Finding Time to Write
Julie Schooler is an author of 9 books and mom of 2 beautiful tiny humans. Julie is the author of Rediscover Your Sparkle. She is on a mission to help busy people have all the love, energy, and fun they deserve without the guilt or overwhelm.
Julie lives with her family in New Zealand, a small, magnificent country at the bottom of the world, where you may find her trying to bake the world’s best chocolate brownie.
What We Discuss with Julie Schooler:
- Her writing journey
- Monetizing your book and bok launching strategies
- How do you get people to leave a review?
- 3 reasons people don’t leave reviews
- How you can make it easy for people to leave reviews
- Julie’s book production timeline
- The idea behind her book, Rediscover Your Sparkle
- The importance of play in life
- Book marketing strategies
[01:40] Julie’s Writing Journey
Julie has always loved writing as a kid but she squashed that dream until 25 years ago after she had her son and she started blogging and writing picture books.
Then she got pregnant with her second child and lost her job so she thought of writing a book. She invested in a coaching program to learn how to write a book. So Julie went from working in a corporate job as an accountant to writing a best-selling book on potty training.
[04:14] How to Monetize Your Book
If you want to get a book out into the world, that is your main priority. Don’t think about monetizing it. Concentrate on finishing that book.
See what sticks.
Then learn and try new things in marketing whether that’s growing your email list or launching a website, or putting yourself out there on social media.
[06:26] Book Launching Strategies
Get a launch team around you so you can get the book out there to as many people as possible and get their reviews. Leverage your connections. Ask people from your mastermind group to review your book.
A launch team is when you have a dedicated group of people who are already on your side. They’re your “superheroes.”
They watch your journey and they know you’re writing a book. Or maybe they can even get an early copy. Then as you launch your book, those people will help share it. They buy your book and give reviews. And they tell others about it.
[08:22] How to Get Reviews
Ask as many people as you can who might be interested in the topic. Then follow up with them. Get them excited about the book.
Amazon has set a condition on their Terms of Service that if you ask people to leave reviews, you cannot give any kind of incentive for review except for offering a free book. A good way to get around this is to create a Facebook group where you can have your launch team in it. Get people excited about the book by offering gifts there too.
The best time to start marketing a book is before you even start writing it. Like movie trailers, they’re created way before the film is even finished.
The more involved people are in your book, the more committed they are and the more they’re willing to talk about it. You’ve got to build anticipation. They got to first remember that you wrote a book and they have to know what’s going on.
[09:57] 3 Reasons People Don’t Leave Reviews
- People are afraid they’re going to make a mistake. They don’t want to leave a bad review and they don’t want to do it wrong.
- They don’t leave a review because they’ve never done it before.
- People didn’t read your book.
[10:24] How You Can Make It Easy for People to Leave Reviews
Make it as easy as possible. For example, ask them to read Chapter 1 and leave a review if they liked it. They can always go back and edit the review on Amazon any time they choose to update it once they finish it.
People don’t have to finish the book to leave a review.
Most people don’t know this about Amazon reviews. You have to coach them on this so they won’t be afraid to make a mistake. They can even put just a one-sentence review.
[13:15] The Principles Behind Rediscover Your Sparkle
Savor
Play
Play has to be the thing that you really love to do, especially the thing you’re not allowing yourself to do. Figure out the thing you really love to do that you’re not doing and do that thing.
Appreciation
Rest
Kindness
Lightheartedness
Extraordinary
Those aren’t everything to everything you need in your life to make you a bit happier but it’s a very good start. Ask yourself what’s missing in your heart and your soul and work it out.
[26:13] Book Marketing Strategies
Concentrate on one or two books that are selling the most. And focus on how you can improve the sales on those.
It’s always an experiment when you’re writing books.
Make sure the cover looks good, you’ve got the book subscription sorted, and there are enough reviews.
Set monthly and yearly goals so you’re aiming towards something.
If you write the book for yourself, the reward comes from the process of writing and the thing that comes at the end. And if you write for other people, you’ll probably be more successful, but you may not be as fulfilled. It just has to depend on where you are in your place in life.
It goes back to the play element in the book. Life’s too short to spend four months doing something you’re not really enjoying because you think you might make some money and you think that’s what the market wants.
Have goals around money and have goals around making your book as successful as it can be. But that’s because you want people to read it because it helps them or inspires them or entertains them.
Episode Resources:
Get a copy of Julie’s books: https://julieschooler.com/books/ including Rediscover Your Sparkle.
Connect with her at JulieSchooler.com or look for Julie Schooler on all the socials.
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