readers, right? Like who buys one book and done? If you have a problem that you need to learn about, you don't buy one book. Nope. You buy a few.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

I mean, uh, yeah. And that's all I was just actually researching. I needed a new bookcases. And I'm like, I need a bookcase that I can hold a lot because I probably get it. Oh, it's it's I have a problem. I get a lot of books. I have at least two books going at the same time. There's at least two books that arrive at my house weekly. Uh, but yeah, I mean, like, and they're all around different topics, but I mean, I'm not reading the same person.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

Yeah. And if you, you know, if you ask yourselves these kinds of questions that we're talking about, who am I speaking to? What do they need to hear? Is this the right tool for what I want to accomplish? Is it the right time in my business? When you're answering those questions, I think it does start to build that confidence because you start to understand that what you have to say, even if you were saying the same things, right? Like if we created an outline and I gave it to you and I took it, we both said, okay, we're gonna write a book based on this outline, it's gonna be two very different books, even starting from the same outline.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

What you have to share, your experiences, your unique knowledge, what you've been exposed to, the way that you see things and think about things, that's always gonna be different. And if you've done the right work to know who you're talking to and what you want to do with the book, then it's gonna fall into place that those people are going to care what you have to say because you've already identified who they are and what they need. And now you're giving them what they need. So yeah, it doesn't matter that other people have written on the same subject, there's still gonna be an audience of people who want to hear it from you.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Yeah. I and again, you know, the there's no ideas in this world that are unique. It's just how you are interpreting and distilling that idea for somebody else. And I think that that's the thing that we need to really understand that, you know, we're not in competition with people that do similar things because we're not everybody's cup of tea. And I love saying that because I I am the the sweet, uh, strong tea that's gonna kick your ass. But I'm gonna be very sweet about it. And that's my tea. And if you don't like it, that's not who am I not your business coach, right? Right. And and that's that's really important. Now let's talk about the editing process. And I I often like to talk about this and say my husband is the person that saved me through the editing process. But there's a lot of writers that skip that or misunderstand it, right? What do great editors actually do? And what should authors um expect in that partnership? Because I do believe it's a partnership between the author and the editor.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Absolutely. Working with a good editor is very much a collaborative effort. And when I say collaborative, I don't mean that they're taking the book on as their own or that they're changing it in some substantive way. I really mean that it's a collaboration in the sense that you have a vision for your book and your editor wants to help you achieve that vision. So they want that book to be the very best it can be, and they want you to make, they want to make sure that you're doing the thing you say you want to be doing on the page. But it is absolutely a partnership and a collaborative effort. I'm really glad you asked because I think this is something a lot of authors don't understand if you're editing and they think what we actually call copy editing, which is grammar, syntax, spelling, punctuation, real basic, very important, but fairly basic technical type stuff. And absolutely that is important, but that is in fact the last stage of editing. What people miss is what we call the developmental or substantive stage of editing. And it is the most important, and yet it is the part that is so often overlooked.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

100%. 100%. And you know, Allie, and I mentioned that, you know, I'm participating in a collaboration with uh some of my colleagues that I've love and and they're doing a great job, but they really are going about it and you know, uh not rushing into it. Um, but I was offered another collaboration, and um, this is I guess uh it's been about a year and a half, and and I turned it down. And here's someone who I mean, this person sells a lot of books, they have multiple of the series, and you know, it they they do a lot and they're out there. Um but when when they were pitching it to me, and again, someone I know from someone I know. And this person, I said, well, tell me. I I said, you know, I don't know if I'm ready to go through the editing process again. Um, that was it really first of all, I got I got my first set of edits, right? And I uh my confidence was on the toilet. I and I was like shattered, and and and it took me a long time to actually go back and start to work through some of the edits. And that's why I said my husband saved me. But um this person's like, oh, don't worry about it. I just use AI for the editing. And immediately I knew not for me, thank you, because I do believe, and maybe I'm old fashioned, maybe I'm I'm I don't know, but I just think that I needed to be able to say to my editor, this is what I meant by that. And she would come back and she would say, you know, don't say that. And I'm like, no, no, no, you don't get it. This is me. This is like the essence of the message, right? And in and I don't think that you can do that with AI, or can you? Am I am I wrong here?

SPEAKER_01 24:03

I mean, I think there will be a point where AI is smart enough to be able to do that. I don't think that we're there yet. When most people talk about editing with AI, it's more like line editing or copy editing, right? So they'll put in some text and the AI will kind of slightly rewrite it and massage it a little so that it sounds better or it flows better. Um, and and that's fine, and that can be really good. But we've already started to see some projects where authors heavily relied on AI. And what ends up happening in some cases is that you have a draft that's technically well written, sorry, um, but the content is a mess. You know, there's very little connective tissue, or the it's just going all over the place or it's highly redundant. You know, it doesn't feel like a deliberate build or transformative journey in the way that most people expect a nonfiction book to be. Um and that has to come from the author. So I do think that AI is incredibly powerful. It's only going to be more powerful as it gets smarter and training. You know, right now we say AI, but it's not really AI yet. It's really like you know, language learning models, but we will get there. But right now, the people who are getting the best results with AI are the people who understand that the expertise and the knowledge still has to come from them. Then they have to put that in and let AI maybe help shape the organization or help with their writing. It's not gonna make the book itself.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

It's not gonna make the book itself, yeah. I I did an interesting thing. I'm I'm curious to to hear what you have to say. Again, my book came out in September of 2021. And uh we've often talked about re I I there's some things I want to redo, but not a lot. And but I've also talked about putting the book in audio. And I said to to my husband, Dan, I said, you know, I I I don't know. And he's like, Well, what do you mean? And the reason being is we have several clients that we help with podcasting, some of them have books, and we have helped them with putting the the audio together and helping them launch their audio book. So he's like, you know, we can't just do it for others and not have yours out. And I'm like, well, I need to rewrite mine, and you know, again, the perfectionist in me and everything. So I took the manuscript and I uploaded it to chat and I said, This is my book. I said, Can you tell me where are the holes? What are the things that I need to um you know, maybe go back and what what are the things that maybe are not clear? What and and you know, overall it gave me answers that said it was pretty good, right? Not and didn't give me anything that I was like, oh, okay, like I was hoping maybe you would say. Um but I wonder if, you know, we're still not understanding what that, like you said, like what is the meat? What is what makes it stick? Walk me through how do we make sure that our chapters, right, are are connected. And in because what I try to do is like the concept that I did in chapter one, then I introduced the second and I kind of connected them, but I want to make sure that everything kind of relates to the main topic. Am I either in the right direction here?

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Yeah, absolutely. Um, so first of all, to address your question about AI, I think, yeah, that like that underscores the point that AI can tell you it's probably very well written, it generally looks fine, there's nothing that stands out as being egregiously wrong. Um, but it's not capable because it's not an expert, it's a generalist, right? Remember that AI is a general pulling information from other things. That's all it knows. So if half the stuff out there is bad, you know, half of what it knows. That's so true. It's so true. So, you know, you hear these stories, and sometimes it's kind of funny, but it it really is in some sense dangerous where people who don't understand that ask, you know, chat these very sometimes these life questions. I mean, to to go really dark. Some people, there have been some stories about people asking it if they should kill themselves or if they should do terrible things. Yeah. And I'm like, well, if that's what you want to do, that's great. You know, right.

SPEAKER_00 28:21

Like, okay, absolutely. We're we're not getting it. And you know, for some of these things, I I remember when I was little, my my grandfather, he was so at and he taught math and was uh a CFO, and he he talked about um a calculator was a tool, but it was not the answer, and you couldn't rely on it as the answer. You still have to have the level of self-reliance and that was there to check you. And even now, I mean I use the calculator all the time now, but but it's like I think that that's kind of what I see also coming up with AI when it comes to writing and when it comes to the publishing, that that it's just the tool, it's not gonna be the thing that does the work for you, and exactly and that that's incredibly important. Now, your services, from what I understand, um, you offer developmental editing and cover designs. And for an author who is just all over the place or overwhelmed, and what are the things that they should be prioritizing as the must-do's and the nice to-do's?

SPEAKER_01 29:33

Well, I think developmental editing is one of those things that people act like is nice to do, but really is a must-do. Um, because at the end of the day, if you are investing all this time and energy into a beautiful cover and marketing and doing all of this work and the book doesn't deliver, like you're really just wasting your time and money and energy because you're promoting something that's not going to get the results that you want. You know, you're gonna see sales, but then no reviews, and you're like, why is no one reviewing the book? It's like probably because they didn't finish it or it sucked and they didn't want to leave a bad review, right?

SPEAKER_02 30:06

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

Yeah. Um, so yeah, I think that's one of those things is like, don't, it's good to think about marketing early. It's important to think about marketing early, but don't get so fixated on how am I gonna sell the book before you've written a really good book. Start with the content, you know, make sure that you are thinking through all the things you need to think through. And if you've never done it before, work with a professional, work with a developmental editor. You know, these are the questions that we ask our clients. We get clear on what their business is, what are they trying to do? What do they want the book to do for them? What else is going on in their business? And how does the book tie into that? Um, being able to ask those questions. And you asked uh a little earlier about structure. So, like one of the things that we look at with a nonfiction book in particular is we look for a very particular kind of structure. So there are lots of different ways to tackle a nonfiction book. There are, you know, formulas, if you will. But I think some of the things that underpin all successful nonfiction books are, first of all, that they pretty much always involve some kind of transformative journey for the reader. So maybe the journey is simply, I want you to think about this thing differently. Maybe they're just changing their mind about how to think about a problem, right? A paradigm shift of some kind.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:22

Some books are very practical and they take you through an actual program, right? Work through this book and you will have less stress. You will weigh less, you will, whatever it is. You know, however it is, from A to Z, you want that reader to be taken on some kind of transformative journey. And because it's a journey, there needs to be a kind of logical flow, there needs to be an ease of flow. It has to build on it, right? You can't just tell people what they're supposed to believe. Maybe that argument has to be made slowly throughout a few chapters, or maybe there's something you want them to accomplish, but there's baby steps to get to that place. That's the big, big structure. And then the second part from that that I think uh stretches to all kinds of books is what we call the macrocosm and the microcosm, right? So the macrocosm of the overall book is like what is this book? What are we promising people? Right? Why are they picking it up? What are they coming to this book for? That's the big picture. And then everything within the book needs to come back to that picture. So within each part of the book or each chapter of the book, all of those topics need to speak back to that promise and connect back to that promise. Then within each chapter, all the sections within the chapter need to speak back to the promise of the chapter. So you have that macrocosm of does everything in this chapter speak to the topic of this chapter, the promise of this chapter? And does the chapter in turn speak to the promise of the book? And that really helps to connect everything and tie everything.

SPEAKER_00 32:51

So good, so good. Oh my God, you're on your unpacking this, and I know that people are probably wanting to take notes. If you want to take notes, don't worry. We have show notes and uh we'll we'll have the transcripts, but we also connect you to Allie. But more importantly, you know, that this is really tangible things that you can use. And and you you my friends, this is uh this is information that people pay a lot of money for and for to Allie for. And it's really important that they you have an expert in your corner like Allie. Now, you have like you we said in the intro, you worked for Simon and Schuster. And obviously, there there is the indie publishing, the solo publishing with Amazon. Walk me through all the different ways to publish and and what is the process for some of those ways to get published.

SPEAKER_01 33:37

Sure. So, really broadly speaking, you have four main paths to publication. You have what we call the traditional or the legacy path. That's where you're submitting to an agent or directly to a publisher. You become partners, they publish your book, everybody makes money together, so on and so forth. Opposite end of the spectrum is you have DIY, total self-publishing, in the truest sense of the word, where you are doing all the things and you do everything yourself. Then in between those two things, we have two sort of half options. So one is hybrid publishing, which has really sort of matured over the last five, 10 years or so. Hybrid publishing has a little bit of traditional publishing in the sense that they don't publish everybody. There's a submission process where you get accepted. But it's also a little bit like self-publishing in that you bear some of the cost. So a hybrid publisher is discerning in what they publish, but they also will charge you a certain amount, usually flat rates, for help in producing the book. And then both of you earn money off the sales of the book. So you're both very invested in the cost of creation and in the income that follows. The fourth type is sort of between hybrid and total DIY, which is what my company does. We call it supported indie publishing.

SPEAKER_02 34:54

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

So it's not like a hybrid publisher in the sense that when you publish a book with us, we take no ownership. So it's not our imprint, it's not our ISBN, it's yours. You are the publisher. We are basically your outsourced publishing staff. So we do all the things a publisher would do, but we're doing them for transparent flat rates, and it's all on your behalf. Once the book is published, uh, we turn everything over, all the accounts, we turn it all over to the author. We have no ongoing interest, we don't take any of the royalties or anything like that. Um, and it's similar to total DIY self-publishing in the sense that again, you are the publisher, you have all the control. And I obviously am a little biased because it's what we do. Yeah. But you know, one of the things I think is really beautiful about that option is that you get the traditional publishing experience, that feeling of going through that process. But unlike somebody who's totally alone and maybe has to ask Chat GPT or a blog, you know, what they should do, we have you have experts in your corner when you work with a group like us. And we are never going to try to make something ours, but we do push back. If an author wants to do something that we think is a really bad idea, we will tell you. Good for you. I yeah, I uh I'm not there are a lot of companies out there, to be blunt, who are very happy to put lipstick on a pig. You know, you pay them some money and they take your draft and they'll throw a cover on it, run some spell check, and publish it for you. And that is not what we do. We care about the quality of the book and we care about the results that the book gets for you. So sometimes uh that means having some difficult conversations. But at the end of the day, you are the boss, you are the publisher, we will do it. We'll just try to talk you out of it if we think it's a bad idea.

SPEAKER_00 36:44

No, and I I think that this is really good. Thank you so much for unpacking that. I think that, you know, I I did very similar to what you do. I went with someone who, again, they pushed back, they offered me all the the marketing that we went through the steps. But, you know, at the end of the day, it was my book, right? I could make the the decisions and certain things. Um, but obviously I needed to leverage their expertise and other when it came to the copy editing, the the proofreading, the the cover design, all of that. Um and again, you know, I look at I actually just have a friend I saw them on Sunday. They just published a book and they were totally DIY. He did a great job, honestly. Um, because and and to his credit, he is out there talking about the book, going, and he's trying to build a speaking career. Um, but I I look at all the energy, but that's all he did for the past year. That's all he did. So that's that that's if you don't have a full-time job or don't need to, you know, do anything else other than your book, then DIY may be the way for you. But sometimes you do need like my motto do what you do best, delegate the rest. And I am not a book editor, that's for sure. You know?

SPEAKER_01 38:04

Yeah, yeah, no, that's absolutely true. Um, and they're there, you know, like certainly I've met I've met indie authors who have done everything themselves and have done a really great job. It's not that you're not capable of it, but everybody's skill set varies, everybody's aptitude varies. You know, some people um have a really a real knack for design. Other people, you know, create something that looks like a third grader did it, you know, let's be honest. So no, for sure. I've seen that they have in their skill set is going to vary a lot. And and as you pointed out, you know, a lot of our clients, especially on the nonfiction side, they have businesses. They're writing the book because they have a business they want to grow. They don't have time to make that book their full-time job for a year. So it just really depends. I always like to say that, you know, it's um, it's not my saying, it's that old marketing truism, right? That you you can have it done. Oh no, you're gonna pay one way or the other. You're gonna pay time or money.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

Or money, correct.

SPEAKER_01 38:59

So if you have the money, you hire a professional team, you get it done. If you don't have the money, you can do it yourself, but it's gonna take a lot of time to learn how to do it right.

SPEAKER_00 39:07

And and here's my motto on this, right? You you need to buy back your time. And time is a commodity that sometimes we cannot create more of. But money, money we can create more of, right? And we can, you know, budget for it, we can do different things. Now, I I will tell you, someone just send me a book. I I I'm gonna interview this individual. And um I the just speaking to them before the the actual interview is I do mostly, um, really I was fascinated by his story, and he, you know, he just published his book and he really is so excited, and I'm excited to read it just from talking to him. So I got the book in Kindle, because I usually get it in, you know, in my Kindle. Now he did send me a copy of the book. Now I will tell you without showing the actual book. Hold on. I was a little scared when I got the book, although I've been reading it and it's really good. I really have a hard time putting it down, but this is the size of the book. Is there a right size for a book?

SPEAKER_01 40:24

It depends on the kind of book, and it very much depends again on what you want the book to do for you. It always comes back to the goals. Um, you know, some people will write a book that is a pure lead gen, right? They're planning to have it up for free or for 99 cents on Kindle. Those books tend to be in the range of 20 to 30,000 words, usually about 100 to 150 printed pages, right? They're short, they're easy, they're quick, they're very, very narrowly focused. The whole point of those books is usually to introduce you to someone and get you to take the next step, which is usually to work with them in some way, right? That's one type of book. But maybe you're trying to put sort of like put your flag in the sand, right? You want to write a thought leadership book. You really want to establish yourself as the go-to expert on some subject. Maybe you're on a mission and you want to change everybody's mind about something. Those books tend to be a little meatier and a little bit longer. They still should lead people to take an action, but they want to get into content. They're not just overblown business cards. Those books tend to be more in the 45 to 60,000 word range. Traditional publishing also tends to publish slightly bigger books, usually comes down to the finance and the cost of printing versus sales. Um, you can even see nonfiction. It's not atypical for a nonfiction book to run as much as 70,000, 75,000 words.

SPEAKER_00 41:44

Yeah. Wow. Good to know. Good to know. Now, I and you know, and speaking of this book as a business card, marketing for the book, because it's twofold, right? Um, someone, like I said, sent me a book. And now there is another gentleman that, and by the way, this is another really great book. Um, and I'm interviewing him, uh Nate Hambrick, uh, The 18 Laws of Uh Leverage. And very, very well written. It was great. And when I spoke to him, he actually interviewed me for his podcast. And I said, Oh, I I want to read your book. Tell me more about it. And you know, he was talking about it. Now he said, I'll send you a copy. Most people send me either a copy or they send me the ebook and I just downloaded. But he sent me five copies of the book.

SPEAKER_01 42:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 42:35

I'm excited because this is a good book. I'm giving it away. Is that a good marketing tactic? Now, what are some of the mistakes, too, that people, even seasoned authors, uh, make when trying to grow their platform or to market their book? And what can people do to fix it?

SPEAKER_01 42:50

Well, yeah, I mean, that's a that's a great example. And I do think that that is something that can be very effective. Um, it can get expensive quickly, of course, if you're sending print copies. But as long as you're being really targeted, like you are a perfect example. So this gentleman recognizes that you are somebody with a platform and an audience of your own. You are someone who's very connected to the right people. If he sends you his book, first of all, if you like it, I mean, he's going to be on your show. So that's you know a side thing. But if you like the book, you're going to talk about it. You've already mentioned like three different books, you know, in this episode. I know. I read a lot. I'm sorry. No, don't be sorry. That's great. So he sends it to you. He knows you're going to talk about it if you like it. Second of all, he knows that you know other people in the space and that you're going to understand other people who might like it. So you are a very prime candidate to be able to get those other four copies into the hands of other ideal people he might not have known himself. So, yeah, real smart. You know, costs a little bit more. Um, but it's really, really nice. And I heard someone say once that, you know, giving someone a business card, they're just going to toss that in the trash when they get 100%. But nobody throws out a book. They just don't. So it you know, it can be a really, really powerful thing to give if you give it to the right people. Um, and I think that that's really what it comes down to. You know, a lot of authors they're very worried about giving things away, and there's this sort of um uh resistance to the idea of giving things away. And I think it's because you know, you come from this business perspective of like, well, I'm investing all of this money and time and energy into creating this thing. I want to earn that money back. And first of all, they don't understand that free is one of the most powerful tools in your toolbox, right? I mean, content marketing, right? Podcasts don't cost anything, blog posts don't cost anything, social media. We already create a lot of stuff that we give away for free. A book's not really that different. Yeah, and second of all, that the value of a book for nonfiction people, anyway, for businesses, it isn't in the cover price. You know, would you rather sell uh a hundred copies for, you know, maybe 10 bucks a book or something like that? Or would you rather sell a $10,000 coaching package?

SPEAKER_00 45:05

100%. You're hitting the nail on the head. That's it, and and that's I think what a lot of people don't realize is that they think they're going to monetize their book. And the monetization doesn't come in the number of copies you're selling, it really does come on positioning and what is that going to lead you to, and how is that opening doors? And uh, and I know that for me, that's exactly what the book did. Um, but I went in knowing that. And I think that um I knew that this was going to, and again, immediately I a lot of my speaking and paid speaking has come from the book and it has really helped me to leverage that now. Um, because we've talked about publishing having evolved and changed, um, what does success in publishing look like? Because not everybody is hitting the New York Times bestseller, right? And and how does how does success in the book publishing evolve maybe from five to ten years ago?

SPEAKER_01 46:03

I think a lot of it really does come down to that old truism that you have to decide to find success for yourself. You know, so for some people it might mean um getting a certain number of copies into people's hands because you're just trying to boost your visibility. Or maybe success means that you've leveraged that book to get some speaking engagements or to sell some packages or whatever that looks like. Maybe you do have a goal around book sales. That's fine. You know, I don't think it's the best use of your energy, but it it certainly is something that you can do if that's what means success. Um, bestseller lists are challenging. You know, you mentioning the New York Times list. So, you know, first of all, it's very rare for an indie book to get on traditional bestseller lists just because of the way that they're structured. Most of them count sales from brick and mortar stores still. Um, so you know, that's certainly not the be-all end-all of whether or not your book is successful. I've known, you know, when I worked at Simon Schuster, I knew of several authors who had never been on the New York Times list, but whose books were in their 10th, 11th, 12th, 20th printing and had been selling hundreds of thousands of copies every year because the bestseller lists focus on a very short window and a rate of sale.

unknown 47:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:18

So, you know, what's success? Is it important to you to hit a bestseller list? Is it important to you to say I'm an Amazon number one bestselling author? If it is, then you build your strategy around achieving that thing, and that's fine. Um, but their success definitely can look like lots of things for lots of people.

SPEAKER_02 47:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:36

Um, I don't know how much that's changed. You know, traditional publishing, I think the real change is more about how you publish the book. Um, you know, traditional publishers are big businesses with a lot of overhead. They very much need to sell a certain number of books to make the investment they put into it worthwhile. Everything from the professional staff to keeping the lights on and literally in the building, right?

SPEAKER_02 48:00

Right.

SPEAKER_01 48:01

Um, so they have a certain amount of scale. They need to sell books. But you as an indie author, especially if you have a business that your book relates to, you're not in the business of selling books. You wrote that book to sell your business.

SPEAKER_00 48:14

Right.

SPEAKER_01 48:15

So it's a very different picture.

SPEAKER_00 48:17

Oh, such a different picture. Now, you talked about the ISBN number, and and you know, that made me think of um someone that I just saw on TikTok, and I felt terrible for this young man. He wrote a book, and I I cannot remember for the life of me who uh what the it's a children's book. And he uh went ahead and published it himself, and he was sitting in this room uh with boxes upon boxes, and he was ready to uh send the book out, I guess, to uh to Ingram or and and Ingram, I guess you have to have a certain amount of books that you have to have published in order for them to accept it. And and he said, I thought I could just send my book, I thought I could just have a different ISBN from Amazon. And that's another component, right? That people need uh support navigating through, right?

SPEAKER_01 49:14

Yeah, you're talking about distribution, basically, rational distribution. Yeah, um, so Ingram has both a print-on-demand arm that they call Ingram Spark that is available for indie authors. They also have another side of the business that is also print-on-demand and uh traditional printing, but that's only available to big established publishers with large accounts. So, yeah, it is really important to understand if you produce the book yourself, how is it going to get into the channels through which people will buy it? Um, you know, the easiest answer is a lot of people publish through Amazon. Amazon has its own KDP platform for publishing. Um, and there are lots of situations in which publishing directly through Amazon makes sense. There are some cases in which it doesn't make sense. Um, and then you have lots of other options depending on the format. Some places only work with ebooks. Smashwords is a good example. They're a really big, really popular e-book distributor, but they don't distribute print books. So yeah, this is just another piece of that business puzzle that you have to understand. And I think it really highlights what we mean when we say that you are self-publishing. That's that's very literal. You know, you wear all the hats and you have to learn all the pieces. And if you don't, then you either make mistakes that you may not be able to recover from, you miss opportunities, you may not be able to get back. Um, and once a book is published, it's not so easy to just unpublish it.

unknown 50:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:41

So absolutely those mistakes can be, those can mistakes can haunt you for a very long time. And you don't know what you don't know, which especially if you have big goals, if you have big dreams for what your book is going to do in the world, if it's more than just a hobby or a bucket list item, it really pays to work with professionals.

SPEAKER_00 50:58

Yeah, absolutely. I I cannot stress that enough. And, you know, I I wonder as we're wrapping up, and again, I, you know, this has been such a fun conversation, Allie. You're very knowledgeable and so helpful, I think, for the listeners because a lot of them are kind of navigating this or thinking about it. And it's really good to have this type of information to help them and put it in their toolbox so they can move forward in the direction that makes sense. Now, for the someone who's listening who's stuck, maybe they wrote a rough draft or maybe they haven't started yet. But what's one small powerful action that they could take today to get unstuck?

SPEAKER_01 51:35

Well, they can come to our website at therritersally.com. Our primary gift is a free checklist called Are You Ready? Are you really ready to publish? And it sort of covers the nine steps, the nine essential steps that every successful book needs to go through. So that could be a really great thing to help you get a temperature check on where you're at. And if you're writing a nonfiction book, if you're thinking about writing a nonfiction book, or if you've gotten started, I have a really great free gift that I want to offer your listeners. Okay. Um, it's a special website, we'll include the URL, I guess, in the show notes. It's offers.com backslash Casa de Confidence. And it's a webinar. It's called Don't Write the Wrong Book. And it's I love it. Nice short 20, 30 minute training on exactly that.

SPEAKER_00 52:22

Okay, amazing. This is so good and so generous. Thank you so much for setting up the audience and hooking us up. I love it, I love it. Um, you've brought so much value and you have shared some incredible knowledge. I know that if I had to do it all over again, you would be my choice. And I and I'm sorry if I've had other people, but I love you all. But sometimes you just know, you know, when you click with someone. So Allie, so fun. Um, where can the listeners find you other than the writer's ally ally? Right? Yeah. The writer's ally. Where else can they find you? Where do you hang out online?

SPEAKER_01 52:59

Um, mostly on LinkedIn. I do have accounts on other platforms, but I would say LinkedIn is uh is the most active.

SPEAKER_00 53:06

Amazing. Well, I want to encourage you, my friends, that if you had some value from this, don't just go and download the thing. That's gonna be great resources for you. But go and tell Ellie how much you really loved her content and what was helpful for you, and what is one actionable that you're taking away and putting into practice because confidence doesn't come just from having the feeling, it comes from practicing the thing, even when it's hard. Show up, show up 1% better every day and have that consistent action because that's what gets you traction, my friends. So until next time, I am so grateful for you hanging out with us today. Allie, thank you again. And don't forget, everybody, go confidently in the direction of your dreams.

SPEAKER_01 53:48

Thank you so much again for having me. It's been a blast.

SPEAKER_00 53:50

A blast for sure.