On Self-Publishing Success: Avoiding the Mistakes That Cost Authors

Think publishing your book is the finish line? Think again.

Many authors unknowingly make small publishing decisions that lead to poor discoverability, lost sales, rejected bookstore submissions, or even leave their work vulnerable to theft. The good news? Most of these costly mistakes are completely avoidable—if you know what to look for.

On this episode of Talking Book Publishing, Kathleen and Adanna welcome Juliet Clark of Superbrand Publishing to discuss the publishing and marketing mistakes she sees every day, from copyright protection and metadata to author branding, Amazon optimization, and the scams targeting today's authors.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why registering your copyright matters
• The difference between ISBNs, Library of Congress registrations, and Amazon product codes
• How cover design affects discoverability and sales
• What makes effective back cover copy
• Why every author needs a consistent brand
• How Amazon A+ Content helps readers understand your book
• Why metadata and categories are critical for discoverability
• The importance of building your author platform before launch
• How lead magnets grow your email list
• How to recognize and avoid common publishing scams

Whether you're publishing your first book or looking to improve the performance of an existing one, this episode is full of practical advice that can help you publish smarter and market with confidence.

Connect With Us

Kathleen: kathleenkaiser.com

Adanna: maddannastudio.com

Podcast listeners receive a special 20% off all ProBookLaunch products. Use code TBPLISTENER20 at checkout.

Have a topic or guest suggestion?
Email us at podcast@talkingbookpublishing.today

Join the conversation on Instagram: @writerspubsnet

Transcript

Kathleen (00:07.63)
Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of Talking Book Publishing. I'm Kathleen Kaiser, your co-host, along with Adanna Moriarty. And today we have Juliet Clark from Superbrand Publishing, who works with lots of authors and has run into some interesting things that authors trying to save money and use AI to publish are running into. So let's tell us all about it, Juliet. Welcome.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. yes, so lately we haven't been doing as much publishing. We do more book marketing and platform building, but we're getting people on our calendar who are asking us, okay, I published how do I sell books? And so we started going through and doing an audit and found so many things that they are missing that could really, really hurt them. And one person actually had their books stolen from them last year that we got.

So the first thing is the copyright. it seems like they're learning, I don't know if it's from AI or from courses they're taking, but they think that their copyright page, all they have to do is just put it in front and say copyright twenty twenty five or copyright twenty twenty six. And that will not hold up. You have to go file the government document for your copyright.

especially if someone is taking pieces of your work or which we see a lot of, you you quote, you don't cite, you don't give citations for it, or you can actually have your manuscript solen stolen and republished, which was what one of the people I talked to did. She sent it over to I'm not sure it was one of those places like an upwork or a fiver where it's offshore and suddenly her book was published in somebody else's name.

So you have to go over to the copyright site with the government and file that. And you guys know about the anthropic lawsuit, right? About yeah, all that. The only people, my understanding is the only people who got settlements had LCCNs filed, those pre registrations and copyrights. So it was actually both of those that were necessary if you wanted a payout on there. So

Kathleen (02:23.242)
And also I don't know of a lot of people because it's in small print at the bottom, which you figure you've resolved everything and yes, you're now, you know, your manuscript that you uploaded. Within a year, you have to send a hard copy of the book. A lot of people don't do that.

Yes, for the L C C N the Library of Congress, you absolutely do. And that's another thing is when they're self publishing, that is one of the things that was like number eight on here, but they then they take their book, so they get their book in hand, whether it's Ingram or whether it's Amazon, and they walk into a bookstore or they walk into a library and they say, I'd love I'd love for you to carry this book and they open it up and they see no L C C N and they're it's a it's a hard note.

because you know they can they can tell it's been self published. So yes, you're absolutely right. You do have to send it within a certain period of time so that they can file it and get it out of there.

Yeah, there there's so many little things along the way. It's like, well, I have the the free ISBN numbers from Amazon. It's like, no, you don't. You have Amazon product codes. Those are not ISBN numbers. And you have to own your ISBN numbers. It's you know, I know it's expensive, but if you go down this route, it's part of the budgeting for it that you must do to protect yourself. There's like you said, there's so many people stealing things.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. The next thing we're seeing are really poor cover designs. So you know, you have to remember when you put your book over on any of the distributors, it's like a postage size stamp of your book cover. So if you have really thin lines or you have something that doesn't stand out, nobody's gonna choose that book.

Juliet (04:10.37)
They don't, I mean that that is literally their first impression. Unlike a bookstore where you know they people pull it off the shelf and read that back cover copy. when you're over on Amazon, usually that that cover is the first thing. And I have seen some really poorly done covers lately as well. So you have to keep that in mind when you're when you're doing it. And does the cover match the topic? I I we've seen a lot of people who have come to us that

I ask them, you know, where's your brand, your brand guide? Where's your brand? They don't have anything. they've got a website that looks one like one thing, that you know, a cover that looks like another. None of it matches. And, you know, that goes to the heart of what you're doing before you start. You need that brand guide to keep everything consistent with what you're doing.

When I've ran into clients with covers and they're insisting that they're fabulous and they're horrible and they don't have anything to do with their genre or whatever, I say, okay, do this, take it and send it, don't do it on your little inkjet printer at home, send it to the local printer, ask them to print one copy and tell them to make it this size, like a six by nine, if that's what you're publishing. Then take that and mount that on a piece of cardboard.

Go down to Barnes and Norble and go to this, you go to your genre and put it up there next to everything it's selling. Every single time they go, I see it is different. You know? It's like when you see your con when you see it up against your competition, if you have an open mind, you'll see that, my God, this is not gonna work. You know, you have to be honest with yourself.

Well and also, I mean, shrink it down, put it in black and white, because I mean, if people are reading on Kindles, they're absolutely tiny. And on you know, on any of the paper versions of a Kindle, everything is like newspaper. It's black and white, black and gray. I mean, if you if it's muddy and you can't tell what it is, nobody's ever gonna click on that to read ever.

Kathleen (06:12.03)
I think they should do it down to grayscale instead of strictly black and white. Because the gray Yeah, but the average person doesn't know the difference between grayscale and black and white. And grayscale will actually make it look like your cover just in black and white. But black and white can be harsh on a cover if you select that.

Scale, I mean

Juliet (06:33.612)
Yeah, yeah, I can. A lot of I learned seeing a lot of like dark colors with thin lines that you wouldn't necessarily see those thin lines on the on that postage side stamp too. So not not really visible. And I just got back, I've been I haven't written fiction novels in fifteen years. I just got back into it and we did a whole brand guide in advance. So all of those covers

They don't look exactly the same but they have the same brand. Like you can tell it the book is from the that I'm the author of the book because it it has a pattern that goes all the way through the series as well.

Like to dive into a brand guide a little bit more for authors. I mean, it is something like that I do for my clients, but it's always nice to have that kind of explained, you know, from the outside in. So somebody who might never even have thought of that, because I don't think people actually really think about their book as a business that would need branding. and I think that authors definitely need branding. So could you just

I don't know, like expand on that a little bit so people know what that actually means for them.

Yeah, so it it's like if you have a business, you go to somebody who does a brand, you know, branding. And so everywhere that your book is at, the font the font is the same. So it the font is the same on your website. The colors are the same, the look is the same, the the feel of everything is the same. So you might have certain fonts that you use, certain colors that you use. if you're someone like I just talked about with the fiction.

Juliet (08:11.498)
We have one we have words in script and then we have a word below. So we have it it all has to be consistent so that people can identify right away. That's a Dana Moriarty or that's Kathleen Kaiser. That makes sense. You probably get a little bit deeper into it when you put them out.

I mean, I have variations of how deep we can go. I mean, I have a style guide that I can do for people or we can do full branding. It just depends on what they need. I mean, I I think everyone needs at least a style guide, like personally. But

Ha ha ha ha ha.

I'm just I have a friend who has a couple of mystery series and her her original one has just been bought. It's got ten books in the series by a British publisher who's going to do it in Britain and have it translated for Europe. And they sent her the new cover and she sent it to me, and it's like so different than all of her covers. And she didn't self-publish. The first five books were with Random House, and then something happened so

The next five she's done, but she sort of kept the look. But that was twenty years ago. And the cover, and she goes, I'm not sure about this. And I said, I love it. It's totally different. Looks fresh. It's got all the covers that are colors that are working right now. It has a red on there that's outstanding as rope going across a screen or something. And it the the title pops so that you know what it is. And she goes, All right, I'm gonna just keep looking at it, you know.

Kathleen (09:45.322)
But you know, when you've been living with something for twenty years and suddenly you've got to change it, but if they're they see a potential for it, you gotta go with the professionals that know what the fonts are and the colors are that your market is buying now that makes their hand go out and pick it or click it as most people do anymore.

Also, the like the international market is different. I mean, if it happens often, I mean, if you publish a book in America and then it's published in the UK, it's gonna have a really different cover because we are very different populations of human beings that buy books.

And they also sometimes change the title that appeals more to what they want. I know, especially for Germany and France, they often change the titles. But anyway, I thought that was interesting because the importance of the cover. If you use this was several years ago, Dan and I were doing some ebook promotions, and she got talking with one of the guys who works for one of the companies, and he was talking about

We asked why were a couple of our books not doing as well as they had been, and it was all about the covers. So she was showed him one that we had coming up, and he goes, my God, they'll love that one. And he was right, that book was number one on Amazon and number one on Ingram when it came out, but it was the cover that grabbed your attention. And they don't read the rest of it if they don't like it. And when they're going through the emails, if they don't like it, they've got five to choose from that day. They just don't click on it.

And it's the cover, not the description.

Adanna (11:19.342)
I mean, picking books is like dating. Yeah. You gotta you judge it by the cover first and then you get into it and decide if you like it or not.

I'm much more successful at choosing books than I am dating.

Yeah.

Okay, what else are you seeing, Julia?

So really poor back cover copy. there back cover copy on fiction is a little bit different than nonfiction, but with nonfiction it's very formulaic. You can't just ramble on about what your book is about. People have expectations. They want to know what they're going to get from the book. They wanna know what the expectations are, what is no matter what the genre is in nonfiction, they wanna know results.

Juliet (12:09.004)
What am I going to get from reading this book? And I've seen a lot of them that kind of ramble on about one particular one that comes to mind is health. Your health isn't great. It just talks about America's health. It doesn't talk about when you read this book, you will get some practices that help you sleep better. You will you know, having those bullet points there that really point to what the expect what what you will get out of that book.

so I'm seeing a lot of that where I don't know I'm I would think if you're using AI, they would know what the formula is to use over and over and over. But for some reason they're just ignoring it maybe and and writing what they think. The other thing I've seen Yeah. The other thing I'm seeing is when so from a marketing standpoint, you know when you see people do something w they think is cute, like

a phrase or they make something up and then people pick up the back cover of the book and they go, I have no idea what that means and they put it down. So y you have to be direct and use language that people understand about your genre, not just something that only you understand.

The one thing I found, especially with conferences, because I've produced a lot of conferences, is what's the takeaway? What can they walk out the door and implement in the next week? You know, people want to know that. And if you have that back on the back cover, some of the things that you will learn and you can and how to implement them, that that's like, okay, this will solve my problem. They picked up your book probably because they have a need. Show them you have a solution.

Yes. That would be really good.

Adanna (13:52.854)
I can the reason that AI spits out bad copy is the prompt is poor. So if you say I have this book that I wrote, or you upload a one-page synopsis that you wrote about your own book, that you know you may or may not even actually understand what genre it's in, or what your audience is, or what the key points are that are important to put in a one-page summary.

That is really good.

Adanna (14:20.47)
And then you upload that to Gemini or Chat GPT or whatever. And you say, you know, I need a back cover copy from this. And you that's it. That's your whole prompt. You're going to get bad material.

Yeah, you really are. And that sort of brings me to our perfect reader playbook as well. We put those prompts just like you guys did in Pro Launch. We put those prompts in, you answer those questions, and then you get accurate marketing information because we know what prompts work with that. and you know, it's very hard, especially there are a lot of people who are not using AI, right?

Yeah.

I mean, and I don't think that's their fault. I mean, I think that, you know, if if you are a person who has never marketed anything ever in your life and you've written a book and you're trying to DIY your entire process, right? From ISBNs to your copyright, your back cover, your cover design, your editing, all of it because you don't have enough money to pay for things. and then you're like, okay, I have to market this.

And you go into AI to try to help you market, but you have zero idea what good marketing is. I mean, that's not their fault that like, you know, so when they when AI then spits out something and they tell whatever AI platform they're using, like this is good, then AI will just keep giving them bad stuff because they've already told it, I like this.

Juliet (15:51.089)
Right.

You know, it's not really the AI's fault or the person's fault who has no idea what they're doing. I mean, you know, that's why people like us exist out there because and we have jobs still.

Yeah.

That that is absolutely right. We still have jobs. the the other thing I see is people that are using Amazon. They're either not using A plus content at all, which is an extra, which can really help get your book discovered or tell people more about the book, or they're using it incorrectly. So there I I know we talked about before we got on here scams. There are a lot of people reaching out via email right now who are saying,

I have this package, I'll optimize your Amazon. And then they take, they optimize your A plus content, but they make it look like one big sales page. We actually had a test we did with our author promocast where when we develop your A plus content, it's informational. It's not one big landing salesy landing page. And when we ran those ads with two different clients who had both of them had trauma book books.

Juliet (17:03.714)
The one that was all promo didn't do well. The one that was informational and helped people understand more of what was in their book got forty percent more clicks than the ones that are saying, I'm gonna optimize your A plus content and it's just one big sales page about it. So first of all, if you're using Amazon, I would encourage you to use it, but use it in the way that will help people understand what your book is about.

not trying to sell your business or, you know, sell other packages or be really cute with the promo on it. Does that make sense? Do you guys

But explain A plus content. Some people may not understand that.

So A plus content is free when you publish through Amazon and it's it's modules. So you go in and I believe self published authors can use four to five modules. And they give you templates, you can put images in there, and you do a little storytelling about the book. You usually when I do them, the last module is about the content you produce. So where can we find your blog? Where can we find your podcast?

tell me about yourself as an author. Are you a speaker? So we have that at the bottom and that will usually get through Amazon's stringent. They're pretty stringent about what you put on there. But you can tell they have the modules that you choose from templates. So you can do one that has an image and the verbiages on the right. Then there's one that's opposite, and they have some where you can do some comparisons for different things. So you you choose those modules, you populate images and you

Juliet (18:43.886)
put additional information that is in the book. So if you had a health book, you might, let's say there are four pillars of health that you teach. You might do a four template that has four images and underneath each image it has a little bit about what you teach in each area. So it like I said, it's informational, it's not buy my book, buy my program, you know, buy XYZ. So I would encourage authors to really use that.

And you know, it it's additional to your back cover. So it gives people just a little bit more information. And we do it for all of our authors because we put the ebooks into Kindle so that they can work with them, adjust pricing if they have events. But I know I notice a lot of people are not using it as well.

Yeah, they don't even set up their author pages.

No, I know.

I mean, we we do it for our clients, but it's like you've got to have your author page set up because you know, it's in the part of the algorithms, I think, with the new with the series 10 on Amazon that they look to see if you have a real picture. Is there do you exist? You know, and do you have your author page? Do you have a website? What's your social media? Do you blog? All of that type of stuff. And that all goes into your author page.

Juliet (20:07.018)
Yes, and that blogging piece is they're rewarding content creators more than they did in the past. So when you put together that A plus content, you're signaling them, look, I have a podcast. Look, I have a blog. I am a content creator. So that helps your algorithmic adventure as well through that. So

There's so much to do.

the next thing is when I talk to them about publishing, they don't understand the publishing world at all. So I ran into somebody a couple weeks ago who got returns on her books and she didn't understand why they were charging back so much. She didn't even know she could get returns. All of a sudden she has a bill from Ingram. And so you really need to understand what you're getting into.

Because if you happen to get that book in a bookstore and they don't sell it, it just doesn't it just doesn't go to waste. You get charged back for all of that. So I think that's another thing is just not understanding the publishing industry in general, which is why you should work with someone. Because you know, if you're an engineer writing a book about how to build a bridge, well I can read that book, but I don't think you'd ever want to

drive over a bridge that I built because I'm an amateur. So that that right there is why you should work with professionals is you don't what you don't you don't know what you don't know when you get into something like that.

Kathleen (21:43.158)
Yeah. And and like you said, I think Adanna said it too. So few people ever have anything to do in their business life, however they're employed that has anything to do with marketing. Right. You know, in fact a lot of the people think the marketing guys are terrible people. You know, they don't understand what it does, but without marketing, they wouldn't have a job building a product because it couldn't have been sold. People wouldn't have found out about it.

And that's sort of I always look at it as like the t town crier in a way, you know, in the old times going around talking about what they're ringing their bell or whatever. It's sort of the same thing or the guy in the ro in in Rome standing up reading the latest announcements from the Senate. That's sort of what marketing is, letting you know, positioning it properly, letting people find you. And without being able to find you, it's it's a really, it's a really sad adventure, actually.

It is, but it's even I think it's even harder than that because if you don't understand your messaging, you're gonna have a really hard time communicating that to a marketing group. Or if that marketing group is putting together your messaging and they don't understand you and your business. I hear a lot about

I I built a funnel and I or this company built a funnel, I don't know how to use it, I don't know how it works, I don't know what it means. If you're going to do this, you need to be intimately involved with that marketing group and understand what they're doing. Because if you want to take over that marketing for a VA, you have to understand it to be able to delegate it. And if you're not really involved with it, they're probably not getting the essence of who you are.

Of what your product is and how to really promote that well. in fact, we've been talking about that later or lately within our company. We're actually doing a talk in June about your funnel's not broken, it's empty. So a lot of times authors will go out and they'll have the funnel built, but then they won't know how to drive traffic to it or they won't bother. They're expecting magic. And you know, that's it, it really is.

Juliet (23:57.364)
more complicated than that. It's a lot of work to build your author platform. A lot of work.

Marketers are not magicians.

Yeah. No. I mean, all we can do is like we know the science, but I mean, you know, I agree. We're not magicians.

No, not at not at all. I we can I can build things, but if you don't execute on that build, it's just gonna sit there and it's a waste. And we do build a lot of funnels. And then the last thing, and I think you guys have been talking about this already: scams. I'm an author, I see them all. They're in my email box every day. The best way to avoid getting ripped off that I think is I hit them back and I say.

Tell me about your services and by the way, sell me, send me your link over on LinkedIn. And then I'm really direct with them. If you don't have a LinkedIn link, you're not my people. I want to be able to investigate you. I want to see the testimonials that people have done over there. And I can tell you I have not bought a single thing because not one single one of those people has a LinkedIn profile. So investigate and protect yourself.

Juliet (25:14.12)
I actually have a client who bought four of those book clubs and I could have strangled her. we she worked with she works with my group and another marketing group who does her social media. We got on one big call and we told her this is a scam. She didn't believe us. And it it's just been it's been really hard because that the these scam people they don't

I she's probably getting something. They say that they're reading her books. These book clubs are reading her books. All I've seen so far are a bunch of unverified reviews on Goodreads and Amazon. And those unverified reviews kind of work against you. They want to see that those people leaving reviews bought the book. So she had 84 unverified reviews. And it didn't matter how much we told her that this is a scam, this is not working, this is hurting you.

She just wouldn't listen. She didn't want to believe that she fell for something like that. So I I would really encourage people, no LinkedIn profile, don't buy. Don't even consider it.

Yeah, I i some people I have one client who's a very smart person and a f business professional, but his dream is for his book to be a movie. And he got one of so I usually get the email for them, so I they don't even know this junk is happening. I just like, and that's good for me to put out scam alerts when I start seeing a pattern. but he went after it like, my god, they love my book. And he went back to he was doing this cover and it's like

and then he finally included me in it. And I went, What are you doing? This is a scam. Look at that. Nothing at Gmail is a professional. Okay. No movie producer at gmail.com is real. You know, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You know, and it then he pulled back and goes, I, you know, it was the the want of to have your creativity that your little baby could be a movie.

Kathleen (27:22.43)
Overwhelmed good common sense. And it's really hard to pop the bubble on people, but you know, they're just gonna be taking you for stuff. He said, Well, it wasn't much money to make a trailer. You don't need a trailer. Okay. You don't need one to pitch producers. Come on. And you know, you and you'd never hear from them again. You get the five thousand, you you know, you'd never see another thing. They it's disappear.

I I mean I I say this, I feel like it's like, you know, beating a dead horse at this point. But I mean, authors, all of us are authors, like I think that we are super vulnerable because it's vulnerable to put your work out there. And then, you know, we always have this sort of like, does anybody like what we do? And then when you get responses like that, it's you know, it's verifying that people do like what you do.

And it gets really exciting because, you know, you dump a lot into making a book. From concept to, you know, through the entire creation. It's it's rough. It's a vulnerable process.

Yeah. I gotta tell you, I got I got taken last week, not by a scam, but I uploaded something, something for my sub stack and I said, Just see what you can do with this. Just don't change my voice. You you know, I've been working with this in Chat GPT. And it's this is one and I got all excited. I said, Hold on, this is AI telling me what I want to hear. What am I but the the rush of it likes it, you know? Like

God, I just felt for it myself, you know. Took about a minute and then it was like, calm down, you know.

Juliet (29:07.282)
Yeah. No, you know, it's it's ego. We you you put your heart and soul into it and you know when somebody comes and these these emails that people send are so flattering. I mean if you I and you really have to sit down. That's why that the the brand guide, the goals, the you know, the perfect reader playbook, all of these things are so important because if it doesn't fit in with your original goals, you shouldn't buy it. Because you had a plan, stick with it.

If it doesn't build your author platform and get you emails or contacts or something that's going to help you sell those books that's not a one-off hit, because a lot of promo is just a one-off hit. you probably shouldn't be indulging in it. And if you do decide, make sure that person is reputable. you know, you we know lots of reputable people that do this sort of thing.

Where you can you can get some traction. Don't you're right, don't go with the Gmail person who doesn't have a LinkedIn profile.

Okay, but that's me.

Yeah, that's a problem.

Juliet (30:15.982)
But you what? Think about it. Do you guys send out I never see solicitations from you guys. I I I don't send out solicitations. Yeah, I don't send solicitations out for anything. I you know, I do social media, I have my email, my newsletter, my podcast, but I don't send out solicitations to anybody who's not on my list saying, you know, hey, I've got these fantastic products, come see me.

No. Yeah.

Juliet (30:42.462)
so I think that is a cue too. I don't think reputable businesses really do that to people who aren't on or in their email.

Those are the boiler room operations that are trying to get you to just buy something and they're spending it and they're just it's like they're it used to be dialing for dollars. They would sit there and the, you know, call people and just keep no matter what the hell the product was, from insurance to God knows what, like all the people that are connected with author solutions and all of their imprints that are just money-making machines that you get nothing for.

But you sent them ten thousand dollars because they were gonna walk your manuscript to an editor at Simon and Schuster. You know. I mean it's it's it's crazy and yet it happens. And they're just making money. They'll tell you anything. And they they're pro pros at it. The ones that are really good make really good money doing that. But you get nothing.

Yeah, that is true. And the last thing is something that you guys know a lot about. Really poor metadata. wrong categories, wrong places, general categories that your books will just get lost in. when I go back through and evaluate the book, a lot of times I find that probably all three Amazon categories are are disconnected from where it really should be. So

And you guys can speak to that 'cause your program does that.

Adanna (32:15.702)
It does. I I think that I mean, again, unless you do this for a living, we you have an idea of where your book lives and breathes, but it doesn't necessarily always mean that's the place that it's gonna sell. I think that finding your subgenres, finding your categories and keywords for both Amazon and Ingram Sparks, because Ingram

uses BISAC, which is also what libraries use. So making sure that your book is properly categorized. it's like a catalog, you know, making sure that it sits in that proper place means that the readers have a better chance of actually finding your book that they want to read. I mean if you have a

vampire romance and you don't put it into vampire romance, no one's gonna find it.

Yeah, you put it in fiction. It's like

Yeah, you put it in fiction or you put it in

Kathleen (33:21.122)
Romance.

regular romance or you put it in cozy romance or I mean, you know, like if you're not if you're just like picking categories because you think that again, A, everybody will want to read your book so the categories don't matter that much. Like what are these even for? I mean, you know, in this world of AI and AI search, because that's really what I mean, that shift that Amazon had last summer from A9

to A ten algorithm, the shift in that is that they use AI to search for stuff. So they're using an AI search model instead of the old the older, which is a search engine. It's different. They sound the same, but they're not the same.

Yeah, very, very different.

ads are have been since the the instituted that ads are very tough to get any sort of conversion on. I've I've stopped Amazon ads altogether.

Adanna (34:22.082)
The the Amazon ads part of this shift and the algorithm is you know, like you were talking earlier about the A plus content, is that they reward people who are bringing from outside into their Amazon. So from their website, from their social media, from their newsletter, the things that verify that they're human beings and that they're not AI.

because Amazon was overloaded with AI created books and AI created content and AI, AI, AI, that they made this shift to try to help prioritize real people. and so if you're not feeding all of those pieces, it doesn't matter how much ad spend you have, because if you aren't bringing in outside traffic, your ads won't work. They just won't.

Well, the out algorithms won't bring your ad up. I mean, I just checked this recently because we had had this up on the Pro Book Launch website that 54% of people looking for a book go to Amazon and just put in like a you know vampire romance. They don't they haven't got a title. I go with the title I want, but most people don't do that and that are just readers. And they if you don't have all of the all of the stuff that makes

the algorithms find you that you have a website, that you have a blog, that you have social media. Here's your photograph for God's sake. You know, you're an actual real person that can be verified and A, I can do that like that. It it it just drops you away down. The one thing I found with I learned this and I haven't thought about it because I haven't worked on it since the algorithm change. But when I was working with an author that was with the Simon and Schuster imprint.

I got transferred around to the this department at Simon and Schuster that only does Amazon ads. And what they did was they went up against your like what your comp you know competitive titles are. And they only placed ads against competitive titles. So Yeah. God. And people don't understand what and you know how many people have not read their competitors?

Adanna (36:32.568)
Subtitles are so important.

Juliet (36:41.558)
Yes. I can I tell you guys a a really so I I mentioned that I I wrote my first fiction novel in fifteen years. And so I've I have this plan. I've been I've been writing but I haven't published because I'm the cobbler's kid who has no shoes no shoes. I haven't published my own book. So now if the kids are out of the house, I'm doing it. And when I talked to AI, when I went into AI and I said, Who are my competitors on this book?

It's everybody I read. It's all the all the authors that I read. And then I started thinking, Wait, I listen to them all the time on audio. Did I did I copy their work? Did I pick up their style? Did I you know, I started thinking about that. I don't think I did, but when I ran my first tranche of ads on Dark Granny, I actually put those competitive titles in and they are the only ads that have actually gotten

significant traffic is I had a list of about twenty authors and I put them in and I put the books because you actually go in and choose the A S I Ns that go with them. That was the only ad that those were the only ads that I got traction on. so

Yeah, that I you know, it's a little bit more of a science to do them that way. It takes a little bit longer for whoever's setting it up for you, but you'll get results.

And silly things matter too, like that place where you can put a tagline in for your ad, which is like one sentence, that has to be a dynamite sentence. It can't just be like my book or review. It has to be something that is a hook in in in a sentence because it's you don't have a lot of room. Like they have a character limit, you know. so that there's so many things.

Adanna (38:38.486)
When setting up an Amazon ad that if you don't know what you're doing, like you're just gonna be you might as well go take a thousand dollars and flush it down the toilet. Yeah. Exactly. Watch it spiral away from you. I mean, it's the it's a I don't know.

Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that's most important with those is you want to make the Amazon ad works like what you've done, obviously, Juliet, is that when people are on those other books, you pop up also have read those though because those are all the sponsored ads down there. That's where you want to be in that first one or two lines because everybody looks at those. And then it gets back to what you said before. And then you have to have a really great little cover, a thumbnail of your cover there.

It's wild.

Kathleen (39:25.836)
That goes, what's that? You know, I have found some incredible books doing that. Going, you know, I'm not buying a book and here's this other thing. And it's like, wow, this is really good.

I mean, another reason for proper catar like cataloging of your book is that if you are a reader, not the author, but if you are a reader and you we'll we'll just stay with vampire romance because that's where we started. And you like vampire romance and you go, you know, into that page or whatever of I've read this book or I'm looking for other books, or because you bought this book, right? And it always Amazon

Amazon specifically will throw up a bunch of other stuff when you buy something. Or when you have read it, like you can go in there and you know, like go into its page and other books. So if you're properly cataloged, when when somebody, the reader, goes into another book in that genre and says, I like this, your book might be the one that comes up for their next read. Cause they're in that category. I mean, there's so many parts of

I guess I I mean it's beyond metadata. It's thicker than that. It's you know, it's it's all of it.

Yeah, it's AI dealing with the algorithms 'cause they're in there doing it. You know, it's I I'm I'm keep trying to figure it out. I've always been fascinated by this and the way it goes, but it it's really everything has changed so much and you have to keep adapting. You have to keep adapting.

Adanna (41:03.906)
I mean, this podcast, I wish I had a notebook because there were like little things that Juliet said that I was like, Ooh, I have to go work on I'm I've evolved our GPT into an app. It's not ready yet, but I was like, I gotta go put that in there so when it's pulling information, it's pulling the right information.

I did the same thing. I actually typed it into my phone.

Okay, good. That was

That's funny. I'm sitting here taking taking notes too. Cause that I think the the most important thing we just talked about today is that author platform and that those external, that's where those external sources come from now. So you do have to learn marketing. You have to learn about that call to action that you have to put on every single piece that you do to drive that traffic in the list. I probably the number one complaint I get about author platform building is

I can't build my list. It's a slow build, and you have to get the right content and the right lead magnet. a lot of times people will create a lead magnet nonfiction that that they think that their audience would want, and you really have to do some research and find out what it is that they think they need, because that's going to be the thing that they grab.

Juliet (42:29.324)
When I first started out, I didn't know much about lead magnets and I made this simple publishing checklist and I was shocked. I got like twenty five hundred downloads in a month. And it was something that was so simple to create, but it was actually the first lead magnet that people grabbed because I had been trying to create all of these other things that I thought they needed. And that was the first time I realized that is what they needed.

Like

Wow, why didn't I see that? So you really have to do a deep dive into what it not what you think your audience wants, but what they actually are asking for.

Absolutely. Because how are you going to deliver what they want if you haven't asked it or understood? And sometimes it's so basic. It's like with on Pro Book Launch, we have if you sign up for our, you know, newsletter or to about things that are upcoming, we send you our our six month launch package that you know that you can you know it's a countdown. You know, do this at six months, it's three months, two months, one week out, all of that. It gives you a plan and

People need that kind of information. You don't learn that anywhere unless it's, you know, you've taken a class and somebody goes step by step by step by step. That's why we've put I've did I turned it all into a blog. Each point is now a blog on the website because you need more of an explanation.

Adanna (43:56.935)
I'm behind on blog posts. It's okay.

Yeah. Well, show me sometime. Maybe I can start tossing them up there myself. Throughout the entire website, I promise.

podcast in two different blogs so I'm I'm constantly blogging I feel like or a YouTube channel too because with the mysteries I started mystery lab so that I could highlight other authors as well. So I think I'm supposed to be highlighting my own books but I enjoy talking to other authors too in that genre.

Well, this that's this is such valuable information, Juliet. I really, really think yet what you've told people today. And actually, since we're all three taking notes, obviously we're helping each other. this has been really informative. And why don't you tell people a little bit about your company and that so they little know a little bit more if they want to follow up with you.

Okay, my email is Juliet at Superbrand Publishing and we we publish books but mainly we work on author platform building. So messaging, we have the perfect reader playbook, and we're actually giving a free copy of that away. We just won the gold at the Bookfest Awards for it, and you can get that at prpfree.com. You can download the whole book and it will tell you how to layer your marketing.

Juliet (45:27.298)
But that is that is mostly what we do. We do a little bit of book marketing, we do fairly amount, a fair amount of publishing, but we've really gotten into the author platform building space. So building the email list, what's your lead magnet, making sure you have a good website and you have some sort of content out there because we just talked about how important content is and getting those external links in. So that is really the breadth of of what we do now.

Fabulous. So we'll have all of the the links to all of those things, especially the freebie who said they can download up on the talking book publishing website page. And it's talking book publishing today. dot today. I forgot that. Anyway, Adanna, any closing thoughts?

no, I think this was great. thank you so much, Juliet, for joining us. And any resources that you're willing to share, I will put into the show notes and put up on our website so our listeners can find them. I think that if Juliet was willing to, I'm gonna put her on the spot, her, if any of the

Amazon pages that you've done, a couple of them that you think have really good A plus content so people could visually see it. I think that would be an awesome share. Okay.

I will get that to you. I'm trying to think, do I have any nonfiction right now? I have a I have fiction, I have my own books, but yeah.

Adanna (46:59.938)
Yeah, it doesn't it doesn't matter, fiction, nonfiction, I mean we're we're all genres

One fiction, one nonfiction. So you know, it everybody can look at it no matter which way they're writing.

I just think it's a good visual so people can see what she was explaining when she was talking about that. So but yeah. I think this was great. I enjoyed it. I learned stuff. I need to come to our own episodes with a notebook, apparently.

Ha ha.

Well thank you thank you guys for having me.

Kathleen (47:32.397)
thank you, Juliet.