How a Book Can Be Your Ultimate Business Weapon With Chandler Bolt

[00:00:00]

Chandler: It's, timeless. And so it lives well beyond you, but it's also leverage, I think, for so many people in your business.

Once you create this book goes on to impact thousands, tens of thousands, maybe even millions of people.

And so it's, it is the way to bring leverage to the impact that you're trying to make, the income that you're trying to grow, and the business that you're trying to grow.

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Allan: Welcome to the Lean Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Allan Dib. Today I've got a very special guest. We've had a lot of authors on as guests on this podcast, and they're a big hit.

Now, one of the things I wanted to have. Someone on today, because I continually get asked about my book. How did I write the book? How did I sell a lot of copies? How did I become bestselling author? How does it work with my business and how does it generate leads? And my guest today, he's the brains behind so many different authors who've actually done that.

He helps. People publish books. He [00:01:00] helps with market books, get them out there, really monetize it.

He's the founder of the Self-Publishing School. Welcome, Chandler Bolt. How are you?

Chandler: thanks for having me.

Allan: so good to have you. Um, do you wanna give us, uh, a little bit of an intro? Is there anything I missed? I'd love to know a little bit about you and your background. How did you get into book publishing? Who you are, who you serve, and yeah.

Chandler: Yeah. I think it's the story of the unlikely author.

Allan: Okay.

Chandler: You know, I'm a C-level English student in a college dropout with ADHD. That somehow ended up writing and publishing books. And then now, I mean, we've helped a few thousand people publish their books. So we publish about two to five books on most days.

I think yesterday we published four. Last Monday we published 11.

Allan: Wow.

Chandler: do this stuff all day, every day. but I mean, fell in love with books and I believe that books changed lives. I believe that books scale companies, I've seen it work for me and. My business have scaled from zero to 70 million in the last [00:02:00] decade or so.

Largely through books. I mean, we practice what we preach and that helped me get on Forbes 30 under 30, helped the company grow fast, and it's just been a wild ride. Still loving it.

Allan: Yeah, and I mean, I'm a testament to that. I mean, the book really drives our business forward and. I think one of the reasons that books are so special as a piece of content, you know, as I think about this a lot books are just so durable. They last forever. I mean, we still read books from hundreds and thousands of years ago versus other types of content.

And I'm not saying other types of content are not valuable, but like a TikTok video or a short form even a YouTube video is definitely longer lasting, but. I think it's unlikely in a hundred years we're gonna be watching YouTube videos that are made today. Right. Whereas in a hundred years, it's still very likely that we will reading books that were written today.

So there a format that's just so durable. What are your thoughts? Like, why is it [00:03:00] so important for someone to write a book? what is it about it that for you is so compelling?

Chandler: Yeah, I think it's, what is what you just said? It's, timeless. And so it lives well beyond you, but it's also leverage, I think, for so many people in your business. I. Any good business owner looks for leverage, right? With the Archimedes quote. It's like, you know, you give me a fulcrum and a lever long enough and I can move the world Books give you leverage that you do work.

Once you create this book goes on to impact thousands, tens of thousands, maybe even millions of people. And so like you with a one page marketing plan, right? You did that work once. You created that book that has sold a million copies, a million people have had your book in their hands and then said, Hey.

you know, I wanna go further with you. And so it's, it is the way to bring leverage to the impact that you're trying to make, the income that you're trying to grow, and the business that you're trying to grow. you know, I think I, I messaged you the other day. I'm at the just like this food truck area and there's all these [00:04:00] vendors and all this stuff, and I see this lady reading the one page marketing plan.

Allan: You sent me that photo that was.

Chandler: Yeah. I sent you the picture with her I'm like, this is unbelievable. you know, the ultimate. Expression of a book out in the wild, right? I mean, she is running this candle stand trying to grow her business and it's doing well. My wife loves it. I mean, shoot, I feel like I should get equity in this place at this point. She's always getting candles on there, but she's reading the one page marketing plan and growing her business like that is the power of a book.

You've never met her, but she's learning. She's growing. Who knows? Maybe she's been working with you as customer. I don't know. But it's just pretty incredible thing.

Allan: It is so cool. I mean, and having run many other types of businesses before I used to have a telecom business. I used to have an IT business and all of that, and they were good businesses, but you'd only ever hear from clients when something was going wrong. Like nobody rings their telecom company and says, man, [00:05:00] you guys are doing such a great job.

Thank you so much. Like, I just rang to tell you that nobody ever did that. I guarantee you. Whereas literally, I mean, I get hundreds of emails from. You know, people who are fans who say, I read the book, changed the way I view it, changed the way I did marketing. It helped me do this, it helped me generate revenue.

So, quite apart from, okay, yes, it's a great lead generator, whatever, it's just such a good will generator, right? So from a, just a waking up in the morning and just being pumped about what you're doing. I mean, of course I was pumped about o other business ventures I was doing for other reasons, but just.

You know, that cycle of just hearing from people, seeing reviews come through, all of that is just so motivating and so inspirational. So that's a lot of what I love.

I'm gonna share with you how the book generates a lot of leads for us. So the book basically it's super simple.

I created a framework and I think part of a thought leadership book. [00:06:00] I think the framework is really the cornerstone because the framework becomes kind of the chapters of the book. It becomes the modules of the course. It becomes the parts of the coaching program. So to me. That's kind of foundational.

And then people opt in for additional resources. In my case, they wanna download the one page marketing plan canvas. And so they put their email address in and then we have a conversation with someone from our team might reach out to them and so on. And so that just creates that flywheel.

And the thing I love about it is, you know, someone who has read your book, they've potentially spent five or six hours with your content. When they opt in and when they hear from someone in my team, it's never like, who are you and what are you about? Right? It's like they know. They know who you are.

They're pre-interested, pre-motivated. They've spent hours with your content already. And it's a very different conversation than if you had. Cold called someone or someone had just clicked on an ad, you know, on Facebook or Instagram or whatever. [00:07:00] There'd be this rapport that you need to build this nurturing that you need to build.

So for me, I've found that super, super powerful. what other things are people kind of drive revenue from a book? I mean, quite apart from royalties, which I often tell people, look, unless you've had a smash hit book, yes, absolutely. If you're a James Clear with Atomic Habits or a Mark Manson you can absolutely generate a lot of great royalties, but they tend to be very the exceptions not the rules.

I don't know how you feel about that, but there are many ways to kind of generate revenue from a nonfiction book.

Chandler: Yeah. I love the model that you're doing, Allan. I think it's super smart. It ties directly into the business. I think you're uniquely skilled and talented in the framework area, which I, just quite frankly think not many people are. And so I think the benefit in some ways, if someone has a. Course or online coaching program or training or whatever, the book actually forces them to create a framework around it, and then they actually end up leveling up everything that they do.

So I think that's [00:08:00] kind of a side benefit, but at its core, I look at how do you use the book to get more leads, more sales, more referrals. So leads, these are people who hear about your business because of your book, right? Sales, this is more of the people who already know about you choosing to do business with you.

So using as part of your sales funnel, as part of the sales process and all your conversion metrics go up, right? And then the, then referrals. This is turning customers into active referers. And so, I mean, I would imagine many people that are customers with you, they refer you business all the time by saying, oh yeah, I'm using the one page marketing plan.

What's the one page marketing plan? Oh, you haven't read the book. Right. And so, I mean, that, that's the beautiful thing about your book. And I think the way that, that you've aligned the hook and the business and all that stuff is super, super smart. But even. You know, for me it's people are referring me business through my book and they're getting saying, Hey, you should read this book.

Right? And I recommend for a lot of people, you know, give two copies to every customer and say, Hey, here's one for you and one for someone [00:09:00] you know who needs my help. Right? And then there's all other small, subtle ways like, I'm sure you do stuff like this. Well, like in the very beginning of my book, I'll give away the audio book and the video, a video summary for free.

So this is just. I know a lot of people don't give away the audio book for free, but this is an inherent value add guess what? That, you know, for me it's like that lead is worth way more than they would've I would've gotten if they bought my audio book. Right? Same with the video summary. This is one of my best performing webinars that covers the core content and the book, so it turns readers into customers.

Right. And even something as simple as like, we have this in the very beginning, it's like, hey. Want our help with self publishing.com, implementing the stuff in this book. Book a call chat with us, right? So there's just a bunch of stuff like that within the book to take people from reader to subscriber and ultimately customer, but then there's using the book to get lead sales and referrals.

That's kinda how I think about it.

Allan: Yeah. One of the things that [00:10:00] people often object to is they're like. I'm not a good writer. can't write really well, and my response on that is I think good writing is maybe the third or fourth most important part of writing a bestselling book.

You know, I think my writing is. Pretty good. It's okay. I'm not the best writer in the world. I'm not the best writer, probably even in, in my space. If I was to give a hierarchy of what I think is most important, to least important in terms of selling a book to me the absolute apex, the most important thing is to have a very strong concept and a hook.

You know, so, um, I know authors who like and books, frankly, that. The book is really not that good, but the concept is super powerful. Like they've come up with a really powerful concept. The writing is kind of all over the place or whatever. and honestly, some of them are just expanded blog posts, right?

So they've taken a 600 [00:11:00] word blog posts and made it a 50,000 word. Book. But the concept is so strong that carries it. And especially if the concept is carried through in the title. and the title really has to be, wow, I really want that. A four hour work week. Wow. I want that atomic habits.

Wow. I want that. I want page marketing plan, I want that. Right. so having that concept really easily communicated in the title I think that's probably the most important part. What are your thoughts? What makes a bestselling book? I.

Chandler: Yeah, I think you're totally right. I mean, a compelling and shareable hook, and that shows up in the form of a title. I think that's one of the most important things, and I always think about your title and your cover. People need to instantly understand what the book's about within a. Two seconds.

Right? And confused. People don't buy. So if they don't know what the book's about and whether or not it's for them, they're not buying the book. So I think you need a compelling hook that's kind of table stakes to even get someone to pick up the book. But then to your point, I mean, I think you need to be a good [00:12:00] teacher or good at teaching frameworks, obviously, if it's nonfiction.

And so that's a powerful thing. I mean, I think in the example with your book is your framework is more important than the writing.

Because The framework is so good. The writing doesn't have to be because the framework's good. Right? And so in, in some ways, the framework or the concept that's supporting the ideas gotta be really good.

And then you gotta be really good at marketing and then you gotta be really good at writing the book. And so I would say and so Sure. Is it a good compelling hook? And is the book need to be good? Of course. But you. You can just have a good book and if you don't have a good hook, you don't market it.

Your frameworks, they're not sticky. Cool. Nobody's gonna read it. Nobody cares,

Allan: The other big test I like is how giveable is that book? Because a book is the ultimate gable package. Like if I see my friend has got a problem, and I know there's a book that solves that, sure, [00:13:00] I could send him a YouTube video or a TikTok or something that addresses that, but that feels low value.

That's like cool. They might watch it and forget about it, whatever. But if I give a, book, a package, something that's gonna sit on their shelf. For the next 20 years you know, I heard Seth Godin say, you know, physical books, the main reason people have them is because they're a souvenir essentially.

Not because they're necess, because it's probably more convenient to read on a Kindle or listen on audio or whatever, but the physical book is kind of like a souvenir. You have it on your shelf, whether it's a souvenir for you or something somebody gave you. So, I'm always thinking about what's a trigger point that someone would give that.

Book. So like, you know, someone's pregnant, you give them what to expect when you're expecting, you know, someone wants to improve their habits, you give them atomic habits or the seven habits of highly effective people, you know. So, if it solves a problem and you can easily give that to someone and it feels high value when someone gives you a book, it's way more valuable than if they sent you a link to a blog post or a [00:14:00] video or something like that.

So that's another factor I think of is how. Giveable, is this in terms of a trigger that some someone would have with something?

Chandler: I think you're spot on with that. And I think also how shareable is the concept and how kind of your viral coefficient or is it something you wanna do with some, someone else? A friend of mine here in Austin, Texas, how well ride. He talks about this with his book, it's Miracle Morning, morning Routines, right?

And he, he integrates that into the content is, hey, do a 30 day challenge or I forget what it is for him for your morning routine with someone else. So now you're gifting someone else the book as part of that. And I think similarly when you're writing framework books for companies, like I think. You know, obviously traction's a good example of this.

Scaling up those type books because then you go from your viral, you increase your viral coefficient, right? Which for those who aren't familiar, viral coefficient is. Basically your shareability or your virality around a [00:15:00] thing, and you wanna get as close to one as possible. And if you get north of one, I mean, that's insane because in every book that you sell, it's is more than one additional book that's being sold through your viral coefficient.

So it's just, I mean, it really makes the thing fly. And so that's where I think. With it's like scaling up or something like that, or any book to CEOs or organizations. Well, guess what? I buy one copy of that book and then now all of a sudden I've probably bought 50 copies, a hundred copies of that book from new employees over the years.

Right? And it's like, so then that one copy becomes a bunch more.

Allan: Yeah, Hal is a super smart guy and we had him on the podcast, and the other thing that he said is if your framework or whatever that your, the main concept of your book can be something habit inducing, so something that changes a regular habit that you do. So in his case, your Miracle Morning habit.

So, I think that's really powerful. , because it's great if you write a clever book, some clever concepts and everything like that, and [00:16:00] then someone puts it away and then that's it, right? They move on with their life or the next thing. The other thing I kind of want to double click on is.

A lot of people worry whether someone will read the whole book or read it at all or whatever. And I think a lot of the value absolutely, you want someone to read the whole book and spend hours and hours with it. And if you can do that, absolutely you should, but I still think there's value in a book, even if someone never gets through the whole book or never gets through any of the book.

In fact, I came across a, Japanese concept the other day. It was called Sudoku. It's basically the art of collecting books that maybe they're piling up and you don't read them and maybe you'd never even get to them, but it feels good still having it. It's there when and if you want it. And so, I don't worry about.

You know, does someone read it or not? I mean, of course I'd prefer that they do. But someone just having that, like, you get a book that's kind of potentially solving your problem. It's lowered [00:17:00] your blood pressure already. Like you know, if you've feel you've got a lot of obstacles in your life and now you've got a copy of the obstacle as the way you automatically feel better even if you haven't read it yet.

Right. So, because it feels like you're on the way to solving your problem or you've gotta. You've got a resource that's gonna help you get there and you may get there and you may not get there, but it doesn't really matter.

Chandler: Yeah it's a funny thing in buyer psychology, and this goes for books. This goes for any product. Is the dopamine hit or the feeling of conclusion happens on purchase, not on a, not on achievement of the action of the purchase. Foremost, people with most things, it's a really kind of funny thing that way.

And so I think that's why people have such a big TBR or two b red pile. But if someone's worried that people aren't gonna read their book you don't have to worry. They won't. And I'm not saying that in a crass way, but I'm just saying it's a generalization. I think it's something like 20% of books that get [00:18:00] started get finished.

And so yes, a bunch of people are gonna buy your book and not read it. And that sucks and nobody likes that. But two things. One, the people who truly read it, it can really impact them. But then secondly. It can achieve the business objectives that you have, even if they do not read the book. And so the mere fact of, I'm sure there's bunch of people in your book, Allan, buy it.

Look at the one page marketing plan, said, no, I'm, I haven't even read the book, but I'm gonna work with you. And maybe still didn't read the book, but worked with you. Right? So it can still achieve the business objective either way.

Allan: Totally. And I was chatting with James Clear recently, and his advice was to really front load the book with your best stuff early on. don't leave it till later because people who maybe get through only 5% or 10% or whatever. We'll still get your best stuff and it'll also give you a better chance of them continuing as well.

I thought that was a really good tip.

Chandler: Smart.[00:19:00]

Allan: So, so Chandler, what are some of the best ways to monetize? Obviously there's collecting leads from the book. What have you seen? I mean, I'm sure you've seen the gamut the whole spectrum of ways to monetize a nonfiction book. And we're talking mainly non.

Fiction here. Obviously fiction is a totally different game, right? It's fiction. You are making money from the royalties pretty much, and there's not much out outside of that, as I understand. I don't know fiction books that well, but nonfiction books, I think about a lot.

Chandler: Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, I'll just go a quick aside there. I mean, we've got a whole fiction arm of the company@selfpublish.com, and you're right, I mean, the way the. Fiction is you got to write series, write multiple books and increase your read through rate which I guess is somewhat applicable nonfiction for your serial authors, like a Malcolm Gladwell or like a Seth Godin or like a you know, whoever else.

It's your read through rate. Hopefully it hits good enough that you get a movie and maybe some other type of deal or something like [00:20:00] that. That's fiction and kind of similar on children's books, but nonfiction only. So lead sales referrals. Again, kind of back to those three buckets. Those are the three lenses with which I look and then I.

There's a couple things that really stick out that, that work well for us. I mean my, this book right here is probably brought in about 7 million or so over the last year, and the way that we do it is kind of, there's three different buckets. There's number one, it's, it's just like unlimited free leads.

I mean, we give away the book all over the place. And so this, you saw, I showed the audio book video. We'll give

away

PDFs.

Allan: you unpaid ads to the book? To give it

A little bit some on Amazon. We probably could and should be running more ads right now. Honestly, we've done three plus shipping funnels in the past for sure, and that's worked really well.

Chandler: But I think, I'm amazed at how many people don't want to give away their books for free,

Which I get it. You work really hard on this book, but I'm thinking from my perspective, how much would you pay for a lead as a business owner?[00:21:00]

Allan: Yeah.

Chandler: I don't know, 10 bucks, 20 bucks, 50 bucks. Okay. What if I told you instead you could just give away a book for free and it costs you nothing.

If it's a digital version, it costs you five to 10 bucks if it's a physical version. And I do that all day and my sales team loves it. 'cause the best prospects, they come in and they get on the call and it's, the objections are handled. The belief is there. It's. A couple maybe questions and then, Hey, how can I work with you guys?

So unlimited free leads, that's the big bucket for us.

Secondly is we use them with conferences and speaking gigs. So we built out a speaking team of about I don't know, seven to 10 people. And so we're speaking at events all, all the time and four to 10 events probably a month. I think this month we're speaking at eight or nine.

And uh, most of the time it's not me. It's my speaking team. And so they're really good speakers. They'll show up, give a great talk. That's kind of our core talk@selfpublishing.com. With their flavor. We bring a bunch of physical [00:22:00] copies of the book, we give them away for free. We capture a ton of leads and then we sign up, you know, typically anywhere from 30 to a hundred thousand dollars per talk in customers, maybe more than that.

And so, you know, this past week we. Yeah, I don't even know how much we did last week. Maybe 150, 200,000 or so from two or three events that we spoke at. Right. And so it's just using that, that's kinda the second bug. I see you're itching for a

Allan: I'm itching, I'm itch. I've never heard of someone saying they've got a speaking team. Usually when, with speaking, it's like the guy at the guy who's known for the thing is the speaker. I've never heard of anyone having a speaking team. Tell me more about that.

Chandler: Yeah, I mean. Maybe it's that, you know, I'm not that famous and people don't care if it's me. But no, I mean, I just think we, you know, we have a powerful message that fits in with, and we have a good, really good team that's booking and so they're finding conferences. They're saying, Hey, [00:23:00] we can come in, we can speak at your event.

Maybe we do a sponsorship as part of this. We'll have a booth there, something like that. Work out the terms in a way that makes sense for them and for us. And then we've trained up. I was, in fact just this Monday I was doing a training with our speaking team saying, Hey, this is how we do talks.

This is how we do this. This is how that you do it in a way that's compelling, engaging, but also converts into paying customers. And so just, we've built out a pretty good training program and so we have them go through and they'll run webinars for us internally. Then if that goes well, you'll get bigger webinars.

If that goes well, maybe you get your first in-person event, you know, 50, a hundred people. If that goes well, then you keep kind of working your way up and get bigger and bigger opportunities. And it's been to the point where there's been plenty of times where the company, where the biggest talks that we've given have been given company wide have been given, not by me.

Allan: Oh, that's cool.

Chandler: It's kind of crazy. It's like, oh yeah, so and so spending like 1500 people this. I'm like, what are you talking about? That's crazy. [00:24:00] So that's a really fun one. And working.

Allan: do how do you recruit these speakers? Do you just see someone who's a really good speaker say, Hey, I think you, our message would resonate. Do you wanna come speak for us? Or is that how it works, or,

Chandler: They, no, they're typically our best salespeople and sometimes our best coaches. I. So they're used to, I mean, they're already they know our message, they know our prospects. They know what resonates. They've talked to likely hundreds, maybe even thousands of customers at that point. you know, it's, it's people who have proficiency for it and. Almost all of them, if not all of 'em, have published books. So they start working with us, we walk 'em through the process, they publish their own book. Now they can speak from a place of authority and that sort of thing. And so that's worked really well for us. And then just to fully land the plane from your question earlier the third bucket, which I've already kind of alluded to is just.

Increasing close rate throughout the process. So we just embedded everywhere in our funnel. And so this is where if I'm a business owner listening to this, I would just say, [00:25:00] Hey, almost everyone listening probably has some sort of sales funnel or sales process. Integrate it everywhere. And so whether it's at the opt-in, maybe you have a training.

We'll give away the book for free and as part of a training, but only if they show up in state of the end, right? And so now we're incentivizing them not only to register, but to show up in the state of the end. Maybe the bottleneck in your business is getting people to book or show up for appointments.

Integrate the book into that. You know, as they say, the root word of authority is author. Most people you know, you become an authority by first becoming an author. And in the mind of your prospects or customers, you're differentiated. And now they wanna do business with you. And so those are kind of the.

The three main buckets and three main ways we're we monetize in the business. That's what works for us.

Allan: I love it.

What are your thoughts with now chat, GPT, large language models like Claude and things like that? What's the right way to use them, the wrong way to use them because I. We've all seen content that's clearly AI generated and [00:26:00] there's now concern among authors like, I think you and I we're in a, we're in a little author's WhatsApp group and I saw the other day someone posted an article saying, you know.

Books have now jumped the shark or something like that, and everyone's can be an author with just a little prompt or whatever. I don't agree with that, but what are your thoughts and what's the right way to use it? What's the wrong way to use it? How should we be thinking about it?

Chandler: Yeah. I mean, books have died so many times already. You know, it's like a drinking game every time. Says, somebody says books are dead.

Allan: Yeah.

Chandler: I mean. I think AI is a really awesome and powerful tool. I think it can be really, used really well for ideation. It can be used really well for outlines, especially.

That's really helpful. It can be used really good for editing and making the book better. I mean, there's so much and some writing, but I think where people mess themself up and I just wouldn't recommend it, is just Chad GPT write a book on this thing and then, okay, [00:27:00] cool.

Let's just publish that.

It's not good. It's not authentic and it's not unique and so. You know, it's gonna have probably the exact impact that it should, which is not much. And so I think it's use it to make a better book, not just use it for the book on its own, because it's not gonna be that great.

It can be decent, but if you wanted to truly move the needle in your business, it's probably not what you're looking for. That like going fully that route.

Allan: Yeah. The way I use AI in my writing is very much as you said editing can you make, and sometimes I, there's a word that I just can't think of to complete this sentence. I'm, I'll say, look, gimme 20 completions of this sentence where I, and then I'm like, ah, yes, that's the word I'm looking for. Or as a research thought partner you know, give me.

20 companies that were from Silicon Valley that pivoted after they launched or whatever. So that stuff would've taken me maybe an hour of Google research going back and [00:28:00] forth. Editing for sure. So I've gone back given it a block of text and say, edit this based on the Chicago manual of style.

And so it'll add dashes and commas and all of that sort of stuff everywhere. So the thing a lot of people need to understand is that these tools. Super, super powerful mashup tools. They're super powerful information retrieval tools. They're not great at creating something completely novel. I've never, like I've done every form of prompt I could possibly could.

I've never been able to have it come up with something completely novel and inventive. And that's just by design because they're designed as kind of a median tool. Like they take all of the information and guess the most likely next. Word, the most likely next sentence. So if you give it, the sky is blue is probably gonna be the next word.

It guesses because that's what most commonly comes. So that's why it pumps out a lot of cliched [00:29:00] content, a lot of generic stuff. Having said that, one of the ways that I've been able to get it a lot closer to my voice and give much higher quality output is by giving it a lot of context. So I will I might do a prompt where I might say, look my goal is to create a LinkedIn post.

Here's what I want to communicate. Here's what I don't want. So I might. Give it an example and I'll say, I don't want any cliches. I don't want any hyperbole, all of this sort of stuff. And then the magic is in the context. I might give it like 20,000 words of my previous writing, and I'll say, you know, mimic this style of writing as much as possible.

Th this is a sample of my past content. And then it will pump out content that's much, much closer, still not perfect, still not something that I would just publish. Verbatim, but way better than just, Hey, write me a 600 word LinkedIn post or whatever on x, Y, Z

Chandler: That's good. I like that a lot. And I mean, even [00:30:00] that is a way better approach than most people take to AI content. 'cause they, I mean, it's a really good prompt and the output is only as good as your prompt. But then to your point, often not a novel concept. 'cause that would mean that it wasn't derived from an existing concept, which is the whole underpinning of ai.

Allan: Exactly. Exactly. So, um, I think of it kind of like Photoshop for words really. That's

Chandler: Yeah.

Allan: You know, Photoshop can make you more, more powerful. It can help you edit. It can help you manipulate it faster, it can help you whatever. But. It's probably not gonna come up with the, well now we have generative images and things like that, but again, it's still not gonna come up with something completely novel at least just yet.

So that's the way it is at the moment. So I like this because it really gives you more time to be a thought leader, to really think about what's the novel concept that I wanna communicate? And it doesn't have to be earth shattering, but it can be a different point of view on something, a [00:31:00] different way of thinking, a different tool or a different framework, or a different way to take people from a better, from a worse condition to a better condition.

So, I really like that.

So, Chandler getting a little bit more. I guess into the weeds of book structure and things like that, what do you find is ideal? Like a shorter book. A longer book. Like I've seen, like, like for example, my friend Phil Jones has a book exactly what to say, and it's like 17,000 words.

I mean, there are blog posts that are longer and there, there are books that are. Hundreds of thousands of words and you know, very complex and all of that sort of thing. What are your thoughts about some of the mechanics? About how long should a book be, how long, should chapters be shorter or longer?

Should we have images versus text? Things like that. What are your thoughts?

Chandler: Yeah. I'll start with the. Link, I think, and I've got this diagram on my book, I don't know if people will be able to see this or not, but like what you're kind of talking about is what I'd call like a more traditional lead generation nonfiction, which is 10 [00:32:00] to 25,000 words, but your more traditional nonfiction is probably in the 50 to 70,000 words.

Right, right. That's kind of your, your your typical size book, but it's long enough. as long as it needs to be, right. Keep the attention span of the reader. And then a lot of the other stuff is just stylistically, like your job is to get them to start the book, the job of the title.

Is to get, it's kinda like Joe Sugarman's slippery slide, if you've ever heard of that job, of the title is to get them to read the subtitle job of the subtitle is to get them to turn to the back and read a little bit more. The job of that is to get them to open the job of the first line or table of contents, or first chapter is to get them to start reading.

The job of that is to get them to keep reading and ke and keep going and so to, to James clear's point, you know, starting with some of your most powerful stuff so that there. And they're hooked. Right? And then style, and then it's a stylistic choice, which for me, I love A DHD friendly books that are kind of punchy.

They're written in [00:33:00] a it's kind of how I would talk to someone so it's not. You know, super formal or anything like that. But I also love having graphics and a book that I would be interested in. So that's how a lot of my books are. Right. And then but if that's not your audience or that's not you, well then I wouldn't do that.

So a lot of the other stuff I feel like is just kind of stylistic choices.

Allan: Yeah, and I mean, the thing I would say is to not pad it out. Like there's been books where, you know, I've read it and it's based on one clever concept and I'm like, this could have been a blog post, man. Like, this didn't need to be a 50,000 Word book. And conversely there are. Books that are just so dense with wisdom and ideas and content that I'm like, wow, the this was just packed full of just ideas.

You know, I think of it like ideas or concepts per words sort of thing. You know, you can have very few

ideas or concepts per words or, or a lot per word. So. I think of that whenever I'm [00:34:00] writing, I'm like, does this sentence need to be there? Does this paragraph need to be there? And just trying to keep it as, yeah, as long as you need, but as short as possible.

The other thing that I found just mechanically is I. Having big walls of text is kind of intimidating, like if there's pages and pages and pages of just text. So I like to break it up with subheadings, every few hundred words. So, and again, pull them back, back into the text so that like, Hey, this is an interesting subheading.

I'll keep reading. And it visually, it looks a lot easier to read and go through. The other thing that I found there are a few authors who do this. Well, but they have super short chapters, but they have a lot of chapters. But it feels like you're making a lot of progress. You're like chapter 32, and then it's maybe two or three pages.

You're chapter 33, right. And it just feels like, wow, I'm flying through this thing. Versus where when they have very long chapters and it doesn't feel as, as much like you're making progress. So, there are a few kind of mechanical things. I found that images [00:35:00] are good, but, if you've got like a Kindle version and some people have a colored Kindle, some people read it on an iPad.

Then the big problem is audio books. So if you are got someone reading it, you've either gotta skip over that bit or you've gotta describe the image, which is kind of clunky. So I'm now, whenever I'm writing a book now, I'm thinking of, you know, audio, not audio first, but definitely keeping audio in mind.

Like will the narrator have to then. Describe this weird image or something like that, which is gonna kind of break the flow so. I do have images in my books, but I make them non-essential to the actual content. They just add to the written version. If you see it, and if you don't read, read it in the audio version.

It's it's okay. You'll, you won't miss much. So there's some of the things that, that I, 'cause I audio is. I think one third of my readers come via audio. So it's a quite a big chunk. Yeah. I dunno if that's typical, but my book at least is one third [00:36:00] audio listeners.

So I try to make it really well optimized for audio as well to have a really good audio experience.

Chandler: That's great. Well, and then, you know, one thing that you can do in addition to that, which I'm sure you know this, but is the supplementary. They'll allow you to have a supplementary PDF with the audio book. And so you can include that, which is kind of nice for the visuals. Like I'm assuming like one page marketing plan and stuff like that.

But then also what I'll do, and this is kind of a double benefit, so I'm a hundred percent in agreement with you on hey, you don't wanna make it to where if you don't have the visuals, you literally can't listen to the book. 'cause that's a crappy experience. No one's gonna like that. But how do I make it additive to where at the beginning of that audio book, I can say, Hey, I. You're gonna love this book. There's some images that are really helpful and you're probably gonna wanna see 'em. So I've added a resource where I have, what I actually do is I'm like, Hey, I'll just give you the PDF of the book for free. So you can use it, you can view it, you can [00:37:00] whatever. And so then it's just such an added benefit.

And bonus that, again, back to what I was saying earlier, I want them to go from reader to subscribers. So it's just another version of lead collect, but an on ramp through the audio book. Worked pretty well for me.

Allan: I totally agree. I totally agree. So, I even used different URLs for the audio book versus the print because. For a couple of reasons. First of all, I wanted to identify audio listeners versus written listeners so that the follow up emails could be relevant. So I could say, thanks for listening, rather than thanks for reading, or please leave me a review on Audible versus leave me a review on Amazon.

So that was one reason. But the other reason is I wanted to make sure the URL was phonetically obvious, so I it didn't have like. For example, if I had the URL one page marketing plan, is it a number one? Is it the word one? Is it, you know, all of that sort of thing. So I wanted to have a URL where I could say [00:38:00] it and it's obvious how to spell it and put, type it into a, browser.

So, that was another tip. I'd give someone with audio books.

Chandler: You gotta do that. I mean, 'cause otherwise, especially if you are a narrator, you don't realize it until afterwards. I've seen some people do this where it's like one page marketing plan.com/free. Dash resource, dash library

Allan: exactly.

Chandler: slash tools.

Allan: Yeah.

Chandler: Good gosh. Nobody's ever gonna type that out.

Allan: nah,

exactly. That's cool. Well, Chandler you've been a wealth of wisdom. What haven't I asked you that I should have and what else should people know that we haven't discussed already?

Chandler: the thing I would maybe close with is if you're thinking about writing a book, start. Most people just think about it and you just listen to this podcast and you're like, okay, maybe [00:39:00] someday do it. there's never gonna be a perfect time to write a book. You gotta get started.

And there's a framework that I'll kind of end on is, it's called a More Writing Method, which more is an acronym that stands for mind map outline, rough draft editing. This is kind of one of the core frameworks that we teach. Mind map outline, rough draft editing. So what I encourage people to do is start with that mind map and take five, 10 minutes as soon as you're done with this podcast interview, and just mind map everything you can around the idea of your book.

And I think when you do that, you're gonna realize you got a whole lot more to cover than you think, and that's gonna really kinda kickstart the creative process.

Allan: Love it. Thank you so much. And obviously you've got a wealth of resources that you can help someone with if they wanted to publish a book where does someone find your stuff? Is there something that you'd like to direct people to specifically?

Chandler: Yeah, totally. I'd say two most helpful resources. One would be my book published. It's kind of the guide on what we teach. So if you go to published [00:40:00] book.com/audio I'll give you a free audio book of that book. I figured if you're listening this podcast, you probably like audio stuff, so check that out.

And then secondly, for my company directly, you can go to self-publishing dot com slash apply. You can book a call with my team. We'll sit down, talk about your book totally free. We'll walk through your goals, your challenges, and see if we could help. So those are probably the two best resources.

Allan: Amazing. Thank you so much, Chandler. You've been a wealth of wisdom. Books have absolutely changed my life. I heard Seth Godin say the book that most changes your life is the book you write. I wholeheartedly. Agree with that. So, um, it's a great tool. I think of it as the nuclear weapon of business cards.

So, really powerful. Thank you, Chandler.

Chandler: Thank you, Allan.

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