543 – Ensure your audio book is a big seller: Tom talks Promoting Audio Books

Episode 543 – Promoting Audio Books
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode five hundred and forty three to Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about promoting audiobooks. I'm going to give you back episodes on a series we did or I did on audio all about audio books. So if you're really interested in this and I think you should be because audio is blasting off and has been for a long time, then you'll get it all in in this in the back episodes. Now my book got approved by Audible Yippy and it should be on sale shortly. It's called Online Joint Venturing how to get in front of a million warm prospects in the next 90 days. So I'm asking you, please buy it and leave a review. It's all priced at only two dollars and ninety nine cents. I don't think I have any control over that at Audible, so I'm learning as I go, but there's no reason to hold back. Let's do it. So I'll have a link to that in the show notes here. So today I'm going to give you an outline of the things I'll be doing over the next month or so to promote the audio book and the series of audio books, by the way. Any time you want to go to one of these back episodes, you go to screwthecommute.com slash and then the episode number.

[00:01:41] So episode 541 was Angela Ohlfest. She's done ninety ninety nine zero a voiceover, audiobooks and plus commercials and all kinds of stuff, so she's got lots of good insights. Episode five Thirty five was about audio books. Five Thirty six was something you can skip if you buy the the book because it's the first chapter and introduction and five thirty seven was an audio book progress update about how it was going through the process of getting ready to be accepted by Audible. So there's episodes five forty one five three five five, thirty seven and five forty. Yeah, five, thirty seven. And the last episode was five forty two. Cathy Nesbitt and she she was such a hoot. She sells worms for a living, among other really cool things. She's been a lifetime entrepreneur, so loved, loved her. Now, I hope you didn't forget to download a copy of my automation. screwthecommute.com/automatefree. This saved me millions of keystrokes, literally, and helped me handle up to one hundred and fifty thousand email subscribers and sixty five thousand customers without pulling my hair out. And you'll notice if you ever see me, I still have lots of real hair, no hair plugs, and my dad had a full head of hair when he died at 94, so I think I got lucky there. And while you're over there, well, that's at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And while you're over there, pick up a copy of our podcast app.

[00:03:24] It's screwthecommute.com/app where you can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road. All right, we're still going strong on our pilot program to help persons with disabilities in my school. We're getting them trained in internet and digital marketing. We're going to get them hired and or in their own business. And then I'm going to roll it out really big. But I need your help on this. We've got to go fund me campaign helping to finance the whole program. You can check it out. It's a link to directly to go fund me screwy. So you go to my school website. IMTCVA.org/disabilities. And then you can click on the Go Fund Me campaign. Any little bit you throw in is good. It's very inspirational to see these people. Two of the people in the program so far are blind. All right, so so they're making videos and all kinds of stuff for learning keyword research. I mean, it's just beautiful. I'm just so proud to be part of it, and you could be to so check that out.

[00:04:37] All right, let's get to the main event. The things that I cover today about promoting audio e-books will be things I'll be addressing over the next month or so. Admittedly, I should have been doing some of these things in advance, but I wasn't even sure the first book would get approved on the first try with Audible, so I didn't really have any idea when to prepare for the release. Then all of a sudden, I get an email notice from Audible that my book has been approved and will be on sale in a few days. So I surprised myself with that one. I'm not too worried about the fact that I'm late promoting. I mean, this audiobook is somewhat evergreen, meaning it will have a long life. So my promotion starts now actually, with this podcast asking you to purchase the book for two ninety nine and leaving a review. Now, some of the things I'll cover today are standard stuff for any book promotion, and some are specific to audiobook promotion. The first thing to do is get some reviews. That's why I'm asking my closest friends. That's the many thousands of you on this podcast to purchase the book and leave a review, and the link will be in, the show notes. I also encourage you to listen to other audiobooks before you do yours. But be careful. Some of the purists out there told me it's not common to put an about the author section of in your audio book, and I'm thinking, why not? This book the book is about a marketing tool for me, my products and my services. Shouldn't people know my credentials? I also did some other unconventional things, like I put in an audio resource section with links to things that could help people like other episodes of this podcast and my copywriting course and my free webinars that lead to buying stuff and and I even threw in a link to the trailer of the Hollywood documentary that was done about me.

[00:06:50] And I'm hoping that thing finally gets out this spring. Anyway, from what I understand, those aren't standard things, which is why I was also unsure. The audiobook would be approved. All right. But it's up there and no one said a word about the extras I put in as a marketer should put these kinds of things in their book. Ok, so the first thing is to get people to actually purchase the audio book and get some reviews. Now, the rest of these things aren't in any particular order, but some will logically come before others, for instance. It's a no brainer that you should have. A page on your website dedicated to your audio books before you drive traffic to your site to tell them about the book. So it's really kind of juvenile that I have to say this, but I get so many students that want to drive traffic, drive traffic, drive traffic without building the infrastructure first to get that traffic to do what you want them to do. So anyway, get a page on your website dedicated to your audio books with links to where they can buy them. Now keep in mind, you don't get the customer name if they buy off of Amazon.

[00:08:10] So you could tell them to send you proof of purchase and you would give them some kind of extra freebie that they opt in to get. That way, you get them in your database, which I've preached about that on hundreds of these episodes. Now. This can be put in your audio book also, which I admit I totally forgot to do because I was so worried about getting the audio files just right so they would get approved. Now I won't forget that in the next book, I'll tell you that. The next thing is to make an author page on Audible. It's free, and there's no reason not to. And I got a sample here of a lady named Joanna Penn that has a great one and the link will be in the show notes. Wow, she's prolific on the audiobook. Now, I'm not going to bother too much with the standard stuff like putting the announcement of your audio book on all your social media. I'm also not going to concentrate on paid ads, although I am in favor of them, especially with the Amazon sponsored ads being so darn cheap. I will mention, though, you should wait until you get your friends and or email subscribers to put up some reviews before paying for ads. You don't want to pay for cold traffic to have them leave without buying because you have no reviews. Now, I just mentioned email subscribers again, it's a no brainer for you to promote to the people that are on your list.

[00:09:48] Another simple no brainer is to put the link to the book in the signature file of all your business email correspondence. This, like I said, applies to any book or any kind of book you're promoting. You can blog about your book, do Facebook Live's Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and TikTok and Twitter and any other social media you use. You can do an audio book launch just like you do on any other book. Now, some another no brainer is audio sells audio. Pitch yourself to be on podcast interviews or by advertising on other podcasts. Ok, let's get into some audio, book specific promotion and marketing. Now, if you are exclusive with a sex audible, they will give you promo codes. You can give these out for free to anyone you want, and they could lead to what is called bounties, which are payments you get if people sign up for Audible because of you. Now it could be fifty or seventy five bucks a person. I'm going to cover that in another episode. Now, if you aren't exclusive with Audible, Find a way voices gives you something similar. That's another site to promote audio books. And speaking of them, you can get your audio book into libraries through them. In that case, people listen for free, but you still get paid. It's a licensing thing with the libraries. You get paid when someone checks out the audio book. The money isn't as big per checkout, but it's more distribution and exposure for you.

[00:11:39] If you've included much bigger stuff in the book that people can buy, which I preach like crazy. It could be a cash. I call it a cash giraffe instead of a cash cow because you draughts are so much taller and then cows. So tell people they can get your book for free at the Library. But they have to ask the librarian to order it out of the catalog of audio books. Now there is another thing you can do. There are tools like headliner that makes what is called an audio gram. This is a short video of an audio sample of your book. And many of the templates have a moving wave form, so people can see that it's an audio if they're browsing with their audio turned off. And you can put this on all your social media. And since their video, they can be uploaded to YouTube. You can use QR codes on your website and printed material to link directly to your audio book. You can try to get on book bub deals with the e-book version of your book, and people can upgrade to the audio version at a lower price. Now it's not always easy to get into book bob deals, but if you do get in there, tell people to go there to get a great deal on your e-book, and hopefully they will upgrade to the audio version. You can also check out book Bubs, ChirpBooks.com.

[00:13:17] It's run by bookbub, but it's Chirpbooks. You scroll down to the bottom and you click on authors and publishers. And I'm going to read to you what I saw in that section of the site you have now, you have to be non-exclusive to be considered for their program hears from their site. Chirp is an audio book retailer powered by ebook Bubb that highlights unbeatable discounts on audiobooks. Chirp offers listeners access to a full catalog of audiobooks that they can purchase a la carte with no subscription fees, but it focuses especially on surfacing amazing limited time audiobook deals in the member's favourite genres. Our team works with publishers and authors to curate new deals every day, helping our partners drive significant increase in sales, reach new readers and boost visibility for their audio titles. And it goes on to show you how to sign up for an account and everything. I'm going to be signing up with them this week. Pretty sure. Now, another place where you can put a paid ad that you know it's targeted is Audio File Magazine. You can download their media kit to get all the different ways that they can promote you and all the prices. You know they have all kinds of promotional mechanisms now. Audio Pug Pug Audio Puffball has a bunch of promo opportunities and reviewers on their site. I think it's an association of audio publishers. Now, here's one you probably never thought of. Higher, if you're going to use a narrator now, what you do is you hire a narrator who has a following.

[00:15:15] Now, if you narrate your own, this isn't an option, but if you do hire a narrator, this is a cool idea. Believe it or not, some narrators have a following that buy every book that they narrate. So that's pretty cool. Another idea is audio book box sets, where you combine several of your audio books into one and sell them as a bundle. You can also do audio book giveaways as a promotional tool. Now, if you deal with good reads, you can do an author review. All right now, don't be a dick and leave a star rating for your own book, right? All right, don't do that. You can include links to your audio book and your followers will see your review in their feed. Also, you can connect your blog to good reads, so when you make a post, it will automatically update good reads. Now I'm also checking out this thing called Amazon's Audible matchmaker. What it does is that you tell people about this and it scans their Kindle book library. So if they've bought your Kindle book, it'll find that you have a matching audiobook compatible with Whisper Sync for voice. Now you have to get into whisper sync for voice, and that's what the next application I'm going to make for my book because I was very careful to make the read of the book. Exactly. I mean, within ninety seven percent, they require of the text of the e-book version.

[00:16:50] So if you don't know what whisper sync is, I talked about it in that one of those previous previous episodes. Now, one last resource for you is the ultimate collection of audio book marketing examples. It's a free download from Book Bubb and we have the link to it in the show notes. The ultimate collection of audiobook marketing examples. So this is by no means a comprehensive list of ways to promote your audiobook. But if you do even a portion of these, you'll be on your way to much greater audiobook sales. And hopefully those sales, if you've if you created your book that leads to bigger stuff, will create a lot more sales of big stuff that you have and your products and services. So do me a favor and go buy my audio book and leave me an honest review. Only after you've listened to it. And if you really hate my audio book. Well, forget what I said about leaving a review. I'm just kidding, of course. I don't think you're going to hate it. It's really good about joint venturing, so. So that's my story. I'm sticking to it. Get your audio books made. Listen to all those back episodes. If you're interested in this and you'll be on your way to making having a whole new bunch of listeners and audience for your products and services. All right, that's my story. And I'm sticking to it. We'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.