Ep 059: “Prosperity for Writers”

Welcome to the 59th episode of The Author Hangout, a podcast designed to help authors, especially self-published and indie authors, with marketing their books and improving their author platform. Authors struggle with various aspects of marketing and we are here to help!

“You have to sit down and get those words down on paper. What that means is, set a daily goal even if it’s 100 words a day or one paragraph a day or a page a day.”– Honoree Corder

Prosperity for Writers

In this episode, we interviewed author Honoree Corder and we discussed her new book, Prosperity for Writers, as well as many other great tips such as how to write more, using a mailing list, getting more reviews and tons of other great tips.

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Intro

She’s an inspirational speaker, transformation expert and bestselling author with more than a dozen books to her credit including The Successful Single Mom Series, The Miracle Morning Series and Business Dating. Her latest book, Prosperity for Writers: A writer’s guide to creating abundance aimed to provide authors with techniques, tools and ideas they need to revolutionize their writing business. Please welcome a renowned business coach who’s empowering others to dream big and achieve their goals, Honoree Corder.

How did you become an author and publish your first book?

Honoree has a great story:

“I was a coach and a speaker when I met Mark Victor Hansen who many people know as the co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul series. I met him at this conference. I was sitting in the back typing notes and then he came to the back and we struck up a conversation. Within a couple of minutes he said, “So what do you do?” I was very proud of myself, I said, “I am a coach and a speaker.” And he was like, “Aw honey, everybody’s a coach and a speaker.” It wasn’t condescending but he said, “You’ve got to write a book.” I’m a little sarcastic and sassy in my sense of humor and my first thought was, “Of course I’ll write a book. What could go wrong? How hard could that be?” Little did I know…that was back in 2004 when I wrote my first book, Tall Order, now it’s a book I giveaway on my website. That’s what you do when you’ve written a few books, that’s what I’ve heard anyway from the marketing experts. So here I am all these books later and really enjoying the process. I didn’t know what I didn’t know and I’m so glad that I didn’t know what I didn’t know. It really empowered me to take a suggestion and do it. Which is my first suggestion for anyone who wants to write a book. Just do it.”

What is your most recent book or project?

She tells us:

“Prosperity for Writers is the mindset shift that writers need to make money from their writing. I wrote the book because I attended a conference in the spring here in Austin and there’s a podcast, a self-publishing podcast and those guys were putting on a conference and it was in my own backyard. I said, “I want to go meet my people.” So I went to the conference and there were a number of published authors there and aspiring authors and others that were saying, “I have this book but I also have this day job but I really hated it. It was killing my soul and killing my body. I don’t like it but it pays the bills and I have this belief that I have to keep doing that.” For someone who never went to college and didn’t take a writing class, who has published all these books and I make money from them…that’s a fact…I make “casholla”. From someone who’s doing that. If possible for me to do it, then it’s possible for literally anyone to do it but the thing that I conquered before I really had to conquer anything else was what was going on in my brain about making money. About making money as a coach, about making money as a speaker and about making money as a writer… I did what Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield said, do 7 things every day to market and promote your book. By the time I got the first 5,000 copies on my doorstep, which by the way was a great moment but kind of like a letdown too because you’re like, this is it? Where are the streamers and the fanfare? I don’t hear angels singing, there’s no confetti, what’s the problem. But by the time they came I had sold 11,000 copies of the book because I did 7 things every day. I took it seriously. I treated it like a business. I believed I could make money from it and I did.”

Honoree also shared a bit from her book, and part of that is about sitting down and writing. She talks about how many people think about writing but then don’t get the writing done.

Here’s a tip from her book that she shared:

“You have to sit down and get those words down on paper or on the page in front of you, on the screen in front of you. What that means is, set a daily goal even if it’s 100 words a day or one paragraph a day or a page a day. My goal is 1,000 words in 20 minutes. People say to me, “Honoree all you do is write. You publish all these books, you must write all the time.” I’m like, “No, I watch an extremely ridiculous amount of television. I eat an extraordinary amount of chocolate, which means my fingers are busy. I can’t be writing.””

Can you tell us about a time when you really struggled as an author?

Here are some great tips from Honoree:

“This year, my in-laws, my husband’s parents are divorced and re-married but they’re having the same exact heart problems. It’s been really gut wrenching and stressful and worrisome and it does interfere with productivity. So I really had to “eat my own dog food”, the minute I take a stance on something the universe steps in and says, “Oh, let’s see how committed girlfriend is to her stance on this position.” You have to get up at 6 o’clock to go to the hospital, when are you going to sit down and write for 20 minutes? When are you going to get on Facebook and interact with your friends? When are going to do your marketing? When are you going to do the execution of your plans? What are you going to do today Honoree? Are you “eating your own dog food?” Yes, yes I am. I promise I’m committed. You don’t have to test me but all of these challenges creep up the minute we make our commitment to ourselves. There’s always something that interferes and you have to say, “I’m really going to find my 20 minutes or my half an hour, or my hour, or whatever that looks like. You just have to do it.”

What one marketing tactic is really working well for you?

Here’s a tip she shares about getting reviews:

“What I do now with every single one of my books, up to including Prosperity for Writers, is that I have A.R.C. (advanced reader copies) of my book. I do a page, as soon as I go into production on a book because, like I said, I turn them around fairly quickly. Someone can do this on a 2-year time period if they wanted to. I set up a page on my website and I let people go on that page to opt-in to be an advance reader. All they have to do is leave an honest review in exchange for an advanced digital copy of my book and I provide, once they’ve posted a review, I provide either a digital copy or a paperback copy of my book. I find that, because I’m write, publishing and repeating that, I have people jumping on that.”

Need reviews for your book? Our Reading Deals Book Reviews service puts your book in front of readers who get to read it for free, in exchange for giving you a review. Learn more here.

If you started over today, what 3 things would you tell yourself to help you sell more books?

“I would build a list. Build a list of followers by using a Mail Chimp or Aweber and I would start the minute I decided to do anything…write a book or ink anything. That would be the first thing. The second thing would be to write more books sooner.”

Her third tip is really great, so be sure to listen to the podcast to get that tip!

How can people connect with you?

“http://honoreecorder.com/ is my website and I’m @honoree at every social media outlet.”

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