Episode 202: Lessons From My Book Launch

Business For Superheroes Podcast Transcription: Episode Two Hundred And Two: Lessons From My Book Launch

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*In an industry stuffed with marketing bullshit, empty promises and shiny-suited liars, one woman’s had enough. She knows what it’s like to have the wrong clients, no money and no time for fun, but she also knows how to fix it, and, on the Business For Superheroes Show, she promises to tell the down and dirty truth about business, sales and running away with the circus! Here’s your host: Vicky Fraser…*  

Vicky:  Hello, and welcome to the 1000 Authors Show. I'm Vicky Fraser and this is my husband Joe.

Joe: Hello.

Vicky: Hello. Are you all right there?

Joe: Yeah, I'm good, thanks. You okay?

Vicky: Yeah, I'm trying to avoid your garlic breath.

Joe: I had a really garlicky lunch. I'm sorry.

Vicky: It's very bad.

Joe: Can't help it.

Vicky: I think you need to breathe in the other direction.

Joe: I don't want to breathe in the other direction.

Vicky: Well, you need to.

Joe: How 'bout you inhale in the other direction.

Vicky: This my office . Today, we're drink-- well, I'm drinkin' water. What are you drinking?

Joe: I have no drink.

Vicky: Daffodil juice.

Joe: I am, I'm misery Joe.

Vicky: Show the listeners the daffodils. If you're watching this podcast, look at these magnificent daffodils in my office creating a little bit of sunshine. And also attracting all of the ladybirds.

Joe:  Where do they come from?

Vicky: I don't know. I think they're living in gaps in my walls. And now it's warm and they're like: Whoo hoo! And they're all coming out and dying on my floors.

Joe: Ladybird central in here.

Vicky: I know, it's great. So, yeah, today , that's not the title of the podcast at all . No, I have to.

Joe: You have to make it right.

Vicky: Yeah. So today, I couldn't, I could not deal with having the wrong title underneath. Today we're talking about lessons from a book launch. All of the lessons that I have learned over the last week or so of launching my book.

Joe: Okay.

Vicky: There are many.

Joe: Is the book launch over?

Vicky: No.

Joe: Okay

Vicky: I'm kind of, the launch period is for February-ish. Until I've run out of swag to send people already. So if you want some cool swag, better buy my book now. www.moxiebooks.co.uk/feb2020booklaunch. Link in the show notes.

Joe: Link in the show notes.

Vicky: Link in the show notes. So yeah, but before we do that, what are we reading? Joe, what are you reading? Listeners, if you can guess what Joe's reading there's a prize in it for you.

Joe: I'm reading The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, still.

Vicky: Still.

Joe: Ongoing. It's a project, it's a big one.

Vicky: We are, well, we're not reading this but Joe and I have kicked off a project to watch every single episode of Star Trek ever made starting right from the pilot episode of the original series, which was terrible.

Joe: It was bad.

Vicky: And even though, Joe, in the 1960s Star Trek was very ahead of it's time we're discovering that a lot of episodes are very problematic .

Joe: Yeah, I mean, I think it's fine that women and men and everybody should wear whatever it is they want to wear. I just find it a little unlikely that all of the women would have chosen to wear skirts quite that short.

Vicky: They've all got their butts hangin' out.

Joe:  It's like actual butts hangin' out the back.

Vicky: Which is again, you know, I'm a pole dancer, not a problem. But it just doesn't seem to be very practical, especially, I was gonna say especially when the men are all covered. But actually that's not entirely true because at every opportunity that you can possibly imagine James Kirk takes his shirt off or gets his shirt ripped off him. Or is otherwise slightly creepy towards whatever young woman happens to be in the vicinity . It is also awesome but also terrible in many ways. So that's what we're doing. But I am reading at the moment, fiction-wise, well, I've literally just finished reading The Outsider by Stephen King, which is his latest book.

Joe: Was it good?

Vicky: It was great actually, yeah it was really good. Very creepy as you would expect from Stephen King. I had a really weird day on, was it Wednesday night you were away? It was, wasn't it?

Joe: Yes.

Vicky: So Wednesday night Joe was away. And so on Wednesday morning I had to finish, I had to finish the book because otherwise I would have been reading it in bed and that would have been terrifying. I would have been terrified. So I was like, right, I've gotta finish this book, in daylight, before Joe goes. And it meant that I started work really late. So I didn't get into my office until later than usual because I didn't have any snooker to watch.

Joe: Wait, what?

Vicky: So whenever I used to read a scary book, if I was reading scary books and I was on my own in the house and I didn't want to go to bed having just read a scary book because something's definitely gonna grab your ankle from underneath the bed if you've just read a scary book and you're on your own, I used to put the snooker on afterwards because you can't possibly be scared of anything when the snooker's on.

Joe: Right.

Vicky: It's true, try it. Not that you get scared of things anyway.

Joe: Not so much. Okay, cool.

Vicky: Anyway, so The Outsider by Stephen King's really good. It's just been made into a Netflix series as well. So I think we ought to watch it.

Joe: And is Stephen King still churning things out that are different from all the other things that he's already churned out?

Vicky: Yeah.

Joe: Yeah?

Vicky: Yeah.

Joe: Okay.

Vicky: I mean, you can't dis Stephen King, dude.

Joe: Oh, God I can.

Vicky: You're not a massive Stephen King fan are you?

Joe: Not really.

Vicky: You should read some of his short stories 'cause some of them are brilliant. Like, one of the short stories that he wrote that I, ah, it's stuck in my head because I just love the concept and I found the whole thing really unsettling. It's not a horror story this one isn't it's just one of his short stories. It's called The Langoliers and it's about time travel. And it was just a really interesting take on time travel.

Joe: I've read his stuff. I've read lots of the old school stuff, the, you know, It and Christine, and--

Vicky: I haven't read Christine.

Joe: Carrie, and all that kind a stuff.

Vicky: Never read Carrie either.

Joe: And you know quite enjoyed 'em but felt like I'd read enough Stephen King.

Vicky: Fair enough.

Joe: He's written 600 books since then.

Vicky: I know, he's amazing. So anyway, I've just finished that. And I'm about to start reading The Salt Path, which is this month's book club book book in town. So I've just started reading that. It's already had me in tears before even the end of chapter one.

Joe: Sounds great.

Vicky: It is good, it is good. But it's, yeah. I'm just about to start reading Bird by Bird by Ann Lamott, which is a book on, some instructions on writing and life. And I've dipped in and out of it before and I love it. And she's just marvelous and I'm reading it properly now for my book club, Bookaholics Anonymous, which if you would like to join links in the show notes. It's totally free. And we meet once a month via Zoom and talk about the book that we've just read, which this month is gonna be Bird by Bird by Ann Lamott. Can't really say much about it yet because I haven't really started reading it yet.

Joe: Tune in same time next week to hear how that went.

Vicky: Yes. Okay, so I have just launched my new book.

Joe: Launched your new book.

Vicky: Which is called: How The Hell Do You Write A Book?

Joe: That one.

Vicky: That one, there. And it's, I'm pretty proud of that book. It's great, it's got a forward by Drayton Bird. Thanks Drayton.

Joe: Hi Drayton.

Vicky: Yeah, so I'm just gonna quickly run through what I did and what I've learned. So I've never, I've never launched a book before, which people might be a bit surprised by given what I do. But I've never officially launched a book because once I have helped my clients write their books I hand it over to them, then they go and do their thing. They launch it, they do what they do.

Joe: Can I take a step back and ask for a definition please?

Vicky: Of what?

Joe: A launch. What's a book launch?

Vicky: Okay, so--

Joe: What's the purpose of a book launch?

Vicky: The purpose of a book launch is to release your book into the world with a bit of fanfare and pomp and circumstance. And try and sell as many books as you possibly can and do other things off the back of it all as one big event instead of just kind of writing it, self-publishing it, and letting it trickle out into the world. You wanna make a big deal out of it is basically what it is.

Joe: Okay.

Vicky: It's no, really not that much different from a product launch if you're launching a new product or something. It's like I've got this new thing and you build some buzz up to it. And it's like, right, I'm releasing it on this day. So I had, this book launch is the first time I've ever done it properly. When I wrote Business For Superheroes I did a launch just to my email list, just to the people on my email list. And it went pretty well. And I sold quite a lot of books actually to that list, which was very engaged and had all the right people on it. And my list now is much smaller and has very much fewer of the right people on it, which part of the reason for the book launch was to build up my email list again. So I couldn't rely just on my email list this time. And I didn't want to. I wanted to get the word out there a bit more. So I obviously promoted it to my email list, that's fine. But I'd already pre-launched it to the list back in December, was it when it first came out? And so I spent the last month or so planning what I wanted to do as a bigger launch deal. So I took an idea that I heard from Andy Bounds, who is--

Joe: Hi Andy.

Vicky: Hi Andy. Who is a communications and sales expert. And I once heard him talk at a event he did jointly with Drayton Bird. And that was the first time I met Drayton which is where I made him scream.

Joe: Why?

Vicky: 'Cause I presented him, anyway that's a different story. But Andy, I was really impressed with his presentation. And I still use some of the stuff that I learned in that presentation. And when I was helping Drayton write his autobiography Andy emailed Drayton with a little bit of advice about book launches. And I took that advice and ran with it for myself. And Drayton had done the same thing for his book launch. So what Andy had suggested was ask maybe 10 or 12 people, experts in various industries, you know, maybe in your industry, maybe in related industries if they will help you promote your book. And what you ask them to do is promote your book out to their lists, their email lists and on social media and stuff like that. And also provide you with a couple of pieces of advice or information that readers of your book will find really, really useful.

Joe:Okay.

Vicky: So Andy provided me with three videos, which were great, really useful videos on sales techniques and communications techniques. Other people gave me other bits of advice and Julia made a report for things to consider when you're designing your book cover, that kinda thing. Yeah and it's a really great idea. And so I went to a bunch of people and all of them said yes. Which was really great. I was really grateful to everybody. And like some of the people who said they would help was Andy Bounds, Drayton helped me out, which is fantastic, said some really nice things about me. Guy called: Doberman Dan, who here in the internet marketing world you will have heard of probably, is an American guy.

Joe: Hi Dan.

Vicky: Hi Dan. He will not be listening to this. Ryan Wallman who is awesome. He is the funniest marketer on Twitter. And he's written a book called: Delusions of Brandeur, which I absolutely love. That's gonna be in the book club at some point. He gave me some cool stuff to share. And I think he's, I don't know if he's shared anything on social media or anything yet. I'm gonna nudge him and see if he has. But either way, he's really cool. And I was really glad to have his help. Rory Sutherland who is a vice chairman of Ogilvy and Mather.

Joe: Nice.

Vicky: Which is quite a coup for me. And, again, he's provided something really cool, which is marvelous. Thank you for that everybody. Yinka helped me. Hi Yinka!

Joe: Hi Yinka.

Vicky: We love Yinka, Yinka's helped me and that was fantastic. Kevin and Vicky, loads of people. I'm gonna list everybody out in various blog posts and things to thank them properly. So anyway, I'd asked all these people, they all said yes, which is great. And I asked them to all promote it on the same day, the launch day because the more people who buy your book from Amazon on a specific day the higher it's gonna rise through the ranks and et cetera, et cetera. I also did some promotions on Instagram and Facebook or rather Harriet did. Thank you so much Harriet.

Joe: Thanks Harriet.

Vicky:  And other people have shared stuff as well. I did not do nearly as much as I could have done. And I have learned many lessons from this. So, that's what I did. Like I said, it was my first ever book launch. And I didn't really know what to expect. I didn't really know what to do other than kinda some of the stuff that I put together and decided what I was gonna do. I didn't know at all how many sales to expect. It would have been, like for instance, Andy Bounds is much better than I am and he ended up being the number one best-selling product on the whole of Amazon on the day of his book launch.

Joe: Ouch.

Vicky: Which is really cool. I would have loved to have done that. Maybe for my next book 'cause I'm learning about, like, I can write a book and help people write books and I can help people market them as well. Book launches are an entirely new animal for me. So it's been really cool learning about it. And I've taken lots of cool lessons away. It was very stressful. I was very tired . I had a lot of late nights. And kinda getting stuff finished and all the rest of it. So I just wanted to run through a few things that I had learned from this process. Numbers one to five are all start your book launch process and planning earlier.

Joe: Right.

Vicky: Like start it--

Joe: Left it too late, huh?

Vicky: Yeah I don't think it's that, yes, I did leave it too late. But do you know what I was thinking about why I left it too late.  And it's not because I'm lazy. I joke about being lazy. But I don't think anyone really could call me lazy in all seriousness. I think it was fear. Because I've created this book that I'm really proud of. It's a really good book. On my good days I think it's a really good book. On my bad days I think it's a bag of shit . But no, I am really proud of it. It's like anything, you ask any writer and, you know? Some stuff is like, I am really proud of it. I think it's a really good book.

Joe: Cool.

Vicky: And it was just scary putting it out into the world because it's like, if you actually do a book launch and ask people to buy it and ask people to help you sell it then suddenly, you know, if nobody buys it, it's gonna really hurt. Whereas if you don't say anything, if I haven't done anything I could have been like, oh, well, I didn't put much effort in.

Joe: Didn't put much effort in, nobody bought it.

Vicky: Yeah.

Joe: To be expected, that's fine.

Vicky: Yeah. And so it's just like another sticking your head above the parapet and inviting people to throw rocks at it. And--

Joe: Sure.

Vicky: Do you know what I mean? And so I think that's why I didn't start it earlier 'cause I kept being like, ah, oh, I'll get to it, I'll get to it. And then.

Joe: But it's fear really.

Vicky: Yeah, it's totally fear really if I'm being totally honest. So I didn't start early enough. I didn't know enough about book launches. Now I know more about book launches. And for my next book launch I'm gonna know even more.

Joe: And you're gonna start earlier.

Vicky: And I'm gonna start earlier. What else did I learn? To be braver about asking people for help.

Joe: As soon as you asked everybody they all said yes.

Vicky: Yeah I had to, I emailed a couple a people a couple a times. But yeah they came back and said yes. Nobody said no. And I made it very easy for them to say no as well. Because I, you know, at the end I was like, absolutely fine. If this isn't your cup of tea that's not a problem at all, thank you for listening and reading. Oh, I also made little videos asking people to help me. Which most people won't bother doing. So you can put a face to the name, yeah. Face to the name, name to the face. You know what I mean.

Joe: Voice to the words, I don't know.

Vicky: Them, yeah, that. So yeah I would be braver about asking people to help me because all of the people that I asked said yes, which is awesome. So there were a few people that I didn't, I chickened out of asking. I was like, ah, I'd really like to ask that person or that person would be a really good fit. Or, you know, and for some reason I didn't. And I didn't ask enough women to help me. And I'm really annoyed about that.

Joe: Interesting.

Vicky: Yeah, I know, isn't it? And I was thinking about that. I was like, ah, why have I, 'cause I could think of a whole bunch of female entrepreneurs that I would have loved to have asked to help me do this. And I chickened out of askin' all of 'em.

Joe: That's strange.

Vicky: I know. Which is really weird. And I'm annoyed for two reasons. First of all because, you know, I'm chicken. And second of all because I want to introduce more people to the people who help me. And so I want to help more women grow their businesses if I can. Because, you know, we're not loud enough and we're not--

Joe: Well, why don't you just ask 'em?

Vicky: Well, the launch is kind of over now.

Joe: It's not, it's goin' on all month.

Vicky: Don't say that kind of thing to me on, like, live podcasting.

Joe: Will you do it?

Vicky: Yes.

Joe: Okay, good. We'll check in next week.

Vicky: Okay. But I'm gonna have to unpack that at some point and figure out why. And I think it's, I don't know. I have to be kind of careful. 'Cause all of the people that I've asked I really admire, obviously, 'cause otherwise I wouldn't have asked them. And I wonder if it's because, I wonder if it's because I put more weight on women's approval than on men's approval.

Joe: Perhaps.

Vicky: And I don't know why that might be. And I'm more bothered about being judged by other female entrepreneurs I think than by male entrepreneurs. I wonder why that is. I'm gonna have to dig into my brain with a spoon at some point and find out. 'Cause that's ridiculous.

Joe: Yes, yes it is.

Vicky: 'Cause we need to help each other, women in business. We need to help each other more. And, you know, me doing that is just dumb .

Joe: Get on with it then.

Vicky: So yeah, that's what I-- But I would be brave about asking all sorts of people for help. Because if you ask people and if you ask them graciously and give them an easy out then it's fine.

Joe: Burning relationships or--

Vicky: No.

Joe: Pissing people off.

Vicky: Or, you know-- Cornering people.

Joe: No.

Vicky: I would never, I've never pissed off. If people ask me for things, I'm never pissed off. I don't always say yes. But I'm never pissed off about it. Joe, you told me a good thing. Tell me what you learned?

Joe: When I heard that we were doing a podcast on something to be learned about book launches I thought well, I better find out about book launches.

Vicky: Did you research?

Joe: Little bit.

Vicky: It's 'cause you're my love.

Joe: So, I obviously, you know, started googling. And one person's strategy at least was all about getting your Google ranking high. And Amazon ranking.

Vicky: Amazon ranking, yeah.

Joe: Amazon ranking. It was all about getting, you know, in the top 20 of Amazon on the topic that you're talkin' about. And their whole methodology was focused around that and nothing else. It wasn't about making money or meetin' people or anything. And they said to do that you need lots of sales for a month. Not for a day or a week or anything else. You need a month's worth of good sales. And you need at least 10 reviews. So their whole strategy was around gettin' those two things. And what they did was they would say, talk to people, email chains, mailing lists, all that good stuff that you're doing. But they said have the startin' price as low as you can bear. They were sayin' like 99 cents.

Vicky: That'd be for an e-book.

Joe: Yeah, for an e-book. And that will get you lots of sales. And then you get people to write reviews couple of days after they received it. And that gets you the reviews. And that gets you high enough in the rankings to keep you near the top of the list for the next month. And assuming you sell a bunch a books then as well it keeps you high in the next month. So the whole deal is about staying high up the Amazon list.

Vicky: Can you remember who's advice that was?

Joe: No, but I'm sure my internet history knows.

Vicky: Cool. It would be really nice to credit that person with what you've just learned. So that link will be in the show notes when Joe has dug it out and --

Joe: I will do so.

Vicky: And found it. And it'd be nice to, in fact we could. And we're back in the room.

Joe: Hello.

Vicky: So Joe found that on a, oh God--

Joe: Terrible sounding website.

Vicky: Yeah but the guy who wrote the advice was a guy called Joseph Hogue.

Joe: H-O-G-U-E.

Vicky: Yeah, so book launch strategy. We'll protect your Amazon rankings and turn your book into a bestseller. I don't know if that will work or not 'cause I haven't tried it. But go try it if you're gonna launch a book, try it. Which brings me to the next thing that I've learned that I didn't do in time because actually you're gonna be helping me with this and I didn't ask you to learn about it in time. But I didn't use any ads. I didn't do any paid advertising at all. And I think that would have been a big help on Facebook and on Amazon, Amazon Ads. So Joe's doing currently a Facebook advertising course that I bought because I knew that I wasn't gonna do it basically. I want to know when you set up the stuff I'm gonna sit and watch you and kind of help you. And I'll obviously have to write the copy as well.

Joe: Sure.

Vicky: So I want to understand it. But I know I'm not gonna do it. And that's the kind of minute detail stuff that I think you'll quite enjoy.

Joe: Okay.

Vicky: So ads, use ads to push people to your book launch and all the rest of it. I'm gonna definitely do that next time when I've got a handle on how they work. Another related thing, ask for reviews more often.

Joe: Yes.

Vicky:It's really, really, really difficult to get people to review your book. It's really difficult. Even among people who really love you. You have to ask, and I'm not poking at anybody here at all who I've asked for a review who hasn't reviewed it yet. But please do go review it . It's just a difficult thing to do. It's a difficult thing to get people to do. So ask for reviews often and early. And as soon as you know somebody's got a book, follow up. So as part of my email sequence there's always quite early on please go and review my book. I missed the bloody trick in the actual book. I made a video about this the other day. I forgot to put in the printed book, and I'll change this in the second edition, a page right at the end that says: Thanks so much for reading my book, please go here to Amazon and review it now. I'm putting that in the digital version of the book 'cause it's obviously very easy for me to change that. And then re-upload it. So the digital version of the book will have that. And it will have a hyperlink as well.

Joe: Which makes it--

Vicky: Which makes it even easier. And I use a piece of software called: Vellum, which makes it really easy to link to the bookstore where the person bought the book. So if they bought it somewhere else, if they bought it on say, Smashwords or Barnes and Noble or something like that it'll hyperlink to the shop where they bought the book. And leave the review there, which is really cool.

Joe: That's cool.

Vicky: And really simple. I would rather they reviewed it on Amazon to be honest 'cause more people use Amazon but that's fine. So yeah, get more reviews if you can. I should have talked more about the launch. I was too quiet on social media and in person. And I think it's because I was so sick of hearing myself talk about my book. I thought everybody else would be as well, which they might well have been. But it's that old chestnut of people stop running successful adverts in their businesses because they're sick of them. And they forget that they see it every day but the people they're advertising to don't. And it's the same with me. So, I'm sick of hearing and thinking about and talkin' about my book. But, and probably you are as well . But the people who are out there that have never heard of me they're not sick of hearing about it because they've never heard about it before. So I'd forgotten one of my own rules of advertising. And I just didn't wanna piss people off on social media. Which is ridiculous 'cause I'm like, well, I'm not putting a gun to anybody's head and forcing them to look at my posts. Do you know what I mean? So, I really, I really, that again, that's fear. That's a fear thing. I've cared far too much what other people thought of me. So yeah I should have talked about it a bit more. It helps having Harriet do that kind of thing for me on Facebook and Instagram because then I'm not doing it, she is. And Instagram's been great actually. My Instagram presence has been really good. Harriet's done a really good job of that. I shoulda done more stuff on my personal Facebook page and on my other you know Facebook groups and things. More live events and talks. I've done a few talks in the last few weeks. It would have been great to have done more. I could have organized more, I could have organized my own live events. I could have organized a big, in-person book launch and got local media there and stuff like that. And I didn't. And again part of it, to be honest, part of it was time. I have been incredibly busy over the last two or three months. I have, I mean you've seen how busy I've been. And part of it, again, was fear. And I think another part of it was I'm just, I've spent so much time and energy and focus on this book I've just got sick of it. I got sick of the whole thing. So that's another lesson actually is you are gonna be sick of your book by the time you get to the end of the book launch but you can't let that stop you from doing this stuff.

Joe: For sure.

Vicky: And that's probably a really, really important lesson. I could have organized a big, online party, a big ol' online book launch. And I did talk about that with Harriet. And then I did nothing about it. So, like, a big Facebook Live. Part of the problem with this is I'm not a big user of social media. I don't spend a lot of time on Facebook anymore. I took it off my phone. I don't really know how Facebook Lives work. I see other people doing them and they seem to have success. But I'm always really weary of just jumping on a bandwagon that I don't know very much about and trying to do it. So that is a legit reason why I didn't do very much on social media. But again the more I do on social media the more comfortable I become with it. So there's that. I'm also, I just don't wanna spend all of my time on social. So there is that as well. And that, as well I think is a good lesson to take away. I feel quite often pressured into doing stuff that everybody else is doing just because they're doing it. And if I don't enjoy doing it, if that's not where I want to spend my time I'm not gonna do a very good job anyway. And I shouldn't be worrying about, you know, there are other things that I can do. And I think that's really important. Don't feel like you have to do stuff just because other people are doing it. Social media particularly, if you're not gonna spend time and effort on doing it well.

Joe: Doing it badly's almost worse than not doing it.

Vicky:  Yeah, it's like don't bother. So yeah. And I think really the biggest takeaway I think is for this podcast is put a proper plan in place, get as many people to help as you can. And don't be afraid to be excited about your book, even when you're sick of hearing yourself talk about it. Don't be afraid to keep ramping it up. And I had another takeaway that I thought, that was quite a good one. Now I can't remember what it was. Come on brain, work.

Joe: You could buy the book. Takeaway, buy the book.

Vicky: Takeaway buy the book, yeah. Learn, learn from your, you know, I'm actually quite pleased with how it's going. I've had a decent number of sales on Amazon and through my website. I'm building up my email list with the right people on it. The right people joining it every day.

Joe: That's cool. 

Vicky: That's really, really cool. So yeah, I'm actually, I'm not unhappy with the way it's gone, at all. And the way I've seen it is this is the first time I've done this and I'm treating it as a real learning experience. And I think that's probably the biggest takeaway that I can give you. Do all of this stuff, try it out. Don't be disheartened if it doesn't work the way you would like it to work, it doesn't work the way you think it should.

Joe: Learn and move forward.

Vicky: Learn and move forward, yeah. And that's, I did go into it with that. I think the old me, a couple of years ago me woulda been quite upset about various things that have happened or not happened. And because I've gone into it with the mindset that, you know what, this is gonna be one big experiment and I'm gonna learn from it. And I'm gonna see what I can do better next time. And that's made me feel pretty good about the whole thing.

Joe: Cool.

Vicky:  Yeah. How do you think it's gone? You don't have a clue do you?

Joe: Well, I haven't seen the graphs of the sales so I don't know.

Vicky: No. And that was the other thing that was quite frustrating, yeah. Here's another lesson. Don't sit there and obsessively F5 the Amazon KDP bookshelf report.

Joe: Refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh.

Vicky: Because there's a massive lag. Sometimes days between a sale going through and Amazon recording it on your reporting page. And that's like: Why is nobody buying my book? And then two days later it's like, oh, they are, that's fine .

Joe: That's worth knowing, isn't it?

Vicky: That is worth--

Joe: That sounds pretty scary for a couple a days.

Vicky: Yeah sometimes it shows up within hours. And sometimes it shows up instantly and sometimes it shows up days later. And I really have no idea why that is the case. So, so there you go. Right then.

Joe: Okay.

Vicky:  What's coming up next week?

Joe: Mudita.

Vicky: Mudita.

Joe: Mudita.

Vicky: We're gonna be talking about Mudita and why it's something that you need to cultivate if you want to write a book or do something big or achieve something cool.

Joe: Whole new word.

Vicky: Whole new word. In other news I'm still sorting out our writing retreat. Not sorted out yet, in progress. Oh, I'm launching, this Friday I am launching a free 29 day writing challenge. And by the time this podcast goes out you will be able to join it at, hang on, moxiebooks.co.uk/29-day-writing-challenge. Why is that such a shit URL ? Link is in the show notes. Yeah, it does exactly what it says on the tin. I'm gonna get you to write something every day for 29 days.

Joe: Cool.

Vicky: And you'll get an email from me every day with a writing prompt and an idea. And a little bit of cheering and encouragement. And the idea is I want you to create a writing habit so that when you come to write your book you find the whole thing a little bit less painful.

Joe: Nice.

Vicky: Yeah. If you've listened to every episode of this podcast, you know what to do. Email me with your postal address and I will send you a cool gift.

Joe: Nice.

Vicky: Mm hm. And what else?

Joe: Subscribe, like it, review. Five stars.

Vicky: Review us. Yeah, five star reviews, please. Thanks, thanks very much, thanks. Yeah. I'm really tired.

Joe: I know.

Vicky: I'm really hungry. Let's go.

Joe: Let's go, we're done.

Vicky: Let's go. By guys, we'll be back, same time next week.

Joe: Bye!

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