In this interview with Shae Bynes, she shares how to sell books by building a thriving community. She not only shares what worked for her but the exact steps she took if you would like to use this same launch model.
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In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
- How to sell books in a thriving community
- How Shae used her first book to launch her Facebook group
- The exact steps Shae took to launch multiple best-selling books
- And more!
About Shae Barnes:
As Chief Fire Igniter of Kingdom Driven Entrepreneur (KingdomDrivenEntrepreneur.com), I equip and activate a community of entrepreneurs that demonstrate the power, presence, passion, and purity of God in the marketplace. I have authored and co-authored several books on the topic of God-centered and Spirit-led business.
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Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below:
SHELLEY. Today I’m rolling out the red carpet and inviting you to join me for the expert interview with Shae Bynes. Hello Shae!
SHAE. Hello! I love your energy.
SHELLEY. Thank you. We kind of are both energy people, we’re so passionate about what we do. I’m excited to have Shae share with you today about how she has built a thriving community and what that has meant for her books. First, I want to tell you just a little bit about her. Shae is the chief fire igniter of KingdomDrivenEntrepreneur.com, she equips and activates a community of entrepreneurs, and that demonstrates the power, presence, passion, and purity of God in the market place, she’s author and co-author to nine books, and has books on the topics of God centered and Spirit led business, and so much more. I’m so excited to have you here.
One of the reasons I love doing these expert interviews is because success leaves clues, and we can learn from each other, we can share with each other, I’m so excited for you to share about how to sell your book by building a thriving community. So, welcome and share with us just a little bit about your community and how God led you into doing what you’re doing today.
SHAE. Sure. So, I am pretty much… life as I was doing it in 2012 was interrupted by an introduction to a woman, who ended up being the co-founder of Kingdom Driven Entrepreneur, and it was just one of those total God moments. You know, where you met someone and you knew there was a reason that you met besides you having a chit chat on the phone with someone that you were connected with, and after a few weeks of prayer and going back and forth the Lord just dropped Kingdom Driven Entrepreneur. From there it was funny because even when she mentioned it on the phone, this was after like 3 weeks of praying about it and going back and forth, she said the words Kingdom Driven Entrepreneur and it was like my spirit leapt.
SHELLEY. I’m getting tingles right now.
SHAE. It was funny, because as soon as she said that the words that flew out of my mouth, that I know had to be the Lord because I didn’t know what I was talking about was, “that’s a community, it’s a movement, and it starts with a book.” Those words just flew out of my mouth. So we actually took time in that same phone call, outlined the principles around Kingdom Driven Entrepreneurship and started writing a book. I didn’t even know the woman, she was someone out in Florida. This is just a really ridiculous God story, but that’s how Kingdom Driven Entrepreneur came about. So, we launched that in the fall, November of 2012, and we launched the community with our first book, which was The Kingdom Driven Entrepreneur Doing Business God’s Way.
SHELLEY. I love that, and I love it because it’s out of the box. What I tell people sometimes is, when you’re a Christ follower and you’re in the world of book marketing, sometimes what God asks you to do doesn’t make sense, or it just happens in a way that you never expected. You didn’t plan this, you weren’t thinking, “OK, I’m going to publish a book with a co-author.”
SHAE. That I don’t know.
SHELLEY. “That I don’t know. We’re going to build a community that’s going to help us launch our book to best seller status.” You never planned this, but OK, this is a really, really cool story. I love this because it’s different than a lot of the things you hear with book launches or writing a book. I love the idea of writing with a co-author, I’ve done that multiple times, it’s a great strategy and it’s a great thing to do. For those that are listening, it’s a great way to get a book out because you do half of the work. Plus, its accountability, built in accountability. But, tell us a little bit about the nuts and bolts about what happened with the community and how you built buzz in the community to then launch a book. I want to hear more details.
SHAE. OK, it’s going to be a two fold thing, because we launched a community with a book, then we launched books with the community after that. So, Kingdom Driven Entrepreneur as a community started because, when we created that book we did it a Kindle freebie giveaway for three days. It was either a three day or a five day giveaway. All we had was a landing page. So, for people who downloaded the book we had bonuses that we set up like, “here’s a workbook that goes along with the book and if you want that you can go to our website at KingdomDrivenEntrepreneur.com,” they give their email address, and at that time then we would invite them over to the groups, to join the community. So we were doing list building and all of that through a Kindle giveaway.
SHELLEY. That was so smart! You had your book, you were doing the free promotion, but you were driving people to your email list, which I teach that all the time it’s so smart, and you gave them a really good reason, a workbook. That’s so smart. Then, in the autoresponder follow up…
SHAE. Then you share the other things you got going on.
SHELLEY. You weren’t behind your computer typing, you automated this whole process, and you invited them then with a link to join your Facebook group?
SHAE. Yes.
SHELLEY. Brilliant, I love it.
SHAE. So that’s how that worked. So, when we launched the book it actually ended up being on the best seller list, which was just kind of weird because it was like, it was a weird moment. We actually did, as far as promotions were concerned, we had shared just on our personal Facebook pages at the time, because again, we didn’t have a community, we’re starting from that point. We didn’t start exactly from nothing, because the book that I was doing prior to that I was also online, so I did share it with them as well. It wasn’t a Christian audience, but I knew a segment of them were, and since I was transitioning I was like, “hey, this is coming up if you’re interested in this type of thing, head over here.”
Outside of that I’d gone to a couple of those different types of websites where you can say, “hey, I’m going to have a free Kindle giveaway, will you put it in your Facebook group, send it out on the list, or whatever.” I don’t know how much we really got out of that, I don’t even know how I could have checked that at the time. So, we had thousands of downloads and we ended up with 500 and something emails. Shortly after that we had 500 and something in our Facebook group, something like within three weeks. So, it was actually kind of surreal…
SHELLEY. Yeah, like, “this works! This is working!”
SHAE. Everybody was like, “oh, oh wow, that was great,” but it was very interesting to see the conversion on the landing page, it was like 25-30%, it was just interesting to see how that all played out. We couldn’t have planned it, we didn’t have this meticulous plan, after that we’ve done book launches in a very structured type of way. That first one, that’s what it was like, and that’s what started the community.
SHELLEY. Cool. So now you have this community, on Facebook, and you’re interacting with them. If somebody is doing something like this, what is realistic as far as time commitment, because I know that’s a concern for a lot of people who start a free Facebook group. How much time is this going to take, and then what does it really take to make it a thriving community and not just a community that is sitting there. Can you give us a few pointers or tips about that?
SHAE. Absolutely. One of the things that we do is we have daily themes. One thing, the most important thing, is that we have guidelines. When people come in we’re like, “this is who we are, this is the rules around here, this is how we flow, if you like it stick around and if you don’t,” you know. That was one of the very first things, it was like, “let’s be very clear about what this is so that when people come in we say, “go read the guidelines.”
SHELLEY. I like it, because it’s like clarity versus chaos, because there can be chaos in a Facebook group if you don’t give the clarity, so I love that.
SHAE. In that we let them know that the basis for which we would also kick them out, right? We kick people out.
SHELLEY. Yeah, unfortunately, yeah.
SHAE. Because one of the things that happen in groups is a lot of people come in with the mind set of, “I just want to promote whatever I’ve got going on.” So, when they do that it really becomes cluttered and unproductive.
SHELLEY. Spammy, yeah.
SHAE. Basically, but having the guidelines nobody can say we’re unfair because we’re saying, “hey, after multiple violations we’re just going to boot you out.” You know? I think having guidelines are very important. As far as engagement it’s just having daily themes, ask posing questions, doing things that are going to get people involved in answering questions or sharing experiences of their own, depending on what your topic is, so make it relevant. The more questions you pose and things you share it encourages other people to share as well and as the community grows you’ll see there are certain people that are really engaged, like super community members. Then, you engage them and see if they’ll be on the administrative team, give them a role, and then their helping to increase conversations, they’re really helping people to get fired up and engaged as well. So you don’t have to do all the work yourself either.
SHELLEY. Yeah, I love it! I’ve had that before where, right now I have a Facebook group that’s pretty much run by a moderator. It’s my gratitude challenge group, and she loves it, and she she’s so engaged and she really has a heart for that, so I think that’s great. I love, for my paid group, I’m using Post Planner for my weekly posts and the themes, it posts it for me. I rotate between four different images so it looks different each week, but that’s a way to automate too. There’s ways to automate, and you still need to engage, you still need to be in there.
SHAE. Yeah, you need to be in there.
SHELLEY. There’s ways to schedule things or have people helping you out. So, now you’re building this thriving community, so now what is the plan, or what did you do to then launch your next book?
SHAE. So, we pretty much use, for many of our books, I’d say about half of the books we’d done, in fact all the ones that became best sellers, we used the same formula. What we did is we would, a few things were key to success, one was making sure there was some type of bonus that was for people who purchased between a certain time. So, usually we’d say a three day period, so we’d have these promotions where, I’ll give you an example, we have a book called The Kingdom Driven Entrepreneur’s Guide to Extraordinary Leadership. It was written by David Burrus and we just wrote the forward.
When he was doing his book release I said, “OK, David, you have so much to offer in this area, how about we do webinar series with people, free webinar series, for people who buy your book within the first 72 hours.” He said, “fine, whatever you need me to do, I’ll do it.” So what we did was we put a bonus structure in place, and even as we were going through the process, we do this with all of our books, we share the covers very early on. We like people to be apart of the process as we’re going through and even developing in the book, or share quotes from the book, or share a story behind the scenes of what’s going on with the book. People are anticipating the release of the book when it’s time for us to release the book.
SHELLEY. They’re like, “oh, we’re done, where do I buy?”
SHAE. Right, in fact that’s what happens. Now when we put a cover up for a book they’re like, “I’m ready, I’m ready, when is it going to be available?” Because now we’ve established that pattern. So I think that’s been key, one is having a bonus so that people make a decision quicker to buy the book. That’s saying, all the people who say, “I really want to buy this book,” you’re incented to buy it in the first few days because we put a bonus together for you to do that. Real simple, so they just have to give their receipt and then we send them whatever the bonus is. We have done that multiple times, and in fact the only times we haven’t had a book hit the Bestseller list are the times we did not do that bonus.
SHELLEY. Yeah, teach this all the time, its like, “give them a reason to buy now.”
SHAE. Sooner rather than later.
SHELLEY. Yeah, like a deadline. I love the webinar series, that’s a fun idea. Workbook, that’s a really good idea, so think about your audience, think about what might be a complimentary fit, not just giving a hundred different bonuses that are random like they used to do, but something very specific that would just help them consume and implement the content in the book. I love that, that’s a great idea.
SHAE. We’ve done webinar series, we’ve done a free audio version of the book.
SHELLEY. Yeah, I’ve done that before.
SHAE. Let’s see what else we’ve done, we’ve done workbooks, a six week series where we helped them implement something that was in the book, and we’ve done all kinds of things.
SHELLEY. So like a six weeks coaching thing?
SHAE. it’s not a coaching, nothing that’s too intense. Nothing too intense because we’re talking about a $10 book. We never did something that was going to be very intensive in terms of the time it was going to take to do it. In fact, I prefer to do bonuses that actually aren’t going to take anytime, that’s why I like workbooks and why I like doing the workbooks or the audio books. I didn’t mind doing the seminars because someone else was, I wasn’t having to do it, someone else was doing it. It was the author of the book, I didn’t care, if they wanted to do that I was cool with that. So there’s a few different things that we’ve done, and they’ve all worked well.
SHELLEY. Yeah, and I think that’s the key, is just trying different things and seeing, where is your strength in? If you have a strength in speaking and you can do a webinar with Q&A, offer that live because people love that. The Audiobook version, I’ve done that many times, you buy during the launch you get the audiobook MP3, and that’s automated. The six week thing, did you do autoresponders?
SHAE. The six week thing was, I think there was maybe within the six weeks, it wasn’t like a weekly session type thing, I think what we did with that one, I didn’t have to do that. I think it was like two or three calls that were live calls that took place within that period of time and then there was a follow up that happened at the end. That ended up being a lead in to a program that we ended up offering later on, too.
SHELLEY. OK, there you go.
SHAE. I like to try different things and see what resonates with people.
SHELLEY. I love that, because then you can see what your audience is really wanting, and even with each different book it might be different too. What I love is, asking God for wisdom, because when you’re getting ready to launch a book and you have this book coming up you can start praying and wait for that divine inspiration of how to really strategically plan that launch. There is a formula, there is a certain way that really does work, but the exact details, God can really give you those details and that wisdom. This has been jammed pack, we could keep talking forever.
SHAE. We could.
SHELLEY. I always like to end with a take action tip. So, what would be one tip from those that have been listening to this training that you would recommend they do as a result?
SHAE. I would say to not underestimate the power of community as it relates to what you’re doing. A lot of people, I think, kind of operate outside of this idea of community and just kind of put things out there, right? I think there’s a lot of power in community because, not only is it because they’re receptive to what it is you’re sharing, but you’re also able to find out, get more insight from them, in terms of the things that are on their heart. What are their needs, what is on their heart, and they provide inspiration for future things that you can meet their needs. It’s like constant market research, right? They’re always giving feedback, so you can’t underestimate the power of that.
SHELLEY. I love it, yes. It’s so true, I think so many authors are just focused on writing Tweets or spending all this time doing all these things, and it’s like build your tribe, your community, your people, and just see what happens, and listen to what they are saying, to what questions they are asking. It’s such a great tip. So, thank you so much Shae. If somebody wants to connect with you and join your community, see what your guidelines are, see how you do it, success leaves clues right? But if they want to connect with you, how do they do that?
SHAE. Everyone should go to KingdomDrivenEntrepreneur.com, that’s where you can sign up and get connected to everything, the podcast, the books, the community, everything.
SHELLEY. Yeah, and I’m part of the community and the membership that she has, so I highly recommend it. Shae has mentoring programs, she has all sorts of things that you can get connected with her, and I encourage you to go over right now to KingdomDrivenEntrepreneur.com, sign up, join the community, and I’ll see you on the inside. Thank you so much Shae, I appreciate you.
SHAE. Thanks for having me!
SHELLEY. Thank you guys so much for being here again for another episode of Author Audience, I appreciate you, I thank you for being here, and I’ll see you next time.
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