Un-Gatekeeping Self-Publishing with Ellen Polk

Summary

Podcast Summary: Slay The Gatekeeper – Episode: Un-Gatekeeping Self-Publishing with Ellen Polk

Host: Courtney Johnson
Guest: Ellen Marker Polk
Release Date: November 12, 2024

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Introduction

In this enlightening episode of Slay The Gatekeeper, host Courtney Johnson welcomes Ellen Marker Polk, founder of Sage House Editorial, to delve deep into the world of self-publishing. Ellen shares her expertise on transforming the often intimidating self-publishing process into an accessible and strategic endeavor for authors, particularly entrepreneurs and content creators.

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Ellen Polk’s Expertise and Background

Ellen Marker Polk introduces herself as the founder of Sage House Editorial, established in late 2017. She specializes in assisting nonfiction authors—primarily founders and entrepreneurs—in crafting books that serve as authority-building assets. Her mission is encapsulated in her tagline: “I help these people go from bucket list to bookshelf.”

“I help these people go from bucket list to bookshelf.” – Ellen Marker Polk [02:23]

Ellen emphasizes the importance of a book as a digital product that amplifies an author's impact, income, and influence. She discusses her role not just as an editor but also as a ghostwriter, helping authors maintain their personal brand across various platforms by repurposing book content into blogs, social media posts, and more.

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Cheat Code #1: Leveraging Existing Content

Ellen reveals a game-changing strategy for aspiring authors: using existing content as a foundation for their books. She explains that a typical 20-minute podcast episode equates to roughly 3,000 words. This means that five hours of podcast material can form the draft of an entire book.

“If you already have a lot of content, you've kind of already written a book draft.” – Ellen Marker Polk [04:39]

Key Points:

• Avoid Reinventing the Wheel: Authors don’t need to create entirely new content. Instead, they should expand upon topics their audience already engages with.
• Audience-Centric Writing: Focus on addressing the pain points and expectations of your existing audience.
• Strategic Content Expansion: Incorporate case studies, data points, and thought leadership to add depth and nuance to existing ideas.

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Cheat Code #2: Content Repurposing for Lifelong ROI

Ellen discusses how repurposing content can create a sustainable marketing loop that generates continuous return on investment (ROI). By transforming book chapters into various content formats—blog posts, videos, social media snippets—authors can maintain a constant presence and engage different segments of their audience.

“Content repurposing can create this almost like a marketing loop that generates a lifelong ROI.” – Courtney Johnson [07:05]

Key Points:

• Multiple Formats: Break down book chapters into blog posts, lists, videos, and keynote speeches.
• Extended Reach: Use the book as a central hub, distributing its content across multiple platforms to reach a wider audience.
• Evergreen Assets: Ensure the content remains relevant over time, maximizing its long-term value.

Ellen cites the example of Nicole, the Holistic Psychologist, who successfully repackaged her book content into a series of LinkedIn posts, creating a robust marketing loop that supports ongoing engagement and sales.

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Cheat Code #3: Collaborative Self-Publishing

Dispelling the myth that self-publishing is a solo endeavor, Ellen highlights the plethora of resources and professionals available to support authors. From editors and ghostwriters to designers and marketing assistants, assembling a team can significantly enhance the quality and reach of a self-published book.

“Self publishing doesn't mean you have to write and publish a book alone.” – Courtney Johnson [12:34]

Key Points:

• Professional Support: Hire editors, proofreaders, designers, and marketing experts to ensure a polished final product.
• Investment in Quality: Budget appropriately, with typical investments ranging from $1,000 to $25,000, depending on the project's scope.
• Strategic Outsourcing: Leveraging expertise to streamline the publishing process and maintain high standards.

Ellen compares traditional publishing to self-publishing, illustrating how both paths require significant investment but offer different levels of control and potential ROI.

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Cheat Code #4: Defining the Problem and Transformation

A critical aspect of successful self-publishing is clearly identifying the problem your book addresses and the transformation it offers to readers. Ellen stresses the importance of guiding readers through a well-defined journey, ensuring that the book delivers on its promises.

“Get clear on the problem you're solving and the transformational journey your audience will take.” – Courtney Johnson [27:08]

Key Points:

• Targeted Solutions: Focus on one or two primary problems that resonate deeply with your audience.
• Structured Transformation: Lead readers from point A to point Z, ensuring a coherent and impactful narrative.
• Consistency and Delivery: Maintain the book’s promise throughout the content to build and preserve reader trust.

Ellen shares insights from her work with a real estate expert, illustrating how defining specific pain points and solutions can shape a book’s structure and content effectively.

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The Importance of a Book Proposal

Whether self-publishing or seeking traditional publication, developing a comprehensive book proposal is invaluable. Ellen likens the proposal to a business plan, outlining market research, target audience, competitive analysis (comp titles), and a detailed chapter outline.

“If you're going to self-publish, this is a really good exercise to do.” – Ellen Marker Polk [23:00]

Key Points:

• Market Validation: Demonstrates the book’s potential for success by detailing audience needs and market demand.
• Strategic Planning: Helps authors map out their content, ensuring alignment with their goals and audience expectations.
• Risk Mitigation: Prevents wasted effort on misaligned content by providing a clear, guided framework for writing.

Ellen urges authors to invest time in the proposal process to refine their ideas and ensure their book effectively serves their intended purpose and audience.

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Timeline for Publishing

Ellen addresses the common question regarding the timeline from conception to publication. She emphasizes that the process is highly variable but generally recommends allowing at least a year to a year and a half for self-publishing. Traditional publishing timelines can extend to 18-24 months post-acquisition.

“Give yourself a year and a half. That is a pretty good timeline.” – Ellen Marker Polk [31:35]

Key Points:

• Self-Publishing: Faster entry to market but requires disciplined project management to maintain quality and effectiveness.
• Traditional Publishing: Involves longer timelines due to editorial processes and publishing schedules but offers established distribution channels.
• Goal Alignment: Authors should synchronize their publishing timeline with industry events and personal schedules to maximize impact.

Ellen advises authors to consider their personal capacity, existing commitments, and the strategic timing of their book release to optimize the publishing process.

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How to Work with Ellen Polk

For listeners interested in embarking on their self-publishing journey, Ellen provides clear avenues to engage her services. She encourages establishing early conversations to plan effectively and avoid common pitfalls.

“Partnering with the right people for your book is a make or break situation.” – Ellen Marker Polk [36:31]

Contact Information:

• LinkedIn: @EllenMarkerPolk
• Website: www.sagehouseeditorial.com

Ellen emphasizes the value of personalized guidance and strategic planning in transforming a book idea into a successful publication.

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Conclusion

This episode of Slay The Gatekeeper offers a comprehensive roadmap for aspiring authors looking to navigate the self-publishing landscape. Ellen Polk’s insights demystify the process, providing actionable strategies and emphasizing the importance of leveraging existing content, repurposing for sustained ROI, collaborating with professionals, and clearly defining the problem and transformation for readers. Her guidance serves as a valuable cheat code series for anyone aiming to transition from a book idea to a published, impactful work.

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Notable Quotes:

• “Don't trap yourself in the idea of thinking that if you are going to be writing a book, it needs to be something completely new and original.” – Ellen Marker Polk [05:05]
• “The book is kind of like a top of funnel or middle funnel asset for you.” – Ellen Marker Polk [09:18]
• “A book as a business is just a better way to think about it.” – Ellen Marker Polk [23:12]

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Additional Resources:

For more information and to connect with Ellen Polk, visit Sage House Editorial or find her on LinkedIn.

Transcript

[Ellen Marker Polk]

Foreign.

[Courtney Johnson]

Welcome to Slay the Gatekeeper. I'm your host Courtney Johnson and I am here to un gatekeep the gatekept. Thank you so much for being here. Enjoy.

[Ellen Marker Polk]

Guys.

[Courtney Johnson]

I was using a CPA that costed me like $700 a month and honestly they were not even that helpful. So I wanted another tax olution. So my COO found found this tool called Collective. Collective is a tax tool specifically for self employed solopreneurs and content creators. Also it costs less than 300amonth. So I am saving so much money using Collective. They helped me set up my S Corp election with the irs, which listen, I'm not going to get into what that means. I don't even fucking know. But what I do know is it's lowering my taxes by about 15%, which is huge. They also give you quarterly tax estimates, annual salary recommendations, paycheck calculators, business income tax returns. They do your taxes for you. But what's cool is they specifically work with content creators with solopreneurs. Also they set up my payroll and they set it up through Gusto.

[Unknown]

So they have a partnership with Gusto.

[Courtney Johnson]

That is really cool. What's really exciting is that now that I have an S corp, it's actually my first week that I'm getting a real paycheck from my company. Very exciting. It's just like a huge milestone and.

[Unknown]

I feel very proud about that.

[Courtney Johnson]

Anyway, I highly recommend checking out Collective if you don't have a tax solution that you love right now. And I have one month free for y'all. So if you use share.collective.com backslash Courtney Johnson, you'll get one month free of using Collective. Y'all don't want the IRS all up in your shit. Go be tax compliant, but also be strategic again. You can check out [e-mail] backslash Courtney Johnson.

[Unknown]

Ellen, tell me about what you do. Honestly, for all the listeners. Ellen has helped me so much in my own book writing process of just being a sounding board and helping me come back to my messaging and my truth and my authenticity and I've really appreciated that. So Ellen.

[Ellen Marker Polk]

Yeah. What do you do? What.

[Unknown]

What are you working on?

[Ellen Marker Polk]

Well, thank you. I always love when like satisfied customers tell me that I did a good job. I run a business called Sage House Editorial. I founded it back in at the end of 2017 and I work now exclusively with nonfiction authors. Most of the time they're founders and entrepreneurs who are creating books that are authority building assets that drive revenue in their business that lead Transformations for their clients that essentially help them package and distribute their knowledge in a way that amplifies their impact, income, and influence. And really my tagline now that I've been using for a long time is I help these people go from bucket list to bookshelf. Almost every founder and entrepreneur that I speak to in the DMs, in person and networking groups, once they find out that I work in publishing and editing and, you know, storytelling craft in general, the next sentence is immediately like, oh, you know, I have this book idea or it's on my vision board for the next three to five years. Or like, oh, everybody tells me I should talk about X, Y and Z. And you know, in my mind I'm like, so do it. Let's talk like, do you want to. Do you want to set up a call? Let's make that a reality for you. So I really guide people, founders and entrepreneurs specifically, who are writing nonfiction through that bucket list of bookshelf experience. And then on the flip side, because I am a writer, educated and trained, I do ghostwriting. Then for those people, it just kind of is naturally an organic part of that relationship. So as we all know, selling a book, part of that is being present on social media and having a personal brand and already having kind of like a base of content that people are ready to buy from you. And so I do a lot of the ghostwriting then for people is like, okay, well, before the book comes out, let's start writing and publishing some LinkedIn posts. And then after the book comes out, let's repurpose that into smaller assets. And you're gonna need an email funnel. And if you're not sending a monthly newsletter, you should be. And here's how we can then leverage this into a keynote speech. And so I do a lot of that kind of, I call it my like Secret Service or behind the scenes work with people is it's not just writing a book. You know, you wipe your hands off it and move on. You have to then continue writing and promoting and selling it, especially in the self publishing space.

[Unknown]

Yeah. I think that brings us to our first cheat code, which completely blew my mind. And that is if you already have a lot of content, you've kind of already written a book draft. And one of the numbers you bring up is a 20 minute podcast is roughly 3,000 words. So just five hours of podcast material could be a draft for an entire book. That's crazy.

[Ellen Marker Polk]

Yeah. And the caveat there is like, don't go to your podcast feed and just pull the last five episodes, the last five hours of content. Like, there's still a little bit of work to be done to think about goals and audience and theme and the transformation. But yeah, the first cheat code, I would say, is don't trap yourself in the idea of thinking that if you are going to be writing a book, it needs to be something completely new and original. In fact, it should probably be the opposite thing. Write something that your audience knows and expects from you. A pain point that your readers are already, you know, dealing with. Again, because I work with founders and entrepreneurs. They're already solving. They already have an ideal client avatar. Well, it's a really easy jump to say, okay, the ideal reader avatar is that exact same person. And all we're doing now is addressing that pain point through a different mode and taking them on a journey through a different method. And that is with this new asset, this digital product that we're creating for them. And it just, it happens to be a book. And so leveraging that existing ecosystem of stuff that you've already put out there is a great way for people to get that first book done and kind of get over the hump of, I wrote and published this thing. I'm an author, I have an asset to show people. You know, it's on bookshelves, it's physical thing that I have in my hand. A lot of times, if I'm working with authors who like, oh, I have a list of ideas, which one should I do first? We kind of go through this exercise of like, okay, what's relevant and timely? Do you have an audience? What do they need from you? What are they already asking for? Let's start there. And if you've been, you know, on the online space putting out content for a while, which is partly why I do that ghostwriting side of my business. If you've been putting out that content, you know what's working for your audience. So, like, let's just leverage that into a new format, package that up, say a few new things, maybe incorporate some case studies or data points or expand or contract in an idea and link some things together in a way that's new and nuanced and pull in that, you know, buzzword thought leadership a little bit and build on what you've already put out. It doesn't need to be something new from scratch.

[Unknown]

Yeah. So if you're already a coach, a speaker, an entrepreneur, a thought leader, all of these things, you already have so much material that can come into your book. That's been a big game changer. For me because when I got the opportunity to work on a book, I was like, oh shit, I gotta write all of this new. I have to come up with new stuff that my audience has never seen before. And what was really helpful is you were like, actually you should do quite the opposite. Your audience clearly loves this topic. You already have so much material on it. Just expand on that. And speaking of content, our cheat code number two is that content repurposing can create this almost like marketing loop that generates a lifelong roi. How does that loop work of content in the book? And coming back to your social promoting the book, what does that look like?

[Ellen Marker Polk]

Yeah, so we've already kind of touched on podcast to book going that direction of I am pulling together a collection of assets and I'm grouping them by theme or problem that I'm addressing or transformation or a collection of insights and packaging that up into an individual digital product. As my book on the other half of that cycle is, okay, I have a book now, what do I do with it? It's. It would behoove you as author again. Founders and entrepreneurs, we're thinking about ways to distribute our information, expand our digital footprint. On the flip side, okay, each of those chapters becomes a blog post. Each of those chapters, the subheaders in those chapters, that becomes a numbered list, then that you record a 30 second talking head video and that goes up across platforms. Maybe one of those chapters is like really core or central to your messaging. Well, that is something that you refine and you put that out as a pitch to events and you speak about that. And when you're on stage, you part of the introduction or when you get to like the crux of your presentation, you're on stage and you say I actually wrote about this in chapter 12 of my book. And sneakily, because you're smart, you're a savvy, you're a modern author is what I tell people all the time. If you're a modern author, you brought a stack of those books with you and you're passing them out for free at this conference. And because the book is kind of like a top of funnel or middle funnel asset for you, people at those conference may or may not read it. It's really not the point. What the point is is that they have something that they have in their hand to say, I have confirmation that this person knows how to solve this problem for me. And so if I'm looking for somebody to help me with that in the future, I'm just going to hire them because they're obviously an authority in their field. And so it's this constant cycle of promoting your book in a way that is true to what you've actually talking about. We're not talking about like sleazy sale tactics here. We're talking about leveraging your knowledge in multiple ways across multiple assets. And I know you talk about this all the time with your audience. It's not about saying 100 things one way, it's about saying one thing 100 times. And this kind of falls into that category. It's we don't need to recreate the wheel every single time. We need to put out a piece of content. If you have a mega evergreen asset like a book, then it's easy to chop that up and reformat it and be presenting it in different ways to different audiences the whole while knowing that your time horizon for ROI for this thing that you've created and probably invested some money in investing some time in. Right. You hired an editor, a coach, a cover designer, somebody to help you with publication, maybe marketing, maybe you already have people on your team that are doing that. But because you know the time horizon is so long and because you know that you are always going to be talking about this thing, it the, the return is incredible.

[Unknown]

Yeah, I a really good example of this. If you listeners have seen the holistic psychologist, she has the book how to do the Work. I forget her name. Nicole something. But she basically made an entire TikTok series of her therapy practices. Put that into a book. Every book the book had, you know, 200 different tips. She pulled the 200 different tips into 200 different LinkedIn posts and essentially repackaged them again as LinkedIn Instagram TikTok posts and it's created this really amazing loop. And now she's on book two. Random question. Ellen, what do you think about like curated content book like a Tim Ferriss style where it's the same 10 questions you're asking to multiple people or you're curating expertise from different parts of your industry. I that's actually one of my favorite types of nonfiction books. What are your thoughts on that?

[Ellen Marker Polk]

Same I love those types because you get a lot more of that narrative storytelling knowing that an expert that you trust has gone out and done the work for you. Instead of you having to go be like okay, well what does Tim Ferriss say? And like instead of you having to go out or pay to be in the rooms with those people, this is the real cheat code is instead of having to pay $10,000 to go to one of his events or ask people questions that you wish they could ask them. He's already in those rooms. So instead you could Pay, you know, 9.99 and get his book and get those answers for what, like a million percent discount? But I love those collection styles or curated styles of assets because I think it's just, it's such a good way to get access to information that you wouldn't have been able to maybe even find on your own. Like, I mean obviously there's a ton of, if you are a savvy individual and you're, you know, Internet literate, you should be able to go out and get a lot of that information on your own. But it's so nice when somebody has done the work to curate that for you to say, you know, I'm an expert, I've, you know, been doing this for however many years. And these are the insights that I think are most interesting for you. Like, why wouldn't you want somebody to do all that work and bring it to you on a silver platter? I, I think those types of books are fantastic.

[Unknown]

Yeah. And I also just in content creation in general, I love the idea of content curation. I think it's going to be, continue to be more and more important as we get overloaded in content. The curators will be important. Okay, cheat code number three. Self publishing doesn't mean you have to write and publish a book alone. You can have an editor, you can have support groups, you can have people helping you. I've always thought that self publishing meant you had to do it all on your own. So what types of help can you get?

[Ellen Marker Polk]

Well, I'm glad we're talking about this because I mean it's called self publishing. So your belief is not totally wildly off base. I mean there are a ton of people out there who think and, and, and it's because self publishing has evolved so much over the years where yeah, really anybody could put out anything. I could go out on Amazon, KDP and upload something today. Is it going to be good? Absolutely not. Like it could be just a one page document. And so there are a lot of misconceptions out there about like, well, self published books are poor quality, they're hard to read, they're, you know, they're going to be full of typos and in it just the ideas don't make sense. They're not actually good pieces like assets to be consuming. And yeah, I'm not gonna lie, there are, there are self published books out there. But again, and we're speaking to founders and entrepreneurs. These people are savvy. They know how to create a good digital product. And I think once you make that distinction, like anytime I'm on a call with somebody and we start talk, well, it's, it has to be this beautifully written, this literate piece of artwork, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, no, no, this is a product. This is a really high quality digital product that you are creating. And as soon as we can flip that switch, then they're like, oh, well, of course I would outsource and bring on a line and copy editor to help me. Of course I would outsource and get a coach to teach me how to craft a compelling nonfiction book to begin with. Of course I would go out and hire a proofreader. Of course I would get a designer and a formatter for the interior layout and the COVID Of course I would have, you know, a marketing assistant help me with PR and pitching me to get me on a podcast tour and all of these things. Like, as soon as you can reframe a self published book as a digital asset, as a piece of your larger business ecosystem, then things start clicking and ticking. You're like, okay, yeah, I'm going to have to invest a little bit upfront, but I'm going to have this team around me of professionals who are going to help me get to this book to the finish line. And there are levels to everything, right? Like you could invest a thousand dollars, you could invest $25,000. But even if you were going the traditional publishing route, you're still going to have to make some of these investments. So why wouldn't you? Again, we're talking about expanding the time horizon. Why wouldn't you take more money in the long run versus maybe taking an advance on a book idea and thinking, oh, well, you know, the traditional publisher, they've got the team of experts. That's the only way I'm going to get experts expert support on this. That's not true anymore. Self publishing has blown open the gates for the publishing industry in general. And it is really easy to find qualified people to bring onto your team, contractors to bring onto your team to help you craft a book that's indistinguishable from traditionally published titles.

[Unknown]

Yeah, I want to un gatekeep something that I find really interesting. So Ellen helps people on self publishing. My book is taking the traditional route and in my proposal, they definitely made it clear that they want me to communicate to the publisher that I'm willing to invest my own money. In marketing this, my money in having my team's labor on the project. So it's definitely not like you go the traditional publishing route and they pay for everything for you. No, in fact, there is no way you could go the traditional publishing route and not have a profitable business and money to invest in it. That would be extremely hard. So either way, if you go self publishing, if you go traditional, you can expect to invest 1,000, 10,000, $20,000 into your book project over a couple of years. So even if you're going traditional publishing, I'm budgeting for, for $20,000 of my.

[Ellen Marker Polk]

Yeah, I was gonna say 20 to $25,000, like is a good, like average investment. And the caveat here is, right, like what is your goal for the book? If we were speaking to self published fanfic like Dramione, Draco, Hermione, Love story, spin off, like somebody who's been writing on wattpad and is now gonna self publish, like an actual bound asset as a book. Like, this is not the conversation that we're having with them. This is, you are a business owner, you are an entrepreneur, you are a media personality, you are famous for something, you are a celebrity. This is a conversation that we're having in these circles where you are going to be putting down a chunk of change no matter what. So budget for that ahead of time. And this is why having early conversations with people in the publishing industry can be so valuable. I mean, again, if you are Internet literate, you could go out and google these things and probably get your way to the right answer. You'd have to sift through a lot of bad misinformation out there. Or you could just shortcut the knowledge acquisition process and schedule a call with somebody who works in publishing, who does the types of books that you want to work on, who has helped authors, who are, you know, people you know and rub shoulders with and just have an hour long conversation and say, here's what I'm thinking. What do you suggest? What do you look like? What are the paths? What can I expect to budget? Who should I be thinking about bringing onto my team? What's the timeline look like? How would you suggest, you know, setting up the campaign? How do I actually like recoup my investments? All of these things, even just having like an hour, two hour long conversation with somebody who's in the industry can be that massive first step to moving from the bucket list to bookshelf phase. Because now it's not this big elitist conceptual thing like, oh yes, someday I'm going to sit down in a cabin for a week and write my magnum opus. Like, no, really, again, what we're doing is what's the pain point that you're solving for your audience? What's your goal with publishing? What does your budget look like? Some of these questions are going to really help you determine, like, is this a thing that I do in the next year? Is it something that I do in three years? Is it something that I need to, like, maybe launch a course and get a cash infusion so that I can put this out because it's especially timely or something like that? There are lots of ways to approach, you know, the publishing process. But, yes, you're absolutely right. It is a big misconception that, oh, you know, XYZ Big Five publisher, author, offered me a $20,000 advance. So I'm gonna go out and buy a watch and I'm gonna, you know, get this expensive thing or a new bag or that's actually an advance against royalties. And so the publisher is not gonna be losing money on your deal. They're going to recoup their investment. It's like Shark Tank is how I describe this all the time to people is you're walking into Shark Tank and saying, I have this idea, this concept for this book. It's proven because of, you know, all these things that I've laid out for you in my book proposal. I have this audience. I have this, you know, annual revenue. I have this type of people who are this amount engaged with me, and I. I believe that I can sell them this book for this amount of dollars, and we could make this much money. And then Mr. Wonderful comes in and says, okay, I'm buying 85% of that product, and you're only going to get what's left over. And that's essentially like a really, really simplified level of what's happening with traditional publishing. Not even to mention the fact that you have a literary agent who's also taking a cut of any future royalties that you will be making off of that book. So there are tons of pros and cons to both of those major publishing paths. But any way you slice it, you are going to be dropping money to get this book out there. The thing to consider then is how are you going to recoup your costs? And if you think that a traditional publisher is going to help you do that, fantastic. Like, I. There's no hate any. Like, as much as I promote self publishing, I really don't have any hate towards traditional publishing because for a lot of People, you included. That is a really good like path to get a book done or multi book deal or whatever. Like you get access to the New York Times bestseller list. There's all there are, you know, perks that come with having a big five traditional publisher putting in some muscle behind your book. But for a lot, I would say the vast majority of founders and entrepreneurs and business owners who are writing these books again as a product, as part of their ecosystem, it makes more sense to retain that control and not sell 80% of their micro business, which is the book, to an investor and say I'm going to put down some, you know, $30,000 up front knowing that all I have to do is sell one year long coaching package and I've recouped my cost for this book. And because I 100% own the rights to this book over you know, the next 60 years of my life. Let me think about how many coaching packages I'm probably going to sell from this book. That is a lot more money in your pocket as a business owner. So once you start thinking and doing some of that napkin math, you're like, hmm, this actually might be the more viable option for me.

[Unknown]

I love that you laid that out in recouping your roi, because that's exactly right. And the book that comes to mind of like the, I don't know, a book that's sprinkled with calls to actions. I'm sure a lot of people that listen to this podcast have read A hundred Million Dollar Offers by Alex Hormozi, but I think that's a great example of sprinkling and offers and calls to action throughout the book that converts very highly. So great example. I want to recap a few things you said. One the one on ones and talking to an industry expert, y'all, that is so important. It's like truly that can be the difference of saving you like dozens and dozens of hours going through the shit on your own and trying to figure out this whole industry and this whole process. And also you could maybe you spend a few hundred dollars on a one on one with an industry expert and you're like, actually I don't want to do this. Like I want to go a different direction. And you just saved yourself two years of or maybe you're like this actually isn't the right thing in my business right now. Like I just cannot emphasize enough how important that is. And then also you talked a bit about your, about having proven frameworks and proven topics. I think that is why social media is so important because you can go back, you can see what your audience is resonating with the most. You can see the content, themes and outliers and your audience will tell you what they want. And the next thing I want to talk about is even if you're self publishing, to still go through the proposal process. The proposal process has been incredibly helpful for me. Talk a little bit about what the proposal process is and why self pub authors should go through it too, even if they're not pitching the book.

[Ellen Marker Polk]

Yeah. So if we're framing the book as a product in your business, or maybe even a micro business, like I think saying a book is a business card is close, but not quite there. I think a book as a business is just a better way to think about it. And if we're looking at it through that lens, the book proposal is essentially your business plan and what you're doing in the book proposal, in your case, working with a traditional publisher, you are basically giving them the market research for the book. It's less about like, oh, does she have a good idea? Do we like the concept of this book? It's less about that and more of you saying, like, I'm proving to you that we're going to sell copies of this book because again, they're not going to invest in something that they don't think they're going to make their money back on. So that's the game with proposals in traditional publishing is it's a market research asset for the publisher. And yeah, you've got, you know, your annotated table of contents and the first couple chapters that you've written. And that's just for them to say like, do we think that she's actually going to be able to follow through on this? Like, how is her writing? Are we going to have to invest in a ton of editorial support for this person or are they going to need like our standard level of care? Things like that is what they're looking for in the book proposal. If you are a self published author, I think if you've got the time and this is a really good exercise to do. Even if you don't end up writing like a 30 to 50 page document, which is oftentimes how long these proposals end up being, which is another shocking thing for most people. It's not just like a two page pitch. If you are going to go through the exercise of doing this, you are going to learn so much about who you're writing for, what the goals are for the book, what the marketability is, what the strategy should be to sell the book. You're having an outline, a full outline in place that's annotated. So it's more than just like, here's the topic for chapter one. It's a full deep dive into what each of those chapters is going to be addressing. You're probably pulling comp titles, which is like, if you were to go to Barnes and Noble and look at the bookshelf and go to where you thought that your book was going to be sitting on the shelf, what are the books that are in conversation with your book? What is your book saying? That's like, yes and. Or no, but. Or, this book was good, but they missed the point and here's why. And so what are those comp titles? Who are you having conversations with on the bookshelf? All of those things are going to go into your book proposal. And it's such a good exercise because it's. This is the cheat code, right? It saves you so much of that time of sitting down and looking at the cursor and spending a year writing the wrong book. And then you realize, like, oh, wait, like, what my audience actually wants for me is this thing that's close, but now I have to scrap everything that I've written. And that's where people get into the cycle of like, yeah, I've been writing and writing, writing for 10 years and I can just never do it. And then as soon as we sit down, start having a conversation and I start asking them about, like, okay, well, who's your target audience? Well, it's this person and this person and also their mom and their sister. And I want them to be able to send it. Like, no, no, no, we gotta. It's gotta be as narrowly focused as your ideal client avatar. And again, as soon as we start having those conversations about your reader being a client and they are having pain points and you're addressing that pain points, and they have desires and wants and needs. And your job then is to address those and take them on the journey between cover and cover. Again, the caveat for all this conversation is we're talking about nonfiction books specifically, like prescriptive how to Business, Personal development, those types of titles. Your job then is to take them on a transformation from COVID to cover. And you're just really narrowly focusing on a couple things. And as soon as you can do that as an author. And the proposal oftentimes is a tool that can help you get there. If you're not going to hire a coach or somebody to kind of walk you through those things. You put that down on paper and you're like, oh, well, every time I start to get a lot little off track and a little wordy here and there. And then all of a sudden, chapter three is about my dog and our last vacation to Florida or whatever. Like, that becomes your guiding North Star. And it can save you a lot of, like, wasted energy doing things that don't actually get you to the desired outcome, which is having a book that addresses a specific problem for a specific purpose.

[Unknown]

This brings us nicely to our last Chi code, which is because you kind of mentioned it. Get clear on the problem you're solving and the transformational journey your audience will take. This has been huge for me. What does this mean?

[Ellen Marker Polk]

So I'm actually working with a client right now who we are going through this process. It's. She's worked in real estate for 22 years. She has a ton of knowledge, and she knows how to solve a lot of problems for people. And so part of the. One of the first steps that we did was, okay, we're going to define your reader and then we're going to talk about just like this one thing that we're going to be doing for them and for her.

[Unknown]

It's.

[Ellen Marker Polk]

She's focusing it in as her work as a listing agent and the common pitfalls and things that she sees these people going through who are trying to sell their house. And the pain point that we're solving for them is, how do I get the deal done? What's the process of listing my house, getting the inspection, getting the photos done, getting a contract? How do I know when I need to send in this? I got to get my deed and my title and all these things. So the problem doesn't have to be, like, so narrow that you can only write a chapter about it. The problem should be expansive enough that you could fill, you know, several chapters, but you want to be identifying something that your audience is struggling with and then either again, walking them through your proprietary process or, you know, I always tell people these five things, like, okay, well, those five things either become chapter titles or they're subtitles in one chapter. And all you're doing is walking them through how you get your existing clients from point A to point B and getting them to identify with the pain points that you see in your current client. So that way, when they pick up and they start with the introduction, like, yeah, I do struggle with this, or, I do wish that for myself. I wish I could, you know, only work four hours a week. I wish I could, you know, have a healthy, well balanced life. You start to hit on those pain points and desires and then you present yourself as the guide, the Sherpa for them, the expert who's going to impart part of your wisdom upon them. And then you get into the meat and potatoes of the book and you're walking them through steps or examples or, you know, with the collection or the curated books. The, the pain point there is, I wish I had access to these high level people. I wish I could get the 10 smartest people in the room to tell me about this one topic. Or I wish I could just, I wonder how they did that or I wonder how they got there. And so the pain point is giving people access to that information. And instead of taking them on a transformation, we're thinking about where it's like I started at point A and point Z. The transformation is knowledge acquisition and I now know more as a reader than I did coming into the book. There are tons of ways to spin it, but generally speaking, you need to be thinking about one or two, maybe three problems that you're solving for somebody and then the, the whole thing. I tell this to people all the time. We're zooming out for a book. It is a exchange between writer and reader. And if you promise them something in your book, you better deliver. Because if you break that trust, it is so hard to get that back. Well, I picked up this book because I thought it was about X, Y, Z. And by the time I was in chapter two, we were talking about something totally different and I didn't finish reading it and I don't recommend it to anybody. And I'm probably never going to hire that person because I don't actually know like what their capabilities are or what expertise I'm buying from them. So any promise you make to the reader at the beginning of the book, you say, I'm going to take you on this journey. I'm going to teach you about XYZ, I'm going to show you how to structure $100 million offers. You better deliver on that because if not, just like, it's easy to get the ROI from the book, it's just as easy to lose the readers, which is why it's so important to. I would encourage people to work with a professional to help you make sure you are crafting a good book. Because it's not just enough to be an expert in your field. I work with plenty of experts who, God love them, they know so much about what they're talking about and writing is just not their forte. And even if it is, you're cranking out blog posts or social media posts that 800 words is totally different than 50, 60, 70,000 words. I mean, yes, in theory the structure is the same, but it is on scale. And you need somebody. Again, just like you're an expert in your field, it would behoove you to bring an expert in to help you make that product the best it could be. Because again, if you want that ROI to be there, it needs to be really good. Readers are getting more and more savvy every single day, and so we need to meet them where they're at. And part of that is putting out really good digital products in the form of books.

[Unknown]

Yeah. Okay, Ellen, I want two more questions. First, how long is this gonna take? Let's say you want to become a modern author and you're like, all right, am I thinking six months? Am I thinking four years? How long, how long is it going to take from idea to publishing?

[Ellen Marker Polk]

Well, you're going to love this answer. It depends. Like I said earlier, if you want to self publish, you could go and set up your Amazon account and upload something today. So the barrier to entry is really low, which is a good thing. On the flip side, the barrier to entry is really low. That can be a bad thing. So if we're thinking realistically, and this is a hill that I will die on, and you know, I've talked about this before, like I am not a fan of the programs, the asynchronous courses that promise you write, publish, market a book in 90 days. Like, first off, you didn't even mention edit, which is a huge phase. Refinement is a huge phase in the production process. Second, it is unrealistic to set that as your timeline if you are going to be writing again, 50 to 80,000 words. And what ends up happening with a lot of those programs is they give people, I would say, like 80% of the tools to get an okay book done. And what happens is those programs are then putting out, they're saturating the market with a lot of just okay books. Now, do those programs offer one on one services that help them with their marketing? And they can kind of finesse things like, oh, we had this author and it won, you know, Amazon number one bestseller in these three categories. Those one on one services are vastly different from those group program services. But I would say, you know, let's just say you're spending a couple days a week working on your book, you're self publishing you, and we're talking about writing, right? We're not accounting for the time where you have set up the plan. You've worked with maybe a book coach, you've developed the outline, you've gotten really clear on your audience, the goal for your book, what the transformation is going to. You've done all that pre work, you've done all the mapping, you have an outline. From writing to editing to publication to marketing. Like I would say give yourself a year and a half. That is a pretty good timeline. And that's if you're self publishing. If you're going the traditional publishing route from the time your book gets acquired by a publisher to the time your book is published, it's like 18 to 24 months. So that's another thing to be considering into the equation when you're thinking about like which publishing path to choose from is how timely is your book. Like there are some pieces of content and this is why I caution against trying to write like viral content. Like that type of media is good for like short form online. Virality is not really something that you should be like, should be the goal of your book. Longevity should be the goal of your book. So thinking about like I'm writing about something that is only relevant right now. Like I'm thinking about like political things, like really hot sparky things that need to be published right now. Well, yeah, true traditional publishers can fast track but for the majority of books that are getting published by Big 5 in any of their imprints, that window is anywhere up to two years. So like don't expect that you sign with a trad pub agency and your book's coming out, you know, four months from now. That's, that's not what's going to happen. So I would say if you're self publishing, give yourself a year, a year and a half. This comes back to the whole goal setting envisioning thing. If you're the type of person like oh I'm, I take four one month long vacations every year where I don't touch my laptop. Well, okay, you might need to give yourself a little bit more time. You're also going to be thinking too about like when do people buy in our industry? If you know you always get a ton of sales on Black Friday, maybe it's best to set your publication date for Black Friday a year from now and then we work backwards and build that timeline. If you know the thing in your industry that happens, there's this big event that you want to have a book that just came out for this big event, and that happens in the spring. Let's backtrack your timeline from that date. It's. It all comes back to, like, a lot of these exercises that we do at the beginning of the writing process that before you even put pen to paper. Let's talk about your publishing goals. How are you going to leverage this book in your ecosystem? What does your time look like? Are you somebody that needs to hire a ghostwriter because you just don't love writing? And what you need to do is sit down with somebody, flesh out a really robust outline, and then every Monday morning for an hour and a half, you're going to sit down and you're going to dictate what you want those chapters to be. And then that ghostwriter is going to come in and help finesse things and clean up your writing and keep your voice and do that writing process for you. Like a lot of having a really successful experience writing a book comes down to, like, know thyself. What is, what is your capacity? What does your timeline look like? Are you in the weeds of executing client deliverables in your own business, or are you in more of a CEO role or a consultative role where you maybe have a little bit more flex in your schedule? Do you have kids? Are you the primary caregiver? Like, there's all these things to consider, but yeah, to answer your initial question, it depends. You could have a book up today, you could have a book up in two years. It all depends on, on a lot.

[Unknown]

Of factors that is helpful. Yes, very variable. Well, if people want to start planning for their book, start to take the first steps of their book, how can they work with you and how can they find you?

[Ellen Marker Polk]

Yes, I am on LinkedIn @Ellen marker Polk. I also have a website which is www.sagehouseeditorial.com. those are the two primary ways to get a hold of me. And I would say I speak to established authors, people who consider themselves aspiring authors, or I say author curious, or people who are in kind of those beginning phases of writing. I work with people at all of those phases, founders and entrepreneurs specifically. And again, the first step, the real cheat code here is set up a call, learn some information, develop a plan before you even start writing, because it's going to save you a ton of heartache down the road when you realize, oh, you know, I've, I've dedicated a thousand hours to this and it's not the right book. Like, don't let the sunk cost fallacy keep you stuck in a book. That's not the right asset for you to be creating at this time. Start the information acquisition process by talking to somebody in the publishing field, whether that's me or not, or even if you DM me. Like, I'm happy. I have a wide network of people that I'm happy to point you out to because part of, again, the successful journey, the successful process, is partnering people who are the right fit for you and your book. And not just the right fit, because they have this massive list of credentials. Really, having that relationship with an editor or a writing coach is a make or break situation for how your experience turns out for you.

[Unknown]

I love that. Well, guys, reach out to Ellen. I'll put all of her links in the show notes. And thank you, Ellen, for coming on the podcast.

[Ellen Marker Polk]

Thank you for having me. You know, I'll talk about books any day of the week.

[Unknown]

Love it.

[Courtney Johnson]

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