Is Anything Real?

They say “books don’t sell.” Jeremy Jones says that’s the wrong goal because the real job of a business book isn’t copies…it’s credibility.

In Ep. 61 of Is Anything Real?, Jeremy Jones (Jones Media Publishing) breaks down the Book Bridge: how authorship becomes a trust engine, and trust becomes pipeline. We get specific on the two moves most founders skip:
  1. Build your book around a named process (IP) that differentiates you
  2. Pair “organic authority” with a real launch plan...because Amazon rewards external traffic done right
You’ll also hear a real case study: a four-week launch + smart paid traffic that drove ~$6,500 in royalties, 200+ customers, and “tens of thousands” in downstream client revenue.

Plus: the AI shift in publishing (including Amazon KDP’s AI disclosure checkbox) and why the “human element” is the moat.

Follow Jeremy:
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If you’re building a reality-first growth engine and want to pressure-test what’s real in your system, grab a quick Foundation Call with me: https://calendly.com/adamwbarney/foundation-call-20min

Creators and Guests

Host
Adam W. Barney
Adam W. Barney helps transitioning leaders navigate career and leadership inflection points with clarity and momentum. Author of Make Your Own Glass Half Full and creator of EnergyOS. Based in Boston, fueled by family and music.

What is Is Anything Real??

Is Anything Real? is the Reality-First Leadership podcast for builder-leaders who want outcomes, not optics. Each week, Adam W. Barney sits down with founders and operators to unpack positioning, marketing, community, energy management, and influence - plus the numbers behind what actually worked.

You’ll hear: a quick Reality Check, a practical Proof Stack (inputs → actions → outcomes), and one EnergyOS habit you can run this week. Specifics over slogans; humane systems over hustle cosplay.

New episodes every Wednesday at 12:00 PM ET.

👉 Book your 20-min Exploration Call: https://calendly.com/adamwbarney/explorationplugin-20min

[00:05.4]
They say books don't sell, but what if your book isn't supposed to sell copies? It's supposed to sell you. Today's guest has turned book publishing into a credibility engine, blending authorship, authority, and Amazon ads into one of the smartest organic plus paid systems in marketing.

[00:24.3]
He's helping consultants, coaches, and founders write the books that build empires. This is Jeremy Jones from Jones Media Publishing. Welcome back to "Is Anything Real?", And the show where we filter the noise, cut the jargon, and find what's actually working in marketing.

[00:42.6]
I'm Adam W. Barney, energy coach, author of Make Your Own Glass Half Full, and your host for this sprint through the truth behind the click. Today again, I'm joined by Jeremy Jones, founder of Jones Media Publishing, a Scottsdale-based firm that's helped launch over 225 books for consultants and experts looking to scale their credibility, leads, and impact.

[01:03.6]
He's been in marketing for two decades, and he's here to talk about how book publishing paired with paid ads, might just be the most underutilized funnel in business growth today. Welcome, Jeremy. Hey, Adam. Thanks for having me here. You got it. All right.

[01:18.7]
You've helped hundreds of people publish books not for fame, but for growth. Why do you think books still work so powerfully in an age of algorithms? Yeah, they really do. And that's just because books are not going anywhere. It's how we learn as we grow up.

[01:35.9]
It's how we learn while we're in college. There's a saying that I don't think is going away anytime soon that leaders are readers, business leaders read books. A lot of times, business leaders, executives privately have things they want to work on.

[01:53.1]
You know, personal development, personal growth. And so they'll go, they'll look for a book privately. They don't go seek out a coach first. They go seek out a book privately with an issue they want to work on themselves and try to solve themselves. And then the author connects with them, they like the author, and then that's where it opens up opportunities for a coaching program, or consulting, or something like that.

[02:12.3]
So, it's a great door in for that. That's awesome. You know, and I know you focus on books that build that credibility, build that authority, and also work to drive client acquisition. How do you design a book that actually sells the author instead of just the story?

[02:29.2]
Yeah, that's a great question. So, there's a variety of different ways to do this just for the sake of time on this interview, we'll focus on two areas. Number one is the process. Right. So if a coach or consultant has a predictable process that they take their clients through, every time. That's a formula, or a mechanism, or a process that they take people through that could be the backbone or the basis of a book.

[02:52.6]
That's number one. And then number two, if you go dive deeper on that, each of those processes are a mechanism to help people get results. And you can narrow down, and you can talk about one of the mechanisms of your business and how you get clients results and you teach on that and share insights, and how that works, and client experiences and client stories.

[03:12.1]
So those are just two areas that a coach or consultant could focus on. Yeah. And then on the flip side of that, what do most entrepreneurs or coaches get wrong when they think about writing a book to grow their business? Yeah, I love this question because it kind of ties into what you mentioned before is a lot of people that are, you know, they're an expert, they're really good at what they do.

[03:34.2]
Their clients say, oh, you should write a book about this. I'd love to learn more about your, you know, your mindset around this and how you think about this. And that's why we like to learn from authors and from entrepreneurs. You're taking your 20 years of experience it, and really it is a lot of work to condense down what you want to say in a short book.

[03:53.2]
Right. A medium-sized book is what we typically recommend. Right. So the thing that people get wrong is thinking that that book is all about them. Like it's meant to be some sort of memoir or something. Yeah, do a memoir later on. But right now you're talking about how you get your clients results.

[04:09.0]
A mechanism that you help them do that or a process you help them do that. It's really to demonstrate your expertise. So I do have to remind our clients and our members, a lot of times along the way. This is not all about you. This is how you serve your clients, and it really helps ease the pressure off of that.

[04:26.7]
We want to put in your personal experience, your personal story, because that will make a connection with the reader and your ideal clients. But the book is not all about you. Right, right, right. I know also, you've developed a really unique Amazon paid ad strategy targeting competitors' books.

[04:43.5]
How does that work in practice? Yeah, so this is something that I stumbled upon after we had published more than a hundred books. A lot of our authors were using podcasting. I'm a podcast host myself. Over 480 episodes, I think we have now. So that was a big part of our model before, is having authors go out to other podcasts, have a huge network of podcast hosts.

[05:04.5]
I have a big directory of podcasts. We help them get featured on podcasts. So that's a big mechanism of what I like to start with. And that worked really, really well on top of a few other strategies that we have in launching the book and promoting the book. But I found a lot of authors wanted to be able to market their book continually and have something that kind of works 24/7 in the background.

[05:27.1]
I love Neta ads as well. It's a great vehicle if you have a book funnel. So I think that's a separate conversation and a separate thing by having a book funnel and increasing your AOV, and all of that. But for the purposes of this, we'll just focus on the Amazon side of things. About two years ago, I started seeing on Amazon that every time I would search books, or do a little bit of research with my clients, I would see these sponsored product listing ads.

[05:50.8]
I thought, well, that's interesting. Like, how are they getting these ads in here? Started looking at the platform and found out how these sponsored ads can get on there. And we identified a couple of areas that we can really focus on. Number one is buyer search terms. So when people are searching for search terms for books in specific categories, or authors, or titles, they would search those terms, and you can serve ads to those specific search terms, number one.

[06:15.2]
And then number two, you can actually target specific books. So if you have a specific book you know that you'd love if people are looking for this book, they would also love my book. You can actually target that specific book, and right now it's right next to that book. That's fantastic. Fascinating. Yep.

[06:30.8]
And I think most people probably view Amazon just in general, as an avenue for selling books, but I love how you think about it as an option for lead generation. Overall, how do you uniquely measure that success in a book ad campaign when the goal isn't the direct sale lane, but it's the credibility and the client attraction.

[06:51.9]
Yeah, very good. So having the book on Amazon and because the ad platform reaches a lot of people, we have some ad campaigns that are reaching fifty thousand, a hundred thousand people a month in impressions before it gets to the sales and everything. But it's reaching a lot of people. It's being viewed to a lot of people.

[07:07.2]
That's great brand exposure, that's great everything. But what really counts is the sales. So we look at the sales as an initial metric. But I have a unique strategy that we use, and it's called a book bridge. And so basically, what we want to do is bridge the gap because when someone buys a book on Amazon, it's Amazon's customer.

[07:25.2]
Unfortunately, if you sell a book on Amazon, you don't get any customer data. You don't get their name, their email, any of that great data. That would be awesome to have. Amazon doesn't share that with us because it's considered their customer. It's on their platform. We just see a little one like, yeah, one sale, right?

[07:42.6]
Or whatever the number is. So in order to capture a percentage of that, we want an elegant way to take book readers and customers, and turn them into a lead for us. And we do that with a book bridge. So it's a simple way to give a valuable resource.

[08:00.1]
It's like a lead magnet, but it's a little bit different where we put a valuable resource that's complementary to the book inside the book that leads them to a website. And that's where we capture the opt-in. And that's what we measure is those opt-ins. Interesting, interesting. Also, both of us have been a part of watching marketing evolve over the last two decades, from print to digital, now to AI.

[08:23.4]
In that realm, what stayed the same about what actually converts? Yeah, what stayed the same is being clear better than being clever. So I see a lot of people that they use cliche sayings, they try to make a book title with some sort of cute cliche saying, and it just flops.

[08:42.1]
And I strongly advise against. Some are like, oh, I, love this title. This is what I want. That's fine. And it just doesn't, it doesn't connect. And the reason for that is it's not clear. And if your book title is confusing in any way to the cold audience out there that has no idea who you are or what you represent, what you're all about, entirely cold.

[08:59.8]
If the initial impression is confusing, you're done. So it's better to be clear. I love that. And I've seen that, you know, with people that I consider, you know, friends in my life. Amanda Goetz, who just published a book called "Toxic Grit". You've also got Sahil Bloom, who has "The Five Types of Wealth" that came out earlier this year.

[09:20.5]
You know, it's incredible how you see maybe those succeed just based on title alone in a very crowded market. Shifting gears back to the podcast, you know, lens though, you've run over 475 podcasts yourself.

[09:36.4]
How has that experience shaped the way you think more broadly about storytelling and trust building? Yeah, it really has. And I love it because I get to speak with people from all different perspectives. So some people that talk about advertising from one side of things, and someone else talks about advertising from an entirely different side of things.

[09:59.0]
So it really helped open my eyes to the idea of a book that nothing is really 100% original. Like, we all are kind of regurgitating the same things over and over. But what makes it unique? And this is the example I like to give my clients all the time because I find a lot of authors get stuck, like, oh, my ideas are not like this earth-shattering thing like, is it going to be good enough for the marketplace?

[10:20.9]
You have to create a unique positioning. But I like to think about it this way. And this is for all your listeners to think about it this way. If you're thinking about, considering a book, but you're like, I don't know if my idea is unique enough. When a master chef creates a new recipe, and that recipe calls for cinnamon or they want to have it have the element of cinnamon, they don't go out and try to invent a new cinnamon.

[10:42.0]
Right. They're using the ingredient of cinnamon with a combination of other things that enhance, either enhance the flavor, flavor or soften the flavor, along with other things like sweetness, and bitterness, and all of these things that make up a new recipe.

[10:58.0]
They're not going to find new sugar like, invent a new sugar, invent a new cinnamon. No. They use the fundamental ingredients. So we use the fundamental ingredients of how you get clients' results. Your process, unique mechanisms, your unique story, your unique perspective on life, and your own unique background, which is unique from everyone else in the entire world.

[11:19.1]
So that's what makes it unique, is your unique lens on life. Yeah. That's so incredibly important. We all have unique stories that we can tell in the world. What do you think, in the realm of the authors that you've worked with, separates those who see real ROI from those who just check publish off their bucket list?

[11:39.4]
Right. It's a pride thing to put in there. Just pack away afterwards. Yeah, it's funny, I will have some people that it is a lifelong mission that they want to have a book that's published, and that's it. And it's up there.

[11:55.6]
And then they run their business as usual. And the people that say, oh, where's your book? I'll just go on Amazon and get it, they love to have that thing. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. To be able to take and create a body of work, even if it's a small body of work.

[12:10.9]
Being a mid-sized book that represents what's important to you, your value system, how you get people results. It can reach people all throughout the world, hundreds of thousands of people all throughout the world. Be printed on demand in multiple countries around the world where they can get a physical product and book from you.

[12:28.8]
You don't have to fulfill any of that. Is unbelievable if you really think about it. Like, Amazon has a fulfillment center around the world. A lot of people, I mean they probably realize this, but you don't really think about it is, books don't get. If I'm an author in the United States, or I'm in Scottsdale, Arizona, and Amazon is like they're all over the place of all their distribution centers.

[12:49.5]
Someone could buy a book that it is living in Australia. A book is not printed in the United States and shipped to Australia. A book is printed digitally over in Australia and shipped locally. That's just bananas. Isn't that bananas? It is incredible.

[13:05.1]
And I've seen that with my first book. Right. It's incredible the print-on-demand nature that this industry has been able to move to in the last 10 years, let's say even. Yeah. And you can imagine the first few years like books are being physically shipped overseas.

[13:21.5]
It's like, why are we physically shipping a book when we can send a digital file that can be printed in another country and locally shipped? It's just insane. So we have this amazing capability to take our knowledge that we have, package it, that can help people, impact people, and turn into new clients all over the world.

[13:42.2]
We have this amazing communication ability right now that just constantly fascinates me. Right. That doesn't even get into the lane, though of thinking about audiobooks. Right. And that being a prominent place with my first book I was very, very proactive about recording it in my own voice.

[14:03.5]
What do you see that piece of the puzzle looks like in this publishing world that we're in these days? Yeah. So right now, Amazon ACX is Audible's platform. Initially, we were publishing some books that were produced in AI, and then after several of them, they started getting rejected.

[14:22.0]
And I found out that was because of that Amazon created a beta platform they have right now where they're doing text-to-audio AI, but they want to control it. So they don't want you to send your own AI, they want to use their own. So they can, they can control everything, about it.

[14:38.3]
So it's in beta right now. So not everyone can get into that platform. Also, when you publish books on Amazon KDP, there's a little checkbox that says, is your book created or edited with AI? So they want you to disclose that. Now, right now when you buy a book, an audiobook does have a disclaimer that says this is text-to-audio AI.

[14:57.6]
So there's a disclaimer. And a lot of times it's obvious because it's not super great AI conversion right now, but I have a feeling that books that if Amazon detects it or if you disclose it, I think eventually, probably pretty soon, there will be some sort of a disclaimer on a paperback book or on a Kindle book that's a disclaimer that this was generated with AI.

[15:17.1]
And it's hard to tell whether that'll be acceptable to consumers or if they even care. I have a feeling that that will be something that people would say, well, I'd rather have this be, you know, written by a person than just spit out by an AI. So I think there's a little bit of the humanness that people want to maintain.

[15:36.5]
Content is great. AI is fantastic. It's amazing what it produces, but it does lack the human element. Right, right. And then I guess in that realm of the future kind of a book marketing, you've been doing this long enough, Jeremy, to spot trends early. What's one thing that you see coming that most people might be missing in the publishing or broader ad world?

[16:00.0]
Yeah. So, one of the things that I see has to do with the book bridge, and that is engaging with customers. So because there's so much content that is just spit out with AI right now, LinkedIn is just bananas with content that is just overly produced.

[16:20.8]
It's a lot of it is obvious that it's AI, especially with those em-dashes that we see are all over the place. Everything is cluttered with Dashes, you know, and so, I just think the human element is missing. And that's why I have a very unique process that I work with our authors on, doing paid workshops.

[16:41.4]
And so a lot of times, when an author publishes a book, we recommend that they do paid workshops. We show them how to host them, how to fill them, and how to get paid on your book topics. And I think that creates that missing human element that's not there in like, just AI spit out content.

[16:57.7]
Is you actually doing workshops, and like working with customers, and working with people, and workshopping ideas that are directly correlated with your book to help people get results and not just spitting out content. So again, I think it does have to do with that human element of your book and your advice.

[17:14.9]
I mean, we're at a place even with these AI tools and the digital tools we have in front of us, every business is still run by a human. So bringing that human element into the fold is critically important. For any sort of founders, coaches, entrepreneurs who are listening today, though, what's one small realistic first step that they could use to start building authority before running another paid campaign that maybe isn't going anywhere or isn't filling this side of how they grow that authority?

[17:45.4]
Yeah, one of the first things that we do, with authors that are putting together a book, and even before you put together a book to build authority, I have a belief system that one of the elements. I've identified five to seven elements, but one of those elements is by having a system and a process to what you do, like a recipe.

[18:06.3]
And not everybody has that. Some people just have a service. Right. It's just my service that I have. But when you define the process that you go through, you own the intellectual property of that, and you're the creator of that. And that's what authorities do, is they name the process that they have, and the way that they help their clients get results.

[18:27.8]
And when people see that you have an IP, you have intellectual property that you've identified. Here's a label that I put on this, and my method, and my process. That right there separates you from all the other coaches out there, all the other consultants, all the other agency owners.

[18:43.4]
When you have named a process and a way that you help your clients get results, I think that's a big differentiator. That's magic. That is absolutely magic. Kind of a funny one here, a fun one, let's say. What's the most memorable book launch you've ever been a part of, and why did it work?

[19:02.8]
Yeah, so I'd say one of the most memorable. We have an author right now, we're working on his sixth book. So we went through the first and the second book, just went crazy. And that's why he just loves this process of putting together books because we make it fun, we make it simple and we do really, really effective launches.

[19:20.8]
So I'd say one of our greatest success stories is a launch that we did. His name is Justin, he's a consultant, and we launched the book simultaneously running ads, and we pushed both as hard as we can. And what we found was because there was a nice organic push, which Amazon loves.

[19:40.2]
They love to have traffic outside coming into Amazon, doing that the right way with a dedicated four-week launch plan that we did. Plus, we drove a lot of paid traffic as well. It went crazy. The royalty profits alone in the first month, month and a half, were almost $6,500 in book profits after royalties were paid out and everything.

[20:03.2]
And that created like something like more than 200 book customers, tons of reviews. And those book customers turned into tens of thousands of new clients for him. So that was very successful. What was the name of that book?

[20:18.8]
You can feel free to mention that here also. Yeah, it's called "Sales Superpowers". "Sales Superpowers". salessuperpowers.com awesome. Well, Jeremy, this has been incredible. I love how you've taken something timeless, writing a book, and turned it into a modern growth strategy that actually works.

[20:37.8]
Before we close, where can listeners find you, connect, and learn more about Jones Media Publishing? Yeah, for sure. We have a case study on jonesmediapublishing.com and I find a lot of coaches and consultants would love to write a book, but they don't have the time to do it. So I have a process called Speak Your Book System.

[20:53.0]
They can go to Speak Your Book System, and it shows them how they can speak their book into existence with a seven-day plan that we have. Get all their content written out by speaking it instead of sitting and typing it. So, speakyourbooksystem.com. That's magic. I have to say that in writing my book, that was a game-changer because of that taking that brain, through the body, fingertips, digital tools like spell check and Grammarly popping up.

[21:21.3]
When you can at least spit it out. It gets a little easier to get to that draft standpoint. It does, for sure. Jeremy, what hit me the most from this conversation is that authority is really the new algorithm, in some ways. Paid ads might buy you visibility, but that true credibility, the kind that comes from publishing your ideas, it's what buys you that trust with potential customers.

[21:43.5]
I agree. And trust, I think we both would agree, that's what's real here. That's right. Yep, exactly. Awesome. Well, thanks for tuning into "Is Anything Real?" If this episode gave you something real to think about, share it, leave a review, and join us again as we explore what's real in marketing, leadership, and growth.

[22:01.7]
Until next time, plug in, power up, and keep finding what's real. But, Jeremy, thanks for joining today. Thank you, Adam.