Ep 042: “Telling The Best Story”

Welcome to the 42nd 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!

“One of the biggest things is overcoming the mindset of, “What are people going to think?” You’ve really got to just get over that… I knew I had some great content and expertise in the field that I was talking about but there were so many other people who were already writing but none of them had my particular skill set or expertise or whatever, I just needed to let that go.”– John Cote

Telling The Best Story

We interviewed bestselling author John Cote. He shares some great tips about writing and marketing nonfiction books, Facebook marketing for fiction and nonfiction authors, and other great marketing tips and advice.

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Episode Resources:

FREE: The Ultimate Author Checklist for Online Book Marketing
JohnCote.net – John’s website.
Author Authority Academy

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Intro

Serial entrepreneur, podcaster and CEO, he’s also an award winning author who’s published multiple Amazon.com #1 bestselling books including titles; Mobilize Your Customers, Healthcare Elsewhere, and his most recent project, Your Epic Book Launch is set to release in July. He recently launched Author Authority Academy to help busy professionals and entrepreneurs write and publish a bestselling book in just 8 weeks. Here to share his story and success, John Cote.

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

John talked about his crazy start as an author:

“I was helping local businesses with their marketing, Facebook marketing, things like that about 4-5 years ago. I was looking for a way to have a better competitive edge in the marketplace to basically tell people who I was and what I was all about. I heard this gentleman on stage one day talking about how he published a book on Kindle and did it by talking into the microphone of his iPhone and getting it transcribed and turned into a book in a very short period of time. I was fascinated by that and so after the flight home, on the drive home, it was a 2-hour drive, I started doing just exactly that. All I did really was the thought of the questions I was typically getting from business owners as I was speaking at meet-up groups in the Chamber of Commerce. I just answered those questions as part of the book and that became Mobilize Your Customers.”

He also talked about how this process really helped him. Any nonfiction authors definitely need to hear this story to see how he catapulted his business just from his books.

What is your most recent book or project?

John is the owner of Author Authority Academy, and he shares a bit about this project:

“There are plenty of courses and book online and in stores that will teach you how to go ahead how to self-publish your book and what we’re finding is there’s a lot of people getting into these and just getting bogged down with life. What this is really is a small group coaching type of setup where we give you some videos, some course materials but it’s short and concise just a couple of videos a week. Very short, to get you moving forward on the content and the process of how to do it. So we take you from idea all the way through publishing and a #1 bestseller on Amazon in 8 weeks in a very small group environment, like 5-10 other entrepreneurs or authors.”

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

John talks about a mental block many authors struggle with:

“I think for me, one of the biggest things is overcoming the mindset of, “what are people going to think.” You’ve really got to just get over that and get over yourself. I think we all struggle with that at some time, the impostor syndrome, or whatever you want to call it. I knew I had some great content and expertise in the field that I was talking about but there were so many other people who were already writing but none of them had my particular skill set or expertise or whatever, I just needed to let that go. Once I started putting the book together and once we started launching it and advertising and putting it out there, I found that we got nothing but positive response and even if you get some haters out there, some negative response, that’s okay it just means you’ve arrived, right?”

He also shared some very specific tools to help you get into a great mental space before interviews, promotions, etc.

What one marketing tactic is really working well for you?

“Facebook works really, really well. Of course social media in general, Instagram, Pintrest, depending on who your avatar is, obviously, if you’re targeting women for example in particular who has a higher demographic of use and interaction on Facebook, Instagram and Pintrest, so those are great markets to get into. Again, whether it’s male or female, it doesn’t really matter, just know your avatar and where they are… The thing that’s working for me most specifically is paid advertising on Facebook. It works really, really well. If you know what you’re doing you can really hit the targeted people that you’re trying to reach for a book launch or whatever else. If you’re not sure what you’re doing, don’t just dabble in it. Either buy a course and figure it out or hire a professional and let them do it for you.”

He goes into some more depth about using Facebook advertising to promote your book, so be sure to listen to the interview to get these Facebook advertising tips for authors.

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

He starts off with this gold:

“When you sit down to publish your book, have an idea, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction before you put pen to paper or voice to recorder, have an idea who you are trying to reach? Who’s your avatar? Who’s your perfect person that’s going to be buying this book? Have an idea of what it is you’re trying to do for them. Are you trying to entertain them or educate them or give them an inspiration story, whatever it is? Have that in mind in the beginning. When you look at the great story tellers, they have the end of the story already written and in mind and then they back it up from there and take the journey from beginning to end but they start with the end and kind of move back from there. I’m really big on story.”

He shares a great tip about storytelling, and then talks about time management:

“Once you have your story and kind of where you’re going with all set aside focused time in your day, don’t let the day get to you, interrupt you or distract you from things. Turn off your phone, turn off everything. Just turn it all off and sit down and do an hour or half an hour, whatever that time commitment you’re going to make every day and do some work on your book every single day, focused and committed. Do not let anything else distract you.”

How can people connect with you?

The Author Authority Academy is at http://authorauthorityacademy.com there’s a webinar there that will talk a little bit more in detail about what I’ve done in the past and how we had these successes and what we’re doing with that. You can always reach out to me www.johncote.net that’s our marketing division where we handle all of our clients and things like that.

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