SPS 192: Lessons Learned From 8 Years, 7,000+ Books Published, And $43M+ …And The Future Of Publishing with Chandler Bolt

Posted on Jan 11, 2023

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Home > Blog > Podcast > SPS 192: Lessons Learned From 8 Years, 7,000+ Books Published, And $43M+ …And The Future Of Publishing with Chandler Bolt

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Chandler Bolt [00:00:02] Hey Chandler Bolt here. And joining me today is Mr. Matt Emmorey. You may know him as the host of the Authority Figures podcast. This is our companion podcast here. So publishing scoop, I guess you may know him as the author of two books Where the Rubber Meets the Road and The Tourist How to Get Out of Your Own Way, Find Purpose in Unexpected Places and Traverse the Path to Effortless Authenticity. And you may also know him because, you know, he’s been on the self-publishing school podcast, so I think I forget which episode it was. I should have a handy. But you may have heard his episode on Self-publishing School podcast, and he’s one of our author resource specialists here. Yeah. So thousands of you listening to this have probably talked to Matt at some point about your book and maybe even got started with self-publishing school because you had a conversation with Matt and he said, Hey, let’s help you out. And then next thing you know, you’re working with us and we’re getting your book done. So this is a bit of a unique interview in the sense that for the first time ever, I’m going to be interviewed on my own podcast. And so Matt is going to actually be the interviewer. So I’m kind of introducing the interviewer and I will be the interviewee. And it’s this is to celebrate a pretty big event that’s happening that you may have already heard about and that we are we are launching as we speak, as these podcasts coming out what we believe to be the future of publishing. So big cliffhanger. We’re going to get into it in this episode. If you absolutely can’t wait, then go to self-publishing dot com forward slash the future that’s self-publishing dot com for Slash the Future. You’ll see some details there. We’ll talk more about what that is later. But it’s a pretty big announcement. So with that Matt I’m going to pass the reins.

Matt Emmorey [00:02:02] Yes. Well it’s such an honor to to be able to flip the script with you here and actually interview you. Amazing intro of me, by the way. Thank you so much. I want to temper that by saying I’m just riding your coattails, buddy. I just can’t get by. Truly, a lot of those things for me. The book’s published. It was like 15 years of trying to write a book, and then I meet you, and within a short amount of time I had a book published. So really good to, to be able to to be doing this with you and I know will arrive full circle back at that announcement at the end. But in the meantime, I think we have some really good content for people. Some really good questions for you. So at this point in 2023, where we’ve been in business eight years. Over 7000 books published, and keep me honest here, if some of my numbers are off, if you have or more specific numbers, I’ve done about $43 million in business in and yet we we jump on these meetings together and it’s sometimes I hear you reference our company as a startup and I’m just wondering at what point what is what is the defining characteristics of startup that make you still say that? And is there a threshold where we will graduate to whatever is next?

Chandler Bolt [00:03:31] Ha ha ha. That’s a great question. I wonder what the technical definition of a startup. I mean, there’s like SMB or small mid-sized business, which I think is tactically below ten or 20 million or a median. Be more than that. So some of it is the technical term and then some of it is kind of like Bezos is. Oh, it’s always remember, it’s always day one or day zero. I forget which one, he says. But it’s almost just like that startup mentality. And that’s just I don’t know, that’s so important to me is that we never feel like we’ve made it. You know, if you’re not growing, you’re dying. And so it is it is kind of crazy to think about. You know, you’ve been a huge part of us achieving a lot of what we’ve achieved in just helping so many people and and getting, you know, people committed to their books. And so it’s it’s always like on money and it’s like, all right, it’s cool to reflect back and see those numbers. But then also in as as you probably see too, it’s like the vision ahead is so much bigger and it feels like where we’re going, there’s. I mean, I just keep catching and we just keep catching the bigger fish. It’s like climbing a mountain and you get to the top of the mountain and you’re excited and then you get to the top and then you realize that there’s a taller peak or you’re like on a hiking trip and you’re like, Oh, this is if we get this out there, we’re going to be good. And then you get to the top. We’re like, Oh, well, actually, no, I got to keep going. And so I feel like that keeps happening along our journey is there’s just bigger and better mountains that we can climb.

Matt Emmorey [00:04:59] Yeah, and it is I mean, it’s great to see how far we have come, but I do find that pretty exciting. I mean, being being somebody who for the most part, I just like to I like to sit back, be in my temple, meditate, kind of hang out, keep to myself. I never really fully expected to be a part of a company with a startup mentality. And then just to find so much knowledge happening, so much learning happening through osmosis, just being involved in an organization that has that mentality. So maybe there is a threshold where suddenly you’re no longer a startup. But I love the mentality, but.

Chandler Bolt [00:05:40] You never stop thinking like it.

Matt Emmorey [00:05:42] Yeah, and it’s really good. So have you found, though, like looking back at the business, going from, you know, just you and one other person to now we have 5051 employees or something like that. Have you found that there’s any thresholds, whether it’s revenue or otherwise, where suddenly it just seemed like you were running a fundamentally different business? It’s so different than what it once was.

Chandler Bolt [00:06:10] Hmm. Yes. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I’m trying to think when that would be. There’s this thing in scaling up, which is, you know, this is like one of our business battles up here, scaling up in traction. But they talk about like the complexity of communication when you add people and this was like a graphic that showed it really just jumped off the page for me, which I’ll see if I can quickly find it. But there’s a decent chance I won’t be able to just fuck it through the book. But they talk about how, you know, when you’ve got one person to one person, it’s pretty easy to communicate. And he had when you had a third person. And then there’s three ways of communication. But then actually as you add four or five, six, etc. ending and I think I’ll be able to find it like the communication branches just get exponentially harder and deactivated. But and so if you look up scaling up in that people matrix, I’m sure people can find it. But that’s what I found is like as we it was actually people, it was almost never revenue amounts which sure their solopreneur was which when you are fulfilling there’s that initial threshold which is like, All right, I can’t do any more than what I’m currently doing. But pretty quickly we were able to start training up a coaching staff and start say, all right, how do we make sure that there’s pieces of this that are scalable and productize the service, which I think was something that we did very intentionally early on that that was very helpful is so that we can deliver a consistent experience no matter who is actually delivering that experience. And so I think those things allowed me, allowed me to get out of and somewhat avoid the original threshold of like, all right, you kind of you sell the work and then you fulfill the work and then you constantly oscillate back and forth between like, Oh, I just got a bunch of sales and I got to do nothing but fulfillment. But then when I do nothing but fulfillment for months at a time, then I now have no sales. And so I’m like, Oh crap, we need more sales. And it’s like a lot of people can get stuck in that kind of seesawing. And so I think we did a good job early on navigating that. But then when we hit, gosh, I think it’s there’s, there’s certain troughs of like 2 to 3 million is a trough and then I think it’s around 10 million is a trough. And there’s where things get just harder. It’s kind of common pitfalls and so. I think it was probably that. But then also employee count where it’s like, okay, we are. This isn’t just like everyone’s on the same meeting. And then we made one announcement and now everyone knows and we don’t get to talk about it again. It’s like we’ve got to have like a different level of communication and feedback and all that stuff.

Matt Emmorey [00:08:54] Well, yeah, and it definitely takes a lot. I know there’s been times where I always appreciated you as a leader being like leading with vulnerability. You create this space where I think as hard as it is for people to be vulnerable, I really appreciate about that, about you. It’s like this is going to be a safe place and we’re going to do our absolute best and not have our pride or our ego involved in this. And we’re going to grow because this is the way that I’ve always felt like where we are right now is not where we’re going to be so long as we really look accurately and we accept where we are and then we can move forward. Yeah. Um, and yet there’s been times where, where you’ve expressed maybe, maybe humorously, maybe with a little frustration where you’re like, I am, I am everybody’s least favorite person. And I honestly have never felt that, that you were you were not amongst some of my favorite people. But when I when when I feel like there’s that tendency or that thought process that could be developing in the team, for me, I just think and I could never survive a day in your shoes or a week in your shoes. And so going back to where you were in the very beginning eight years ago to arriving at the men that you are today with the company that we that we have today, what what do you feel like were some of the best decisions that you made that allowed you to or allowed us to get here?

Chandler Bolt [00:10:29] Hmm. Who’s that is a great question. That’s a hard one to answer. You know, it’s funny. It’s like, even as you were asking that question, I thought you were going to go down the path of like, okay, what? Like mistakes that were made or just kind of lessons learned because and so I’ll go on a side side and then come back and answer that question. Like, I think what’s really important as an entrepreneur or aspiring entrepreneur, leader performer who’s listening to this writer author, right. I think it’s really important to not compare someone’s highlight reel to your reality. And so I think it’s so easy to see where we’re at as a company or where I’m at as an author or as an entrepreneur or whatever. And it’s just like, Oh, and then this comparison is the things of joy, right? And and so when you were saying, Oh, think back eight years, my immediate thought was like, Oh, that time where I went six figures in debt borrowed from my parents retirement to buy a business partner. Oh, that time when like those were a lot of the things that I think that that don’t often get talked about but as far as best decisions go. Hmm. The early one would be sell, then build, which is something we teach a lot of our authors and entrepreneurs that work with us, sell or then build. And you will not only validate the product that you will build a better product. So we did that early on, and I think that helped us get paying customers, get early velocity and build better products. Customer focused and customer first. I think we were really good at that. Probably the first two years of the business and it was probably a two or three year kind of wondering in the wilderness where we lost sight of that customer first. And it’s hard. Like me personally, I got detached from the deliverable, like from both selling and delivering. And when you lose that customer feedback, I think you can just make bad decisions as a leader because you’re making decisions in a vacuum. And so I think that that would be one small thing that I think. Yeah, I think it was a big decision of selling the building and putting customers first. That’s a big one. And we have come back to that and then we have gotten better and better, I believe, at that one. It’s very small decision. I think it’s actually a big decision is to, on that note, keep contact with all of our authors. So I run the the group coaching call on Monday night and I have four years in a row basically since inception of the business. And it’s at a point where, you know, if you just did a time study and said, Hey, Chandler, what’s your time worth? And could someone else on the team run that call? Absolutely. And is that not worth my time, quote unquote? Definitely not. But it’s this That was a big thing and is a big thing for me because it’s like I never want to lose track of like that author that’s asking me that question. And then I, I now can empathize and understand what our sales team, what our coaching team, what our author success like. I have my fingers on the pulse of what’s happening with our customers and it’s just the easiest way that I found. Sure you can get feedback, but you’re going to get filtered feedback and there’s nothing like actually talking there. I mean, crazy concept actually talk to your customers. And so I think that was a good decision. Being very stringent in our hiring process early on. That was just like a non-negotiable of our this is how we’re going to recruit and hire, and it’s not going to look like the way that most people do it. And. That’s the point. Because we don’t want to get results like most people get. And so we work our butt off when we’re hiring and we recruit really hard. We interview attorneys, a lot of work, but just kind of biting that bullet and saying, all right, short term, this is going to suck and it’s going to feel like a huge waste of time because I’m spending so much time. So it’s like I’m hiring someone because I don’t have the time and we don’t have the time as a team to get this job done, which is why we need another person’s. But so what’s the last thing that you want to do is spend all this time hiring that person, right? It’s always worth it. And so those are those are probably some. And then last one I would say is dig your actually, I’ll go to more dig your well before you’re thirsty. As Russell Brunson talks about building relationships and always being like a relationships and people first focus place and whether that’s with your employees, with your customers or with your partners and affiliates. So early on, having relationships with people who are willing to go out on a limb and promote me and promote self-publishing school. It was the way that we got to our first million in the first year. I mean, that was why we grew so early or so fast, so early on. And so I think that was a big one is is a new dig your well before you’re thirsty and then the last one. Hmm. And I forgot what? The other last one.

Matt Emmorey [00:15:37] Well, I’m going to say, yeah, if you’re as you’re thinking about this. One of the brilliant things that I think has been done by by you and the leadership team is all of the incentives that I run for us to to make us that much more comfortable in our home office environment. Just realizing, like, how how brilliant is it to have a an office upgrade incentive? When I first moved to this house, it was a desk. It was this ratty old rug that I got from somebody when I was, like, buying a spike on that. They’re like, Do you want that rug to like, Yeah, I need a rug. It was just like, grubby. And I really didn’t want to work because I didn’t want to go into that room at all. So I got like the computer upgrade through different incentives, got this desk, got this Mike, these things got this just like it’s a comfortable place. I’m going to come in here and I’m going to work harder. I feel like those incentives that, you know, they’re not really. I think there’s different ways that you can do things where there’s like the linear incentives or the linear things. It’s all about like what you can do. And then there’s other incentives that are more quantum about helping people be the people that they really need to be to show up to have the better results. And I mean, it’s the reason I, I work on a MacBook is because it just I just like the way that it feels. I can I feel like I can be myself with a mac, but I can’t be myself with a Dell. I’m just I’m sorry. I just can’t I’m not my best self typing on a Dell.

Chandler Bolt [00:17:10] Yeah, I love that you mentioned the experience. You’ll think because that’s come to think of it, I’ve been very intentional about is you’ll probably notice a lot of incentives that we do whether it’s with the team or with our authors are experiential because I want there’s a few reasons for that. It’s just how I live my life to begin with. I’m not a big things guy. I don’t you know, I don’t need stuff, but I love experience. It’s always been money and experiences because when you’re when you’re gifting an experience, you’re gifting a memory. And so then I’ll even try to think of like, how can we gift things that are ongoing experiences? So whether that’s, you know, like you’re seeing your office set up or, you know, even just small touches like an author, Vintage live, you know, our yearly author conference it’s author based live experience, virtual experience, but also like sending that box in the mail. And then it’s an experiential thing where now they have these little panels that they can use. They’re like the thumbs up and the heart and the light bulb and all that. And they have that even beyond the conference. So it’s just like that experience show. But I’ll kind of backtrack all I.

Matt Emmorey [00:18:20] Thought of it.

Chandler Bolt [00:18:21] Yeah, I thought of that. The last answer that I was going to give, which is being very intentional about not being channel dependent. And what I mean by that is a lot of people build, they build their business on a single legged stool, which is one way to get customers. And if that thing dies, you don’t have a business, right? Single points of failure are an absolutely, it’s just a deaths. And it’s as an author, if you’re selling all your books in one place or as an entrepreneur, if you’re getting all your sales from the same place, it’s it’s, it’s not good. And so I feel like early on we did a good job of diversifying our channels and saying, all right, I kind of saw early on paid media is going to get way more expensive and way more competitive. And we were really reliant on that and affiliates. So like it was brought up, the content engine was built out like a lot of these other things. Obviously with Bella coming on and building all that stuff out and it was just like, All right, let’s keep investing here. And it didn’t show fruit for a long time. But then when it did, and that’s why that’s why it’s less competitive raised because nobody wants to wait for there to be fruit from that effort. So that’s probably one other big decision then.

Matt Emmorey [00:19:37] I’m glad that you said that we were actually Bill and I were talking about that exact thing this morning where like three or four months into doing all the blog posts and answering all the questions and becoming such a of a host for all these resources, there’s like not a whole I mean, there’s there’s some improvement, but there’s not like there yet is so much to do on that front to really get it to a point where this is where people go and they end up on your site. Yes, that’s a great point. Really great point. So as far as you know, I want to look back a little bit at where where publishing the publishing world was eight years ago versus where it is today versus where you see it going. Do you want to comment on some of the some of the trends that you’ve noticed in the past and how you’re forecasting that into the future?

Chandler Bolt [00:20:24] Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, I think when we first got into the game way back when it was like the Kindle Gold Rush, you publish a book on Amazon, there was a lot of buyers, not a ton. The competition. It was highly lucrative. And also self-publishing, I mean, over the last decade or a couple of decades is kind of transition from the backup plan, like the curse word of the publishing industry. The thing that you only do if you can’t get a publishing deal to now is the preferred option for a lot of authors. And even, I mean, this morning I had a pretty prominent author that texted me and said, What did he say? He said. He said. Publishers, I’m scrolling back through all these text messages. But he said crazy momentum with the book sold out of the initial print run of 15,000 copies. I think publishers are idiots just like me. So now people can buy the book rights just like I. I hear that. I mean, often. And so now more and more people are coming to self-publishing. I think we we came in and disrupted the self-publishing industry in a major way, and we’ve since had a bajillion copy artists. I mean, we get ripped off and duplicated all the time and to the point where, you know, probably 50 or 100 plus of our students are authors have created their own publishing schools and are writing books about it and all that stuff. And that can be frustrating. It’s a highly competitive industry, so I guess I’d say the book publishing world has gotten way more competitive as a as a business, but then also the business of publishing books. So both sides have definitely gotten more competitive. It takes a lot more to succeed today than it did previously. But the good news is, is that the upside to succeed is much greater because you keep the royalties. You don’t need a publisher. You really don’t. And so the upside can be really, really great. Now, it’s not overnight. Get rich, rich quick thing, but I see a lot of I mean, people are buying books and they’re buying more books and books are becoming more accessible. And audio is is really on the rise. And so like, audio is a really great near a really great medium as well as is very profitable. And so I think that’s where books are going. And then we’ve seen cycles where people say, Oh, books are dead, right? Like, why would you have physical copies of books? Right. And if you’re watching on the YouTube channel, you can see how many books are in.

Matt Emmorey [00:23:00] Both.

Chandler Bolt [00:23:01] Of us. It’s just like. And that just keeps pretty much being debunked time and time again is that people still buy physical books and they still buy books as a whole. People have been saying for at least almost the last decade, if not longer, books are dead. They’re not dead. They’re selling really well. Yes, there’s more competition. But if you create something of substance and meaning, you can differentiate in the marketplace and there’s still room to succeed.

Matt Emmorey [00:23:26] Yeah. Not to mention that by creating, let’s say you set out to write an e-book because let’s say you believe that books are dead virtually with identical effort. You can create the paperback, you can create a hardcover, you create an audiobook, you essentially create four products.

Chandler Bolt [00:23:43] Yes.

Matt Emmorey [00:23:44] I’m one that we were just talking about the magic and the experience, like the feel of things like I will always have a book because I want I like have a very tangible memory with these particular pages maybe. And I don’t think that’s silly because that’s it’s kind of like universally human. And we have these things that we just kind of bond with. So I.

Chandler Bolt [00:24:10] Agree. I agree. And people will buy multiple. So this is one of the things we tell our authors all the time is publish your book. And often that’s because your people might never read it. They might not be like you, and they might say, Hey, I’ve never read a book. I would listen to it. So you don’t have an audio book? I’m not buying your book. But then at the same time, you know, just using scaling up as another example, I’ve got the physical copy. I’ve probably purchased 50 to 100 copies of this for team members over the years, and I have the audiobook on my phone, multiple formats. You’re going to sell more copies and sometimes people will buy multiple formats and you’ll make more money in royalties by doing it.

Matt Emmorey [00:24:47] Yeah. So I got one more. One more good question that I want us both to answer and then we’ll kind of transition. Yeah, you mentioned that we’re in a competitive industry and it’s ever growing. Even our own customers are now competing with us. In some cases, more power to them. What do you feel like at this point in time, seeing the reasons that people are publishing books, Why does it make sense for them to come and work with us versus all of the other options that they have? And there are plenty of options.

Chandler Bolt [00:25:22] Yeah, there’s tons of options. I would say, you know, there’s three primary competitors that we have and the first two. So competitor number one is not doing the book. Competitor number two is doing the book yourself. And then competitor number three is our actual competitors. Right. And so I’ll say not doing the book, I think it’ll be the biggest mistake you ever make in your life. I just got done over the holidays talking with my family about how we wish we had books written by my grandpa that passed away that I barely got to know. Right. And so even if it’s just for your kids, like not doing the book in my belief is. It shouldn’t be an option and you should definitely work with us instead because we’re going to help you actually get the book done. Then there’s. All right. Doing the book yourself, which again, now to make a long answer longer like there’s this. You can either spend time to save money or you can spend money to save time. Right. So if you’re low money and high on time, then maybe it makes sense to not work with us and do it yourself. That being said, you’re very high on discipline and you better be high on work ethic because there’s a reason why. According to the New York Times, 81% of people want to write a book and less than 1% of people actually do. It is is because people need a process and they need to know an ability. And then it comes down to, okay, if you’re actually saying, hey, should I work with self-publishing scores on publishing dot com or someone else, then I think that’s that’s where I would say it’s like highest quality books at the best value. We will help you sell more. Like our goal is to save you hundreds of hours in the process which if you value your time, let’s say 20 bucks an hour, thousands of dollars worth of your time, we’re going to help you save. We’re going to be save hundreds if not thousands of dollars on the process, which over the last year. I’ll talk about this a little bit. We’ve built a lot of really built a traditional publishing arm where we can, but in a self-published mechanism where we can create high quality book covers, format, your book, all that stuff. So we’ll save you money and then we’ll help you actually get the book done. The book will sell more copies and grow your business if you have one. So that’s how I look at it. How do you look at it? I mean, you talk to people all day, every day.

Matt Emmorey [00:27:43] I don’t know. And I think that that’s it gives me a good perspective on I’m like what a lot of people are dreaming about and just how little people truly grasp potential going back. This is going to circle back a little bit to the idea that we started with on this like startup mentality. I think in many ways the fact that we have you and your mind at the helm and creating us a company with a startup mentality, people come into this environment and their intention is, I want to write a book. It’s like they’re looking, If these were blueprints, they’re looking at one little small corner of the blueprint that is have a published book. And then when they when they immerse themselves into our community. You mentioned like being deliberate about really like allowing yourself to be seen and spend time with these people, you know, employees included. I my life is an education working for this company where at one point I just glimpsed the little corner of these blueprints to write the book. And before I knew it, I realized like, no, there’s a this entire there’s so much potential with a book that you haven’t even considered. And it doesn’t mean that you have to go and do a bunch of these things that you’re not going to find enjoyable or authentic. It’s just going to be here’s how you can continue to do things that make a lot of sense for you to just arrive at your dream so much easier. And you’re not like this, you know, entrepreneur from another industry that decided to run a publishing company. It was like, I don’t know, seven, eight, nine years ago you wrote a book, and then that book became successful and you realized, Man, I kind of have developed two skill sets here that are quite attractive to people, and the blueprint starts to expand a little bit more. Let’s not just teach people how to write the book in this little corner. Let’s also teach people how they can market their own books and have a successful book. But then so many people were wanting to know that that like, how do we deliver this information to people better? It’s like, Well, let’s build a course in the process of building a course. It’s like the blueprint expands. So many people that want to write books also want to they want to speak, they want to build courses, they want to do coaching so, so often. So I think like you at the helm is you bring these blueprints. Like so often people come in and they say, Yeah, I want to write a book. And then over here I also want to do some speaking. So I’m probably going to go hire somebody to help me with my speaking stuff. I’m going to build a course to self. Go hire somebody else for that. You know, I probably when I do some coaching, some workshops and I’m like, This is so funny because the vision that you’re describing is literally the blueprint of our of our company here. Yeah. And even though it’s called self-publishing school self-publishing dot com, it’s like. All of these things. You can come and you can build the entire dream here. And we know how to build it because this is what we’re actively building.

Chandler Bolt [00:30:52] He’s from experience.

Matt Emmorey [00:30:54] Yeah. So that’s that’s my answer. Love it. I love that stuff. Yeah. If you had any anything else that you wanted to add, I think that you were. Those are my questions.

Chandler Bolt [00:31:09] Cool. So, guys, I hope that this has been helpful. Just looking back, I wanted to record this episode, like I said at the top of this episode as just a reflection on art in the last, you know, going on eight years. I think it’s like we’re maybe a month from our eighth birthday. We’ve published about 7000 books. We’ve been on the 5000 list five times is one of the 5000 fastest growing private companies in America. That’s helped me to land on the Forbes 30 under 30 list. And we’ve, you know, done 43 million or maybe even more than that at this point in business and that eight years and sold a lot of books. A lot of books. I mean, that’s 7000 books that we that that were published that we can track. We know that there’s a lot more than that. And so in recording this episode, I want to reflect on that. But I also wanted to let this serve as an announcement of the future and the future of what’s what’s coming. And now you may have seen at the tail end of last year, we talked about how we’re shutting down self-publishing, school and self-publishing, schools closing and self-publishing school is officially closed leading up to today, which I believe is the biggest announcement in self-publishing schools history. And mainly we’ll look back on this decades from now and see this is one of the biggest announcements or moments in the history of the publishing industry because we are announcing what we believe to be the future of publishing. All right. And the future of publishing. So we’ve been kind of in the lab over the last year building out a lot of kind of what I alluded to earlier services. I call this like final mile publishing services. Right. So when, you know, there’s traditional publishers which publish your book for you, there’s hybrid or vanity publishers, and then there’s self-publishing. Well, what we’ve created, we believe, is a traditional publishing arm, so we can publish really high quality books, but where you keep all of the rights and royalties. So it’s a traditionally published quality book that self-published where you don’t have to self-publish yourself and you keep all the rights and royalties and it’s in a ridiculously affordable price. And this is launching on our new home and our new business, which is self-publishing dot com. Okay, so the future of publishing is self-publishing dot com. Now our goal, which you may have heard us talk about, is our our big very audacious goal, as Jim Collins calls it is is to publish 100,000 books by 2035. And that is still our goal. We’re about 7000 way there. So we’ve made a lot of progress. We’ve got a long way to go. Some might say we’re a startup, we’re just getting started. And but we believe that we will be able to help more authors succeed, not only just by teaching them, which we’re an education company, kind of at our heart and soul. And but as we evolved, we caught a bigger vision and we realized that are we can help people. Some of this stuff, it’s just like we’re coaching you through it and we’re helping you get the book done. But then you got to hire a cover designer, you got to hire an editor, you got to hire small matter, you got to hire maybe even someone to upload your book for you. You got to buy an ISBN. All right. I’m confused by that. Should I go with Ingram Sparks? Should you go with Amazon? Where should I publish? And so what if we just did all those things for you? And so that’s what we’re launching is a lot of those services that we’ve really, I’d say perfecting, but I don’t believe that anything’s ever perfect. It’s always a work in progress and we’re always making it better. But we’ve really been fashioning that and making it better over the last year, and we’re officially launching it to the public as self-publishing dot com. We’ve got brand new programs, branded products, we’ve got better pricing. We’ve there’s just so much that is going into it. So if this is something that you’re interested in learning more about, all you have to do is go to self-publishing dot com forward slash the future. All right. When you go to that page. So this is officially launch day at the time of this tie cast being released. And there’s two things that you can do on that page. So we’re on a number one, we’re running a giveaway in the month of January. All right. So you can win a writer’s retreat to Boat Farm Treehouse. This is my brother and sister in law. They create a boat from Treehouse is they’re on Netflix is the world’s most amazing vacation rental show. But basically it’s these luxury treehouses, domes and mirror cabins which are really snazzy. And one person is going to win a writer’s retreat weekend trip to boat from treehouses. All you have to do to enter to win is go to that page. Self-publishing dot com for us Slash the future, share the announcement. There’s a couple of things that you can do to get points enter to win. Excuse me. Every single person that enters the win, you’re going to get a free digital copy of my book. Audiobook copy and a bunch of other bunch of resources, all of the resources surrounding this book. And so if you enter a win, everyone’s a winner and one person is going to be a big winner. So that’s the first thing. Second piece is we are funding this is our goal to fund 75 libraries in the month of January. All right. And so the way that we’re doing that is for every two people that sign up for self-publishing school, self-publishing, school, self-publishing dot com. Old habits die hard. So every two people that sign up as part of self-publishing that come in the month of January. All right. You will be finding a library so you can join and then accountability partner. Or if you join yourself, you’re finding half of a library. But the way that we’re doing this is we’re partnering with an awesome organization. We’ve partnered with them before. We funded libraries before. But essentially, there’s a lot of schools in a lot of areas of Africa. They have an hour of reading time per day. And a lot of kids exist in these schools where they’ve got an hour of reading time a day. Mandatory is required and they have no books to read. Which is just a tragedy and we believe at self-publishing dot com that books changed lives, write books changed the lives of readers and of authors. So we want to support both of those groups. Always, we will always support those two groups. Right. And so partnering with this organization for every TV people that sign up in the month of January, we’re donating a thousand books, which will find one library. Right. So essentially, they’ve got these books collected. We’re sending those books over there and so that they can actually get in the hands of kids who can read them. So all you have to do if you want to find a library is book a call with the team. And let’s talk about getting our help with your book. Okay. So self-publishing dot com forward slash the future. Go to that same page. You’ll see two things right on that page. You’ll see a little video that explains what’s happening, and then you’ll see where you can enter to win the writers retreat by sharing about the launch. Or you can book a call with the team and get our help with your next book or with your first book. If you’re if you’ve been a customer for a while and it was a long time and you want to start working with us again and we’ll book a call, we’d love to chat with you, but that’s also on that page. And then obviously, if you want to share this podcast episode or share the announcement on that page, you can see that there. And that’s the best way to get this in the hands of as many people as possible so that we can find those 75 libraries in the month of January. All right. So head on over to self-publishing dot com forward slash the future. You’ll find all the details there. And we’d love to work with you and we’d love for you to be a part of the future of publishing. All right. So, Matt, anything that anything that you’re excited about or anything you’d like to add kind of as we wrap up here?

Matt Emmorey [00:39:06] Yeah, sure, I’d love to. Thanks for bringing it back to me. I was just thinking about the implications of some of those goals. Like 100,000 books published in the next few years. Next 13 years. 12 years. The. The idea that somebody can take words and they can put them down in a place like in their computer or even, you know, writing them down something that’s very accessible to anybody, and then publish those thoughts, get them out into the world and know exactly how to, like, really differentiate themselves from other books that are out there. To me, and maybe this is very grandiose, grandiose, like I tend to maybe get a little too philosophical with things sometimes, but I feel like what we’re creating is a world that is just more inherently artistic, more inherently themselves. Like if you didn’t have to go punch a clock, if you could wake up on any given day of the week in your life and it’s like all I’m doing today is being myself and being creative and writing things, I feel like we’re we’re moving toward exactly the type of world that I want to live in. So I’m excited to be a part of that for people.

Chandler Bolt [00:40:25] Well, hopefully that’s what we’re creating and that would be my kind of my parting piece of encouragement for everyone here is, you know, there’s a lot of stuff. There’s a lot of crazy stuff going on in the world. And spoiler alert, there always will be. I mean, there’s always going to be stuff going on and but what we can control is what we can control. And I’ve always tried with what we do in self-publishing school is to say, hey, like, let’s focus on the area of the world that we can change and let’s go change that area of the world. And I think that applies for us as a company and in this next evolution of our company with self-publishing outcome. But I also think it applies to everyone listening to this or watching on the YouTube channel to you and your books, right, is like that is a mechanism where you can create that book. That book goes on to impact thousands, tens of thousands, maybe even millions of people long after you’re off this earth. That book is making a difference. So if you want to make the world a better place, don’t complain about don’t go on social media. Be about it. I write the book and that is the area where you can really make a big difference. And just like Matt was saying earlier, this kind of like that blueprint where you only see one square and so you may only see that book, but if you’re like a lot of people that we’ve worked with, you know, we say a book is kind of like this key that opens the door to Narnia, right? It’s there’s this world of opportunity that only exists for published authors. And I think you’ll find that. But it takes it starts with taking that first leap. So maybe it’s in this year 2023. I would encourage you, don’t wait. You know, it’s there’s never going to be a perfect time to do it. You’re going to have to get started before you’re ready. So I hope this has been an inspiring episode. We’d love to help you with your book at https://selfpublishing.com and just go to https://selfpublishing.com/thefuture book call or the team or enter to win the writer’s retreat. And we’ll see you on the other side.

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