Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
You've heard the book publishing podcasts that give you tips for selling a lot of books and the ones that only interview world-famous authors. Now it's time for a book publishing show that reveals what actually goes on behind the cover.
Hosted by New York Times bestselling author Anna David, Behind the Book Cover features interviews with traditionally published authors, independently published entrepreneurs who have used their books too seven figures to their bottom line to build their businesses and more.
Anna David has had books published by HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster and is the founder of Legacy Launch Pad, David is the founder of Legacy Launch Pad Publishing, a boutique, founder-led hybrid book publisher that helps entrepreneurs turn expertise into authority-building books. In other words, she knows both sides—and isn't afraid to share it.
Come find out what traditional publishers don't want you to know.
Unknown Speaker 0:00
Welcome to the show where writers spill
Unknown Speaker 0:07
the tea process and their therapy.
Unknown Speaker 0:11
We'll talk about the money. Hello and welcome to Behind the book cover podcast hosted by me Anna David. I talk to authors and entrepreneurs about how to look at the publishing business and what your book can and can't do for you. So my guest today is somebody who really knows what a book can do for you. And you know how he knows that he sold 87 copies of a book that generated over $3.5 million and that's not because Amazon was, or, you know, some publisher had an accounting error. That is, the strategic things he did to make it so that this book would precede him, so that 100% of the people who hired him would know about the book. So in this conversation, he talks exactly about how he did that and how you can too.
Unknown Speaker 1:02
And now I give you Alex mendojan.
Unknown Speaker 1:07
Alex, thank you so much for being here. It is a delight and a half. Well, the answer is, whatever she wants. The question is, what does Anna David get from Alex for an interview? So I love that you asked me, no one has ever said to me, do I need to prepare anything now that is a man who I know it's shocking. Nobody's up to your standard, Alex, so we know that we are here to talk about what books have done for your business, and you were generous enough to let me know beforehand by filling out my form. But let's tell people about your books and what they've done. Okay, this as you're watching, I don't know what type of book you have in mind, if you're a first time author or a multi author, if you have a best seller or not, but I will say that what I'm about to say may make you feel uncomfortable, and I will tell you that in writing two books
Unknown Speaker 2:07
so far, I could have written more, but I only wrote two because I knew I would make more money repurposing those books. So a book, to me, is an excuse to repurpose it into other formats. So one book is called Alex isms. They're 140x
Unknown Speaker 2:26
tweets, whatever it's called. Now, used to be called Twitter before, you know, Elon purchased it. And the reason there are these sayings in here, I'm Alex, and that's me. I put half my face because I'm better looking halfway than the whole thing is that that's the left side. I see it. Yeah, I think that is the left side. So whatever side it is, I had my own students who are well known. Now they've surpassed me. You know, these Zoomers and these Gen X people, Gen Y people. But I used to be upset because they surpassed me with more reach, more wealth, etc. And then I had one of my mentors sit me down and say, you know, what an honor that you know you are partially responsible for that. So I have all these sayings, like, the only thing worse than going in the wrong direction is going the wrong direction enthusiastically or sloppy success is better than perfect mediocrity or the early bird gets the worm, but it's the second mouse that gets the cheese. And there's always a pregnant pause, because people don't know what that means. And then it goes on and on. Don't wait for your ship to come in, swim out to it. And so I have all these sayings, so I there's about 500 plus. I put 140
Unknown Speaker 3:39
in less than 140 characters, so they could be Twitter tweets back then, and now that's x. And I wrote it into a book because I would have my own students go on stage, and they would say some of the things that they learned, and then I would look like the imposter. So Alex isms became a book. I don't even consider it a real book. It is an Amazon bestseller, just because I have friends, but it just has these sayings, and then you can put your own notes in to have your own sayings as a professional speaker, that book generated over two and a half million dollars for me. I I sold. I'm looking at the numbers because you asked me for them. I'm embarrassed. I sold 87 of those books in retail.
Unknown Speaker 4:23
I have over 4000 of them out in the marketplace. When I used to go to Asia, I would give all these bonuses for my courses that were $5,000
Unknown Speaker 4:34
and whether it was in Singapore or in Kuala, Lumpur, Malaysia, even Bangalore, India, they would want to get a picture with me with this book. That's just their culture. I would sign it for them. This was a bigger bonus than all the other templates I would give them. So that particular book with 87 sales at less than $12 on Amazon, it's still there. Don't buy it, but if you want, you can. I.
Unknown Speaker 5:00
Um, it generated over $2.5 million
Unknown Speaker 5:03
so the book itself, I'm not a fiction writer, I'm nonfiction. The book itself was a repurposing vehicle for sales. That's why this may make you feel uncomfortable, because you think that the book is going to make you the money. In my case, that's not what I go for. In 2005 I co wrote this book called The Business podcasting Bible by me and a good friend of mine, Paul Culligan, and then we had a course called podcasting secrets, or podcast secrets, I think it was. We sold 508 books. Of course it was, it was a bestseller. It's 2005 so some people still had dial up, but we generated over a million dollars for that book, selling five eight in less than 20 bucks. So in my world, I utilize the book is 150 to 200 page executive summary for my high ticket sales, my highest ticket used to be $100,000
Unknown Speaker 6:01
for a year. I don't do that anymore. I got over 30 people to do that over four years, but it was just it was over too long of a period. I learned what not to do. So my highest ticket these days is 30k $30,000 as a fractional cmo for three months, and then my lowest ticket is 500 so I'm at the higher end of things. I started marketing online.com,
Unknown Speaker 6:28
two years before Google was born, I met dinosaur. Maybe I can't wait for the ears to have hair growing out of it, or my nose, because my grandfather had that night. I keep looking and I still have my hair, thank God, but that's how I've utilized books you wanted me to talk about that it is contrarian. It may impact and even offend a few people watching but it I believe a book is just a repurposing vehicle. One book can be three years worth of blog post, one year worth of worth of Tiktok videos, a year of Google. I mean, it goes on and on. So for me, I look at a book as an outline and not the sales and profit vehicle. People listening to this podcast are used to me preaching this gospel the one way that. I mean, I'm completely with you. I still think, well, it's, it's great to compile tweets or Tiktok videos or whatever it
Unknown Speaker 7:28
is. It's, it can be a work of art, if you really put a lot into it. It can be both a work of art and it can also be, and it should be, a revenue generating machine, never through book sales. Now people listening may want to try to understand, what do you mean? You made $3 million from this book, like, what were the actual steps you took? Okay, so let's go with Alex ism, so these are my sayings, and because I'm a virtual presenter. I've done 4500 plus, maybe more virtual presentations. Larry King, when he was living, said I was the Larry King of web television, whatever that means, right? And but he said that when I was in his house in Beverly Hills. And so I do a lot of appointment based marketing now. Right now, someone watching or listening to this is watching it or listening asynchronous, meaning they're not synchronized with it live, because we're recording it. But if this were a webinar or a virtual event, like a Zoom meeting, then they would watch it on a synchronized basis. I believe that's the highest value prospect or candidate you can have for your business, because if they took the time aside, if, if you win their time, their money will follow. If you win their heart, their mind will follow. So that's the way I approach it. I go heart centered, and then I win their mind, I go time where there's on a website, where they go deeper into the interior and they're reading. If they don't read, they're not for me, right? And then once I win their time, their money follows. So with Alex isms, I have a fractional cmo Chief Marketing Officer business where I just go in for three months, I end up hiring and vetting their marketing director, which is a lot less expensive than a $300,000
Unknown Speaker 9:22
cmo that that you would hire who's, you know, who has a level of experience that I do? Well, I led with the book. I led with the book on stage. I would have the book as a bonus that would be hand signed. So somehow I built credibility with people. The book impacted and amplified that credibility. I built relevancy because all of my Alex isms, I probably utilize them as trial closes. Maybe there's 140 in the book. I have over 500 total. I probably use maybe over I use over 50 in a webinar, because they're just funny, right?
Unknown Speaker 10:00
Fun, and so I didn't know, I didn't know that, you know, it's a useful life lessons from a recovering serial entrepreneur, Ivan Meisner, Lisa Nichols, vision, lachiani, Jack Canfield, Harvey Mackay, Janet Atwood, I didn't know that. You know, they would help promote this book, but, you know, they did okay, so that that's a that's a multi million dollar book. Did the book be responsible for it? Not really it. It was a trigger and an amplifier to what I was doing. Now this one, I'm mentioning the business podcasting Bible, because 90% of what's in this book is no longer relevant. This is written 2005 this is before they called it a podcast, but we had a course called podcast secrets, and so that book is actually the curriculum to our training, which sold for $997
Unknown Speaker 10:56
and over the course of two years, it generated, I think, a little over a million dollars, Right? It was a while ago i i had to split it. So did the books. Were they exclusive? Exclusively, responsible for the revenue? No. Were they amplifiers? Yes. Were they integrated? Yes. Were they bonuses? Yes. Were they credentializers? Yes. So not having a book is a mistake, yes, and I think that's very well said, because it's the unquantifiable impact where you don't know when someone's like, you know what I want to work without. Let me see what's out there about Alex, you don't know.
Unknown Speaker 11:35
Oftentimes people don't say, Hey, I hired you because of your book, but it has impacted their decision in ways you can't even imagine. Would you say that's true? I'll go one step further. By the way, the word is not farther. It's further. In this context, I learned that the hard way in using it the wrong way. So going one step further. I'm sitting in first class. I'm on a plane coming back from Dallas, Texas, to Scottsdale, Arizona. At the time, someone asked me, Hey, what do you do? I said,
Unknown Speaker 12:07
it'll take at least half an hour to tell you I'm not very good at an elevator speech if you've got 25 minutes, because my mother said that 25 years of my life went into 25 minutes to read this book. I'll just give you this book, read it, and then it'll tell you what I do. Well, when that person becomes a $30,000 client two weeks later, I didn't anticipate that, but rather than just telling them what I did and give a truncated version, I give them the book that's the leave behind. They contact me. I seem to have credibility, because they have their videos attached to that, and they can see me online, and my my signature speeches, etc. So it is 150
Unknown Speaker 12:50
page business card, as many people have said in the past, and well, so I said, Oh, you don't know the number of people that are mentioning your book, but you told me 100%
Unknown Speaker 12:59
of your clients have mentioned the book every time, yeah, every time, every time. And I think that's because it's so readable, right? Yeah, especially, I mean, you can read Alex isms. I mean, the tagline is 25 years of marketing. Know how that requires only 25 minutes of your time? And, yeah, you know the way the book is structured, like you have these Alex isms, and it's easy to read. You can read the whole thing on sitting on the toilet, you know. And it doesn't have to be before a colonoscopy. It can be like any visit to the throne. You can read the whole thing. And then you have little note areas where you can make your own ism so I've had my own students do jack isms or Raymond isms and you know, stuff like that. So that particular book has been very, very good to me. I never anticipated. It was a surprise. I didn't anticipate. But when I asked, Have you heard about my book, they go yes, because it just kind of pops up. So yeah, that's why I said 100% not one person who has hired me for $30,000
Unknown Speaker 14:04
or less has not mentioned the book. Wow. And you said so since your book came out, you've spoken on six continents, done 47 speaking engagements before that, it's you did no media interviews when you didn't do any of this stuff before your book or you did. I did speaking. I did speaking. I didn't sell as well because I didn't have a book to sign and I never I didn't do media because I didn't have a reason to do media. Media needs something physical, yeah, so when they see the book as something concrete, it's never going to get old. I don't care age of AI Zoomers. I don't care what you say, you curl up on your couch. You read a book. If you just look behind me, I have in my in my apartment, I have over 1200 books, and that's not all the collection. You're just looking at a little bit of it, you know. I have a little, I have a little bobble head in the background there. You know?
Unknown Speaker 15:00
Right, right here. Oh, no, that's the I saw it. I saw it when your camera was in a so I have my little bobble head right. And then the books, they go, you know, all the way across, and they're here. And I pull them out so they're alphabetized. I'm very OCD, so I looked up M for mondosian, and I got these two. They're only two out of you know, over 1200 but I know that it allowed me to pay for private school for my kids, 25k per year in Marin County, California. I'm in Pasadena. Wait your kids went to my same grammar school. Remember that? MCDs? That that is mind boggling to me. But yes, yes. But you know, for kindergarten, paying $25,000 for a kid that's going to fall asleep halfway through the day. It didn't. It didn't occur to me, but because of the book
Unknown Speaker 15:48
at my wife at the time, and we get along great. We're good co parents, I thought, oh my gosh, I'm glad at least I had a credentializer. So if you were, here's the thing I'm going to say that may offend some people, if you want the book to be the workhorse to generate revenue, very few people are able to do that. Most books are recycled and turned into toilet paper. My good friend Michael drew says that, because they don't sell, you get 5000 copies. You got 500 that are sold. And, you know, 4500 still left in the garage, right? So most books don't sell. But the key point is, if you can repurpose it and get yourself out there, kind of like a spoken wheel scenario, the hub is the message, you are the message that's the hub of a bicycle wheel. The wheel is your market. You know your market. You're going to meet them at different places. But where do you meet them? You meet them the spokes? So the book is one spoke then you got a blog series, then you got YouTube, then you got Tiktok, then then you got all the other elements, Twitter, tweet series,
Unknown Speaker 16:55
Pinterest, you know, you name it, they're all different spokes to meet your market where they are, but the hub is where all the spokes Connect. That is your message. And you are the message, right? And then the spokes of the media. And the book is just one form of media. It's one spoke. And then where you meet. And when you true a bicycle wheel, because I used to be a professional cyclist, you true the wheel in that little nipple, you know, use this little thing, this like a screwdriver type of thing, and you true the wheel, so it's nice and true, and it's going round and round without wobbling. You true it close to the wheel with the tire on there. So it's a great metaphor, if you think of message, media and market. Message is the is the hub. Media are the spokes. That's plural, and then the wheel is the market. Most people, most authors, they spend so much time on their book, and they look at that as a medium. They only think of it in singular. But if, from this point forward, even if I've offended you, if you look at it as one of many, you'll do much better with revenue, because when a when a business runs out of money, you don't have a business. So what about people listening who say, Okay, well, I don't know anything about business, so I've got a book about my career in fashion. What should I do? I don't know how to create courses, and when courses don't sell as well. Today, in 2025 as they did in 2005 right? What should somebody do? Do they set up the business now? Well, if, if you know enough to write a book, then there is a course curriculum there. My, my actually, not only good friend, I've traveled the world with him, but probably my most profitable joint venture partner. His name is T Harv Eker. He used to have the biggest seminar company called Peak potentials in the US. It was purchased by an Asian company. And I'm very close to both factions. His book, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, how to win the inner game of wealth. By the way, your title is what your book is. It's the noun of your book, Secrets Of The Secrets
Unknown Speaker 19:03
of the Millionaire Mind, right? And then your subtitle is the promise of the book I'm teaching now. But it's important, and that is the verb of the book. It's what your book does for someone. People buy a dog, not because it has four paws, one tail, two eyes, because when your husband or wife no longer are talking to you, the dog is still licking your face, loving you. They buy because of what you get, unconditional love, right? And so how to win the inner game of wealth was the promise of that book. That book was a three day seminar called The Millionaire Mind intensive. Okay, that was a course. It was free, and then you were sold a bunch of other courses, up to 16 if you bought Quantum Leap, which was everything. So I worked with hard for about 20 years. And anyone can create a course, but you don't have to. If you have a course that's $2,000 you have a $20 book. How many fewer courses do you have?
Unknown Speaker 20:00
To sell in order to get the same revenue value. So let's say you're not a course creator. Let's say you have a book on fashion. Well, great. So as far as a business is concerned, you don't have to have an LLC or a sole proprietorship or a corporation. You can just start doing blog posts from your table of contents. You can start looking at the chat GPT or Claude or any other AI and start figuring out how to do Pinterest posts, LinkedIn posts, they'll give it to you. AI will give it to you. And the beauty is, if you have a style that you like, let's say Joe Sugarman, who was an ad writer. He was one of my mentors. You say, write it in the Joe Sugarman style. Okay, then you will get posts that are written in the style of the person that you admire. Maybe there's someone who's an article writer who's well known. AI will recognize them if they're online. You can have those written in that style. I actually like to say, write it in a non AI style, yeah. And I get, I get that so you, you don't, you don't incorporate the business. And then start doing stuff. You start doing stuff first, and then if there's enough revenue coming in, then you incorporate, okay, but so how do you turn blog posts into money? Well, you have to have something to sell that is your primary offer. So if your primary offer is consulting, then no on a good, better or best scenario, what your primary offer is. So let's say, and this is what I'm doing now, my new chapter, after 60 trips around the sun. I hate admitting that, but the new chapter I'm diving into is I am, I am coaching and consulting senior executives C level C suite people in corporations. I'm calling it C to C, like B to B, B to C, but C to C is corporate to consultant, and if they hire me for three months, it's eight grand. If they hire me for two months, it's 10 grand. If they hire me for one month, it's 12,500
Unknown Speaker 22:10
people. Say, What do you mean? Say, Well, Money loves speed. So for one month we meet twice a week. For two months we meet once a week, and for three months, we meet every other week, and it's less expensive for three months. Most people choose the one month. And I have a guarantee, if they don't get the results, then they can continue with me until they do. So that's a core offer. So what do I do to repurpose that? Well, I write a book. In this case, I'm starting with a playbook. It's called the C to C playbook.
Unknown Speaker 22:41
You know how to leave your corner office to become a consultant in 90 days or less. Okay, so I'm sure it's going to be a book, but I made a little playbook out of it. I sent it to people on my contact list. I already got two clients. I haven't even launched the website yet, right? Yeah. And so when I'm going to write a book about it, which will give me more credibility. It'll be my third I think it'll be a real book at this, you know, and not something that I've done just to generate business. But you need what's called a core offer. So my core offer is with these senior executives. They're usually 50 to 65 they're usually men more than women, but I have very smart women, you know approaching me on this, and basically they're in transition, and they're they're afraid, and their ego is getting in their way, and these junior executives have leapfrogged them. So once you know that your core offer feeds into a target audience, a character diamond, like they talk about in the movie business, or an avatar like they talk in marketing, once it feeds into that, then you got to put a price tag. And then every other thing goes to that website. What I do my funnel, is they read the playbook. They go to a 20 minute clarity call, after the 20 minute clarity call, and sometimes they have absolutely no interest. After that. They go to 45 minute discovery call of which of the three things of my playbook they want to focus on? Do they want a signature speech? Do they want an outline to in a book? Or do they want to set up a consulting service like I only do one of three, and then they have to pay separately for the other two? That's my core offer. That's how I make money from it. If people want to find you, where should they go? Easiest place to go, just all selling aside.com that's my that's my podcast. So don't buy anything from me. Just listen to the 124 stories that are there. And then I talk a lot about storytelling and repurposing, but you got to have a core offer. And as long as you have a core offer, then the book will be a lot more popular. Amazing. Alex, thank you so much for being here. Y'all. Thank you for listening.
Unknown Speaker 24:47
Thanks for listening to behind the book cover. If you loved it, I hope you'll consider liking and subscribing, because it helps more people find the show and look you can like and subscribe even if you only liked and didn't love it, but if you hated.
Unknown Speaker 25:00
You can skip the review or, who am I kidding? I'll take one from you too.
Unknown Speaker 25:04
Let's talk about the money, or the lack there of the research rabbit hole scooted pissed off behind the book cover. Let's get we're asking the questions that you've always been.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai