1225: Self-Publishing Center: Crack the Code to Successful Book Launches with Founder and Bestselling Author Erik Seversen

Robert Plank 0:01 Eric, hey, we're here with book publisher extraordinaire TEDx keynote speaker Eric Severson. And Eric has lived an extraordinary life. He's hitchhiked from London to Central Africa. He's lived in with a remote tribe in the Amazon, and he's built and sold businesses. Eric has published 15 best selling books on the topic of mindset, peak performance, and AI, he has helped over 300 people become best selling authors, and he knows all kinds of amazing things about book publishing, time management, you'd have to get all those sorts of things accomplished, and especially in Marketing and Entrepreneurship. So Eric is here to tell us what we're doing wrong, what we're doing right, how maybe we should give ourselves a break, but also achieve so much more. So Eric, glad to be speaking with you.

Erik Seversen 0:48 Glad to be speaking with you. Robert, I love to see all the things you've got going on LinkedIn. I've heard your show before, so I'm happy to be here as a guest now.

Robert Plank 0:56 Oh yeah, and LinkedIn is great, right? To get the kind of the I don't know if the swipe file is the right word, because it used to be you'd see someone make a web page. You'd say, Oh, I like what they did with that headline. That may steal it, but not steal it. But then with Lincoln, you see like, oh, well, Eric. He's, like, promoting about his authors, and he's he's posting, like, just a graphic saying, like, hey, this author's in this book. And I'm like, Hey, I see that enough times, and it's like, better than the swipe file, right? It gets kind of embedded into your frontal cortex, and then you're like, Well, hey, now I'm just helping out authors and promoting their book covers and talking about my people without even thinking about it, because months ago, Eric was the role model, and I saw his posting, and so tell me about some of this stuff. Like you put out books all the time. When I prospect on Amazon for like authors to do their audiobooks podcast, I keep on coming across you right. Keep on coming across these compilation books that you do. So what is your kind of secret sauce, uniqueness?

Erik Seversen 1:53 Okay, the first I'll start with, I'm so honored to get to work with all of these great authors and getting to post about them, and there's no way I'd be able to rub shoulders with many of these people if it weren't for working on these book projects together. And it all kind of happened by accident. I was speaking 100% full time when COVID 19 happened, and so then I dove back into books, and my first book caused that. Well, that led to it, and I realized that it would take me two years to write a high quality book, but I decided I need to get some help with people who know this idea as well as I do, or, even better, and create my idea in a co authored book. So the first one was the successful mind. This started it all in I started it in March 2020, the successful mind. And it's all about what creates productivity, happiness and success in somebody's life. And I got all these different opinions from different people around the world, from a medical doctor, a yoga instructor, a pastoral counselor, a fire walking instructor from India, and all of these great minds about a single topic. And I thought that book was a one and done to figure out what to do with my next stage in life, now that my speaking 100% dried up in 2020 but that has led to 16 of similar books, all dealing with mindset and productivity and meeting these authors, from gold medal Olympic winners, somebody who's climbed Everest, somebody who rode a boat, rode A boat across the North Atlantic from New York to Ireland, and one of the founders of Hotmail, so built from billionaires to people who have just done interesting things, I get to talk with them, and Robert, it has bumped my game up so much. So it's an honor to be able to pretty much every day I do, I share one author highlight of one of the authors in one of the previous books. So it's such an honor to get to do that and share these amazing people.

Robert Plank 3:46 I love it and everybody benefits, don't they, because say that that guy that rode the boat across the Atlantic, well, he's done this. I mean, I can't even imagine rowing a boat a mile or two, never mind, in the crazy ocean waves, but he's done this like crazy thing. But then write a book like we, we can't accomplish everything, right? We can't just do you. Can't look at all the achievements everyone's made and say, hey, I'll just do all that in my life, right? There's only so many skills, only so much time. So I can definitely see the value in someone saying, Well, hey, I've got this great message to share. Maybe their speaker, maybe they thought about writing a book, but they're like, hey, filling all this content, I don't know if I have the time or if I can have the patience for that. So I love the this idea of, like, the Chicken Soup for the Soul book is like when I first came across this concept decades ago, right? Of just like all these different kind of points along the road. And one thing that has always kind of piqued my curiosity about the compilation books is where they go wrong. Because I knew a guy because, like you say, you've got this mindset book, everyone's got their perspectives. And I knew a guy once who saw how so called easy it was, and he made a compilation book about. Membership sites. And then the problem with that was you had all these authors who were all competing with each other, right? People had different kinds of pieces of software. So has this ever crossed your mind, like, are there like, do's and don'ts with the compilation book? Or do you ever say, like, hey, you know, such and such topic? Maybe, like, weight loss sounds like an interesting idea, but if everyone conflicts, or everyone's promoting competitors. Like, we don't want that. So, like, where do you see compilation books maybe going wrong? Yeah, and to one for me, one of the main things is, yes, you can if they're competing for the same thing. However, I want to have multiple perspectives. So I had one book called it was actually the second one, a continuation of that, called the successful body, using fitness, nutrition and mindset to live better. And we had one chapter about the caveman diet, about why carnivore diet is healthy for us, and we have a different chapter about why being vegan is the way to go. And so you had these two people with their own experiences, and a lot of them had background as well of why. And you know what? Both can be successful. It's not an either or necessarily. Some readers are going to resonate with one chapter and totally disagree with one, and some are going to resonate with another one. But at least now we get the full array of perspectives, and we can see the biggest mistake I made in the first book and part of the second one too, was trying to direct what the authors wrote. Nancy Pyle is the professional content editor that I work with, and the first book we tried to figure out, all right, here's the puzzle piece. We want them to write about this and this, and then they write their chapter, and we say, okay, can you tweak it this way to really fit in with what we're doing? And we realized that was a big mistake. It was so much better to just let the authors have freedom to write about what they want. Yet Nancy still will put a red line through the book. So if there's a book called Peak Performance mindset tools for managers, and the writer kept talking about leaders and leadership, she might just switch the word from leader to manager or leadership to management a few times throughout the chapter, so that there still is a red line going through the whole a thin red line going through the whole book as a whole. So the biggest thing is, I'd say mistake trying to put the authors in a box, let them letting them go free. And I've had multiple times where I have the same book, have multiple authors write about the same idea. For example, MLP, neuro linguistic programming. I might have a book about performance, and we have two authors who are Neuro Linguistic Programming experts and but they come from different such different experiences. They're complimentary rather than negating each other, so to speak, because they say different things, all right? So those are good lessons, right? Be complimentary, and then have the red line through the book, so that way there's there's a little bit of finesse, a little bit of randomness, but you're not just trying to make everything exactly the same. And I've definitely noticed, like, I've changed my I guess, reading perspective over the years. When I was younger, I was like, it has to be step by step. If I read something, if I learn something, I have to do in an order. And now that I am maybe a little bit older, a little more flexible, I embrace the randomness. If I come across some kind of random book or YouTube video, I'll be curious, and I'll say, you know, I'll, I'll learn about this concept, about space, about planets in other galaxies or something, and just be like, you know, it doesn't affect my exact day to day life, but sometimes I'm open to the new ideas and the curiosity, and I learn stuff, and I have some fun with that. And so we're definitely here to hype up and talk up this idea of compilation books, and especially you doing them. And I guess the draw many times in someone contributing a chapter to this is, you know, they can be paired with these other amazing co authors. And then the idea is that all the resources are pooled and that the book launch is bigger than if they did it by themselves. There's that African proverb, like, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. So can you tell us about the just the amazing book launches that you do and what you do in order to make sure that these books just get noticed?

Erik Seversen 9:09 This is a great question. Robert, so, yeah, my first book did really well, and like I said, that that single handedly led to full time speaking. I left my position as Vice President of International Business Development for a multi 100 million dollar company to speak full time, all because of a book I published with no agenda at all. The speaking requests came in from it. But then when that died up, I started going to the co authored book projects, and now the first book that was published did so much better than my solo book. And I'm like, Why didn't I think that having 33 authors supporting this book launch would be way more strong than my solo book launch. And so that's a big part about it. And a neat thing also is like, for example, the last book we produced, the AI mindset. It's basically the idea is we want to have a mindset as AI is taking over a planet or coming. Integrating into our planet. And the goal of that book is so people become excited about AI and optimistic, yet also cautious about what could happen with the dangers of AI. And in that book, that book ended up to become bestseller in the USA, France, Italy and Brazil. Why? Because we had some really influential authors from those countries. So during the book launch, their followers really supported the book launch as well. And what's great, Robert is a lot of these people don't have time right now to write their full book. Lot of them already have their own book. Maybe probably a small percent already have their own books out before they co write. Most don't. So they co write this book. They it becomes a best seller, and then four years later, or two years later, they write their solo book. Now they've already got a popular book on their Amazon bookshelf. So then when they get their own book out there, there's a little bit of a feed from the really publicized, popular book with 33 authors that goes towards their solo book once it when it comes out, which is great. And I love seeing authors write one chapter and their eyes are open to how much they love writing, and they end up writing more, including their solo book.

Robert Plank 11:07 You get a little taste of it. You say, Well, hey, I saw the fun in writing this book. And I wrote my chapter, I wrote kind of the piece of it that excites me now, and I saw a little bit of a reward, and so why not keep that party going? And so that's a great benefit that I hadn't even thought about that if, if someone's been like, you know, waiting or trying for like, 510, years to write a book, and they're starting from scratch, that's not a lot of fun, but they publish that chapter with you, and they already have some some traction there. Maybe they already have their Amazon bio page already filled out. And, I mean, there's always these, these hidden benefits to writing a book, and especially with these platforms. Like, I didn't even know until a couple years ago that people followed me on Amazon. Like, when you see an author, you click the Follow button, and I was like, there was like 998 followers. I didn't even know where they came from. So when I launched the next book, sure you post a social media, mail your list and the traffic, but then there's also, like those built in followers that I'll get. And we all get, anyone who buys books on Amazon gets that kind of email or that pop up. I think I'm get someone some from you every now and then, from your co authors I've come across, if someone's bought our book before, or follow that author, they come out with something new, and then there's that extra notification. And so as far as everything that can be done to promote a book, right? There's Amazon ads, there's YouTube, there's social media, there's all these other authors where they post on their own platforms. Do you have a favorite traffic source or favorite way to sell some books,

Erik Seversen 12:41 one of the things that I think is most important is keywords. There's a there's actually a software program. So I having now I started coaching a lot of the prior authors when they were writing their own books, coaching them how to get their book published. And I now have created an online program called self publishing center, self publishing center.com and on that there's a link to a software that allows me to type in potential keywords, and it's going to tell me how many people are searching for that word on Amazon per month and what the competition is. So I will type in for 10 minutes just random keywords. And for example, a mountain climbing book on Kilimanjaro, I might write, you know, mountain climbing Kilimanjaro, and it tells me how many people are looking, how many are what the competition is. But then I might just write hiking Kilimanjaro books, and it tells me, and I'll be able to really hone in on exactly what the best keywords are. You can do it for categories as well on that site. And so that's one of the things that I think really helps, is having that strategy to really get the keywords that people are looking for, but there's not a lot of competition. The second thing is, during Book Launch, to try and get a lot of verified purchase reviews right away. And so I'll my I have the books during Book Launch are priced for volume over royalties, so that I get people to read them and get some verified purchase reviews, and that helps with the algorithms as well. There's a kind of two things right away that seem to really help the book launches. I love it.

Robert Plank 14:17 And this is like it's, it's kind of paradoxical, because on one hand, it's some of these ideas you're mentioning are fundamental to marketing, but a lot of people don't even know about this, right? They don't even know that they can go to self publishing center.com, and check out your course and do some of this keyword research and like, this is an idea that has existed, maybe not since, like, the internet starter, but since search engine started, right? That would be people type in keywords. Or now with AI, they get kind of shown keywords based on their past behavior. But similar idea, right? Keyword leads to the book in some way. It's some kind of path, either Amazon search or just a path from the search engine optimization. And we want the kind of low. Competition, but also high demand. And it can be tough to get one's head around this idea, because maybe someone isn't marketing focused, maybe they are passionate about mountain climbing. They say I could care less about or I couldn't care less, to be grammatically correct with someone like you, I couldn't care less about keywords. So that's why someone like Eric and his team should be doing this for me, and so I'm always in awe at these people that really have book launches dialed in, at the timeline or at the upfront work that they do it right? They follow up with the co authors so many times. They create so many marketing materials, because there's like, there's so so much gets ignored on the internet, right? So many lurkers when you have to put so much marketing in place just to get a tiny little percentage. But that's how we beat other people. And when people talk about, like, book launches, like, like six months or a year, or, like, all these speaking gigs, I'm like, so impressed by the volume. And I'm like, if I can learn from that and apply just a small fraction of what they do then, man, that would really up my my game as far as book sales. And so with the is there anything to say about, like, the unexpected amount of work that's done with these book launches in order to, like, get to the numbers the sales that you achieve?

Erik Seversen 16:18 Yeah, one, one is that, like I said, the verified purchase reviews, usually what I'll do is I'll find somebody who's outside of my inner circle, so you know, not going to be my wife or someone super close to me, but somebody outside my circle. And I say, hey, you know, do you mind buying the book at book launch and writing the review? And one of the things I found is that everybody's going to say yes, but then we get busy. We're just in busy lives, right? But it's really important. So if I ask 20 people, 17 of them are going to say yes, and they're not going to decide not to do it. They're going to forget to do it. And so I have learned that if I seriously want these, because they do help the book launch, they're important for the book launch, I need to be a little bit proactive and say, Hey, did you write that review by chance? Oh, no, I'm gonna get to it tomorrow. And sometimes I follow up two or three or four times, and I don't want to be a pain to them. But if I say, if you don't want to, that's fine. However, if you do, would you mind doing it by tomorrow? Because it's kind of important for the book launch, and so just kind of, I don't like to bug people. That's part of my nature. So I have to get out of my comfort zone a little bit and follow up with them and realize that they do want to help me. And so I'm not pestering them and begging them to do it. I'm just reminding them, because in our busy lives, it's really easy to just forget about it and let it go off without happening

Robert Plank 17:36 100% it's, it's, we all get distracted, right? We all make promises, and even it's not like we flick so to seek, we just forget. We made the promise. We wanted to do a nice thing, and we just needed that extra little bit of follow up. And that's a mindset that is on my mind all the time that they used to say, well, it takes seven follow ups to get a sale. And then they said, like eight to 12. And even these days, I'm like, man, it takes eight to 12 follow up just to get someone on a zoom call, just to get someone to reply to an email. So with that expectation, we can say, well, let's kind of navigate the the back and forth of, okay, well, I don't want to be like annoying or too persistent, but I also want to get some results, and all the more reason to work with someone like you to plan ahead, because we you and I have been saying many times in this conversation, it's so easy to get distracted, so easy to get busy. You put all this time into writing a book, and then you had to get back to, you know, coaching clients, or nine to five or whatever, and then to keep revisiting this book launch, it makes a lot more sense to work with a team, to work with people that kind of eat, breathe and sleep, the stuff that way they can just say, hey, well, this is our focus. This is what we do. And so, like, you've put out so many amazing books, helped so many amazing authors. I know it's really loaded question, but is there a logical entry point? I know you said, like those first couple books, it took a while to get, like, gel dialed in. And so is there, like, a book that you feel is, I don't know if it would be like the best, but if someone says, let me find out what Eric's and his authors are all about. Is there a best book and is there a best author?

Erik Seversen 19:10 So no, is the quick answer. However, one of them is definitely the most popular, and it happens to be the first book, The successful mind, and it's basically that that one is Jeremy bookstore bought the Arabic rights for it, and they're, they're selling that book in the Middle East. It's in two university classrooms. So that one has gotten kind of the most, the most fanfare and the exposure wise, the last one, the AI mindset, just because it's so timely right now, this one has, volume wise, actually probably done the best, but, and then there's one, the successful spirit. This one is what kind of changed a little bit from mindset to performance. And in that one, we had three Olympians wrote it months before the Tokyo Olympics, and then two of them won medals, and one of them actually competed. Again in the last Olympics, Gabby Thomas, and she got three golds, I think, and in track and field. And so that was really fun to have these authors write about their performance style and then compete in the Olympics and prove it with gold medals, which is, which is pretty cool. And the reader feedback from that book really pushed me in the direction of performance and productivity. And so I follow the reader feedback. My number one goal is that the readers get value. My second goal is that the authors also benefit from being part of the books as well. But so reading somebody's life changed because of a chapter they read. And usually it's the author who will forward me an email and say, hey, look, a reader sent this to me. I just thought I'd let you know. And it's some reader who wrote directly to this author, who wrote one chapter saying, here's where I was a year ago. Here's where I am now. I owe 100% of it to this chapter. Thank you very much. And it feel it gives me goosebumps every time I read those

Robert Plank 20:52 Of course, that's got to be an amazing feeling for everyone involved, especially the author who received it and then pass it on to you. And so I love this idea of the feedback loop of saying, well, we'll put out a book, and then we'll look at what people like the most about it, and get that kind of intuitively within us. And then moving forward, we say, Well, hey, let's, let's do more of that. And so it's, it's always so much fun to say, like, geek out about books because, like, your stick is to get people gathered together, and you can read about book publishing all day long, or what's possible, or read books, but then, just to get that, that infectious energy with something, it's like you experience it, and it's so much fun in our last few minutes here, I want to make sure that we cover the basis. So is there like a missing, hidden question that I just don't know to ask you, that I should be asking you?

Erik Seversen 21:39 Um, no, there's not. But I love what you're doing, Robert, I just love how active you are, helping people with their podcasts, helping people with their their audio books, publishing just you're one of those people who I love to see in action. Because I think, sure we all want to make money. That's a goal, but I think you do it to be helpful first, with the residual impact that you make money from it. And I really love saying that, Robert, we need that's a model of person that I like to be around.

Robert Plank 22:08 Yes, 100% we want to be around people that are also achieving that that challenges us, that encourage us. And we're both compilation book. I don't know if my buddies is the right word. But I have a client where I put out 15 compilation books with 120 authors over like four years. So I def some of these stories that you're mentioning, and especially like moving the authors along, being like, hey, you know, get that chapter in. There's a lot of it can be a lot of fun, right? It's adventurous. And so if someone says, Okay, I love what Eric has going on, the book covers look amazing. The stories look amazing. The people are great. It's it's great to have a team that can do the book launch with me. Don't have to write so much. Be associated with amazing people, Olympic medalists, and who knows what. What's the next step here? How does someone know if they're a good fit for these compilation books? And how do they take the next step and find you and contact you. Yeah.

Erik Seversen 23:01 So I'm pretty I'm pretty hands on. So my email is eric@ericseverson.com the website I've got Eric severson.com is my personal website. And then the business website, of course, is self publishing center.com people can contact me directly from any of those sources. And for the co authored books, there is an if it's somebody I've spoken with, they're kind of in if they want to, if we have a good conversation. But also, there's an application process for people to be part of the books, but for writing a solo book, that's where a lot of people reach out to me. And one of the favorite, my favorite things to do is show people how simple it is to go from idea to completed manuscript, and then the next stage is from manuscript to published book, and then last stage is the book launch. And so my whole goal is to make it as simple as possible, to take that mystery out and particularly writing the book. I think the biggest mistake people have is they think of the whole book at once and they freak out. They just get paralyzed when my biggest device at the start is only think of one small section at a time. Five sections becomes a chapter. 515 chapters becomes a book. It's going to get there, but only think of it as one tiny section at a time. And you know, everything starts with one step. As I say, I love it.

Robert Plank 24:17 And I think when I was a kid, I got stuck in that problem of, like, having, like, the most grandiose, epic outline in scope. And then I just kept revising that. And I I'm sure there was some kind of procrastination, self sabotage involved. But and then, as far as the writing advice, when they say, Well, hey you, if you have this big, like, epic whatever plan, just look for, like, the most exciting part of that. And there's something like, like, Arthur C Clarke's got his book 2001 but then there was a short story called The Sentinel, where they just discovered the the monolith. And, like he started with that, and it's that, it's kind of like more micro commitments, right? Yeah, figure out what it's the most exciting part that takes shape, and then that can be the version of your chapter that goes in the compilation book. You get some feedback, people use it, you see some sales, you get excited, and you say, All right, now that might even change the trajectory of the larger picture just based on what the feedback, because it's based on what people like, what helps people, not just what I imagined in my own head. So we said self publishing center.com, and then from there, we can go and find the applications, or we can find your email address. And as far as social media, where should we go? LinkedIn

Erik Seversen 25:28 is by far my most powerful. I'm on, you know, LinkedIn, I'm on X, I'm on Instagram, but really, LinkedIn is where I'm much most active. And it's Eric Severson on LinkedIn,

Robert Plank 25:39 all right, and so we should all aspire to, right, especially authors that say, like, well, if can I get my name registered, if possible, great, and kind of get the same username across all platforms. Even better that way. If someone is listening to a podcast or watching YouTube and say, Hey, I really like what this person has to say, well, let me see if they have a book. Oh, geez, let me see if they have a book, and maybe it's a book that they are a co author with, with one of Eric's amazing publications. So Eric Severson on social media platforms, self publishing center.com, and before I let you go, Eric, it's time to put you on the spot and ask a question that I asked my guests at the end here, which is, is there a fun quarter lesson that has served you, helped you in the past, in life or business, that you can pass on to us.

Erik Seversen 26:23 I think that the biggest is I love being in a room that makes me uncomfortable. I didn't know what imposter syndrome was, but when I had it, and now, when that feeling of imposter syndrome comes up, I revel in it because it makes me know that I'm pushing myself. I want to be uncomfortable because of the people I'm around, because they're all I feel they're all better than me, and it helps me feel better or grow push myself to be as good as I can. So I think that's it.

Robert Plank 26:53 I love it. It's very well put that we should pursue being uncomfortable. Sometimes you think about imposter syndrome as something bad or to be avoided, but you're saying pursue that, because that is the path to growth, and especially for you authors out there who want to grow and who want to become published authors with Eric's help. That's ericseverson.com and self publishing center.com we will see you there, and thanks Eric for enlightening us, being cool, sharing some cool stories. Really appreciate it. Thanks. Robert, all right. Transcribed by https://otter.ai