Secrets Of A Seven Figure Author

James Taylor interviews Joseph Alexander and they talked about the secrets of a seven-figure author

In this episode, we cover:

• Secrets Of A Seven Figure Author
• Getting the fundamentals of publishing right
• How he wrote 14 books in his first year

Resources:

• Recommended Book: On Writing by Stephen King
• Recommended Tools: Pen + Paper, Notes, Microsoft Word, Kindle Previewer, Photoshop, Amazon KDP, Book Report Plugin, Better Book Tools,Mailchimp
• Official Website
• Self-Publishing Millionaire Book

For More of Creative Life Podcast By James Taylor

Artificial Intelligence Generated Transcript

Below is a machine-generated transcript and therefore the transcript may contain errors.

James Taylor
Hi, I'm James Taylor business creativity and innovation keynote speaker. And this is the Creative Life, a show dedicated to you the creative. If you're looking for motivation, inspiration and advice, while at home at work or on your daily commute, then this show is for you. Each episode brings you a successful creative, whether that's an author, musician, entrepreneur, perform a designer, or a thought leader. They'll share with you their journey, their successes, their failures, their creative process, and much much more. You'll find Show Notes for this episode as well as free training on creativity over at Jamestaylor.me. Enjoy this episode.

Hi, it's James Taylor here. Today's episode was first aired as part of International Authors Summit. This inspiring virtual summit reveals the secrets of making marketing and monetizing a best selling book. If you would like to access the full video version as well as in depth sessions with over 40 Best Selling authors that I've got a very special offer for you just go to InternationalAuthorsSummit.com, where you'll be able to register for a free pass for the summit. Yeah, that's right. Over 40 New York Times and Amazon best selling authors, book editors, agents and publishers, sharing their insights, strategies and tactics on how to write and market your first or next best sellers. So just go to InternationalAuthorsSummit.com, but not before you listen to today's episode.

Hey there, it's James Taylor. And I'm delighted today to have with me Joseph Alexander. Joseph Alexander is an author, publisher and guitarist although not necessarily in that order. As a prolific author, he has written over 40 guitar traditional books which have sold excess of 400,000 copies worldwide. Joseph also runs a publishing services company at self published.co.uk and two independent book publishing imprints. He's one of the few seven figure indeed nonfiction authors living in the UK today, and it's my great pleasure to have him with us. So welcome, Joseph, Hey, how you doing very well. So tell everyone what's going on in your world just now?

Joseph Alexander
Well, we're plugging away or pushing forward, we're sort of trying to release at least one book every two weeks. It's sort of all hands on deck. And yeah, it's just dividing my time between editing, publishing, marketing, you know, kind of all that kind of stuff. So it's, it's busy, but it's good, busy, you know, everything's fun. We're working with loads of great musicians and sports specialists as well. So, you know, like, I couldn't ask for anything more in my life at the moment works great.

James Taylor
Now we work together on a on a project with a client of mine, a jazz guitarist Martin Taylor, and and you publish that book and work with mine on that book. And it was it was such a, it was a great experience. I know, Martin, as the as the main author, and person who kind of brand was up there really enjoyed that whole process of being able to work with someone who understood, we know what he was teaching, but at the same time, could take away all of those things, which, you know, neither he nor I have any any skill set. And so, is this becoming a bigger part of what you're doing now is not just publishing your own works, but actually working with lots of other authors? Oh,

Joseph Alexander
yeah, absolutely. I mean, with with Martin, this is what we produce. In the end, it was a great project, you know, working with Martin was, was loads of fun. You know, one of my musical heroes growing up as well. So it was, it was incredible for me, but on a personal level to be working with that. Yeah, I mean, I, I started writing, really, as a result of teaching, I was writing down notes to my students, he sort of gradually piled up to him into books. And, and suddenly said, I could sort of self publishing them on Amazon. And eventually, you know, got more and more books ran out of things to write about and the stuff but well, how can I expand this? How can I do more? So what I started doing was looking for guitarists around me, you know, friends and colleagues that, that were teaching things that I couldn't, I'm the world's worst death metal guitarist, but I know a guy who's Great. So I was like, well, I reached out to him, Jones wrote this book. At that time, I have my kind of grounding, built up. And that was really the model that we started working with the great musicians to build really cool actuation products, like, hopefully really good value, we cram in as much as we can. But by partnering up with a beagle with it's just sort of become this publishing company. Now we've got over 100 books, we've got books for guitar, bass piano drums, and you know, we get to work with people that Martin Taylor as a few people I can't quite mentioned, but you know, that there's possibly something with Tommy Emmanuel and in the works with Yeah, sort of just hesitating. So I want to say a few names but

James Taylor
you haven't you have a good pipeline? Is this a you've got a good pipeline? Yeah,

Joseph Alexander
it comes out. Very good. Name people. So it's just kind of grown organically by reaching out and trying to do it in a really, you know, in a way with lots of integrity that we publishing the terrible business for writers generally traditional publishing, you know, royalties a tiny don't get paid very often as a huge lead time. And music can be the same way, you know, if you're recording albums and trying to sell songs, or I, you know, I'm a musician, and I'm a writer, and I recognize those difficulties in both of those industries. So, you know, we pay at least double A traditional royalty and because we've done that we've been able to attract like, great people to us. So yeah, mostly day to day now I'm, I'm still writing your book, but it's, it's, you know, probably 90 90% Publishing other people now,

James Taylor
in this world, people that don't understand the kind of music instructional world probably about, you know, we kind of there was a big move, obviously, people like Mel Bay kind of really helped create, especially in the Guitar World in 1950s 40s and 50s, playing a day, but we didn't was it was a guy in the UK. And then around the probably the 80s, we started moving towards, like video cassettes. I remember like hot licks and Arlen Roth and some some of these like these really Greenie. I've been a drummer, I remember like banging the drum ones. And so a lot of people started moving towards tapes, you know, VHS, for example. And then we moved in DVD. So people were kind of buying that type of content. And then they were moving into really in the past, I would say 10 years into online courses, you know that I've been involved a lot of creating online courses. So I find it kind of interesting that you have gone on on the book side where, you know, I know a lot of guitarists, and a lot of people in the music space, they've gone either creating their own online courses or own membership sites, but you decided to take a slightly different route. What Why was that?

Joseph Alexander
Well, I think it was, it was it just played to my strengths. And when I started that, like I said, I was I was teaching guitar and probably 2025 hours a week, and I was writing down what I was giving my students so it kind of grew out of that there wasn't some sort of master planners like writing in to take over the world with with guitar books, it was really just just how it evolved. Now, we are starting to build that reputation now. And you know, if you go on the best selling guitar books on amazon.com, you know, we've probably I think at the moment, we've got about seven out of the top 10 and you know, probably 20 or 30 out of the top 50 is it's been is going really well. Now, for us. Yeah, obviously video content and working with with such great guitarists live video content is definitely something that's in the in the pipeline. But also you know that we are thinking about moving into a subscription based website as well where people can pay us that their Netflix model where they can pay a set fee, saying that what we have noticed is that Amazon's marketing is so powerful that we we've done a few things which I know we'll talk about later in terms of mailing lists and building that. But if we can promote a book well enough to Amazon, it stays there. And if we can own those keywords, the SEO for certain book titles, that's going to show up time and time and time again, when people are searching for products. And we found that our demographic tends to be people in the age range sort of 30 up who don't necessarily You know, there's so much free content out of out there. Some of its incredible some of its, you know, on a sliding scale down, but not every people want something with some kind of authority. And I think buying a book has that you're investing in it, you know, we hopefully do a good job in writing them. So it's kind of like this, this tangible thing, like this is my workbook, I can have it on my music stand. And I can start here and I can progress. And I know that when I finished this book, I'm going to be in a better place in terms of my guitar skills. And I think that there's always going to be a demographic where people are just looking for something for free or they specifically want video but you know, we sell about 300 books a day at the moment and that's that's pretty huge in terms of the publishing industry as a whole certainly the indie publishing industry so that that audience is there there are people who want books and people who thrive on that kind of light light stimulus I guess you know, some people want a book some people will video we're catering for the book side.

James Taylor
And let's talk about that. You mentioned that the Amazon piece so when you start thinking about publishing and distributing your books you were going to get you are going to independently published route. Did you go where I know this was at CreateSpace initially At that point, and you can have, what did you release? Both printed and? And the Kindle and digital versions? or How did you start things with them? I'm sure.

Joseph Alexander
It was funny, I think I kind of found it backwards that I ended up with CreateSpace first and then didn't figure out I could do an E book until later, which is, you know, pretty the wrong way around really. And it's worth saying and CreateSpace has actually closed its doors this week, we've had the email now we've we've moved all of our books over to KDP. So KDP is like now your one stop shop for for print and ebooks. How did it start out? It was really, I submitted my book, my first book was called fundamental changes in jazz guitar. And I wanted like a really straightforward do this, do this, do this do this kind of thing, to teach guitarists to play, you know, 251 chord progression, it's a common progression in jobs. And I did it and I recorded all the audio examples and the audio examples, Phil, three DVDs. And it sends it off to a publishing company that shall remain nameless in London. And they're like, this is great. We really love it. But we that is not financially viable. We can't put this out, you know, it's hard enough to sell guitar books as of last month. Well, yeah. And I suppose the assumption I made was, well, this stuff needs to be on DVD, because that's just the way it's done. Like, hang on a sec, well, this is the 21st century, why don't we just have a website where people can download this for free, and then the website, and, you know, everything, a thing was, was there. So there's a link in the book to the website, you download your journey, you've got everything that's really clean. Now, that ties in with my kind of, sort of lust for an easy life. Because if if I wanted to distribute myself my stuff more traditionally. And then you've got to obviously pay for printing, warehousing distribution. And if you want more of a traditional way, you're looking at returns and you're looking at like pulping things if they're not serving and you know that that sort of sailor return thing that bookshops happen and quite rightly, I'm not necessarily knocking that. But for for a modern indie publisher, you'll, you'll look in the will I can upload that PDF. And we know we use Word documents still to go to ebook that we can upload that to Amazon. And Amazon takes a fairly small chunk out of that, to have it on the site. So you've got the display, it will print it on demand. So there is now no warehousing no risk of returns no initial outlay of Oh my God, I've got to print 2000 copies. And then it prints one every time somebody clicks by. Now, that's really simple. It's really clean, like I've got a couple of books in the house. But that sort of image of vanity publishing, you know, you've got all these boxes in the garage of things that you can't get rid of, that just doesn't exist anymore. And the indie thing, I mean, if you go trout, and that is right for people, I'm not necessarily just knocking traps, you know, there's good reasons to go trap for various people. But even if you go trash now, and the traditional publishers still expect you to do your own marketing, they're not necessarily going to touch you unless you've got your own following on Instagram, or Facebook or whatever that happens to be. So the actual advantages of that people perceive of going traditional, aren't necessarily that you sort of think rate sent off your manuscripts in that sense, it's not like there might be a year lead time on that book getting out. And then all the things that they're supposed to do with in terms of advertising and placement and control that don't necessarily nearly happen, don't always happen. You know, be a bit careful about that. Of course, if you're, you know, JK Rowling, they'll put a huge amount of money behind you. But if they're taking a chance on you, they're less likely to do that. And no one's going to be more invested in your book than you are. So you need to approach it. You know, like what you think a publisher should be, you need to have a budget for great food companies have a budget for advertising, marketing, all this kind of stuff a website and come across as very professional, because at the end of the day, most books are now sold on Amazon. And no one if your quality is good. No one cares or even knows if you're an indie publisher, or your penguin. Yeah, they don't care. They just want the book. And if the book appeals to them, they'll buy it. So really, I guess what I'm saying is that, that if you want your book out, and if you're if you believe in it, you can do that as an indie publisher and you can,

James Taylor
you can make sales. So I guess that's the difference between what we used to think of as self self published and independently published. So self published where where you basically do everything yourself, including the cover design and the whole the whole nine yards were independently published, you have a team of people house brand new people helping with cover design and maybe editing proofing, maybe some people around marketing you almost like building a little, little team virtual or otherwise around you. Well,

Joseph Alexander
yes and no, I mean, I think self PR is just a semantics thing, really the self published gets a bit of a bad press. Whereas in you know, if you use that sort of vernacular indie publisher, just you know, it just becomes a little bit more of a force. So I guess that's, that's why people who do what I do kind of use that. But yeah, I mean, when you talk about having a little team around you, yeah, I do, because I actually run a full time publishing company. Now. However, if you are, if you want to call it self published, or you're small, and you're going to independently publish your book, then they're probably things that you're not going to be good at. And if you're good at them, great, do them. But if you're not, you're going to need to spend money. And I think the biggest one of that, because the Shilo is front cover design, you know, it's really important, you know, you see, if it's got a white cover, it's not gonna sell as it was, like 7 million bucks on Amazon or something, you're a needle in a haystack that people don't even know they're looking for, you know, so you need to have like, a great front cover, and it doesn't have to cost hundreds and hundreds of pounds is guys out there on Fiverr and Upwork, or, you know, wherever. And, of course, editing, you know, and editing is more expensive. And, but again, like if you've got faith in your story, or your non non fiction book, you have to, even as a self published author, which is written a novel, you have to believe in it enough to invest in it. And I think if, if you're if you're not necessarily willing to do that, then you know, either maybe you shouldn't release it, or maybe traditional publishing is the way to go if you can get them to spend money on all that stuff for

James Taylor
you. Now, you mentioned this idea when someone's reading your books, you're, you have a call to action within the books driving them onto a website, so they can watch videos as well. But then obviously, I'm Imagine you're capturing emails as part of that as well. So you're trying to build your your email list around that. I'm interested in, you know, how have you How have you done it, you find out was that very easy to kind of get into to kind of building that email list? And then to be you know, communicating with that list building a relationship with your list?

Joseph Alexander
Yeah, I think so. It's easier for me, and I appreciate that, with with the nonfiction and the specific kind of work that we do, because we're writing music books. And as talking about the DVDs before me, like, you've got to hear it. And that's why every guitar book or drum books always like traditionally come with a CD or DVD. So we record all the audio examples in the book, you can go to our website, and you can download the audio examples in your book, we simply take the email at that point. And that's how we build our list. The difficulty there is if you are a, like a novelist, a fiction author, you've got to think well, what what's tangible, what can I give away, that is meaningful. And also, you know, people will be willing to exchange their email address for, um, and there's a few ways of doing that. And you know, they mark Dawson's a huge, you know, advocates at this, that people give away, maybe a novella or a prequel. So you open up your it's a novel, you scroll past the kind of index age and then there's a, if you want the prequel to this book, go here and you can, you know, the downloader it does work. And if you get some traction on Amazon via using adverts or whatever, you will start to build a mailing list. It's just something to be careful with because you're you're kind of building a mailing list of people who want something for free. And I well I know the audience my books are free it is something that's tangible to the book it's not just like a free giveaway to get an email address so there is a balance to be had that but that's pretty much the way most

James Taylor
Yes, the book and the mp3 they symbiotic they they can have they live they almost get to live together. They just have different mediums. I think probably for a lot of our viewers listeners to this, most of them are really either nonfiction authors or, or aspiring to be nonfiction and a lot of them maybe business or they're writing those types of books. So those those, you know, free, you know, call to actions could be to a workbook or a checklist or you know that you know, or a calculator, you know, online calculator for some thing, for example, so you've got loads of ways of doing it, but it's providing that additional value. And kind of getting people off the page as well.

Joseph Alexander
It's got to be meaningful, but and yeah, like, say online calculators and workbooks and things like that great. The danger is people go, oh, I'll just include a, like a bonus chapter. And that can be downloaded for free. It's like, well, you kind of actually just denying people value in your book, if you do that, like, Well, why wouldn't you include the the chapter in the book that you know, people paid for, you know, but like you say, if it's something that's tangible and useful, and will really help them, then you know, go nuts.

James Taylor
So you start building your this business, I'm wondering, you know, for maybe maybe some of our attendees, just now the they've got a couple of books that maybe self published a few books, and the they maybe have authority around their domain, let's see if someone there they're really well known. And in terms of in finance, writing books around finance, but it's just them. And maybe the stage now, they actually said, You know what, I think I'm not the only voice on this, maybe I want to do is I want to create a publishing independent publishing company, publishing books all around this topic, I'm bringing in other authors who have a different maybe a different take, or maybe they have a niche with a different area of Finance. What What advice would you give to someone that's thinking about making that, that next transition into not just self publishing themselves? But actually working with other authors?

Joseph Alexander
That's a big question. I think the first thing you have is you have to genuinely have that authority. And not not just think you do. I, after it sort of done a approached a few authors to publish their books when I ran out of things to write about. And I started getting approached by people who are asking me to represent them because of the brand that I was building in fundamental changes. And I think that's part of it that, you know, it's the kind of thing that you're asked, I suppose, I think there's nothing wrong with reaching out to people, of course, there's not. But there's a danger where you see quite a lot of companies now starting up with with in mind that they're going to charge that authors fees for things. And there are some awful ones out there. And I do a lot of consultation work for read z, and I speak to people and I sort of hovering over the button to buy like, literally literally a $10,000 package where some company will sell like, basically publish their book for them and, you know, give them a small royalty for it. There's a lot of danger in the industry. And it's probably easy for someone to go down that route, what we do is we offer a fair royalty split, because we're not well, it just helps us to be a little bit more risk averse, that, you know, if the book doesn't sell that we'll do everything we can to make itself if it doesn't, it's not like we're releasing loads of money on it. It's just okay, it's myself, bummer. We'll do what we can, but you know, okay, what, what's the next work? So, what advice would I get, if you're going to do that? I think you've got to have that authority, but you've also got to get the fundamentals right. Like are you are your cover is recognized as a brand. You know, if you look at our covers, all right, they might be a little bit boring. But you know, that this book is fundamental changes Burke, and you know, that this books, mental changes, but because that's our branding, and if you're going to go into you know, business, or management books, or whatever, like that, you know, having these things set up, so you can build that round and, and be inclusive with that. The reason I say that is because Amazon's algorithms are incredibly powerful. And the people who bought this also bought algorithm is hugely important. So when you scroll kind of down past the product that you're reading, people can see like 10 books, but by the same company, or you know, with the same edits, or you know, however, Amazon share those things up, you suddenly develop a brand and a presence on Amazon without really having to do very much over the, you know, get your covers right and, and projected your brand.

James Taylor
So there's that so you can always see it, you can you can see those little thumbnails, you know, also read also recommend Yeah, and you can see that they have a consistency across them as you're as you're looking across the page, even when, even on a small screen, you need to be able to pass that test on a small screen as well.

Joseph Alexander
Absolutely, totally. And you can see that and we're very lucky like you click on one of our books are actually quite nicely for us. And another guitar or drum book, that you'll see our books button. So if I'm looking at this one that kind of looks a bit self published and you know, like each Robinson, and then but at the bottom, there's all these books are like sprouting. And they've got like, you know, hundreds of reviews on. And then under that you've got all the sponsored products where we own that space as well. It's like suddenly, alright, well, here are these guys. And it's a no, it's like seeing like a penguin book and at a Club Penguin Classics or, you know, you know it when you see it for dummies book because they've done a really good job of that, Brandon. So you click one for dummies book in there, everyone you go, alright, these guys the real deal, they've got those books and look professional, and they're all over Amazon, and Amazon's greater cross promoting so that that's, you know, it's been a coincidental part of our model, but it has been very, very successful for us.

James Taylor
And what advice you mentioned reviews, they're getting reviews, what advice do you have? Because obviously, the algorithm is so, so powerful is looking for those, those reviews to qualify something? What advice would you give to either authors who are self self publishing, or even not maybe other publisher independent publishers in terms of trying to get those reviews up?

Joseph Alexander
Yeah, like, you just got to be cheeky, and I build your mailing list and ask for them. That's it. Like we have an automated email that goes out listening, like, how's your book going? Are you enjoying it? If you've got any problems, please like, email me directly. And that will come through to me. But if you like it, these Could you just spend two minutes to write a review on Amazon. But you know, the review thing, it's a mixed bag, like you need to have verified reviews you need to and Amazon's really doubling down on this stuff, like our reviews genuine but occasionally on so so that, that books, it's lost about three reviews as their algorithms kicked in go that looks a bit similar to that one, or that person's within six degrees of separation. Have you ever noticed that? You know, we don't think that's a real review. Because fake reviews are a huge problem on Amazon. And it misleads the customer. It's, it's bad for everyone. And, and quite rightly, they are cracking down on it. So you refuse to be genuine and you kind of like you know, if you get your your wife, your girlfriend or your brother or whatever, in the same house, Amazon will see that. And they'll see that you're connected, and there's a good chance of that review being removed. So it they all actually for us like we've got 50 something thousand people on our mailing list now all of them genuine customers, pretty much everyone that has bought something from us. And so we just asked them, but huge amount of this. This model is is about getting email addresses in a you know, in a in a meaningful way.

James Taylor
So as you've been going through your journey now as an author, and as a publisher, was there a key aha moment, a lightbulb moment where you said, Okay, this is the direction I want to be going with this business, or you just made an important distinction. Perhaps it was render the marketing or for what you were doing

Joseph Alexander
in terms of why did I know this is for me, this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. Well, this is going to be this What was that like a particular technique?

James Taylor
Yeah, really, really more? when when when the bit? Yeah, when the business was up and going and you were you were Kynaston, you were starting to you know, you were getting those books out that maybe just a light bulb kind of came to say, Okay, this is the direction I want to be going with this company. Because you're now building a company. It's not just about about you as the as the individual.

Joseph Alexander
I think it was like sort of the growing success. The that we had, I mean, I sort of just like haphazardly threw my first book up on Amazon, actually six years ago, August. And I was working as teaching guitar and it was I was taking over it was selling a few coffees. But the but I was being a guitarist, I didn't really have a pension or anything like that. And you could just see it be quite nice. Yeah, that's that's sort of money kind of, I can put aside. And then I wrote another one. And actually, you know, that I could see them promoting each other on Amazon. And um, no, but I think I think some of that 14 books in my first year, wow. I was like, I actually it was, you know, without sort of being, you know, big headed about it. It's like, Well, that was kind of the point where I actually didn't need to work anymore. And we moved to Thailand. And I spent like a year in Thailand, just like writing books, which was great, you know, sat by the pool of the laptop. So it was actually realizing that space. Yeah, that probably be the big takeaway is that more books don't just mean more sales in a linear fashion. It's actually exponential because of that cross promotion thing. And realizing that the secret you know that the key to that success was writing a lot of books, which I did. And we continually add books now. And like I say, I know I've got people working for me now I've gotten a full time listen to the marketing, got a subcontract out to another company that, you know, does our book covers and editing and that kind of thing. And I've done that before. I realized actually, the rate of release of books is very important. And I couldn't, I couldn't physically hit a wall about last November, as well as sort of six books that I wanted to get out before Christmas, and it was middle of November, and I couldn't do any more. It's like, Okay, I need I need people to help me now. And I made that investment be cause it's an extra, you know, it's starting to level off now a little bit, I guess. But it is an exponential increase in sales and everything. Well, you know, there's, there's a ticket, I should say, in everything, whenever you release a new book, and when, um, when people have bought one of your books before, and Amazon will send them an email recommending your your latest release. So, you know, like, if I'm not listed as an author, on Amazon, I'm always listed as an editor, which is not true, but it means the algorithm kicks in, I say, Joseph Alexander book, and then that that will get sent out to people who bought that bought another one of my books. So it's a self prophecy.

James Taylor
I know, Brian Tracy, they're the author. He can't assess it. He's talking to a friend of mine recently. And he said he publishes a book every three months. And part of it is and actually, he's traditionally published as well, a lot. I think that's maybe changing now. But and he's probably he's benefiting from that same thing. You know, he's, he's, he has a very big books and some ebooks, but he's also just publishing was all time just little ones, like time management, or just things. So this is his constant drip, drip, drip. And he's, you know, partly also said that the publisher, the publishers, he's worked in the past, they've got very, they're only really focused on that particular quarter, they're very quarter focused. So if you've got a book every quarter keeps you top top of mind with him. That means there's other thinking,

Joseph Alexander
yeah, I think that's really valid. And it depends a lot. You know, if you're a novelist, and you're writing and didn't 120,000 words, you're not going to be able to do that. However, there's a huge market stay in romance or, you know, like vampire fiction or erotic fiction, or whatever it happens to be the IT people like reverberations, they, they read, and they read, and they read, and especially with things like Kindle Unlimited, the, that I don't think it will approach a saturation point, because you can write a 30 40,000 word book, have it out there. And it's, and it's acting as a business card for you. Because people are very sort of hungry for books and that with music, we're lucky, we can write in any genre for any ability, you know, any any level kind of thing and focus on technique, or theory, or chords, or soloing, or, you know, whatever it happens to be. So we've got such a huge palette of titles that we can write, and then, you know, multiply that by everyone, you know, the most popular instruments as writers as well now, so I've got people writing books in the background, and sort of reinvesting the royalties into things like that, which, which is more sort of piano and that kind of thing, you know, but

James Taylor
interesting, because the topic that you cover, and then the types of books that you publish, they're very evergreen perennial seller type books. Were even very lucky. Yeah, even in your area. I mean, there's obviously some publishers that go very much like, you know, the, the Taylor Swift songbook, let's say, for example, and you know, and so artists fall out of being popular after a while, but because you focus on the fundamentals, fundamental changes, you These will hopefully be evergreen books, and I know some some nonfiction business authors, I've spoken with some they struggle with that part because they're wanting to write a book. And they may want to use examples of certain companies, but they're worried if as a tech current, like hot tech company, that their company is going to be gone in 12 months time, it's gonna be acquired, and it doesn't feel quite as relevant. Now,

Joseph Alexander
I completely agree. And it must be tough if you're writing about like coding or programming or marketing, or you know, Instagram or something that just changes so quickly, or even like, it's funny, because you see books on my Amazon marketing have been written like three years ago, and they're just so out of date. And like, you might be able to glean something. But it's, you know, it's a double edged sword, really, because if you're, if your niche is changing, you can write a new book on it, you know, and you can actually, you know, do not even do second editions, you can write a whole new title, and you've got this sort of progression. And you're building products, awareness, and you're building a heart. But yeah, it's super, super lucky because we are in an evergreen field. We have to deal with a bit more competition from other people kind of doing it now, but like, I think it's the second book I wrote is probably still my biggest selling book. You know, in terms of income, that'll probably be the biggest one I have. So

James Taylor
I have to ask in order to be able to publish 14 books in one year. Yeah, what is your writing ritual look like? Are you just like writing 24 seven you engine now, you know you things are changing a little bit. But in those early days, what was your writing schedule,

Joseph Alexander
I would be up really like my day would be sort of probably getting up about 530 are we doing about two or three hours. And but also recognizing that, I know that if I do more than a couple of hours, the quality of my work diminished. So I'd wake up, I probably wouldn't go downstairs because then the dogs want to go out and law, let's get straight into the office, turn on the computer and write and I would start by checking over real brief scan really what I wrote yesterday, just to get myself up to speed with where I'm picking up from, that would actually allow me to a little bit of an edit that wasn't quite happy with anything, but it just got me into the frame of mind. And to not burn out. You know, I could probably do about seven pages a day, because it's not if I was just writing, I like I've just written a book, self publishing millionaire, which will be out in a couple of months, hopefully. But that I wrote I think 60,000 words in about three weeks or something two weeks it was it was a lot of work. But with with the guitar books and writing musical examples and figuring out how to play things and figuring out how to teach things in text, so it was quite slow process and that's quite demanding. And how to notate everything you know, in music software. So that those were that was more content containing like my books quite short compared to what people would consider for you know, a normal workout probably I try to keep them less than 20,000 words, but we'd have hundred hundred and 50 notated examples, which is the point notes it's a guitar book or a drunk

James Taylor
guitarist screeds of text, usually the the want the examples, they want the tab or the notation.

Joseph Alexander
Yeah, yeah, which, you know, better, better. Yeah, picture paints, 1000 words and all that sort of thing. So that would be I'd be out really early and I would get my stuff done before my girlfriend got up or, you know, before I had to actually go and do anything. And that just meant I had a really quiet house, because I'm, you know, my, my, my sort of biggest fault is that I really easily not distracted as in like, I'll get, I'll go off in another direction. But I can't focus easily with a lot of noise, I can't really listen to music while I work, I do need it to be quite quiet. And that's just my personal stuff. And so if I wanted to do it, I got up early. And some days I work all day, sometimes I'd work late at night, but there would be always a quiet time. And just the understanding with my girlfriend, Amanda is extremely supportive, that like, if my door, my office door is closed for those couple of hours, just just don't come in, you know, let me let me have my time. And I'll be sort of all yours after that. But you, I'm saying that because it's a common thing I hear with writers a lot, you know, I've got family, I've got this, I've got this. And of course that that does complicate things. But you need to be pretty adamant that you're going to carve out that time that you need, and, you know, treat it as a job,

James Taylor
you know, and seek a sacred time. And what about a book if you if you were to recommend one book to to our attendees, it could be a book on the craft of writing or perhaps on marketing, your books, what would that book be

Joseph Alexander
for getting there, and Stephen King's book is really good on the craft of writing so much about it. And no, you don't use any more words and you need to, I will shout out to my friend, Joanna pen, anything that she's written is pretty much gold. I know you've, you've done an interview with her recently. But her stuffs fantastic, it really is on on every aspect of marketing. And if you watch this space in about two months, my book hopefully will be great. That is basically everything I do. It's almost like a complete expose age of all the processes that we put in place. And I've written that with 10 who who's the guy that is he runs a subcontracting company that I use and he's had 20 years experience in the traditional publishing industry as well. So it's got my take as an indie author what I've done and how I've built things, but he's also putting his slant on it like well if you actually do want to go chat What does that you know the the the agent wants to see what how can you best present your work? How can you get your covers done, you know, how can you How can you get that foot in that door, which is incredibly competitive. So it's going to be quite all encompassing. I've taken a nonfiction look at it. He's taken us or fiction. Look at it. And yeah, we're hoping that we'll be out in a couple The most

James Taylor
excellent so what so I know people we're gonna have some links here as well as people can. Because depending on when someone's watching this this MIT this boot this boot may be out at this point as well. What about you mentioned you don't like having music or anything playing. While you're, you're you're writing as well as that has always been pretty much the case you just don't like having having anything. We're just Funny Kids family friend, musician. No, no music while I write, it's annoying that

Joseph Alexander
it really is like, I just can't focus. Like, you know, I could probably have some Mozart on in the background. Yeah, but you know, like the stuff I like to listen to like tower power or something like that I just get so like, my ears just go. And what's in front of me. And it's funny. It's weird, but I'm not trying to train myself to listen to

James Taylor
love it. The only thing I've been able to manage that there's an app which plays coffee shop music, coffee shop background noise. And I've tried that in the past. And I can just about deal with that. That's quite nice, because it's quite nice to have a little bit of a thing if you're just working from home. But apart from that, you know, music for me either.

Joseph Alexander
I bought some nuraphone headphones, amazing, really good, loud noise cancelling things that helps a little bit. Yeah, it's funny, I'm actually trying to actively train myself because the amount of hours of cool music that I could have experienced in thousands of hours I've been writing. And I kind of need a quiet and it's Yeah, it's just a bit of a bummer.

James Taylor
What about tools? Is there a particular any tools or apps you find very useful in your writing and publishing?

Joseph Alexander
You know, I I'm quite adamant about this now sort of, I somebody asked me this, I was talking for Amazon at the London Book Fair. And I was just trying to hold my thought, I think we're a bit different here as well, because I can't be doing with, you know, like productive productivity apps or things like that. I have a pen and paper on my desk. Number one, I kind of use notes now on the map, because it's everywhere that but if I've got something to do, I write it down. And then I do it. So there's nothing amazing that I write everything in Word works really well when converting into, you know, Kindle, Kindle previewer software that you can get from Amazon and that's free. I don't, I used to use Grammarly. But actually, I found now that I've just got an editor on staff. So cracks in contracted that it's easier just to to write it, give it to them. But yeah, really keep it simple. If you want to, if you're just starting out there is absolutely nothing wrong with typesetting, your book in Word, exposing a print resolution PDF from that within Word. If you've got Adobe, you can, you know, go that way with that too. And then that's the internals for your book we use Photoshop got really good Photoshop, as you probably tell from the Booker's I showed you before that we use, and now we're a little bit further down the line. And I know the subcontractors that we use, they use InDesign to set up the paperback version of the book, really having a little, we've got a few I'm looking at

James Taylor
a while back. I mean, obviously, you're on Amazon all the time. So you're using KDP.

Joseph Alexander
Yeah, tons of websites, everything now is KTP. Because sort of, sadly, I like CreateSpace. But that's sort of close its doors, which makes sense. Amazon's just consolidating everything into KDP. book reports, which you've probably heard a million people like recommend is astonishingly good, because Amazon's stats and sales reports are a little bit cumbersome, whereas book report is a little plugin that you can get for via browser, and it just connects to Amazon to tell you what's selling how much it's selling. It'll give you trends over time, highly, highly recommend book report, we use for HTML product descriptions, which was really important, but probably don't have time to get into that. We use it's a paid for site, and it's probably something similar for free. That's better book tools.com. I think. And that will turn your product description into a nice, friendly Amazon product page. I'm sure there are a free version. So

James Taylor
your bullet points and things like that.

Joseph Alexander
Yeah, cuz Amazon accepts a very limited range of HTML. You know, they really cut down on that people used to put a pixel natsai on their pages and measure Matt, you know, Bitly, and all that kind of thing. So they could see what was getting clicked and do lots of testing, which is quite cool. But Amazon, you know, understandably cut down on that. So they use a very limited range of HTML now, so you can do bold and you can see our headings and attacks, but that's about it.

James Taylor
We'll put all these links here as well. And a final question for you. I want you to imagine you woke up tomorrow morning and you have to start from scratch so you have all the skills that you've acquired all the knowledge But no one knows you, you have no books out, you know, no one will let you choose where you can either be in a beach in Thailand some way, I'm gonna let you choose wherever you want to be. But how would you restart? What would you do

Joseph Alexander
staying in my niche staying with like nonfiction, tuition books I would get writing, I would be writing quickly, I would be making sure that the number one thing that I was doing was building my mailing list. And because when you've got a mailing list of 50,000 people, you can, you can send a lot of traffic to your book very quickly, which propels it up the rankings. And you know, then you can start to own those keywords. May, we've already talked about man, we use loads of marketing and automation and all this kind of stuff with when we use Active Campaign for that. I'm not sure if I'd recommend Active Campaign to anyone starting out it's a bit of a nightmare, I would definitely go MailChimp it's free 2000 people and that automation is really catching up, we might be making a shift. But I digress.

James Taylor
It's a great tool. And I know a lot of musicians use MailChimp because it's a friendly, very friendly design, as well.

Joseph Alexander
Yeah, I should use Active Campaign. But great, definitely. It's an undertaking. Yeah, it would be right lots of books, right? On the shorter end, you know, about 20,000 words, keep it going. I would spend any money that I had outsourcing things that I wasn't good at. I cover design and editing. But yeah, the key to everything is building a really useful mailing list, because this is an A, you probably want to go off. But there's, there's sort of perception that well, I publish my book, it's Amazon's job to sell that for me. And I see that quite a lot. Whenever I like I talk at Amazon Academy, and do you read the stuff in the book, then? Why isn't Amazon selling their book like, well, they're a marketplace, you know, they're just a store, you have to get people to go to that store and buy it, that's your job. Amazon is astonishingly good at picking up on what selling it was selling and promoting it, you need to kind of put that snowball at the top of the mountain. And if you can send people to your book can get you know, like, if you're in a sort of fairly non competitive niche, then, you know, like the difference between 10 sales in a day could definitely put you in the top hundred, you know, maybe even the top 10 in your niche, you might not get to the top, you know, one on Amazon, but you know, you get that best seller, they Amazon will start Amazon sells what sells, you know, it's just for them that selling let's promote lots more people. So your job is to set say that seed, get people to Amazon, get that book promoted in Amazon Canada at that point takes over the baton and they keep selling it because it's just this sort of self fulfilling prophecy.

James Taylor
And if people want to connect with you to learn more about you, I know you have the the the the publishing services business now as well where's the best place for them to go and do that

Joseph Alexander
that is self hyphen published.co.uk or South dash published.co.uk if you're American, and so that's where we do all sorts of stuff. We're helping connect people with book covers, we're providing editing services, we're you know, we're we're helping people market we're doing all that kind of thing. So really, that would be the best way to get in touch. If you're interested in the guitar books. That's fundamentalchanges.com. And if you really want to see what we're doing just search Joseph Alexander guitar amendments and sort of be smashed in the face by Baba.

James Taylor
Well, Joseph, congratulations on how your business is built is great watching and I really enjoyed us working together. And hopefully we're going to do some other projects together in the future as well. And I wish you all the best with with this upcoming book that may even be out now, depending on when someone watches this. So thanks. Thanks so much for coming on. Joseph,

Joseph Alexander
thank you so much. It's always really flattering to be asked to do things like this. Always, it's always mind boggling that people are interested in what I have to say. But yeah, I'm always happy to do it. So So thanks for having me on.

James Taylor
If you're interested in living a more creative life, then I'd love to invite you to join me as I share some of the most successful strategies and techniques that high performing creatives use. I put them all together in a free downloadable ebook that you can get by going to jamestaylor.me. That's jamestaylor.me. To get your free downloadable ebook on creativity.

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