[VIDEO] One-on-One with Book Marketing Guru David Chilton
/How am I going to launch my book when readers can’t walk into a bookstore? What does book marketing look like in a time of self-isolation? How do I sell if I can’t go direct-to-reader? If the last few weeks are any indication, authors have a lot of questions about finding success in this ‘new normal’ we’re collectively experiencing.
Thankfully, there’s no shortage of uplifting news for self-publishing authors to draw on for book marketing inspiration: print sales are up, media consumption is up, and traditional publishers are delaying some of their spring releases. These combined forces bode well for self-publishing authors as there’s a gap in the market that you and your book can fill. But readers need to know about your book if they’re going to buy it.
To fuel your book marketing fire, FriesenPress President Tammara Kennelly recently had a video call with the millions-selling self-published author, TV personality, and Chilton Method mastermind David Chilton. David’s a book marketing guru with a penchant for creative marketing opportunities, and he took some time out of his busy schedule to discuss how to market your self-published book from home (as he did with The Wealthy Barber), leverage corporate sales, and so much more. Click play to view the full conversation (or read the transcript) below:
To learn more about promoting your book with FriesenPress, complete the form below to speak with a Publishing Consultant:
Transcript of Tammara’s Interview with David Chilton
Tammara: Welcome, David, thank you so much for giving us a bit of your time. How are you keeping these days?
David: I’m keeping well, and you know, I'm a bit of a loner to begin with so this hasn’t been a huge adjustment for me. And I've got a lot of work to do: I'm writing book number three right now and I'm involved in a lot of small businesses and of course, sadly, they're all scrambling right now to figure how to deal with everything from payroll to rent. We're keeping track of the government programs north and south of the border so it's busy times actually – and odd times for all of us.
I'm eager to return to going out for a drink with friends and having breakfast at the local eatery and hopefully that'll come relatively soon. But as you said earlier the key thing is I hope everybody out there watching right now is staying healthy and their family members are staying healthy and that's what matters most.
Tammara: I've been watching you on Twitter and you've been really reaching out not only to businesses but to local people in your neighbourhoods helping them get groceries and delivering them and supporting the food bank and doing a lot of really good work. So I appreciate you taking the time to reach out and help our authors today and teach them a little bit about corporate sales and the Chilton Method.
David: It's been fun getting involved in the community that way. We did a lot of groceries delivery early for people who were self-isolated or quarantined and would just drop the groceries off on the front porch. We met a lot of nice people through Twitter doing that and the food banks all over North America are scuffling. They've got increased demand, obviously, with all the layoffs and they've got less supply because there's been some food challenges on the supply front. More importantly their fundraising has run into difficulties. A lot of it's based in the spring and so anybody out there can be generous to your local food bank. You can't have a better cause.
It's been a good learning experience and we’ve met a lot of nice people but you made so many good points in the intro about this being a unique opportunity for authors. You’re right that the spring lines have been delayed at most of the major publishing houses. People have turned to the media more – both social media and conventional media. There are a lot of opportunities out there. And people want to hear fresh voices; they want to hear about what books and different things they may be drawn to.
It's a great time to do some in-house marketing and a lot of people say, “Well can you really market from your house?” I’ll be perfectly honest: the vast majority of successful self-publishers, 90% of their efforts come from things they're doing in their home. They're not flying all over the map doing TV interviews – that's very expensive frankly, and it's not viable for most of us. It really is reaching out to podcasts; it's reaching out to radio stations; it's doing those types of things and building momentum and building brand awareness and building word of mouth. It takes time but as I always say: you get one or two interviews and that becomes three or four and suddenly it's 10 or 15 or 20.
It's that early part of the curve and gaining traction that's difficult. But once you have it, your credibility rises and, more importantly, you've been filtered in essence. What's happened is two or three radio stations having you on, two or three notable podcasts having you on, serves as the screening mechanism for other potential bookers. They're much more inclined to have you on and momentum builds very quickly so it's a great time to be able to experiment with all of that.
Tammara: Agreed! David, can we kind of rewind a little bit back to your twenties when I was buying your book? You were sitting at your desk, you had a concept and you were busy writing a book and trying to figure out how you were going to publish. At some point you decided to take the self-publishing path - can you tell us a little bit about that choice and why you took that path?
David: You know, it's an interesting one. There's always been this myth out there that The Wealthy Barber was rejected by a lot of conventional publishers and so I was forced to self-publish. But I opted to self-publish. I went to see two major publishers - they both liked the idea but they wouldn't give me the corporate sales market. They wanted to control the bulk sales market but I knew they weren't very good at it. They're still not, thirty years later, and I said, “No I'm going to self-publish”. I went out and found an editor, found a book designer, found a printer. That's a lot of work - remember I did this full-time, and a lot of [FriesenPress’s] clients of course are coming to you because it's one-stop shopping, in essence. At [FriesenPress], you're able to bring all the best people together. I had to go do that myself and that was a lot of work – but I'm so glad I self-published.
I enjoyed the control aspect of it. We had a lot of success with the book, both in the retail front and the corporate sales arena, and it ended up being a very good decision. We controlled the brand and had a lot of fun. And then I self-published my second book as well and, as you know, I got involved in publishing cookbooks to boot. I ended up publishing three cookbooks before I left that series of Janet and Greta Podleski.
We used a lot of the same formulas and a lot of the same approaches to market all the books and ran into a lot of success. That all being said, I think I learned most of the material I know about marketing books from all the people who've reached out to me over the years. We've had thousands and thousands of authors come to say “What about this idea?” or “Here's what we tried and it didn't work” or “Here's what we tried and it did work”. We've been able to learn from them and mix and match ideas and test different approaches and I think that's where a lot of the learnings came that ended up leading to the Chilton Method.
Tammara: I know you have a few modules in the Chilton Method that are your favourite. We talk a lot about corporate sales and how that’s a real missed opportunity for authors. I'd love to talk a little bit about corporate sales today. I'm wondering what your thoughts are on corporate sales and where an author would start in tackling that area of marketing?
David: You know, I was very confident when I first met you two years ago that the corporate sales videos were going to go over well and that they're going to be positively impactful and lead to some success. But I'll have to admit I did not realize they were going to go over this well. It's amazing the number of course users who have followed those videos to the letter – including the crazy amount of detail – and struck very good deals. Deals for five thousand, eight thousand, twelve thousand, and in two cases seventy thousand books. And a hundred and ten thousand in one case!
There have been a lot of corporate sales struck and the biggest thing I want to drive home to today's listeners is that nobody else is doing this. This is not that difficult. When you reach out and try to get on a top podcast, you're up against 85 other authors that month who're also trying to get on that podcast. When you reach out to a marketing department at a corporation trying to introduce your book as a potential gift to their clients or prospective clients, you're the only one they're hearing from. They tend to return the call, they tend to open the kit, they tend to be somewhat intrigued, especially if the kit is well put together and the book looks good, etc.
The corporate sales arena is fun and in all of my career with all the deals I've been involved in through Dragons’ Den and private company investing and running food companies, I've never seen a better potential [return on investment] than in corporate sales. All you're doing is putting together kits - as few as five as many as maybe 25 - of things you're doing well and then you're making follow-up phone calls. This does not take a lot of time. It does not take a lot of money.
I'm the first to admit, if you follow the Chilton Method’s approach to garnering media, it's a fair amount of work. I've always admitted that - there's no doubt about it. It's a lot of kits and a lot of follow up. Corporate sales? Not at all, and we've had...many people who struck deals with one of their first or second efforts.
Just to give you one anecdotal story because it's so illustrative: we had a woman contact us and she created a children's book that was meant for [children] to read in dentist offices. She had tried to reach out to different dentists, she'd even tried to go to a dentist conference and just hadn't got the traction that she needed. She got in touch with us, got the course, watched the course and one of the things it said was your best bet in those kinds of corporate sales challenges is to go to somebody who's supplying the dentists. [Find] somebody who wants to ingratiate themselves to the dentist community and deepen the relationship and they'll use the book or multiple copies of it as a gift to each office. Within a couple weeks, she told 8,000 copies.
[Changing] the approach changed whom she reached out to. There's lots of possibilities like that and in corporate sales now it's not just bulk sales of books. You've got eBook bulk sales which are a big market. We've been able to tap into that with The Wealthy Barber Returns in a very lucrative fashion. You've got audiobooks, that I think are great corporate sales opportunities. Not a lot of self-publishers are going the audiobook road and they should. You really should. And you're seeing platforms like [FriesenPress] are starting to add audiobook potentials.
Let's get off topic for a second here to talk about why I think audiobooks are so important. A lot of younger readers – 40 and under especially – are gravitating more and more toward them. They want the audiobook version because it gives them an opportunity to multitask. They can listen to the book while they're working out, they can listen to the book while they're driving the car, et cetera. That's positive #1. But they also like the connection that the voice brings over just reading a book. The fact that there's more intonation, pauses, emphasis - it makes it come alive a little bit more. The other thing is they've grown up in the last five and ten years getting a lot of their information from podcasts. They've been trained to take it in through the ears, and so you're seeing that group gravitate more and more towards audiobooks. I think you'll see within two or three years self-publishers make that a bigger and bigger part of their offering mix.
Now, going back to corporate sales, you think about an audiobook and it's all done digitally. There's no inventory, there's no printing, there's no shipping hassle. It makes for the perfect corporate sales potential: you get in touch with somebody and you've written a book on finance and all of a sudden you go to one of the major financial institutions who say “we really like your approach: we're going to buy the rights to the audiobook and we'll buy seven thousand copies.” Well the good thing from their perspective is again, they don't have to ship it, there's no shipping cost, they don't have to inventory it - none of that. So it opens up a whole new world of possibilities.
One other quick example: eBook excerpts. This is one that nobody's talking about. But if you look at the Arlene Dickinson's of the world, she's got a very good brand and - I'll go to the less known brands in a moment - she's got a book coming out on marketing. And she says with one of the excerpts of the chapter and I'll go to someone like Shopify. I'll say to Shopify: you're dealing with small companies all over, you're providing outstanding service through your online platforms, your templates, why don't you help them to be better marketers and give them a copy of this book?
Remember: almost every firm online right now is looking to garner contact information. And so they're going to try to bribe people to give up their name, their email, whatever else? Well, what better opportunity is there than to give them a truly valuable gift, a chapter of a book? A lot of your listeners will say “well, that's great - that’s Arlene Dickinson she's got brand power.” But trust me: even people with no brand power, as long as the book has a good title and it's got good substance and it's well done, there's all kinds of possibilities here.
Now, eBook excerpts are not incredibly lucrative. You're not going to get a check for $37,000 – they often sell for $1,000 to $5,000. But they're out there, now generating word of mouth. They're out there, now generating brand awareness. And oftentimes you have a link at the end of the ebook excerpt that says “for the full book link to the following page”. So it increases those sales as well, it's a profit center that's also a marketing tool. You don't see many of those.
The [Chilton Method] is very deep about the corporate sales. There's 20-something videos...about the different angles you can approach on the bulk sales front, all the attention to detail. I still think it's the area that most publishers pay the least attention to, whether the self-publishers or big publishers, and it should be their area of focus. Sales are non-returnable, they're very lucrative, and if you've got listeners right now who are not printing a big number of copies and they'll say “what if I get a sale for $10,000?” Well, you get pre-payment for half of [the order] in most cases, so go print the books! There's no downside, there's no risk to that at all. Even eBook-only publishers go to print on demand or go to an offset printer. [FriesenPress] provides those services: print five thousand, print the ten thousand that you sell because you know, you've got the order in hand. And again, you can make it contingent with the order that you get 50% of the money up front.
Tammara: You know, David, one of my favourite chapters in the Chilton Method series is the one called “We Had Soup,They Had Crackers”. That's one of my favourite examples that you worked on with the Podleski sisters with their cookbooks. Can you talk about that for just a quick minute?
David: It's such a funny story because we ended up doing a mega deal with Nabisco and this was when nobody had heard of Janet and Greta Podleski. This was when Looneyspoons was out and nobody had heard of them. You say, “well, how do two sisters working out of their basement strike a mega deal with Nabisco where they go on literally millions of boxes of crackers?” And it's because we tried. I don't mean to sound corny, but that's the key: you've got to put yourself out there and you've got to try.
We contacted Nabisco and we said “look, we think we've got amazing soup recipes from Jan and Greta's new book. We're going to be out doing a lot of promotion. The very fact that you're dealing with two obscure sisters who nobody's heard of – that could be an interesting part of the PR story. We can all go out and say how did this mega-firm find these two sisters? There’ll be angles to spin.” They loved the cookbook – we sent down a free case so everybody at their head office was able to sample the soup recipes and they all raved about them. Next thing you know, we're on the box.
As I was saying in the course, I go and speak at a lot of publishing symposiums and often you have the CEO step up [from] the various publishing companies and they have MBAs and they've got all kinds of strong educational credentials. And they’ll say “Dave, how did you possibly put together a deal like that where you have such an obscure brand and you work with a mega corporation? Why would they bother doing that? What was your pitch? What was your angle?” And I said “we had soup, and they had crackers”. There wasn't a lot of depth to that and frankly, that's where a lot of the best ideas come from.
I think what we've done better than anybody – we have our mistakes and we have our flaws – is we try. You know, if we have an idea like that, we’ll say why not? It cost us a $12 kit and a phone call. That's what starts the relationship and that's hardly a huge investment. We also struck a mega deal with Coca-Cola one book later. I mean, these deals are possible and so are the small deals of a thousand and two thousand books. They are out there but people aren't pursuing them. It's amazing.
I'll deal with major publishing companies and they'll watch the videos and go “we don't do any of that”. They'll be upfront and say “we don't try those things”. And so I think it's time now authors realize that scenario’s where they should put a lot of their marketing focus and it leads to a lot more retail success too. Your Amazon sales will bump up, your Chapters sales will bump up - whether you're in store or just online, it doesn't matter. They'll both be positively impacted because you'll have word of mouth. You'll have some critical mass, you'll have traction and that's so difficult to get one book at a time. It's much easier to get it through the corporate sales arena.
Tammara: I know a lot of our authors are listening and they're like “well, yeah, but you’re David Chilton. Great - you are going to do these deals.” I want to back up to something you said earlier…“well, we tried”. I think that authors really need to focus in on that and realize that it is about - [to] use a word that my mom loved - chutzpah. It's picking up the phone and making the call and being persistent and knowing that some people will say no. But you need to keep persisting because while you are “David Chilton” there are a lot of authors out there that are not David Chilton that are trying to make their mark in this world that are persisting and are succeeding. I know your son is working in this corporate sales arena as well and he's had some great success with authors. It really is about persisting isn't it?
David: It really is, and I want to go back to a key point I made earlier: you have to have a tremendous amount of persistence and you have to get up off the ground when knocked down or pursuing media, no doubt about it.
This is a little different because you'll be the only person doing it. So when that leader reaches out to the dental supply company, they're hearing from exactly one author looking to strike that type of deal. Obviously they're going to be a little bit more open-minded, and if she happens to have a good cover, title, and subtitle combination, they'll be more open-minded still and all of a sudden, a couple weeks later, the deal is struck.
You and I've talked before about the importance of having a great cover design, title and subtitle. It subconsciously biases all potential buyers, from the person buying one copy in a bookstore or one copy online to the corporate buyer. They need to see something professional. They need to see something that jumps. They need to see something that they go “yeah, I'm intrigued by that”. And that's where so much effort has to be put in.
Subtitles for example are very underrated parts of book marketing, so even if you're not “David Chilton,” remember I wasn't “David Chilton” when I started. I had to do the same type of thing and we struck some very big corporate sales way back in 1989 (my first year). But you look at people taking the course - most of them again have no brand power and yet they've been able to go out and strike some very big deals. So, it's possible. No question about it.
Tammara: I'm not going to ask you to pull out the whiteboard and start a math lesson for us but I am going to point authors to that section in the course. Because I think the math around corporate sales is probably the thing that is the most compelling and will pull people into really executing on this marketing tactic. Wouldn’t you agree that the math there is pretty amazing?
David: It's incredible. I mean, the margins are phenomenal and as we mentioned earlier, all the corporate sales you run into are non-returnable, so there's no risk. Then when you get the money upfront to cover the printing cost there's literally no risks. What I have found...40 to 50% of times is [that] you get a repeat purchase. Often the relationship works and the company sees this is working and [they] are getting good feedback from the person [they’re] actually giving the book to. There's nothing in our society that costs us little as a book but has the same high perceived value.
I don't want another pen, I do not want another coffee mug. I don't even want a FriesenPress coffee!. I don't want any of it! We've all got all that tchotchke. But if you give somebody a book, it's in their area of interest. They're complimented by it. It implies you think they're a reader. You think they're sharp. We all love receiving books – physical books, especially. Even more so than eBooks. eBooks [are great], but physical books even more so, so that is something you really have going for you as you pursue corporate sales.
Tammara: Agreed. You touched on audiobooks earlier and I want to loop back to that really quickly as we start to wrap up. FriesenPress certainly has been reticent to bring audiobooks into our mix for quite some time and...when they first started to come out, audiobooks were quite cost prohibitive to produce then. I don't like to introduce a product into our lineup unless I think that it could truly have a positive [return on investment] for authors.
I think as technology has advanced, it's become pretty cost-effective to produce an audiobook and it's the fastest growing segment in books. It's incredible and it's a really unique opportunity for authors. Any other thoughts that you want to share around audiobooks and why an author would want to produce an audiobook as a part of their marketing effort?
David: As I mentioned earlier, if you're trying to sell to the under-40 demographic you better have one – because they're going faster and faster [down] that road. Again, they're growing up on podcasts. I think [there’s] a good chance to connect with people through voice now. I do want to have one caution: if you're not a good reader - if you just don't come across well on tape - get a reader. Get a professional in because I have [listened to] some audiobooks lately where I’m going “oh my gosh”. The author was so eager to be a part of the taping process that he or she forgot to think “am I good at this?”
Now a lot of authors are great at it - in fact [FriesenPress has] many clients who are professional speakers for heaven's sake! So they're naturals. And many who aren't professional speakers are naturals, but there are a few who aren't good and therefore they've got to work with someone like you to find a professional reader. [Reading talent is] not that expensive anymore, in fact costs across the board have come way down as you point out with audiobooks. But I think for many people, especially your really serious author...I think they've got to take a look at them. I think they can really open up some doors [with audiobooks].
Tammara: I’m not even sure that you necessarily have to have a professional narrator, there are some people out there...head down to the local acting school at the university. There's some people there who are excellent and would be happy to do it for a royalty share as opposed to an upfront cost. There’s some unique deals to be struck to bring down the risk for sure.
David: That's a good point. In fact, even in my friend group there's a couple people who are outstanding at reading books and they wouldn't charge you much. In fact I take them out for dinner for heaven’s sake - they’d be honored to be involved. And again, lots of authors are quite good at this as they know the material because they put it together. They naturally know where to intonate, where to pause, where to emphasize, but there's that 10 or 20% of people who just frankly shouldn't be reading the book. I don't mean to be blunt or rude but there really are. Some people have what may be perceived as an aggravating voice in some respects, so they've got to be a little bit careful obviously on all those fronts.
Just going back to the tide of podcasts, that's one thing I really do want to leave the viewers with. Podcasts are becoming one of the best book marketing tools going. It's very difficult to figure out how many people are listening to each [podcast], and it's tough to get on the top ones. There's no question about that. But the book buyer is listening to podcasts. If you go out and you say to somebody “where’d you hear about the last five books you bought?” it is shocking now how many times two or three or four of them on the five book list came from a podcast mention.
If they like the podcast host, they develop a relationship with [them] that includes a lot of trust. It's an intimate relationship when you listen to someone an hour or two hours a week, and if that person says “I love this book, you should get it,” they tend to go and get it, or they want to click order right away online. So I think podcasts have to be pursued. There's some databases coming out in the next six months [that are] going to list all the podcasts, their average listenership, how you get in touch with them, etc. I'm sure you guys will be tracking those down as well - they can be very very beneficial to people.
And old-fashioned radio, for whatever reason as its ratings have gone down on the index from say a 100 to 80 (in some cases a 100 to 90 which isn't that bad) people have given up on radio. Big mistake . It's still one of the best ways to market your book. Radio loves a good guest and if you can go on and be compelling and articulate, you not only get on that date because they have to have programming 24 hours a day seven days a week, you're often invited back to three and four times and you start establishing relationships and can go on regularly. Again, people listen to it in their car. I'm a big believer that the radio still moves a lot of books. In Canada, getting on the CBC and getting interest there is probably one of your best marketing tools. In the United States if you get on NPR, that's gold. So don't give up on radio – radio and podcasts are still two of the best.
Tammara: David, we’re going to have a lot of authors listening to this webinar. Some of them have already published their book, some of them are just writing and starting to think about publishing a book. The Chilton Method is not just book marketing methodology - you threw in a really nice bonus at the beginning of a number of modules that talk about producing their book. And I can hear your voice in my head over and over and you already said it once today: title and subtitle. If there was nothing else I imparted on an author it would be in the importance of a good title and subtitle. Is there anything that you want to share with authors around that bonus content at the beginning – your favorite pieces you would point them to?
David: This sounds funny but I am really proud of that section. I really am. It's interesting, you know, writing two books in my career, being on Dragons’ Den and giving thousands of speeches, that section is one of my favorite things I've ever been involved in, and the funny thing is it wasn't supposed to be in the course.
The course was exclusively on book marketing. Then just when I started creating the course I gave a speech to one of the big publishing houses and it was more on putting the book together and where I think they were going wrong. A lot of them came up to me after and said “you've got to put that material out there somehow”. So we linked it to the course and I think your people are going to love it, it's very detailed.
I'm a little obsessive compulsive about all that but it's incredibly well researched. I mean, we've done testing on all these different things for 20 and 30 years and what I've really come to the conclusion of is you have to let the readers guide you. The readers are yelling certain things at us and for some reason the publishing industry hasn't wanted to listen. So in nonfiction not fiction, they don't want the long chapters anymore. Doesn't make much sense, but for whatever reason they want short chapters. They actually want thinner books now if you can believe it! They don't want the big thick books – well, don't fight the marketplace. We know enough about this now.
Same with covers: we've done so much research on covers, not just our company but other very sharp companies. We now know certain things you have to do on a cover to draw people [in]. I think people really like that section - it starts out with the video that's been one of the most popular in the whole course on why you should never put your acknowledgements at the front of the book and just the logic behind why they should be at the back of the book. It's interesting because I think that that set the mindset for a lot of people where they went “you know what, everything you do with the book is marketing, because you're doing everything for the reader and the reader’s your ultimate sales tool”. They're your ultimate brochure because if they like the book they really have it resonate with them, they're going to go and tell everybody else. All the little things you do while putting your book together - the pride and craftsmanship, the attention to detail - does it ever pay dividends down the road.
Tammara: It might be extremely detailed but I think that's a benefit because for me, it was literally like a checklist of exactly what I need to do as I'm producing a book. I really encourage authors to go back and review that section if they're writing right now.
So you mentioned earlier that you're working on a new writing project - is there anything you can tell us about it?
David: Nothing. I even made a joke in an interview that it was seniors’ erotica - and the guy actually believed me! I said no, I was just kidding. I was going to call it 50 Shades of Gray Hair but that would be a good title if it was seniors’ erotica.
No, I'm working on a book that's not in the world of finance. I started working on it a year ago and - as a lot of your listeners will be able to identify - I'm writing part-time. With the other two books, I wrote full-time for 12 to 15 months. So every day you're grinding it out, testing it on people and there's a lot of hours there that you can make it the best it can be. Most of us, of course, including most of your clients are writing part-time and it's a lot more challenging.
To find an hour a day in two hours a day and still keep testing and adjusting and everything else, it takes a lot of dedication and I definitely found it much much harder. I'm a lot more sympathetic to people who have to write while they're working. But it's been fun and I think I'm about a quarter of the way through but I know where I'm heading with it. I'm hoping to have it done in six to eight months and I'm going to get it published with a conventional publisher for the first time. And it's because I'm too busy to do anything but that.
I've got a lot of my plates so it's been fun. I've enjoyed being back at the table again. I'm still writing on the same card table I did 30 years ago with The Wealthy Barber, at the same chair at home and the same card table. So let's hope it has the same luck.
Tammara: Amazing! We're looking forward to seeing your newest book David – thanks for joining us today. I really appreciate all the great tips that you've given our authors and [I’m] hoping they'll jump back into the Chilton Method and refresh their memories on some of the great tactics and get out there and fill that hole in the market. It's a great time and for the authors that are listening: if you need any help, of course call us at FriesenPress. We're happy to give you a hand with [the implementation].
