Susan Friedmann [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas and tips from the masters. Every week I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. Today, my special guest is Debby Keeban. Debbie is the founder and Chief Inspiration Officer at Highland Press, where she helps change makers tell their stories of healing and transformation. Debbie's passionate about elevating women's voices, and she hosts the Storytell, her podcast. A believer in magic, a lover of French press coffee, and a frequent user of irreverent humor, Debbie brings warmth, fun and depth into every project she touches. Debbie, it's an absolute pleasure to welcome you to the show and thank you for being this week's guest, expert and mentor.
Debby Kevin [00:01:01]:
It's my absolute pleasure to be here. Susan. I was looking so forward to our chat.
Susan Friedmann [00:01:07]:
Yes. And it's been a long time coming. And I was like, I'm so excited because I love what you're doing at Highlander Press and the incredible books that you bring out, your authors, how you guide them, it's incredible. And I know you've got a great book coming out shortly, but I'll let you talk about that. You work with authors, you take them through the writing process, you publish their book, and then it's that transition from publishing to marketing that I would love for you and I to spend some time talking about. Let's talk about that one thing that often authors overlook when it comes to marketing their because they're so myopic about the book and bringing that book to market. Then what?
Debby Kevin [00:02:06]:
It's so interesting because I talk about this a lot and I know you and I have discussed this. I say that a lot of people think I've got this great book. I've poured my heart and soul into it and everyone's going to want it. I always talk about this not being the field of dreams. If you're familiar with the movie, the line is if you build it, they will come. And my myth busting is if you publish it, they don't find it. You have to mindfully approach what's next, otherwise you're going to end up with crickets. And nobody wants crickets.
Debby Kevin [00:02:42]:
They're cute, but we don't want them. When it comes to having spent and invested so much time, energy, talent, and often treasure in getting a book to market and so understanding what options are available to an author and how to decide which ones are going to work best for them.
Susan Friedmann [00:03:04]:
Yeah. Because there is, it's looking at what are the options. I love that, you know, analogy with the field of dreams, because, you know, if you build it, they will come. And unfortunately, there are a lot of myths out there about marketing a book that, you know, you have to put it on and social media and Amazon and sit back and wait for sales to come rolling in. But unfortunately, that is just a pipe dream.
Debby Kevin [00:03:32]:
And to your point, if we just focus strictly on Amazon, which I'm not a proponent of, but a lot of people do just focus on Amazon, over 4,500 books are published on Amazon every single day. And if you think about it, unless you have an idea of where your ideal readers are hanging out and how they consume information, you could be shouting into the wind about your book and it gets lost in the sauce. Really. I always say, don't use the spaghetti approach. Throw it on the wall and see if it sticks. We want to know very clearly what one or two marketing techniques will make the most impact and help you spread that word.
Susan Friedmann [00:04:18]:
There are two questions that I always ask authors when they come to me, and one is, who's this book for? Obviously looking at their target audience. And then the second one is, what do you want this book to do for you? Because I think that will help in the marketing journey. What are your thoughts on that?
Debby Kevin [00:04:40]:
I think those are two of the most important questions. Because when we're very clear about what we want this book to do, and not just fill my coffers, right, with our incredible royalty checks, but it's really, when you're writing a nonfiction book, what do you want your readers to take away? What do you want that impact to be? And so keeping that goal front and center helps people decide, how can I achieve that goal? Or what's the next step that will be just before that goal is achieved. And sort of I say, create, like, this garden pathway from where you stand today, which is, I've pushed the publish button to having that impact. And so starting with that goal is hugely important. And then knowing who that goal is for is hugely important, because not everybody is your reader. And when people say, well, anybody could read my book, I say, that's absolutely true. And if you try to market to everybody, you're marketing to nobody.
Susan Friedmann [00:05:42]:
Exactly. Yes. You and I have got that same thought there, because it's true. And the number of times. And you've heard it multiple times. I've heard it multiple times. Is, my book is for everyone. And I say, not even the great Procter and Gambles of this world or any of the huge international, global companies Even try marketing to everybody.
Susan Friedmann [00:06:08]:
So why should we as solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, even think that we can do that?
Debby Kevin [00:06:15]:
But it does is if you think about it. And I distill it down to writing a letter. If you're writing a letter to your dear Aunt Sally, you have a relationship with her, you know the inside jokes, you can really have a meaningful conversation with your dear Aunt Sally. But if you're trying to write a letter to everyone, where are they meeting you? How are they even knowing who you are? There's so much that we would spend our time wasted trying to build that relationship. At the same time, as opposed to this book is for women who have left the corporate world. They are middle aged, they may have grown children, they have hit the glass ceiling and maybe they've shattered it and been cut by some of the glass pieces falling. That's very different than this book is for all women.
Susan Friedmann [00:07:09]:
Oh yes. And even I've had several people come to me recently and they say, well, my target are women between 35 and 55. And I'm like, that is a very big difference. A woman of 35 has a very different outlook on life and where they are in life. Maybe they're just starting a family versus a 55 year old woman who could be an empty nester at that point. And their needs, wants, desires are very, very different. So Debbie, let me ask you, in the publishing, the writing, the publishing process, at what point do you introduce the idea of marketing?
Debby Kevin [00:07:59]:
From the very first conversation, which freaks people out because a lot of people that we tend to work with are introverts and they're like, well, this book isn't a reality yet, I can't talk about it. And I said, but it is a reality. It's just not a reality on paper and it's not published yet. You want to start taking people on that journey. I'm thinking about writing a book. You can ask questions, what would you want to know about this particular topic? You can draw people in and then you take them on the journey that you're undertaking as a writer, as someone who's editing a manuscript, somebody who's helping to select a cover that gets people really invested in the journey and excited for you and wanting to be a part of that success. We do publishing cohorts, literally our second class is all about how do you start and how do you start from where you are and then where are we going to take that with those ultimate publishing goals in mind?
Susan Friedmann [00:09:04]:
Thinking about that, is there something tangible that they could start focusing on? To even make this look as if it's a reality, because it's one of those I've got to see it to believe it situations.
Debby Kevin [00:09:21]:
I'm a big fan of encouraging authors to go on to Canva, or even cutting out pictures from a magazine and creating a faux cover of their book and then putting it where they see it every day, whether it's as a screensaver or it's just beyond their camera. So they're looking at their cover with a title and a name. And of course, it's not professionally designed, and of course it may inform the COVID but it is unlikely that will be the final cover. But seeing it as a reality often helps.
Susan Friedmann [00:09:55]:
I love that idea because my authors come in at a stage further than you start with. So I often say, you know, have you had the COVID design? Because with the COVID like you said, they can start actually marketing it.
Debby Kevin [00:10:12]:
Right.
Susan Friedmann [00:10:13]:
I love the idea, though, that they can see the visual and that already in their mind they can believe that this is a reality and just has a few steps to go to get there.
Debby Kevin [00:10:27]:
Exactly. Just a few.
Susan Friedmann [00:10:29]:
Just a few.
Debby Kevin [00:10:31]:
One step at a time, though.
Susan Friedmann [00:10:32]:
I know that our listeners love learning about mistakes. Debbie, what are some of the mistakes you come across with authors you've worked with or authors you know with regard to this transition into the marketing from the publishing?
Debby Kevin [00:10:50]:
It's such a great question, because when you go through a book launch, there's so much energy and focus given to that book launch. Your book birthday, the day that you're announcing and sharing that your book is now available, and people are celebrating with you and making purchases, and it takes a lot of energy to get to that point, because by that point, you've written the book, you've edited the book, the book is designed and laid out and published. So there's all this intense focus on that one day and you're exhausted.
Susan Friedmann [00:11:25]:
I'm exhausted just listening to you.
Debby Kevin [00:11:27]:
Right. It's exhausting. I mean, truly, truly, truly exhausting. They think that their work is done, and then they just wait and they don't really talk about it. I'm always a big fan of rest. If you must and you must after a book launch, you must, and you must reflect and be grateful and celebrate that you've done it. You've put this incredible effort into sharing your wisdom, and it's out there. Celebrate the heck out of that.
Debby Kevin [00:11:57]:
Actually, I'm a big fan of celebrating every single step along the way. But taking a break, but don't take a break for too long. And then Start talking about your book again, but talk about it in a way that might be surprising. So it's not like I lived for a brief time in New York City during an internship and I lived near Washington Square Park. And for those of you who aren't familiar with that area, there's a beautiful arch. It's in the, actually the film When Harry Meets Sally. And there was a guy that used to walk around in Washington Square park wearing a trench coat and he would open his coat and on one side he'd have fake Rolexes and fake Cartier watches, and on the other side he'd have doobies. And he was always open in his coat based upon which he thought you might be interested in.
Debby Kevin [00:12:47]:
And he'd be like, check it out, check it out, check it out. That's not how we want to sell our books. Right. It's not a used car sales lot. This is. How can your book be of service to your ideal clients? And they need to know that it exists first and foremost.
Susan Friedmann [00:13:06]:
I was wondering where you were going with the trench coat.
Debby Kevin [00:13:10]:
Maybe where you thought.
Susan Friedmann [00:13:13]:
I knew you had some irreverent humor, but you know, I've had some situations with gentlemen in trench coats, so we won't go there. But the idea then of knowing exactly who your audience is I think is very helpful right from the get go because that's going to help in the journey and knowing where these people hang out, because we know social media is something that people think that it's going to do a whole lot more for them than often it actually does. You know, we'd say be careful where you put all your eggs, rather build an email list rather than putting too much effort into social media, knowing where your audience is, what's something that you would encourage authors to do based on that fact? Knowing where they are, where they hang out. What are some ideas that you share with your authors?
Debby Kevin [00:14:14]:
That's such a great question because I think we tend to, as you said earlier, put people into these huge buckets. And I'm a big fan of actually leveraging a character study, which is an abbreviated character development technique that we use in fiction writing, actually collecting the demographics and the psychographics of an ideal reader to the point where you know what kind of car they're driving. And let me give an example. If you have a mom or a dad who drive a Honda Odyssey minivan and they are always toting the soccer kids around and they have a very different marketing message than a single, never married, successful career woman who drives Porsche Carrara very different. Where their shopping is different, what their priorities are is different. Neither one is wrong, it's just they're different. And so knowing who is your audience, down to even giving that person a name. And I again, I love to use Canva to create a visual and creating a visual for this person and giving them a name and then I'm only writing my marketing copy to them.
Debby Kevin [00:15:32]:
And to your point, building the email list, email is still the most effective way to communicate with people, but you've got to get people on your email list. And so one of my techniques with our authors is knowing what the end is in mind. How can we get people who purchase your book who don't even know who you are and get them on your email list? And it's by offering something of value to those people you've gotten to the end of my book. I have a free resource for you. If you put in your purchase information, you can get this additional. Maybe it's a workbook, maybe it's a checklist, maybe it's a private set of recordings in support of creating that relationship.
Susan Friedmann [00:16:17]:
People love all of that stuff. And the more valuable it would seem to the end user, then the more likely they are to part with their email address because that nowadays has become something that people still shy away from because of a scam. It's got to be valuable. And if it relates to your book and the message that you're offering to whoever your audience is, then the more likely they are to share that as well. I love that. Then they love checklists. They love checklists, they love tips. And it can be very short.
Debby Kevin [00:16:59]:
Yes, it doesn't have to be a great time investment, but it can have a great turnaround. And you could try things. I'm a big fan of failing forward. Let's try this one. And if it doesn't work, we have a plan B or a plan C and we can switch them out.
Susan Friedmann [00:17:13]:
It's funny because over the years I've tried many different things and the Seven Deadly Sins as a title for a giveaway, it's always gone like hotcakes. Yeah, whatever you want the rest of it to say. But the seven deadly sins or the 10 common mistakes people make, those kinds of titles are juicy because people are like, oh my goodness, I've got to know what this is.
Debby Kevin [00:17:43]:
Yeah.
Susan Friedmann [00:17:43]:
Because I.
Debby Kevin [00:17:45]:
Curiosity.
Susan Friedmann [00:17:46]:
Yeah, exactly.
Debby Kevin [00:17:47]:
We must know.
Susan Friedmann [00:17:48]:
We must know the secret. The word secret too is so powerful. Using those in any giveaway, as you say, whether it's a recording, whether it's a checklist whether it's a tip sheet, an E booklet, whatever. I mean, your book is made up of so many different products. I mean, that you can create. Talk to us about that. I love dicing and slicing books. What do you advocate in that arena?
Debby Kevin [00:18:19]:
Yeah, I mean, your book is. If you're talking about social media, you're talking about how do you nurture the people on your email list, even if they've read your book? You can take it a chapter by chapter. You can have a book club just to talk about your book. We're going to discuss this chapter this month. Right. And you can nurture people and get them to go along with that. Like you have done. You've taken your book and you've created courses for how to do certain things.
Debby Kevin [00:18:48]:
There's so many ways you can create social media posts you can create checklists you can have downloadable items you can have. There's a myriad opportunities to take your wisdom that is contained in a manuscript and parse it out to leverage it in growing your audience and then attracting more ideal clients or more ideal opportunities. So maybe you don't want to grow your client list, but you want to grow opportunities to speak. That's another way that you can do that is by being generous. I'm a big fan of generosity.
Susan Friedmann [00:19:25]:
Oh, me too. Yes. And giving people things of value as well. So you're generous with your information. Just like, you know, on here, you're sharing generously information that is incredibly valuable for our listeners. Also, your book is. You've got umpteen articles within your book. You know, often authors say, well, I don't know what to write about.
Susan Friedmann [00:19:51]:
You've got 200 pages worth of articles.
Debby Kevin [00:19:55]:
Yeah, exactly. You can carve them up and submit them to online magazines or newspapers or other people's blogs. You can republish them on your blog and say, this was original. An excerpt from X manuscript or X book that you can then have a link to. There's so many ways you're absolutely right.
Susan Friedmann [00:20:15]:
And if you get stuck, I tell you, ChatGPT or one of the other LLM programs are amazing. You just feed your chapter in. It'll come up with the different suggestions of what you could write. This is a tool that just makes it so much easier for us. I know it takes a little bit of the thinking power away, but yeah, hey, it helps you to be even more creative because you've got somebody or something else that is helping you with that.
Debby Kevin [00:20:45]:
And to that point, like, you know, we can't give ourselves a good haircut and sometimes we just can't see what's right in front of us. So we may not realize the value or what someone else might find valuable, our ideal reader or our ideal client would find valuable. So by feeding that in a chapter in and saying, can you create social media or suggested blog post articles or titles for this particular reader so you can actually put in who the ideal reader is or the ideal recipient of the information? So it's very targeted, but it's your information.
Susan Friedmann [00:21:23]:
Exactly. It's your information and it's just helping you. Sometimes we can't see the wood for the trees. We're so close to it that we don't realize what we think is valuable may be something different for our target audience.
Debby Kevin [00:21:42]:
Absolutely. That is 100% true. And in fact, even when you're talking, pay attention to your emails. If your emails start off with I want you to know right there, that's a red flag. It's not a green flag. It's like it could be. Instead, many of the people who've read my book have said they have this problem. Did you know?
Susan Friedmann [00:22:08]:
And those frequently asked questions, again, they can be very basic. That's why the dummy series books and the idiot guides books are so incredible, because they stick to the basics. So why can't we just learn from the experts who have worked out how to do this and to do this extraordinarily successfully as well.
Debby Kevin [00:22:31]:
Right?
Susan Friedmann [00:22:31]:
Yeah.
Debby Kevin [00:22:32]:
Yeah.
Susan Friedmann [00:22:33]:
So, Debbie, this is the time when it's great for you to share with our listeners how they might find out more about you, Highlander Press, what you do.
Debby Kevin [00:22:45]:
Thank you. I would say one of two ways is the best way to connect with me. One would be on LinkedIn. You can connect with me personally or Highlander Press also has a presence on LinkedIn. Or you can visit highlanderpressbooks.com where you can learn more about us. You can check out our bookstore, you can check out all the genres that we publish and our submission guidelines and what we're accepting and not accepting. Thank you so much, Susan, for this wonderful opportunity to talk about a subject about which you and I are both extremely passionate.
Susan Friedmann [00:23:21]:
We are, we are. And I believe you have a little gift for our listeners as well.
Debby Kevin [00:23:26]:
Yes. Oftentimes, one of the things that I've found is that there's such misinformation about the publishing industry. And so I felt really strongly that I wanted to provide a place of information, understanding the three main ways that authors can publish.
And again, I'm not advocating one over the other because they all have their pros and cons. And so I created a video, a little presentation that's on our website called Demystifying the Publishing Process that really goes into exactly that. What are the pros and cons of each? And what are the things that you would want to consider when you're making that decision for your own publishing journey?
Susan Friedmann [00:24:09]:
Yes, and that's a question that I get. I've lost count of how many times I've gotten it. Should I self publish? Should I go with a traditional publisher? Should I go with a hybrid? What's the difference? And this video is extremely valuable. So thank you for sharing that with our listeners. And Debbie, as you know, our guests always leave our listeners with a golden nugget. What's yours?
Debby Kevin [00:24:35]:
My golden nugget is that you don't have to do everything thing that marketing is not about just throwing everything the spaghetti on the wall, as I like to say. It's really about understanding who your ideal readers are, where they hang out, and what your book will solve or help them with. And then very mindfully starting with one or two marketing techniques and getting them going consistently before determining if you need to add any more. But you don't have to do it all. Just pick one or two and do them really well and do them consistently.
Susan Friedmann [00:25:14]:
That's so wise. Absolutely. Because I think people have that feeling, oh my goodness, I've got to do this and I've got to do that. And they get so overwhelmed, especially if they don't even know how to do some of these things, that it gets to the point that when you're in overwhelm and you don't understand and you're confused, the action is zero. So just those small little things start to build, as you rightly say, and before you know it, you're selling hundreds of books. You're being hired to speak, to train, to coach. Fabulous. Debbie, really appreciate you sharing your wisdom.
Susan Friedmann [00:25:57]:
It's been amazing. I'm thrilled that we finally got you on the show. Show and listeners, if your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expected to, let's you and I jump on a quick call to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales. Because you've invested a whole lot of time, money and energy and it's time you got the return you were hoping for. So go to bookmarketingbrainstorm.com to schedule your free call. And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books. So until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.
Here's how to connect with Debby:
Free gift: Video - Demystifying the Publishing Process
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