In this Behind the Scenes interview with Beth Jones, learn how she got her Facebook friends involved in the publishing process which helped build buzz for her book. You’ll also learn how Beth took her speech and turned it into a book.
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In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
- How choosing the right categories can help you reach the Amazon bestseller list.
- How your Facebook friends can help you choose a book topic or cover and build buzz for your book.
- An easy way to turn your speech into a book.
- And more!
Find out more about Beth Jones here: www.BethJones.net
Enjoy the podcast! It’s my hope that these episodes are bringing you one step closer to reaching more people with your message.
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Godly Gain Segment:
Each week, I share a Godly Gain segment for entrepreneurs who want to keep Christ at the center of their business.
Today’s scripture:
Two are better than one,
Because they have a good reward for their labor.
For if they fall, one will lift up his companion.
But woe to him who is alone when he falls,
For he has no one to help him up.
Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm;
But how can one be warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him.
And a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 (NKJV)
Thanks for listening!
You ROCK! I appreciate everyone of my podcast listeners. If you have a specific question for me, submit it here: www.shelleyhitz.com/ask
“Even the weakest light can hold back the darkness.” – Unknown
It’s time to let your light SHINE!
Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below:
This is episode 26 of “Author Audience.”
ANNOUNCER. Welcome to the “Author Audience” show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message, create a book, connect with your audience, and change lives. Here’s your host, Shelley Hitz.
SHELLEY. Today I’m rolling out the red carpet and inviting you into my community for a behind-the-scenes look at what’s working for authors just like you. My name is Shelley Hitz, and I’m the owner of Author Audience Academy. The most rewarding part of my job is helping others get results and reach their goals. In this particular episode I want to position the spotlight on one of my members, Beth Jones. Welcome, Beth!
BETH. Hi, thank you, Shelley.
SHELLEY. I’m just going to share your bio real quick, just so people can get to know you. Beth Jones is an international speaker and author; she’s wife to paramedic Ray Jones and mom to three beautiful daughters. I think you now have a grandchild, right?
BETH. Four.
SHELLEY. Four, oh my goodness!
BETH. Four grandkids, one last night.
SHELLEY. Wow. She resides in Kansas City, Missouri, and her mission is equipping women to use their gifts for God, doing what they love, and prospering in all areas of life. She encourages women to dream big—I love that—because we serve a big God. You can find out more about Beth’s speaking and books at BethJones.net.
Beth, I’m so excited for you to be on this week’s podcast episode and for you to share a little bit, because you really had a transformation. When you came into Author Audience Academy, you had already written several books. I think you said you have seven now, you are working on three more, and by the time this episode airs, you may have even more because you’re on a roll now. Before you joined Author Audience Academy, your books had not hit the best-seller list, so tell me a little bit about the process of what really made the difference for you and how you were able to then become a best-selling author.
BETH. Like Shelley said, before I had joined her training, I had written some books and I had gotten them on Amazon. Shelley’s training is amazing. She inspires me so much with her success, and it is just jam-packed with valuable content; it taught me and it is teaching me so much. What made the difference for me was learning about the key words and the categories. I had never really paid a lot of attention to that, and Shelley’s training in that area, I feel, made such a huge difference in my book sales, the way they were ranking, and just understanding the categories and the keywords can make a real difference in getting your book ranked high up, even on the best-seller list. I’m learning so much about that, and that’s made a big difference.
SHELLEY. So when you choose your category, I recommend choosing one that has less competition so that you can rank higher in the best-seller list in that category, and then one that has a bigger audience and is profitable. We really went into detail in the Take Action Workshop in July, which is in the members area and has tons of information. You really went through and researched the categories for your book. Tell us about the first book you published after joining Author Audience Academy.
BETH. I got the idea for the book in Shelley’s training. It is my signature talk topic, “The Cinderella Story.” So with Shelley’s training, I got the idea during the training, I wrote the ebook, and then I uploaded it to Amazon, and it became an Amazon best seller. It’s the first time I’ve ever done that with a book, and I was just so excited.
SHELLEY. Yes, it was really neat too, watching the process, because we are friends on Facebook. I notice you surveyed your Facebook friends too, saying, “These are some of the ideas for the book I want to write,” and everyone was like, “Do the Cinderella one! Do the Cinderella one!”
BETH. Right.
SHELLEY. That’s a great tip for people too. When you’re looking to do a topic and you’re not sure, I do share my book topic formula in AAA. If you want to join in a live webinar, I share on one of my webinars about that too, it’s ShelleyHitz.com/webinar. I love how you did that! You surveyed your Facebook audience; you surveyed your Facebook friends, and you said, “OK, I’m getting ready to write a book. What do you think?” It really worked; it really helped for you to get clarity and decide which book to write next.
BETH. I did that, and I also asked them, “Which picture do you like for my cover?” because my graphic designer gave me two options. I was amazed at the response, and people want to share their opinion and their voice, so that was really encouraging to watch that.
SHELLEY. That’s something I really encourage authors to do, because what you’re doing—I don’t know if you fully realized it, I think you did—you were also building buzz for your book. You were actually marketing your book before it was done, because you started sharing about it. You’re pretty good about doing that on your Facebook as well, and I do that as well, where you’re sharing about what you’re doing. In a way that doesn’t feel to salesy, but it’s telling people, “This book is getting ready to come out.” When you do things like that, you get people engaged, and people love giving their opinions. I recently asked for an opinion on a book cover, and there was, I don’t know, a lot, maybe over a hundred responses—I don’t know, there was a lot of responses. I was like, “Wow!”
You don’t want to crowd source everything, so if you ask people their opinion on everything, you’re just going to get confused. I think you even commented on my post where I was asking for opinions, “Sometimes you just have to make a decision to move on,” and you do! I totally agree with that. Still, getting people involved also builds buzz, and when people are commenting on your post, the more people interacting, the more people commenting, the more Facebook is going to show it in the feed, so the more exposure you’re going to get. That was a really great thing that you did as well: you started to build buzz in that you asked for people’s input on what topic but also your book cover.
I think it’s really great that you chose it based upon a talk. You’re a speaker and I’m a speaker, and I’ve done that before too. I’ve actually created books based on talks that I’ve given, presentations I know that are already successful, already really well received, and then you can use that as an outline to create a book. So, talk just a couple minutes on that process of, if someone’s a speaker, they already have a talk, do you have any tips for turning that speech or talk into a book?
BETH. That was something that I learned, also, in your training and you really emphasized it. With The Cinderella Story: The Power of Shoes I was already talking about that, and what I love to talk about as a Cinderella story. I really relate a lot to Cinderella; I believe that God has huge plans for our lives, and I just want to encourage women to use their gifts. So through your training I was learning that you can take your talk and actually turn it into a book, or an e-book, and so that’s exactly what I did. I thought that was such a great idea from you; to turn your passion, the things that you normally would talk about, and put it into an e-book. With The Cinderella Story, when I showed the people the graphic designers’ two covers, I had such a great response, and it kind of surprised me; I had such a great response to that, that I decided to go ahead and do a series. I’m going to actually have another e-book in a series with The Cinderella Story.
You can take whatever is your passion, your talk, is and put it into your book. One of the ideas I have on my website, which was a blog, was on a speaking blog. I had a series of blogs on speaking, how to start out speaking, so you can take that idea and make it into different little e-books.
SHELLEY. Yeah, so you can even take blog content and repurpose it. I love repurposing. One of my blogs I actually had to have transcribed—I used rev.com, so you can have that transcript—then you have information and content that you can repurpose, and it will need to be edited quite a bit. But you have a starting point, and you can take that . . . or one of my talks I took just the PowerPoint slides and used those as chapter headings and main points. I already knew the flow, I’d already spoken that presentation so many times, and that was for my book Forgiveness Formula, so there are so many ways to do it. My very first book was repurposed content from my website. We could talk forever and ever, but I want you to be able to give a Take Action Tip. So I want you to share, what would you recommend as a Take Action Tip for our listeners today?
BETH. It would definitely be the categories and the keywords, because before I took Shelley’s training, I really had not paid a lot of attention to that. I was actually watching your July webinar, Take Action Webinar, that’s in our AAA training; I was watching that this morning. Shelley just teaches you to drill down deep with the categories because it can get you higher ranked in Amazon, it can improve your sales, and it can get you way up there in a way that you would not normally do.
That would be my Take Action Tip: drill down deep to get very, very specific for your categories; you can choose two categories on Amazon and just get very specific. Let me give you one example from The Cinderella Story: The Power of Shoes. What I did was I went on Amazon and searched in their search bar and looked up what are the best categories for the other best-selling books in this category. So mine were Kindle eBooks, religion and spirituality, and that would be the broader category, the more popular. Then Christian books and Bibles, Christian Living, Women’s Christian Living. That Women’s Christian Living one was a very narrow, specific, category which helped me to rank up on the Amazon’s best-seller list. That would be my Take Action Tip, to just really narrow down your categories and keywords to help you reach best seller. Then like Shelley was saying in her training from July, that will improve your sales and you can put Amazon Best Seller on your bio as a speaker, or Amazon Best Seller on your bio as an author. That’s really fun and exciting.
SHELLEY. Yes it is! Thank you so much, Beth. If you would like a step-by-step training with video and exact tutorial on how to do that, we’d love to have you join us in our community at AuthorAudienceAcademy.com. Beth is one of the most active members in the forums, so if you join us you’ll definitely see her there, and we would love to have you join us. Thank you again so much, Beth, for sharing with us today. What is the best way for people to connect with you online if they’d like to connect with you further?
BETH. You can find me at BethJones.net, and you can find me at Amazon at Beth D. Jones; I’ve got my seven e-books on there. Also, check me out on Periscope at Beth N. Jones.
SHELLEY. Awesome, thank you so much, and again, thank you for joining us for another episode of Author Audience where I want to help you reach more people with your message. This was a behind-the-scenes episode with Beth Jones, one of my members of AAA, helping you to know how to really get more exposure on Amazon through categories and keywords. We’ll see you next time. Thanks, Beth!
BETH. Thank you!
SHELLEY. Also, make sure to get all the show notes and resources for today’s episode at AuthorAudience.com/26.
Before we end I want to give you a backstage pass in this week’s Godly Gains Segment. This is where I share a scripture from the Bible and relate it to the training that I shared in the episode. Today Beth talked about how she used her community on her personal Facebook profile to help her publish a best-selling book. It got me thinking about how important people are in our success; we need each other. It reminded me of Ecclesiastes 4: 9-12: “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his companion: but woe to him who is alone when he falls; for he has no one to help him up. Again, if two lie together, they will keep warm: but will one be warm alone? Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.”
This scripture is often used in weddings or to talk about marriage relationships, but I also believe that when we have business relationships and accountability relationships, coaching relationships, this verse can apply as well. I formed a free Facebook group for Christian Entrepreneurs who want to keep Christ at the center, and I would love to have you join. It’s a place to have support, emotionally and spiritually, in your business. You can join for free at GodlyGain.com. We’d love to have you join us there, and I also love our community in the forums of AuthorAudienceAcademy.com and would love to invite you to join our paid community. If you haven’t joined yet, please go over to GodlyGain.com and get access to the free Facebook group.
It is my hope, and my prayer, that you are getting tons of help from this podcast and it’s helping you move one step closer to your goal. I love working with action-takers. I don’t want you to just keep listening to this podcast week after week but to actually find something that’s relevant to what you’re going through and take action. So thank you for being here, I appreciate you so much, and I’ll see you next time.
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ANNOUNCER. Thanks for listening to this episode of the “Author Audience” show. Connect with us online at AuthorAudience.com where you will find all the resources mentioned in today’s episode. While you’re there, grab Shelley’s free video training on how to write and publish your book using her “6-Step ASCENT Method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message
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