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The official podcast from the team at BookFunnel, hosted by Jack Shilkaitis, Kelli Tanzi, and Emma Alisyn, featuring guest interviews, self-publishing industry discussions, and tips for using BookFunnel to build an author business.
0:00: And the thing is too, is like, you can't predict virality, you can't predict what people are going to go crazy over.
0:05: So all we can do is control the factors that we know go into a viral video and hope that one of them goes off.
0:11: But yeah, posting consistently is definitely key.
0:15: And I think too, you have to realize that every video you put out there is an opportunity.
0:20: If TikTok signal.
0:21: Which content you're after and which content not.
0:24: And the goal is for your for you page to show you only relevant content about your specific niche and really niche down.
0:32: Hey folks, welcome to the Book Funnel podcast where indie authors get real world advice on writing, publishing, and growing a career on their own terms.
0:41: Whether you're just starting out or you're deep in To your author journey.
0:44: We're here to help you build your readership, boost your book sales, and connect with your audience.
0:49: Each episode, we aim to bring you insights from authors, experts, and industry insiders who have been there, done that, and then some.
0:56: My name is Jack.
0:57: I am our lead author support specialist here at Book Funnel, and I am joined today by my co-host, Emma Allison.
1:07: And our guests for this episode of the Book Funnel podcast, we have 2 with us today.
1:14: I want to introduce first, Marvin, the co-founder of Author Scale, and Genesis Davies, a romance author, self-published, recently full-time.
1:25: Self-published author, I want to welcome both of you here to the podcast.
1:29: It's not typical that we have two guests, but this is great.
1:32: It's a full house, so I thank both of you for being here with us today.
1:36: Thank you for having us, yeah.
1:39: Marvin, you and I met, like a lot of guests on the podcast recently in Vegas this past, well, last November, and we sat down, I think it was on industry day, if I, if I remember right, the first day of the conference, and we started chatting.
1:55: I said, hey, we should, you should come on the podcast.
1:57: And that started our whole discussion.
1:59: Yeah, I'm glad we ran into each other and we also had lunch together, right, with your friend from Scriven.
2:06: That's right.
2:06: Talked about food.
2:07: I remember him doing some pictures of what was it like some African food.
2:12: Yes, because I believe his, his wife is, is African and she has a TikTok account where she obviously makes those recipes from and I remember.
2:25: I remember there was, it was this anecdote where he said, He, he, he did a post where he was just eating or something and I think it went viral and he was like, why would somebody watch a post where somebody's just eating it, right?
2:38: But it's a special type of eating because I think they eat with their hands, so Western civilizations are not too used to it.
2:43: But I think it it kind of underlines a very interesting concept that it doesn't take much to go viral, right?
2:52: And the thing that's.
2:53: Something we're going to talk about in this conversation.
2:55: Yeah, yeah, no, I remember that conversation.
2:57: And it also to point out, we just had Oliver Evanson.
3:02: That's who we were having lunch with from Scrivener.
3:05: We just had him on one of our guest webinars.
3:08: In fact, that was just the other day from when we're recording this episode of the podcast.
3:12: And you're gonna be on one of our next guest webinars in a couple of weeks after this episode airs.
3:18: So I want to mention that here first, so folks who are watching this episode know to look for that for Book Funnel Live in February.
3:25: I'll make sure to include more details and so forth, but it'll be exciting to have you come on there as well.
3:30: So you guys will be seeing more of Marvin than just this episode of the podcast.
3:36: So, I wanna transition us here right into the, to the main topic.
3:40: I just wanna dive into it.
3:42: And I think the, the most organic place to start with is with eugenesis, and is, is with your story, cause there's a reason that you're here along with Marvin.
3:51: , and, and Marvin asked me, he's like, hey, you know, we have, we have this author who uses author scale.
3:58: We, can she come on the pod podcast, with us?
4:00: Absolutely.
4:01: I thought that was brilliant to have you along as well.
4:04: So I'll give you a few minutes here.
4:05: Genesis, just tell us your story as an author.
4:09: Sure.
4:09: Well, thanks for the opportunity.
4:11: So basically, I started self-publishing in 2011.
4:15: And didn't really do much with it.
4:17: I was self-publishing.
4:19: My first series did a little well, and then I just kind of left it because I was working as a freelance writer and that paid the bills.
4:26: Writing my own books didn't.
4:28: So, fast forward.
4:31: To a year ago when I started using Author scale, I was, I had some good books out, but I didn't have the reach that I needed, so I was making around $200 a month.
4:42: I saw on $20 to $500 the, the Facebook group.
4:47: I saw that a lot of people were doing really well with TikTok, so I thought, well, I'm gonna try that.
4:51: And actually I saw a presentation by Kate Hall.
4:55: Doing slideshows, so I thought, OK, this is a good option.
4:59: So I started trying to do the slideshows and I was doing them on canvas.
5:03: And Capa is great, but it took me so long to make them that I was putting out maybe 3 a week, and I was not consistent, so I was getting virtually no views on them.
5:14: I was getting like 100, 150 views.
5:16: So I realized that my weakness was number one, time, and number 2, hooks.
5:22: So even though I wrote the book, pulling the hooks is like pulling teeth.
5:27: I just can't figure out which lines to use or anything.
5:30: So what I ended up doing, was going to chat GPT, loading in a chapter of my book and trying to get it to pull the hooks, but my books are spicy, and so Chat GPT did not like that very much.
5:41: Sorry, this goes against our content guidelines.
5:44: So I was actively looking for something that would pull these hooks for me without spending a lot of money because I wasn't making money at that point.
5:53: and I came across a mention of author scale, so I thought, well, perfect, so I jumped in there.
5:57: They were very bare bones at that time.
5:58: They'd just gotten started.
6:00: But it was exactly what I needed.
6:02: It pulled the hooks.
6:03: It gave me great hooks.
6:04: So I made the slideshows.
6:05: I started posting them, and I was getting like 200, 300 views.
6:10: So it wasn't great, but it was better than what I was doing on my own because I was putting them up regularly.
6:14: I was doing probably and probably more consistent too, because, yes, right, so the ease, I was making them.
6:20: I was doing 3 a day as opposed to 3 weeks.
6:22: So it's definitely, definitely helpful.
6:26: Yeah, and so I was just going along.
6:28: One morning I wake up and I look at my dashboard doing KDP dashboard, as you do as a writer, and I realized I had $500 in one day.
6:36: And I mean, I wasn't even making that for a month, so I was shocked and I thought, wow, somebody must have mentioned me somewhere.
6:41: Like it didn't even occur to me that it could be TikTok at first.
6:44: So I start searching the internet and like, you know, who talked about me.
6:49: And I could not find anything.
6:51: So finally in the afternoon, all of a sudden it just tweaked like I was posting my TikTok, and I thought, wait a minute, I am posting on TikTok.
6:58: So I went over to the, cause at that point I was just sending them the TikToks directly to TikTok.
7:02: I wasn't actually on the app every single day.
7:05: So I went over to the app, took a look, and I had Like tens of thousands of views and people were asking about the book.
7:13: They were talking about it.
7:14: And then every time I refreshed, it would go up by like 1000, like just constantly refreshing.
7:19: And my KDP was the dashboard was going up as well and it just turned into this incredible week where I made $11,000 Canadian.
7:30: In one week.
7:31: And I was just shocked and I thought, OK, well, this is a fluke, right?
7:34: This is, there's no way this is gonna continue.
7:37: but because of that one viral video, then people were looking at my other videos, and all of a sudden they just started popping off all over the place, and this stretched out for like 3 months, the, the effects of that.
7:49: And after that, it just, I, because I was still posting consistently.
7:52: Restantly, I kept seeing regular views and I was able to in January when the payments started coming in, I was able to go full time as an author, and I've been doing that ever since.
8:01: So it's been just over a year now.
8:03: Right, right.
8:04: So it's, it's very interesting because I think the way that you approached it because you heard, so you heard about these slideshows and TikTok, I think a lot of authors probably hear about just you need to be on TikTok first.
8:15: And there's different approaches to TikTok and Kate Hall, who is a friend of the channel, she's been on the podcast twice here, to talk about slideshows.
8:24: I know this was, this was kind of all the rate this, so this might have even been around that time that we had her on.
8:30: I'm trying to think, it would have been in like early 20.
8:33: 24.
8:33: Emma, let me correct me if my memory is failing me, but I think that's around the time that we had her on.
8:38: So it, it makes sense that that was kind of part of the conversation that was going on there.
8:42: But it sounds like just the consistency from having a tool that could just make those slideshows a lot more efficiently was the key there.
8:52: You could sit there for hours and, and do it, make them yourself, but Who has those hours to make them, you know what I mean?
9:01: And as a writer, you want to spend your time writing, you don't want to spend your time marketing, right?
9:05: And, and I imagine too, there's a, there's a bit of for some authors, some might, some might not have a problem with this, but it's hard for you to, after you've written the book, because to you, it's, it's this different thing than it is to the reader.
9:19: And for you to sit there, the way you see the story is different than the way the reader.
9:23: see the story.
9:24: And so to know like, oh, that's, that's the hook that's actually going to get the most attention.
9:29: Exactly.
9:30: It's not always what you think it is, right?
9:32: And so you as the author, you have like a different perspective.
9:35: It's like, it's your kid.
9:36: And so you're like, yeah, well, you know, my kids, you know, great.
9:39: Of course, my kid's great.
9:41: That's not to say that your kid isn't great, but like other people have a different perspective on it as well.
9:46: But that's, that's an awesome story.
9:48: , and encouraging, I think, for a lot of authors, and it was all organic, yeah, I didn't use ads at all and I didn't have the money to use ads at that point.
9:59: Right, right, exactly.
10:00: Let's get down to Binis because like, like we want to know how long were you posting before you went viral and how many times a day, because this is a consistency issue we talk about a lot.
10:12: And then also, are slideshows still working or are you tempted to go into like face content or anything different?
10:20: First of all, I don't do face content because I use a pen name, so I, I'm completely anonymous on that.
10:26: Yeah, so definitely this like slideshows are my thing because I don't have to show my face.
10:32: The slideshows are absolutely still working.
10:34: They aren't as long now.
10:35: So the one that went viral first was 24 slides long.
10:38: Now I do 5 slides at a time, and those seem to be doing much better.
10:42: Yeah.
10:43: So I was posting 3 times a day.
10:44: I post 2 times a day now because I have multiple channels and also because that just seems to work better, once in the morning and once in the evening.
10:53: And then you just incorporated that into your daily routine, or do you batch, cause I'm Matt, you have 27 books out.
10:59: Like, how do you find time?
11:01: Yeah, so I start, I started out doing it every day.
11:05: So what I do now is every Sunday, I sit down and I just spend a couple of hours preparing all my content, and then you can schedule on author scale, so you can send it out to pop up in your drafts each day.
11:17: At certain times.
11:19: So I do that now.
11:20: And basically I just go in in the morning when I wake up.
11:22: It's part of my morning routine, you know, get up, take my supplements, grab my phone and post, and I do a little bit of scrolling just to make sure that TikTok knows I'm there and alive.
11:32: It's not just a bot posting.
11:33: And then at night, my bedtime routine includes posting again.
11:37: Gotcha.
11:37: I, I bet it's fun to post something in the evening and then wake up in the morning, and it's gotten a ton of views.
11:42: It becomes addicting.
11:44: It's interesting.
11:44: I've, I've been playing around a little bit with author scale, but the majority of my experience on TikTok just as a platform.
11:52: is with an account that is, as an, I'm an author myself too, but this account is not author-related, it's something totally different.
11:59: it's related to one of my hobbies, and so it's, I've done that before too, I'll post something, and you, you think like, oh, this one's the one, tons of people are gonna watch this one.
12:08: And it's not usually that.
12:09: So is that, do you find that the ones that you think are gonna go viral, tend to go viral?
12:14: Have you gotten a sense for that now, or is it still like a surprise?
12:18: It's a surprise.
12:19: I had one where it was literally an image of a hamburger.
12:23: And I mean, the hook was good, but it was just a picture of a hamburger.
12:26: It was something I was in a rush.
12:28: I threw it up and it went viral.
12:29: And I'm like, this has nothing to do with romance, but it was huge.
12:33: Yeah, it got people to stop and probably pay attention to it.
12:37: And then it's attention that is, is telling the platform more people want to see this, I imagine, right?
12:43: So that, that totally, that totally makes sense.
12:46: So, From, from the time you went full time to now, I imagine you've got, you've got that TikTok routine lockdown with author scale, that, have you continued to scale, or are you, have you found kind of like a comfortable, more like a steady point here in your author career?
13:05: What do you, what's, what's the, the momentum as, as you're continuing forward?
13:10: So I have scaled it.
13:11: I now have 4 accounts that I run.
13:14: , on TikTok, and so I have one that's just experimental, so I try different things there just to see, you know, like if the slideshows, I mean slideshows are working, so I make sure I use those the majority of the time.
13:25: But for example, like the Kindle screenshot videos, those are doing well as well.
13:29: And now Author scale lets you do those, but before they allowed that, then I was.
13:34: Doing it on Canva and so I test those and I, I test different types of videos and slideshows just to see what works best, but the majority of my videos are slideshows.
13:45: So, and then this year I'm scaling up as an author by branching out a bit more like doing translations and such.
13:52: So I will probably be doing, a new channel in German, another one in Spanish, etc.
13:59: Right, and then that's kind of what I was wondering is like, as an author, you're, you have the freedom now to do all those things that most authors dream of doing, right?
14:08: Translations being one of those.
14:09: I don't know, have you done any audio, like audiobooks to go, to go along with your e-books as well, or?
14:16: I've done one so far, right after the viral hit, I went up to, I think it was number 22 on the, the bestsellers list on, on all of Amazon, and Podium reached out to me.
14:26: To do an audiobook.
14:28: So I have that audiobook out.
14:30: It isn't doing as well as I had expected it to, but yeah, that's something I'm also going to be looking into in the future, right, right.
14:36: But still, right, yeah, that opened up a lot of opportunities.
14:40: Now those 4, those 4 accounts to kind of, because in my mind, when you say you have got 27 books.
14:47: I think you have, you have two pen names.
14:49: Is that correct?
14:50: That you do have two pen names right now I'm focusing on one, focusing on one of them.
14:53: OK.
14:54: Out of those 27 books, how many are like, because, right, I write all of my books in like a shared universe.
15:00: So they're all, they're all interconnected with each other.
15:02: So in my mind, are those, those 4 TikTok accounts are those for different.
15:07: Series?
15:08: Are those for different pen names?
15:10: How do you choose like what needs its own TikTok account?
15:14: So, I actually do the exact same thing on all of them.
15:17: I'm promoting the same books.
15:18: Normally what I do is I promote my top three books that are selling at the moment.
15:23: So when I release a new book, then that one's like number 1 on the, the, the TikTok slideshows and then I'll have the next two books that were popping off, right?
15:33: So whatever those are, and then once a week or so I will put out one of my backlists, just do a couple of videos on that.
15:39: Gotcha.
15:40: Just to remind people that there are other books because I have a certain series that is going off very well.
15:45: So, basically what happened is I wrote a single book.
15:48: It was a standalone, that was the one that went viral.
15:51: People loved it so much and they kept asking for more, but I hadn't written it with the intention of writing a series.
15:57: I was doing standalones, and so I struggled a little bit, but then I thought it, it makes sense to write another one, right?
16:03: So what I'd ended up doing was doing standalones in the same universe like you were talking about.
16:08: So I've got 4 books out now in that universe, and I started another series because people were asking, like, I write, why choose for the most part, and so people were asking for, you know, just couples.
16:19: So I did another series that was similar to the first one but with just couples.
16:24: that one hasn't done as well, but it's still doing pretty well.
16:27: So yeah, and then with the TikToks, basically I just wanted more reach because every video that goes out is more people, right?
16:34: So even if you're not getting tons of views and you're getting, let's say you have one TikTok video that gets 500 views and then you post another one on another account at the same time, that one also gets 500 views.
16:45: Well then, now you've got 1000 views, and most of them aren't showing to the same people.
16:49: And if they are, then my theory is you have that old saying where it's you have to see something 7 times before you buy it.
16:57: So these are showing up for people and I've had people say this keeps popping up in my timeline, like I know my for you page.
17:03: I need to get the book.
17:05: Yeah, yes, you do.
17:06: Right, right.
17:08: So in a sense that even if it's not necessarily going viral, having posting consistently, right, having multiple accounts to being, and I know that's a thing that To some folks is maybe a little daunting, the idea of having multiple accounts to manage.
17:22: I guess go into that, like how is, let's go down that rabbit hole.
17:25: You've got the 4 accounts.
17:27: How do you switch between them?
17:28: Do you have different devices for each account?
17:30: What's the, what do you find is like the best way to manage that?
17:33: So, TikTok makes it really easy to switch between your accounts.
17:35: You just, on your phone, you tap the, your name, and it will pop up with a list of all your accounts.
17:40: So you just have to switch over to the next one, and because the Author scale sends everything to your notifications, it's already There.
17:46: So you just have to go into your notifications and post.
17:48: Like it's very simple.
17:49: I do actually have two devices because I live in Guatemala.
17:52: I am still seeing quite a bit in the United States, but I wanted to test it to see if like using a US specific device would allow me to reach more people.
18:02: So I do have a phone that I set up when I was in Vegas, and I use a VPN on it.
18:06: So it believes that it's in the states, and I use that to post for one of my accounts.
18:11: And is it, have you seen a difference with that on that device?
18:15: OK.
18:16: They're about the same, yeah.
18:17: And the thing is too, is like, you can't predict virality, you can't predict what people are going to go crazy over.
18:23: So all we can do is control the factors that we know go into a viral video and hope that one of them goes off.
18:29: But yeah, posting consistently is definitely key.
18:32: And I think too, you have to realize that every video you put out there is an opportunity.
18:38: But even if it doesn't go viral, you're still getting more eyes on your books, which I think is really, really important.
18:43: And people forget that because they're going for the viral video, right?
18:45: And they're like, oh, I only got 1000 views on this one.
18:47: Well, hey, that's 1000 people who just learned about your book.
18:50: Well, I mean, think about, like the cost for 1000 impressions on an ad, right?
18:55: Right.
18:56: And compare that and then consider that this is, you know, obviously there's some tools you're using.
19:01: That are worth the money, right?
19:03: But so it's not exactly 100% free, but the cost comparison to like running ads just to get your, your book in front of people, especially if you're in a position where ads are, you know, not something that you can really afford, then I think that's the promise to a lot of authors out there is like, OK, that's where, that's where the rubber really meets the road, even if you don't go viral.
19:24: Exactly, I will see, for example, like if I have a bunch of videos that are only getting, you know, say 500 views, and then I get one that goes to 1000, I will see that bump on my KDP.
19:34: Like it, it earns money.
19:36: So yeah, and, and are you, I guess one thing to ask too, because I'm sure the, the authors at home are gonna want to know, are you in KDP Select Kindle Unlimited?
19:46: Yes, I am.
19:47: OK, OK.
19:48: Didn't know if you were, you were white or for the most, so.
19:51: It works better that way for romance in the most part.
19:54: I do know some romance people go wide, but honestly, every romance readers are voracious.
20:00: They just, they read so much that it's worth it being on it's unlimited.
20:05: Oh, that makes sense.
20:05: That makes sense.
20:06: Absolutely awesome.
20:08: So Marvin, I'm really glad you, you brought up bringing Genesis on here.
20:13: Because I think this was great.
20:14: And it was a brilliant strategy because you're like, well, hey, she can.
20:18: She can pitch authors scale, but no, I don't, I don't want to be too tongue in cheek here.
20:23: So, we've been talking about this for a minute and obviously author scale has helped Genesis.
20:27: She just told us her whole story and it's really inspiring, honestly.
20:31: So Marvin, tell us what author scale is.
20:34: Cause there might be some folks in the audience who are like, OK, so this thing makes slideshows, has something to do with TikTok, but let's, let's just make sure we're clear on what author scale is and what it does.
20:44: , yeah, first of all, again, thank you then Genesis, that you, that you joined this call and as Jack mentioned, it's always the best perspective, I think to hear from actual users who are using the software, who are using the platform and what kind of successes they had.
21:00: Similar backstory here is last year when I was in London, at SPS James Batch's conferences, a conference, I I was there as a guest.
21:10: We didn't have our, our booth, but we'll have it next year or this year.
21:13: , and I was like, I have to speak to James because the tool was so, was so fresh.
21:19: we weren't around for for very long and I wanted to get his perspective and just talk to him.
21:22: And I was for the entire week trying to get a hold of him, but he was always busy, you know, as the conference host or organizer, everyone wants to speak to you.
21:31: And then the very last day.
21:34: I think I had a chance.
21:36: I spotted him at the, at the, at the, at the, where we, where everyone was having drinks and then I was like, hey James, do you have 5 minutes to, to, to talk to me?
21:45: I have a pitch for you.
21:45: Like I want to pitch you my company.
21:47: And then I was wearing an ultra scale t-shirt like, like I'm now, right?
21:52: Then the lovely lady who was, who was standing next to him with a The drink was also part of the group that I interrupted.
22:01: She was like, oh wait, are you from Arscale?
22:03: I used the tool.
22:03: It's awesome, right?
22:05: And then, then that was kind of the best way to introduce A scale to James and then he was curious and he asked a lot of questions and then we got in touch and, and, and yes or no.
22:16: Now we're joining also SPS as a, as a sponsor this year, just as a backstory, yeah, that's I think for authors, it's and also for just people to introduce an idea or a software or even a book, right?
22:29: like word of mouth is always the strongest marketing.
22:32: But what is author scale?
22:33: Yeah, what is author scale?
22:35: It's a software that helps authors scale their organic TikTok marketing.
22:42: That means it's all built on the framework of posting a lot of content.
22:48: Everyone who knows a little bit about social media and virality marketing or organic marketing knows that you have to be.
22:56: Consistent and post a lot in order to see success.
23:00: It's not about doing one post a week or three a week like Genesis mentioned she used to do in the beginning.
23:06: It's also not your art gallery where people go and check out your, your Instagram or TikTok grid and say, oh my God, or judging you.
23:14: So you have to really see the social media platforms as an experiment.
23:19: Laboratory almost, right, where you just churn out content.
23:22: Obviously it needs to have some quality, but it's, it's, it's important to just be consistent and show up a lot everyday.
23:30: So, A scale helps in a way where you can upload your manuscript and then the tool will give you what will read the manuscript, will understand the manuscript, will pick the scenes that are worth marketing because there's only, let's say a handful of scenes in Any given book that are really worth marketing in in this in this short form format and then it will take them and turn them into a variety of formats, right?
23:56: Slideshows being the most popular one.
23:59: But as Genesis mentioned, the Kindle screenshots is also super popular right now.
24:03: We're always always working on innovating the formats, but right now slideshows are the the most popular format being It's slideshow as an actual slideable slideshow or a video that plays underneath and text is just popping up and right.
24:19: So that's the format, which is very simple, right?
24:23: From the, if if you look at it, it's not highly, it's it's it doesn't require a lot of expensive filming equipment or production effort is super low, but the strategy of this is scale.
24:35: Basically you post twice or 3 times a day.
24:39: And if you have a tool that gives you the post, ready to post, the only thing you need to do is post, right?
24:45: Or authors can let you even post it automatically.
24:48: But so the only thing you need to do is be a human on TikTok.
24:53: Because what TikTok hates and all all your social media platforms is if if if they think you're a bot, right?
24:58: It's just you're everything is automated.
25:01: So, You've as an author, you have to put on your business hat and think in terms of how can I scale my, my marketing and my, and, and yeah, how can I become like a 10 person author just being myself and, and, and make use of, of different tools, etc.
25:19: So then if you, if you take on this hat and start, start thinking in terms of scalability, then it just makes sense, right, to, to use a tool where, where you can Scale your content creation and focus on what needs to stay human is interacting with your readers, replying to comments, warming up your account, super important.
25:40: Maybe we can talk about this later before you start posting anything.
25:43: So, all the human aspects that can't and won't ever be able to automate.
25:50: Right.
25:51: So, in, in a nutshell, scale helps with content creation, scene identification and just integrates with your different TikTok profiles and essentially it's just trying to make your life easier when it comes to organic marketing.
26:05: And that, and that's the big thing that stood out to me from Genesis's story because it was author scale that allowed her to be that consistent and to post that frequently.
26:15: But you also said like the experimentation side of things too is really important.
26:19: And if you sit, sat down to write a dozen slideshows yourself, you probably would wind up writing them all in a very similar way.
26:27: But having a tool that can be like, what, you know, because I've I've experimented with, with it myself too, it'll give you slides.
26:33: Slideshows that are all a little different, or they come at it from a slightly different angle.
26:37: They're they're may be on the same scene from the book, but they're coming at it from a different way.
26:42: And again, you as the author, you have a limited perspective.
26:46: You don't know which one of those is going to attract readers and potentially go viral.
26:51: So I like that, that you brought up that experimentation piece along with it as well.
26:55: Maybe you can talk about that a little bit more about like how authors can experiment.
26:58: Yeah, so that's super important what you just mentioned seeing.
27:01: It as a playground and not as yeah as your face, right?
27:06: And that's why we we we see a tendency that when you are on TikTok, you can have either your your author profile, which is in most cases a pen name, so it's already anonymous, but you can also have like a reader profile, which is, for example, romance lover or something, the handle, right?
27:23: You pretend to be a reader and you just share content about different books and sometimes it's your own book, right?
27:29: And we See that authors treat those accounts with more experimentation because I think that's a human psychological thing, right?
27:37: So as soon as you attach to something, you treat it with more, with more, a bit more care, right?
27:43: You're a bit more careful, right?
27:45: even though you already have a pen name and this is your pen, pen name account, the reader account, you would treat more experimentally.
27:51: And then if when you scale to multiple accounts, we also see an uptick because then your ultimate experimentation, right?
27:57: And When we ask authors that had viral posts, if they would have thought that this post is going to go viral, all of them say no, this is what you also ask Genesis, right?
28:07: So we see a clear pattern there.
28:08: You cannot orchestrate it from the beginning.
28:10: It's not like you can say, I know this one is going to go viral, right?
28:14: If you start thinking like this, you, you will be disappointed.
28:17: But I, I spent so much time thinking about this hook from this angle and this creative and oh my God, why is nobody appreciating that?
28:23: So you will get discouraged, right?
28:25: And one thing that I also want to pick up that you mentioned before is author scale helped Genesis to do this daily.
28:32: Yes, to some extent, but actually, Genesis helped Genesis to do this daily because A scale is just a tool and we see a lot of people that still struggle even though they have the tool, right?
28:44: But you need to learn how to use the tool and most importantly, you need to turn it into a habit as Genesis also like has explained it very well.
28:50: She's kind of integrated.
28:52: into her daily routine and it's like brushing your teeth, like just turning out a couple of posts a day and that mindset shift, no tool can achieve, right?
29:01: That's, that's really on the, on the author level and I think January is also a big month where where people come with their New Year's resolutions and they're like, oh my God, this this year I'm going to make it with my writing.
29:12: So I also want to take the moment to really motivate everyone to that it's, if you're serious about, becoming a professional author and especially if you're starting new, organic marketing is the best way to get started because it doesn't require a lot of upfront costs, right?
29:29: And then once, once you, once you have some initial successes and you start earning some money, then you can reinvest into ads.
29:37: But what will happen then, for example, is if you have a proven creative that went viral already and you use it, then ads are going to perform much better.
29:46: So you're going to learn what resonates with your like.
29:48: It's, it's the foundation of your, of your marketing mix.
29:52: You just, if you, if you just come up with the ad creative that you think would perform well and then you spend money on it and then the CPMs are bad and the kick rate is bad and you get discouraged, it's kind of a vicious circle, right?
30:06: Stop experimenting, turn out content, see what resonates, take that and scale it with ads, use it in your newsletters, etc.
30:12: Like everything builds on top of this foundation.
30:15: That's that's like the next level.
30:18: It's like I, I love that idea that you can start with this organic content, and then you put it out there, and now it's not, yes, it's getting you attention on your books, it's potential, it's making you money potentially, but When, when a post fails, it's not a failure because it's telling you, OK, that's just not the right hook.
30:37: You're, you're actually gaining knowledge from that.
30:40: It's not a failure if, if you don't get views on it.
30:42: It just means you got to keep trying.
30:43: You gotta keep experimenting.
30:44: I love that.
30:45: I love that perspective.
30:46: This is important.
30:47: Now you talk about experimentation.
30:49: I'm sorry, I want to go back.
30:51: Yeah.
30:51: You're talking about experimentation a lot.
30:53: How precious do you need to be with these posts?
30:56: Because I know a lot of us authors, especially us older ones, have activation energy issues.
31:02: Like, are you spending a lot of time like crafting these hooks in the backgrounds, or are you just If you're experimenting, are you just like throwing it out there and go?
31:10: Like, what's the balance there?
31:12: Is it a question for me or for Genesis?
31:14: I'd like to hear from both of you, the person who did the software and the person who uses it.
31:19: Maybe Genesis, to start, what do you do?
31:22: Is it do you pretty much just kind of Take, yeah, let us know.
31:26: Give us an insight into, into how you do that.
31:28: Just throw things out there.
31:29: I'm very much a proponent of not spending too much time on anything that you don't know is gonna work.
31:36: So test it, do it fast, and see what the result is.
31:41: So one of the, the things, the stories that I tell that really goes.
31:46: To this is that when you know, Megaverse and stuff was starting, or not sorry, Bully romance was starting to take off, the Bully Academy romance, I, saw that it was taking off.
31:54: There were maybe like 3 books out on it, and people were talking about it.
31:58: So I thought, well, maybe this would be a good idea to jump into.
32:01: So I wrote a blurb, made a cover, and put it up as a pre-order, but no book.
32:06: Just Put these things up and people started buying like mad like the the pre-order signing up for the pre-order and so then I wrote the book and that's kind of my, it's crazy but it's doesn't it, Jack?
32:19: This is my philosophy for just about everything test if it works first.
32:23: What happens if it doesn't?
32:24: You haven't lost anything because you literally spent 5 minutes throwing it out there.
32:28: Yes, there's a famous director and I, whenever I bring him up, I, I never can remember his name.
32:35: I, I, I need to keep a tab open on Chrome.
32:38: So I always have it there, but famous director, a movie director, and what he would do before the movie even came into existence, he would create the poster.
32:47: He would have some.
32:48: To create the poster for the movie.
32:50: And if it was compelling enough, then he would make the movie.
32:53: Like that was the first thing that got made.
32:55: And I think sometimes starting from the end is a, a little, little different conversation there because we're talking about like creating a book cover and a blurb before you've even written the book.
33:06: But still, like that's.
33:08: I've toyed with that a little bit myself.
33:11: Don't try that if you're not an experienced author.
33:14: Children.
33:14: Genesis has written 27 books.
33:16: She knows what she's doing.
33:17: She knows she can execute.
33:18: So like, if you haven't written your first book yet, don't do it.
33:21: Don't do it.
33:22: Like, well, yeah, and if you, yeah, because you're, how, and I, I guess I want to know too, how far out did you put that pre-order?
33:30: Was it like a year in advance or what was it was like 2 months.
33:34: Boy, wait.
33:36: But I bet that was lots of motivation to write it then.
33:39: Oh yeah, yeah, no, I work best with deadlines, and that was definitely a good deadline.
33:43: But yeah, but that was like just to illustrate the point that like I am like that.
33:48: So with TikTok and with author scale, like, that's my thing.
33:51: It's like, oh, here's a new thing that people are talking about.
33:54: Let's try it out on, you know.
33:56: My test account, and I'll just start throwing things out and see how they react, you know, see how my audience reacts.
34:01: No, I think that's great because I think there's a lot of overthinking that goes on when somebody's like, OK, I'm going to do this TikTok thing and I'm gonna spend all this time and I make sure I do it right.
34:10: It's like, just, just do it.
34:11: Just start doing it.
34:12: And because you don't know if you're going to be doing it right.
34:15: And Marvin, I know if playing with your features, there's, you can kind of direct it when you, when you're asking it to make slideshows.
34:23: You can be like, we'll make, make them a little bit more punchy, or, or you can give it, you can kind of direct it in a certain direction.
34:30: What are some of your suggestions there for folks if like, They generate some slideshows and like, there's that, you know, authors are kind of tend to be kind of creative perfectionists, sometimes, right?
34:42: How much tinkering is worth it and how much is too much.
34:44: I think Genesis does it right and going back to Emma's question about how to navigate this topic.
34:51: Internally, we have a lot of discussions around how much customizability do we want to allow because as you said, authors are creative perfectionists and they request a lot of features, hey, I want to move the text here and there, other colors, other fonts and please make this and we're always like, OK, yeah, we want to listen to the users, but at the same time, if we have too much customizability, then we become Canva and we we we want to rather become a workflow tool.
35:16: We encourage, especially if you're starting out.
35:19: Just trust our prompts, trust the system.
35:23: Might be a little bit of hallucination going on.
35:25: We're working on that.
35:26: AI is getting better and better with semantic understanding and everything, but we're improving also our, our internal work workflow, how, how, how the book is being read and analyzed and how, how everything works.
35:37: So this is being worked on.
35:39: don't over over I don't spend too much time on it.
35:44: I mean, it's, it's interesting.
35:47: and it's, it's, it's definitely if you'd like tweak the prompt and you can say please start with this scene.
35:52: If you know we have a scene that that that will will perform well or you wrote the scene, while you wrote the scene, you already had marketing hooks in mind, then then go, go ahead and use it.
36:02: But if you're just starting out, keep it simple like generate a slideshow, add some background images, maybe use the ones that we, we suggest, we have like a suggested prompt, you click on it, you get something.
36:11: Don't overthink it, just post because again, You cannot tell if it goes viral or not.
36:17: Probably the post that you least expect to will will do well.
36:19: And we also want to say this is not about going viral, right?
36:23: virality should always be seen as the extra bonus on top.
36:27: It's a system to consistently, systematically improve your royalty baseline because every post, even though it's just 300, 400, 500 views, if you stack them up, if you have 2 or 3 of them, those a day, right?
36:40: That's thousands of views.
36:41: We, tens of thousands of views a month, depending on on how active you are and that that will, that will accumulate over time and will have a branding impact, branding, people start talking about you as Genesis mentioned, people need to see your, your ad 7 times at least to to act on it.
36:58: And yeah, so I would just say trust the system.
37:01: Don't be, trust the, the, the, yeah, trust the system.
37:05: I think if you have to start believing.
37:08: That in order to be successful on social media, you need to experiment.
37:12: If you believe this, then it doesn't make sense to be too artsy there, right?
37:18: Focus your energy on writing the books, on figuring out what people are actually demanding, and then also what Genesis mentioned something super important that she tested the book before it was written.
37:29: That's a concept that we see happening more and more often and I mean people talk.
37:35: About, I mean, or a couple of years ago, people started talking about writing to market, right?
37:39: So don't write something that you think will resonate and write something that where you see that there is a certain subgenre or category ticking up and then you write something for this, but we believe this is, this is old because that doesn't guarantee your book to be discovered.
37:56: If you just write something for a market that is ticking up upwards, you still need to market your book, right?
38:02: So what we think is kind of the new philosophy or framework is you, you don't write to, to market, you write to scale, right?
38:11: So, so you write to scale.
38:13: What does it mean?
38:14: It even means what Genesis did, right?
38:17: So you have a book idea in mind, maybe the genre is ticking up, but you test it first on TikTok.
38:23: You see if it resonates even maybe with a pre-order, if you want to go that, that far, but you don't need to have a pre-order, you can just have the hook, right?
38:30: You can just test the hook and if it goes, if it does well, we can take the hook and then build the book afterwards, right?
38:36: That is, that is very extreme, let's say.
38:39: Emma also said maybe not, not that you shouldn't start with, with that.
38:42: Maybe you should get some experience being like the traditional author, but as soon as you you you want to scale your business, you have to think how do I scale myself because nowadays, With all the tools available, you can become like a, as I mentioned, a 10 people army yourself, right?
38:58: If you have the right tools and you focus on where you need to be a human, writing your voice, which can never be replaced by AI, right?
39:06: But, your, your marketing, being an AI assistant, being an AIPA, all of that stuff, if, if you don't do it, somebody else will do it and they will outperform you.
39:17: Now is this when you're using Your system and your prompting and say you're working on the same book for a while.
39:23: Does your system, is it one of those systems that learns from you, the more you prompt it and tweak and the more input you give it?
39:30: Cause I know with some of the systems like clot or whatever, over time it'll, it'll learn, it'll learn you and it'll learn what you want.
39:37: So, you're touching upon a very important point.
39:40: So the system shouldn't optimize for what you want, it should optimize for what is working, right?
39:45: So, what we recommend doing is as soon as you have a slideshow or a post that did well, you can then duplicate it and tell the system, hey, this is this performed well, create something similar.
39:59: Then it will take this similar scene and write in a slideshow, slightly different words and maybe a different angle and then you can take a similar background image and then you have a slideshow or a post that is based on another one that went viral and that's how you start refining.
40:15: Your hooks and perfecting your hooks, right?
40:18: And then you will learn, oh my God, those are the three hooks that work best for my book.
40:22: Then you can go and do ads with it or or talk about it during a conference and when you talk about your book because you know what are the three hooks.
40:29: So yeah, that's basically a system that we also teach like how to, how to work on top of things that are working and at the same time still have some time dedicated to experimenting and figuring out what what could also be working.
40:42: One thing that you mentioned there and this is, because the slideshows and all that is maybe kind of taking center stage, but the background image, right?
40:54: and I guess this is, maybe two questions here.
40:57: First, I'll field this one to Marvin.
40:59: How does author scale help with that?
41:02: What tools for these For the images on these slideshows, and then maybe some trends you see there, and then Genesis, I want to ask you about this as well from the author point of view, but Marvin, I'll, I'll let you go first on, on authors skill side.
41:15: What are the tools there for those images?
41:16: Cause I could see some authors being like, OK, I made the slideshow and now I've got to pick an image.
41:21: I think that's there's 3 ways to add images on author scale.
41:24: Either you can upload yours if you have a custom one, very few people use that.
41:28: There's a stock image library where you can just search for, let's say hockey player or football player or couple kissing or whatever and then you will get the stock images that you can automatically click and add to your slideshow as a background or there is an AI integration which will it will create an image, right, with.
41:49: It would even suggest the prompt, so you don't need to write the prompt yourself.
41:53: You can if you have something very specific in mind.
41:55: For instance, paranormal or yeah, romanticy, some, some creatures or something that you have very clear vision about, you can write it.
42:03: But if you use the suggested prompt, the system will read your slideshow, put it in the context of the book, understand what it's about, suggest an image that doesn't distract too much.
42:13: From, from the text, it should be a subtle background, right?
42:16: I mean there's different strategies, but right now, if you're just starting out, we recommend putting the focus on the text rather in the background.
42:22: Yeah.
42:23: So, so those, that's that's how authors get helped with the background images.
42:26: I would, I would recommend to go with the AI generation, recommended generation one.
42:31: If you don't want to use AI for for images, then you can just use the stock image integration.
42:37: And, and Genesis, for your slideshows, what do you tend to do?
42:43: What do you find you gravitate towards?
42:44: I always use AI.
42:46: It's just easier for me because trying to sort through the stock images and find something that works for my book is tedious, man, like I said, I'm all about moving through it as fast as possible.
42:56: So yeah, I just jump into the AI and I go in, do a couple of generations, and off we go.
43:02: Usually.
43:03: I try not to nitpick too much about whether it's like exactly what my characters look like in my head, because I think authors can get very precious about that and be like, well, you know, it's not quite the right blonde on this woman, you know, or her nose should be slightly smaller.
43:17: I don't worry about it, because in the end, readers are there for the hook.
43:21: The image catches their attention, but they're not going to be reading the book and go, oh my goodness, like the hair was wrong in that TikTok.
43:29: Yes, no, I, I could see that.
43:31: I could see where it's the, the image is a tool to help get their attention, help you, right, and that sort of thing.
43:38: And, and, but beyond that, that, that it's done its job as long as it gets them to like stop scrolling and start swiping on your slideshow.
43:47: Exactly.
43:47: Like I said, I had one that went viral that was literally just a hand holding a hamburger.
43:51: Yeah, well, well, that I could see that though, just a hand.
43:54: And first of all, food is probably going to make people stop anyway.
43:59: But yeah, no, that, that all makes sense to me.
44:02: I get that.
44:03: I get that.
44:04: Now, this, this big, to kind of like put all of this together, right?
44:09: There's, when you're talking about, there's so many moving parts here, and so I want to just kind of maybe, maybe go from like beginning to end.
44:18: So an author who's approaching They're approaching TikTok slideshows, they're gonna upload their book to author scale, they can make the slideshows right there, experiment with them, be open to, to different hooks that you might not have thought of, or you maybe you wouldn't have written it that way.
44:35: You have the ability to play with the, the images, sounds like very easily.
44:39: As well, and have them up and ready to go.
44:42: Is there anything, and then I guess we did talk a little bit about, or I, I think we did, about like keeping your account warm, right?
44:50: If somebody just wants to dive into this, right?
44:52: What are, what are some other things that like, they should be aware of?
44:57: There's, there's a lot of what I like to call TikTok voodoo advice out there, because it seems like people are like, oh well, you know, you've got like so many posts, you gotta comment on this, and it seems like for somebody Who hasn't used TikTok before, it's like, why do I have to jump through so many hoops to just post on social media.
45:15: Other social media platforms aren't quite the same way.
45:18: What whoever wants to speak to that is fine, but so I can take it and say that when we observe successful accounts and less successful accounts on our platform and then we go and analyze the, the accounts and we talk to the authors and we see what, what they could have done wrong and done right.
45:36: There's one thing that a lot of times stands out, which is warming up your account.
45:42: So before you start posting it all, you should be warming up your account for a couple of days, meaning you should be consuming content on your for you page and give TikTok signals which content you're after and which content not.
45:59: And the goal is for your for you page to show you only relevant content about your specific niche and really niche down if it's, if it's like Genesis mentioned the Omegaverse romance, then try to make sure that every post or most of the posts you see have to do something with that specific subcategory, right?
46:19: Avoid the funny cat videos or the hilarious failures, failed videos or, or I don't know that your your your next movie's trailer or something and avoid all of those.
46:31: Even there's a a a function on TikTok where you can long tap and then something pops up and you click not interested.
46:39: Make sure you stick to this.
46:40: I'm not interested in this content.
46:41: I just want to see Omegaverse content.
46:44: And that you do for 5 days or 3 to 5 days, and the longer the better.
46:50: and then you start posting.
46:52: Why is this relevant?
46:53: Because, TikTok, you can create a TikTok account now completely fresh, start posting something random and you will get 300 views or something.
47:01: And, and, and that shows how TikTok works, the algorithm, right?
47:04: So you will first receive some views and TikTok will then measure.
47:08: , engagement rates, right?
47:11: How do people interact with, with, with that post, the 1st 300 views or 200 or 50 or whatever.
47:18: And if you tick some boxes, you will get more reach, then they will analyze again and if you tick the boxes again, you will get more reach.
47:25: So it's it comes kind of in waves, right?
47:27: And if the first few people that TikTok reached or the first few viewers that TikTok served you are, are not relevant people.
47:36: Because they're not into books, they won't interact.
47:40: So the surest way to make sure that TikTok has a slight idea about what what audience you're after is showing it by the type of content you consume.
47:50: If you consume for 5 days, just Omegaverse romance stuff, book reviewers, other authors, other slideshow accounts, then TikTok knows, OK, this account is seems to be in this niche, so it posted something, it seems to be a.
48:04: Similar post like a slideshow post and I think I'm going to show it to people interested in this book, right?
48:10: Or in to people that are in that niche and then you're more likely to have a better results with the first few views, which signals to TikTok again, oh, people actually liked it.
48:21: So we'll get more views, how you get the for you page boost and can go viral potentially.
48:30: This is very, very.
48:31: , important thing to consider because after they, we, we see this a lot after we teach some of our frameworks, people are like, OK, I want to post right now, right?
48:42: They say be patient, first do some, do some warming up.
48:46: If you have an existing account, you can also warm it up, warm it up again, right?
48:50: but it's also super important to keep The content strategy consistent, right?
48:55: If you have Facebook here, if you have content there.
48:58: So we're recommending in most cases it actually just start a new account, right?
49:01: It's actually in many cases beneficial to start a new account.
49:05: TikTok is not a lot about followers.
49:07: It's, it's more about your content strategy and often it will, it will reward new accounts because obviously it wants to reward it's, it's.
49:17: Right, there's one thing because we're talking about this, the, the type of content that you're consuming on the platform.
49:24: There's one trap that I've kind of recognized as an author, just in general on social media, and maybe you can speak to this, is that a lot of authors on social media talk about being an author, and that is relevant to other authors, not to readers.
49:42: And so, and so there's a difference between book talk and author talk, right?
49:47: OK, right?
49:48: Author talk is where you talk about writing your manuscript, you talk about editing it, you talk about all the business of being an author.
49:55: Maybe you're not trying to give advice to people per se, but you're talking about your experience as an author is what I've kind of seen, and that doesn't necessarily line up with what readers are looking for.
50:07: Readers.
50:07: are looking for the story.
50:09: And so, I imagine it could be easy to fall into that trap depending on which authors you follow.
50:14: You would want to be followed, if you are following authors, I imagine, you'd probably want to be following those who are posting the kind of content that readers are looking for, right?
50:23: Because then you can engage with that content and that's, you're, that's more aligned with what you're trying to do if you're trying to find readers, right?
50:31: Cause otherwise you're, you're You're gonna be attracting the wrong group of people.
50:36: So for me, when I'm warming up my account, like I try and warm, keep it warm, right?
50:41: I make sure not to watch those kind of videos on my author account.
50:45: So I have my own personal account and that's where I watch those kinds of videos.
50:49: All the fun stuff, you know, like, you know, watching cat videos or watching like tips and tricks and stuff like that, you watch on your personal account and not on your author account because that will mess up the algorithm.
51:01: Exactly.
51:01: Exactly.
51:02: And for, for those who are like in a niche that maybe is hard to find, like how, how do you go about finding some of those accounts to follow or where that content is being made, is like a hashtag the best way to kind of sort through some stuff or just searching that specific niche?
51:18: I know, Marvin, you mentioned like book reviewers being one of those.
51:21: Right?
51:22: So, somebody who reviews books in your genre, probably things like that are a good place to start.
51:27: Yeah, hashtags is a good way to start, or, or go to Amazon in your respective subcategory, see who's top 1020, look them up on TikTok, what are they doing, what have.
51:37: Are they using?
51:38: Follow them, follow what who, who are they following.
51:41: They must be doing something right.
51:42: Don't need to reinvent the wheel.
51:43: Right, right, exactly, exactly.
51:46: No, that's, that's, that's, that's good because that, that I know for a lot of people is probably a, a step of the process that they They screw up along those lines.
51:55: OK, so while I finish posting the TikTok post I just created an author scale while you all were chatting, I have a question.
52:01: Does your platform, it's a closed system in the sense that it doesn't train your book.
52:06: So if I upload several of my chapters or my whole book, my book is going to stay in there, in there, right?
52:12: Yeah, yeah, that's a very common question we get and obviously a fear that the authors have when they upload their, their book somewhere.
52:19: Right?
52:20: Something we had to address a lot in the beginning of of the company, but now that we have more people know who we are and the people have want some trust.
52:30: I think it's it's much better now.
52:32: But yeah, we don't use anything for training, none of that, none of your book content is used for AI training.
52:39: You can delete it anytime, then it's gone.
52:41: It's, it's on our closed system where, where people can.
52:45: Access it.
52:46: The only way you can log into your account is by sending you a login link to your email, so there's no way to hack it unless somebody hacks your email, but then it's not really our fault, so to speak.
52:58: To update your password regularly and use a strong password and that's, that's your responsibility.
53:03: And so I uploaded one chapter and it literally, I did not like Genesis said, I did not play with it.
53:09: I uploaded a chapter and I did not touch the text it generated.
53:15: I did not touch it.
53:15: I'm like, we're gonna do this, man.
53:17: We're gonna do this.
53:18: And it's up on TikTok now.
53:20: I feel so special.
53:22: Awesome.
53:22: Yes, I, I did.
53:24: I posted before we came on here.
53:26: I made, made it through author scale and everything and just the ease of it and the flexibility, because if you did want to, like, you can, you can also import slideshows.
53:38: Into this.
53:38: So if you did want to tweak them a little bit, we're not, that's the suggestion here, but you can do that too.
53:43: Just that you get, you give everybody so many options, not a ton of options, not too many options.
53:48: But at each step of the process, I like that you guys do that.
53:51: You, you give people options on like, OK, we can generate them for you, you can upload them, you can, and then with the background images, likewise, you can choose from stock photos, upload your own.
54:01: So that little, that, those few degrees of freedom.
54:05: And I've been paying my kid to warm it up.
54:07: So I didn't just put it to a cold account.
54:09: I've been paying my 16 year old, like, can you go on my thing and my TikTok account and do your thing.
54:16: So I'm, I guess if you have a teenager, you know, use them.
54:19: There you go, there you go.
54:22: All right strategy.
54:24: Right.
54:25: So, first of all, or in, in closing here, I should say, I wanna thank both of you, Marvin and Genesis, for being here today.
54:32: I wanna give you each the chance, if there's anything you wanna say on the way out, Genesis, I'll let you go first.
54:38: If there's anything else you wanna share with our audience before we wrap things up here, go ahead, let us know.
54:44: Well, basically, I just want to encourage people to take the step and get out there and start promoting your stuff on TikTok.
54:52: Even if you're not using A scale, like, jump on there because it is worth it.
54:56: Excellent, excellent.
54:58: Marvin, thank you as well for joining us.
55:00: I'm really glad that we bumped into each other at Author Nation, and so that you could be here and of course, be on, on Book Funnel Live coming up in February, but anything you want to share in closing, any final thoughts?
55:11: Well, again, thank you, Jack, for, for having.
55:14: Being us and that can build on top of what Genesis said, I think we'd love to encourage authors to learn how the tool works because the tool alone cannot make you successful.
55:24: You alone are respon responsible to to make yourself successful.
55:29: And I think the one truth that you need to start believing, if you don't yet is that you can only be successful on social media if you treat it like a laboratory, like Jack said.
55:41: And that means you need to turn out a lot of content.
55:44: Most authors, their posts that have gone viral, they wouldn't have known that it goes viral.
55:49: And if you ask them, hey, did you, did you know which post?
55:52: Did you know that this post will go viral, they all say no, right?
55:56: So if you know, then I think you will stop treating it like with your creative perfectionism.
56:02: Just go create posts and then also the biggest kind of concerns that we hear from the community is like, it doesn't work for my book.
56:10: Or I don't know what to post.
56:12: I don't have the skills to to do the posts and I don't have time.
56:15: Those are the biggest concerns that we get.
56:17: And let me just say that we have enough data to prove that it works for, for all fiction genres.
56:22: Obviously romance is the biggest, but it works for all fiction genres.
56:25: Your readers are out there.
56:27: If you, you, you just need to get in front of them and you get in front of them by posting a lot of content about your book and author scale helps you with that, then you don't know what to post.
56:37: Author scale helps you with that.
56:39: You The skills to do it.
56:41: Well, you don't need to be a social media expert.
56:43: You can use author scale and it does it for you and you just post it.
56:46: I don't have the time to do it.
56:48: That's also not true anymore with author scale because even with a busy schedule, you can still use 5 minutes to create posts.
56:55: I just did it while, while we're talking, so you can, you can do it during some of your favorite activities like I don't know, we're listening to a podcast and it's actually something that I also started thinking over, over the holidays, how, how.
57:08: can make our community more successful by using the tool because the frameworks work, the the strategy works.
57:15: It's just putting in the effort and making it a daily habit.
57:19: I mean, a great book that I can recommend here is Atomic Habits.
57:23: Maybe everyone knows it.
57:25: How to turn this into, into a habit, like make it obvious that that you wanna, that you want to make this year about your your author career and really step up your marketing.
57:34: I don't know, print, print a poster somewhere that has Maybe a sentence about the consistency.
57:41: what we used to have in our old office was done is better than perfect, right?
57:46: You see it every day.
57:47: It would remind you, hmm I need to post on TikTok.
57:50: Make it, make it attractive like while you do the slideshows, listen to your favorite podcast or listen to music or you watch a show because it's so easy, you don't really need to spend brain power, you just need to do it.
58:02: and then, yeah, and then make it satisfying like we have now.
58:07: Rated a new feature on authors scale, which is a habit tracker, where if you post daily, you see kind of the green, you see the green streak and if you stop posting it, it's not green anymore, so you want to want it to be green.
58:19: So those little things we hope help, right?
58:22: It's about forming a habit.
58:25: That is what you need to crack in order to be successful on social media.
58:28: If you manage this, it will, it will have an effect on all areas of your author career because you will know what to use for ads and you will have better landing pages once you use.
58:36: Which hooks resonate.
58:38: You, you would have better newsletters if you know which hooks resonate and you would start writing to scale and not writing to market or writing just because you want to write.
58:46: If you're an author, you have a calling, that's why you're an author, that's why you want to tell and write stories.
58:51: But if you, but that calling alone doesn't, doesn't guarantee that the book will be seen.
58:56: So, yeah, that's, that's all I can say for for closing remarks and thanks again, Jack for for having us.
59:02: Absolutely.
59:03: It was a pleasure and I do, I want to mention here too.
59:06: Before we move on, Marvin, this is the 3rd time I've I've said it now, but just so you all know, will be joining us for Book Funnel Live in February.
59:15: It's the 1st Wednesday of every month is Book Funnel Live.
59:19: And so he'll be joining us for a guest webinar on author scale.
59:23: So for those of you watching this episode of the podcast, obviously, you can look into the author scale between now and then.
59:30: I'll make sure to include a link where you can sign up for that webinar and see some insight.
59:35: From him, so that's excellent.
59:37: Thank you, again, Marvin, for being here on the podcast, for coming on the podcast.
59:42: Thank you, Genesis, for tagging along.
59:44: I'm really glad that, you, you joined us today as well.
59:48: I think it gave us both sides of the conversation, right, from an author who uses the service and from the, the service directly.
59:55: So that's great.
59:55: Thank you both for being here.
59:57: Thank you, of course, to my co-host for today, Emma.
1:00:00: I could not do this without you.
1:00:02: And thank you, of course, to you, our audience.
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