SPS 206: From 100’s Of Copies To 230,000+ Books Sold In 2 Years…How I Did It with Tiffany Aliche

Posted on Apr 19, 2023

Avatar Of Chandler Bolt

Written by Chandler Bolt

Home > Blog > Podcast > SPS 206: From 100’s Of Copies To 230,000+ Books Sold In 2 Years…How I Did It with Tiffany Aliche

Apple
Spotify
Podbean

Chandler Bolt [00:00:02] Hey Chandler Bolt here. And joining me today is Tiffany “The Budgetnista” Aliche. She’s an award winning teacher of financial education and is quickly becoming America’s favorite personal financial educator. Maybe you’ve seen her on her Netflix documentary. We’ll talk about that later. Pretty interesting. And the Budget niece is also a bestselling author of a bunch of books, including the One We Budget Get Good at Money, which if you’re watching this on the YouTube channel, you can see that book over her right hand shoulder there. And then the Live Richer Challenge series through her company. It’s called The Budget Needs To You may have guessed she’s created a financial movement that’s helped over a million women worldwide. And these stats are crazy. 2 million. My gosh. Okay. This has changed even since this since this information that I got here. And so maybe these numbers have changed to has helped over 2 million women and the stats on Maya and say save more than two 200 million and pay off over 100 million in debt, purchase homes and change for the way that they think about their finances. This is going to be a really fun when we’re going to talk about books. She’s even got a children’s book. We’re going to talk about Netflix documentary. How do you do that? She’s got a really cool quiz, so we’d love to have you talk about quizzes and books and using that to grow your email lists. Her questions take has been taken by almost 100,000 people, so we’ll dive into that. A lot of a lot of things to look forward to. Tiffany, great to have you here.

Tiffany Aliche [00:01:28] Great to be here. This is awesome. I got your package in the mail. Yes, your self-publishing package. I was like, This is cute.

Chandler Bolt [00:01:34] Too. Yeah, Nice. Awesome. That’s like, that’s what we we surprise people when they sign up and work with us. We send them that. It’s kind of like the the the care package. That’s fun. I’m glad you liked it. Tell me why. Books. You’ve published a ton of books. Why are they such a big part of kind of your business and your brand?

Tiffany Aliche [00:01:52] Honestly, the first book, the one we budget, was kind of accidental. I don’t know that one. We budget was very, very intentional. So many people were asking me the same questions about how do you create a budget? And I was a school teacher for ten years and I knew how to write lesson plans and things. And I thought, well, maybe I’ll just like put it together in this physical kind of like a basically a really big lesson plan so everyone could stop asking me the same questions. And so I didn’t think that I didn’t really have any expectations for the one week budget, but I self-published them and I remember it’s sold a hundred copies its first month. And I naively thought that like, oh, like this is what it’s going to be. It’ll sell 100 every single month. I’m going to be great. But then the next month it sold like two. And then every month after that it sold zero, you know. And so it just what the one week budget taught me how to market, though, because I remember thinking like I worked too hard to get this information out there because as a teacher, a book is an extension of me being able to teach. That’s why I love books so much and it’s like me being able to teach and it’s my best. So something that I might forget to tell you. I luckily have put it in the book. You know, it’s a point of reference that when I’m not with you, you can pull it off the shelf and still get Tiffany. And so, yeah, that first book taught me how to market and, and since then, I mean, know, I read my book like seven or something like that, like I just built a book right machine.

Chandler Bolt [00:03:18] And so a couple of followups there. So you talked about I mean, I love we talk about the broken record conversations. It’s like, what are the things that you keep getting asked about and how that a lot of times it’s a great first book, so it’s kind of cool to hear your experience there. How did that book teach you how to market?

Tiffany Aliche [00:03:35] Well, because had gone to school. So I have my bachelor’s in in business with a concentration in marketing. And then I went on to get my master’s in education and I just never worked outside of some internships that I hated in business. So I never really dusted off my marketing acumen, but I just remember feeling like I had worked so hard on this book. I’m not going to let it languish in it. I mean, it was just like, No, yeah, like I busted my beehive for two weeks for this, but I’m like, There’s no way that people are not going to get this book in their hands. And so two years after the book came out, like I spent two years to learn why anybody who had a book, I asked them the same questions. How, you know, how do you sell your book? What tools and resources have you used? And I, I built my own site. I started social media had just started become a thing because the book was written like over like about 15 years ago or so. And so they didn’t even have business pages on Facebook. But I changed my personal page to Tiffany. The budget needs to Alicia and I started to use the personal page, like the way people use business pages now. Yeah, I suppose the tip of day that nobody cared about for the first like six months. And I learned how to because people weren’t paying me to speak, but I learned how to use speaking engagements to leverage like, Hey, I’m an expert. You see me here speaking, you should get my book. So there were all these things that like it taught me. And after two years, the book started to sell. And I remember one of the best piece of advice someone gave me, because at the time, my the physical book was like, I. Maybe like 12 bucks or something like that. And then the e-book was eight bucks. And because in my mind, I’m like, Well, it’s still the same book. I’m not going to discount it tremendously. And then I met another writer and I told him, my book is not selling. He asked me my price point and he was like, eight bucks. That’s high for an e-book. I’m like, But it’s the same book. Why should it be less like so much less? And he said, Well, I want you to look in your category like the finest category on Amazon, and I want you to look at the top ten books. What are they selling for? And it was like all everything was under five bucks. He was like, Are you better known those people on that list? I was like, he was, you know, they’ve enthusing. And I was like, No. He’s like, Why would somebody pay eight? Were you would they get paid five per day? Yeah. And so I said he said, how about this, do like a mini sale and see what happens. So I dropped the book price to 399 and I posted on all my social. By then I had got like a nice cadence going. I posted I said the book is half off at 399 for the next three days, and it hit the list number one on the finance list on Amazon. And I was like. Pricing. That was the one thing I had not considered. That sale has been going up for the last 15 years and I have never bought the price. And so the book is just and well since then. But yes, I like it, but I’m so grateful for the one week budget because it taught me so much of what it looked like to engage the audience, to get them excited, to get them to purchase and buy. I just learned so much from that book.

Chandler Bolt [00:06:27] Oh, that’s cool. That’s cool and glad you stuck it out because a lot of people will just move on to the next book. All right, cool. This one example. Maybe I just need to write the next one versus, you know, learning the marketing, continuing to market over a long period of time. Any idea how any idea approximately how many copies of that book is has been sold over time?

Tiffany Aliche [00:06:48] Yeah, because I had to do like I say, I got my first traditionally published book deal maybe like two years ago, and that they asked that question and it was about 50,000 copies. But over the last, you know, like ten years. So it wasn’t it was not a runaway hit. I mean, although relatively speaking, the average book never sells over 2000. And it’s like that. Yeah. You know, but, you know, like my book now it’s only get good with money. We sold like 230,000 in two years. So relatively speaking to that, you know, it was a slow go but yeah, about 50,000 copies of that first book.

Chandler Bolt [00:07:19] Hmm. Wow. So from from hundreds of copies sold in the first couple of years, 50,000 copies sold, the first self-published book, and then now 230,000 copies sold in two years of the newest book.

Tiffany Aliche [00:07:33] Do you see how you jump knowledge? Right. So it’s like, I love it. I call it the knowledge jump. So, you know, you hear people say, Chandler, like the first million is the hardest, like as far as making money because it’s so much knowledge you have to acquire. And then so it took me like seven years to make my first million dollars in business. And then it took me two years after that to make my first $10 million in business because there was a knowledge, just like I had collected enough knowledge. So the same thing with the book. It’s like I had learned all of these things. It took forever to get my book to do well. So by the time this book came out, I had already written like an additional five books. Like the next book I wrote was The Liberator Challenge, and that was I’m always accidentally getting success. I created this online challenge and my goal was to have 10,000 specifically women sign up to do this, this free three week course that I was launching in January about personal finance. And it was really just my give back to my community. And before the challenge came out, people kept asking, how could I access it? I said, it’s going to be a blog challenge where every day you get a blog post telling you what to do about your money. And a couple of our older women reached out to me and said, I don’t I don’t want to like look on the blog. And I’m like, Well, that’s where it is. They’re like, Can you put it in a book? And I was like, If I put it in a book, you have to pay for it. And they were like, okay. And it took me like weeks for like the Aha to come up because they kept asking, I’m like, Why would you want to pay for something that I’m giving you for free? Take it for free. And they were like, Simone, I want a book. So I said, Fine. I paid a college student to put it together in like the challenge that the three week challenge and into this book, I uploaded it to Amazon and it sold $10,000 worth of books Month one. I couldn’t believe it. I was like, You’re kidding. So it was this aha moment of like, you know what? Instead of just kind of throwing a book out there, you know, maybe if you can attach it to this existing movement and make the book a resource to the movement, the movement is free. The book costs money. I couldn’t believe it. So then every challenge after that, those books have sold really well because I’d done Five Challenges on the Savings Edition Credit Edition Home Buying Edition and the book. I actually don’t market the book as far as traditionally, so I market the free challenge you sign up for. And then every day during the challenge, it says, Hey Chandler, if you really like the challenge and you wanted a physical form, you can get the book. And so it just like allows that book to sell without any stress for me.

Chandler Bolt [00:09:58] Wow, that’s incredible. I was wondering about that because I’m looking on Amazon and yeah, it’s you’ve got let’s see the live Richard Challenge credit edition that’s got 672 reviews on Amazon You’ve got live Richard Challenge savings edition like you said 379 reviews home by an edition 247 or used net worth Edition. Do I need to read that one? That’s a big focus. I’m like, I’m really learning a lot about growing net worth. That’s fine. That’s really interesting. You’re the only person I’ve ever seen that’s done books from their challenges.

Tiffany Aliche [00:10:32] And literally what I say is copy paste from the challenge. And everyone knows, like I’m very transparent, the audience, that this is just a physical version of what you get for free on the blog, but some people just want it in hand. And what if the way I lay out my books, I like a formulaic book because my books are how to. And so I lay it out the way I would lay out a lesson plan. Here’s what you’re going to learn. Here’s the objective. Here’s how to write this task. This is what it looks like. Here’s a place to practice. So I’m literally just being my teacher so that people love it. Like if I look at my comments that the number one comment is always it was so easy to follow it and. Stan. So then when I got my first traditionally published book deal, I, you know, I put all of this knowledge that I learned together and I put it into that into that book. And even between that. So I wrote a children’s book called Happy Birthday. Molly Moore I’m going to hold it up. Yeah. And so this one, I said I didn’t want to publish it the typical way I said. Is it possible for me to do a hybrid of self-publishing and but also have helping with help with distribution? And so I did that. I found a hybrid company that helped me to do that. And I someone suggested to me that I kick it off with a Kickstarter, and that was like genius. I had never done a Kickstarter before, so I wanted to raise $30,000. And I said, You know, with $30,000, if you buy if you donate up to $30, you get the book. But then you also get to donate a book to a classroom. And we raised like $70,000 on the Kickstarter and it was amazing. But it was such a great learning lesson there to a different way to market. So what I really learned about marketing is if you can tie it to a thing beyond the book itself. So it’s like, Oh, I want to support this Kickstarter, but the Kickstarter helps to sell the book. I want to join this literature challenge, but the challenge helps. So to to sell the book. And for this it was really like the quiz helped tremendously. Like, you know, people took the quiz and they were like, and the quiz helped to, like, sell the book.

Chandler Bolt [00:12:29] That’s great. That’s really great advice. It’s it’s make almost kind of like making making your book into a movement by attaching it to something bigger. Challenge Kickstarter campaign. Yeah, that’s that’s really interesting. It sounds like one of your secret weapons. Is your experience as a schoolteacher. Yeah, the ability to create lesson plans. Any advice for other schoolteachers who are thinking about writing and publishing books?

Tiffany Aliche [00:12:55] Yes. Well, first of all, I want to say that you are totally a badass if you’re a school teacher. I think you’re probably undervaluing all that you bring to the table because you are the principal, You’re the nurse, you’re the counselor, you’re the teacher, you’re the mom, you’re that, you’re all those things at the same time and somehow manage to get your kids to a place of no knowledge, to knowledge or less knowledge. And like, I don’t think teachers understand how powerful a tool they have, you know, like, because it is really hard to get people to know a thing that they do not know. And so, like, I lean heavily into that. And so all of my books are written with this formula of here’s the lesson, here’s how it looks that properly. Here’s a place for you to do the lesson. And when I tell you, people love it. Whether you’re a doctor, a mechanic, or whatever, people want to be handheld when they don’t know how to do something, you know, like not hand-held in a way that, you know, makes them feel like, you know, you’re talking down to them. But handheld, they don’t want to figure it out. They’re like, oh, Tiffany is telling me exactly what to do, how to do it, when to do it. And so as a teacher, lean into your ability to teach and create these lesson plans. And if you’re you know, of course, if you were writing like a novel or something, that’s something different. But if you’re writing how to books, you know, you already know how to teach, lean into it. Let people know that you’re a teacher. I’ll give you a look at my reviews. I have over almost 5000 reviews on Get With Money. It’s only two years old and the vast majority are five star, you know, like 90% or something like that or 70 or 80% something crazy. And the reviews are so similar. It was so easy to read. It was step by step guidance. And that’s intentional. Also, too, when I wrote Geek with Money, I was intentional because the teacher in me. So you want to lean into your special teacher, like kind of like intuition knows that it’s kind of a chunky book. And I knew that not everyone was going to want to read it beginning to end. So I was mindful that the book does read beginning to end, but each chapter is almost its own separate book. That took a lot of work because there are going to be people, you know, who are like, I just want to know how to budget. You go to the budget and chapter, it’s enough. It exists in its own universe, but it also exists within savings and debt. If you just want to learn about investing, you don’t necessarily need the budget chapter if you have a budget. And so I was mindful with this book that I understood how students were going to like my readers, which I consider like my students were going to probably use the book jumping to chapters that they want. So I didn’t want them to have to feel like, Oh, I have to be all of this just to get to the chapter that I want. So the book reads like a timeline, but also individual mini books inside. And so I’m only able to think like that. Sandra Because I was a teacher, right? You know, so leaning into the fact that, like, you understand how people learn, lean into that.

Chandler Bolt [00:15:38] That’s really cool. I love that we have a bunch of teachers that come work with us to write children’s books, so it’s kind of cool seeing your experience not only I mean, obviously you’ve written and published a children’s book, but also applying the classroom to more traditional adult books, if you will. I think that’s really cool. And then you’re totally right. I’m looking right now on Get Good With Money. I’m like, Oh my gosh, these reviews are insane. 4.9 out of five star average. And then this girl in. Through all the top ones. I mean, it’s just and a lot of them are they’re just rolling in. I mean, the book launched two years ago and it’s like a bunch of the ones in the top reviews are January of this year. February of this year. I mean, this is really good. So let’s ask about that. I was going to ask you about that anyway. Five out, almost 5000 reviews. How did you do it? Anything, anything special that you’ve seen that works to get get reviews?

Tiffany Aliche [00:16:34] So key thing is that you want to get your community going before your book comes out. You know, like I spent years like building community around other things. I felt the challenges are a great place to build community because people are like, you know, like challenges allow me to pour into the audience. They’re free. They’re a tool, They’re a resource. But I also get to collect your name and your email, and I get to bring you into the world of Tiffany. This is how I speak. This is how I teach. This is how, you know, like it gets you acclimated to like, do I like Tiffany? Let me stay here. I named my community dream catchers. And so by the time the book came out, I had been pouring so much into the dream catchers that when the book came out, they were like, I’m excited about it because I said, This is an accumulation of all I’ve been trying to teach you, plus some. And so what I did was, which was like, if there’s one thing I did that really transformed like, you know, sales and getting people to write reviews is I created I pulled out from my big community a smaller subset that I call my DC, my Dreamcatcher 500. So I wrote them an email. The initial email that my copywriter wrote did not land. It was like, Do you want to be on the street team to help? Simone saw her book, Nobody Cares. So I was like, I’m not a copywriter. So I was like, Give me the copywriting. I said, My book is coming out. You guys have been so awesome the last 15 years. I want to gift something to you. But there are over 2 million dream catchers worldwide and 300,000 of you on my email list, so I can’t give to everyone, but I can set aside 500 spaces in this private Facebook group where before the book comes out, you’re going to get a free digital copy called the Galley. I’m going to do Lies With You weekly. You’re going to get checklists, all these things. And, you know, just as a thank you for being here and supporting me and certainly I would love if you could leave a review and things like that for the book when it comes out, the five within 30 minutes, the group was filled to capacity. People were like mad, like, I can’t get in, you know, And then those 500 people won. Despite getting a free digital version, bought almost 4000 copies of the book. I couldn’t believe it. I was like, And then when it was time to write reviews because it’s so critically important that when your book first comes out that you have people who are ready to write reviews primed and ready to go. That’s why we get in the digital copies. So they got time to read it. And so as soon as the, you know, the day one hit, which is usually books drop on Tuesday, they flooded Amazon. And I you never tell people how to review just please review they flooded Amazon with reviews and that’s that got to like the juices going and then I emailed my list If you read the book and you thought it was great for two weeks after, please write a review. And so we don’t I don’t push reviews as much anymore because we have a decent amount, you know, now these reviews are just rolling in, are not requested. But that’s how it was. It was like getting this core group of like basically your book street team. Yeah, they’ve got reviews. And if you look at good reads, we have a good amount of reviews. They were reviews on good reads, they posted on social for me. They reshare, they liked and they will Amazon reviews. So that’s just a great a great way to make sure that you get a good amount of reviews going because you really want to send a signal to Amazon that this is a book promoting on my behalf.

Chandler Bolt [00:19:34] Oh yeah, that’s awesome. And that’s incredible. I saw I sent you that box in that there should be a copy of my new book published check out and either you are some maybe someone on your marketing team. There’s a chapter in here on reviews. Two things you might consider. One thing we do is we call it the review sweeper. And so anytime someone downloads anything related to a book, it’s just a follow up email 21 days later, and it’s kind of like a little follow up campaign of like, Hey, what do you think of the book? And when they come in or when they reply, Hey, and then I’ll have someone on my team say, Hey, that’s so amazing. Would you mind copying and pasting that here in a review here? And like that works wildly. I mean, really, really well. And then one of the thing that we do that would work for you as well is just a short link. That’s easy. Like for me, it’s published books, some forward slash review. So whenever you URLs for something and that redirects to the Amazon page, so it makes it super easy. Run a podcast, any appearances or just an idiom or someone saying, Hey, I love the books and hey, I love.

Tiffany Aliche [00:20:38] That.

Chandler Bolt [00:20:39] Copy and paste that here. And we’ve seen those two things. I love.

Tiffany Aliche [00:20:43] That. And you really, I am the queen. I love you URL. Like literally, I’m like, I buy one for everything. I’m like, So I love that idea because you’re right. People will say that just every day someone post tagged me on Instagram about the book. So I was able to say, you know, geek or money review dot com or bunch of these. The review.

Chandler Bolt [00:21:02] Yeah, yeah.

Tiffany Aliche [00:21:03] I love that. That’s actually I love that idea. I want to do that.

Chandler Bolt [00:21:06] True. Awesome. I want to back up a little bit. How many? You said book number seven. How many did you self-publish? How many have you traditionally published? So I’ve only.

Tiffany Aliche [00:21:15] Traditionally published this one. And I don’t know if I’ll do anymore. I wanted I traditionally publish because there was a certain, especially in the financial space, I wanted to garner like a certain level of respect that comes, you know, because people will say like, you know, I don’t mind being called an influencer. I think I’m an educator, an influencer, an author, you know, But sometimes, like, especially now these days, there’s this connotation that you’re not serious, you know? And I thought, okay, I knew I wanted to get a New York Times bestseller, but that was like my aim. And I said, If I can do a book that I can work to get it. The New York Times bestseller and I did all this research about what it looks like to get on the list, and I could sell really well that it will help to differentiate me as like this true expert in the space. And it’s true now. It’s almost like being an Oscar winner. You’re always going to be award. Oscar award winning Tiffany Alicia. And so whenever someone has me on the news, whenever they always say New York Times bestseller, Tiffany only stays in the room. So that was one of the aims. Like, you know, is that I wanted that like especially in the finance space. It’s just, you know, because anyone could just turn on the camera and just say, buy a stock, you know? So I was just like, well, what separates me? So that was one and two, you know, like, I just knew having at least one traditionally published book, like I said, and and this finding finance space, you know, I knew that it was going to like because no one ever talks about my other books, although they’d done well they only ever mentioned get good with money and you see Netflix they actually asked me can we call the the the the the documentary get good with money. I’m like, now that’s the name of my book So they call the get smart with money and status.

Chandler Bolt [00:22:51] Because.

Tiffany Aliche [00:22:52] They’ve never asked about my other books you know they mean so yeah.

Chandler Bolt [00:22:55] So so why why did you not want the Netflix documentary to have the same name just because it be confusing or.

Tiffany Aliche [00:23:01] That’s what I was worried about. I start if someone googles giga with money, you think I’m beating Netflix on the on the algorithm. So at first I was like, Oh, that’s great because it’s going to think somebody’s book fails my way. I’m like, Is it? Maybe initially, but then Netflix will always rank first.

Chandler Bolt [00:23:15] Tiffany We kept saying.

Tiffany Aliche [00:23:16] You know, so that’s it. So then when they need to get smart with money, it’s close enough. So I still get some residual like I, you know, I sold tens of thousands of additional books because of that. But it doesn’t take away from my space when people are Googling for my book.

Chandler Bolt [00:23:29] Oh, that’s really smart. I like that a lot. So you said you you don’t know if you’ll traditionally publish again. What did you learn from kind of the experience of both self-publishing and traditional publishing? And how does that impact what you decide to do with your next book?

Tiffany Aliche [00:23:43] And what I learned, like book writing for me, I don’t consider myself an author. I’m a teacher who has something to say, you know, And so I traditionally publish. You know, it’s nice to have the, you know, the distribution and things like help from from, you know, like your publisher or whatever. But I tell the joke is, is that it’s a book publisher, not a bookseller. Like they not they’re not selling the new books. It’s all you tell people all the time.

Chandler Bolt [00:24:07] Like, Oh, that’s good. I like that a lot.

Tiffany Aliche [00:24:10] You know? And so, like, the work really relies on me and I can just do the work for my own book, if that’s what I’m wanting, you know, And I it so I liked having, you know, because I want to be in Target and Barnes and Noble. And if I’m being candid, I didn’t want to do the research to try to figure out how do I do that, you know, Plus, like I said, it’s easier it’s not impossible to get a New York Times bestseller with a self-published book, but it’s very difficult. And so I knew with a traditionally published book that the odds were were higher stacked in my favor. And because I already know how to get my own press and things like that. And but what I like about a and also too, it’s nice to have the editing and all that kind of stuff. But the truth is, you know, I have access to really great editors and things now. And for self-published books, you know, you get to keep more of the money, you know, like the work, you know, you get to go the fruits of your labor because I got a really great book publishing deal, an excellent one. But I didn’t fully understand book publishing math till I was like, I haven’t paid all back yet after 230,000 copies. And I’m like, because I got a really good deal. But like, I’ve already paid them back. I’ve already paid. They’ve already made thinking, let me five or six times more with my dance class and I got a really good advance. Oh, wow. You know, like I’ve they’ve made millions already, you know, But because you know, that 15% that you get and you’re paying back 15% at a time and so you you can make the million, but you’ve only paid back hundreds of thousands. And it’s like say what now.

Chandler Bolt [00:25:37] You don’t like that.

Tiffany Aliche [00:25:39] Yet So that you know, there’s that. But to be fair, the average person who gets an advance never pays back their their publisher. And so they they rely on people like me to not only pay back my advance, but all the other people that go, oh.

Chandler Bolt [00:25:53] Yes, oh, yeah.

Tiffany Aliche [00:25:54] You know, it’s like you live living, you know, like I’m I mean, my tardy, to be candid, was like she didn’t want me to get a traditionally published book deal. She’s just like, just do it yourself. And I’m like, it’s not for the money because I make plenty of money with the budget needs to. I have. Online school, the Literature Academy. I have a really great patria. My mentor, Tiffany Ecom. I have. So I make like in the last. Few years, we made over $30 million worth in business. So certainly my advance was not really a dent in that. It wasn’t about the money. That was like I told you, there was like a certain level of like put some respect on my name that I needed the book to do for me. And it’s done it. And so like if I get another New York Times bestseller, I mean, it doesn’t really add. It’s just like, okay, girl, you know, like, so, so like I’m considering doing a workbook version just because people have asked. But other than that, it would have to be with the same publisher because they also many of the writes. But other than that, I don’t know that I’ll do like we’ll see. You never know how life takes me but yeah.

Chandler Bolt [00:26:48] Yeah. Did you did you split out your did you split out your audio book rights at all.

Tiffany Aliche [00:26:54] No. So it’s all good. So I do they do have audio rights too, but it’s all together. So what does that look like? Your audio, right?

Chandler Bolt [00:27:00] Yeah, it’s. It’s something that’s negotiable. So I feel like, you know, if you do decide to go traditional publishing with your next book, negotiating out your audio book rights and self, some people I just had someone on the podcast a few weeks ago who they negotiated out their audio book rights and self-published and they make a ton of money on the audio book, right? So that’s that’s definitely negotiable. Okay. I get a smaller advance, obviously, but then you’ve got good long term upside. So it’s that obviously your royalty rate and kind of earn back of your advance. And then the third piece, oh gosh, I’m blanking on owning the IP, but I feel like there’s one other thing. Oh, your price for author copies. Okay is super small thing that not a lot of people think of, but if you want to use author copies, like in any of your speaking gigs or in any of your online courses or challenges or whatever, just negotiating that which, you know, is kind of a line item that they don’t really care a lot about When you’re at the negotiating table, it’s like, all right, cool. You’re you price for author copy. We can drop it by a couple of bucks, but you know, no skin off their back because they’re like, okay, how many author copies are you really going to buy? But it can make a big difference if you want to do like in our world free plus shipping funnels and things like that was like we use the book to bring in customers. Yes, but if that if you have to buy them at retail, it can it can make it really tough to make that math work.

Tiffany Aliche [00:28:24] So the audio rights, you’re saying that I can literally own my own like, okay.

Chandler Bolt [00:28:29] Yeah, you can own your own audiobook rights. They’re not they’re certainly not going to like it. Right. And they’re going to say, Oh, yeah, we don’t do that, or those aren’t how we do our deals or whatever else, and you’ll probably get a lower advance, but it is absolutely negotiable.

Tiffany Aliche [00:28:42] Okay. And then too, because, you know, I know that industry standard of that 15%, you’re saying that like I can push back on that.

Chandler Bolt [00:28:49] You can. That’s that’s on the higher end, though, actually. I mean, we always tell people 8 to 12%, that’s kind of in the range. So it’s definitely negotiable, though. I mean, sound like you’re selling everything negotiable. Yeah.

Tiffany Aliche [00:29:01] I know. That’s one thing you can tell. The way they talk to you differently. I’m like.

Chandler Bolt [00:29:04] Oh yeah, In the.

Tiffany Aliche [00:29:06] Beginning it was kind of like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And then it was like, Wow. Because it’s still two years later, we average like 1500 sales a week still like, you know, So it’s just really cooking with glee. I know I’m not, I’m not going to like at this point, it’s not my audience, you know, like one of the biggest lessons that I did, like about two years in.

Chandler Bolt [00:29:25] Or but.

Tiffany Aliche [00:29:26] Yes. And so one, you have to write an amazing book, obviously. And I worked really hard, but it was something I learned from Tim Ferriss in particular because I said I, I like to look to see who has done what I want to do. But it was in a similar space, like, you know, when Tim’s big book for our work, we came out, he wasn’t famous, he wasn’t. So I’m like, So how did he do that? I remember saying, I want the four hour workweek. Like, how? And so he used to do a lot of interviews that I found later that I listen to all them and read all the blog posts. One of the best piece of advice that he gave and I give to anybody who asks me about marketing their book is that he got really clear on his guy, like, who is the person that I’m speaking to? And he was like.

Chandler Bolt [00:30:05] Yes.

Tiffany Aliche [00:30:06] Silicon Valley guy, 25 to 30 years old and like, let’s just call him Ted. And so I said, okay, I know my girl is 25 to 45 and, and the key is to just talk to Tanya. Yes. Even though you once, Bob and Sally or anybody else. And I’m like, No, no, no. So when I when the book came out for the first six months, I only talked to Tonya because if you just start the Tonya, you know, like there are only four podcast, the time you really listen to there are only three blog, so you don’t have to spread yourself so thin. And so when my book launch, Tonya was titled Tonya’s was literally tweeting me saying, Everywhere I am Tiffany, you are. What’s happening? So it look like So we call it the cacophony on my my team. I was like, we wanted that. Like, I was like, I love that vocabulary word. It’s like if you go into the Amazon and you’re surrounded by birds and it’s literally like you’re inundated by sound. And so, like, I wanted a cacophony when it came to in the media. And so I didn’t have to do nearly as many interviews. So. So yeah, Tonya was my first primary audience. And what happens is Tonya’s best friend is back and her work husband is Ted and her. So Tonya will. All those people for you, you know, But you have to get her on board. And that’s why now I don’t have to say anything because Tanya is selling to everyone else, like the people who are getting the book now. I mean, it wasn’t really like in the book like the book is specifically written with like a feminine energy in mind because that’s the Marky Mark audience. But to see all these men who are hitting me up, I’m like, I love this book because my wife never listens to me. But we sit down to read the budget. These days she’s like, Oh, look, the what’s happened is that you like it? Is that that so many guys have reached out just like, you know, I know like my one of my favorite reviews is on Audible is this guy, his name is Will Smith was obviously not the Will Smith, but he said something like even though in the book she calls me Seth because of my cases in the book, and she tells me, go ahead and splurge on that dress. I love this book. So I just thought like it’s breaking through, not necessarily because of me marketing to so an audience outside of Tonya, but Tonya doing the legwork. So if you can you can empower and flood your audience with the tools and resources they need to share Your book like Nothing Grinds My Gears more than when someone says, Buy my book on Amazon. It’s available everywhere. I’m like, Go get that you are l Get going, Money.com. Yes, that’s it. Or a gig of money book. Like if you can’t get the you go get the URL. So it’s not just about allowing people to decide where they want to buy it. You are training your audience when they talk to their mom and you’re not in the room and she says, Mom, you should get this book. What is it called? Giga with money. Where do I get it? Get good with Money.com. Yeah. You know, And so, like, that was something that was like, I tell all my friends, like, what are you doing? Go by the URL, don’t send them to a budget is a dot com for it’s like 229111. What does that even mean? Yeah, what does that even mean?

Chandler Bolt [00:33:06] That’s good. I like that a lot. Well, I’m going to go lightning fire. A few final questions. And before I do though, I know it’s kind of hard to see, but I love it. I mean, you’re preaching to the choir here. We talk about the four pillars of a best selling book person Pain Promise. PRICE Yeah, right. And so that person. TIME Yeah. Yeah. And getting super clear on that and just writing to Tanya, talking to Tanya, doing podcast that Tanya listens to, I think that’s yeah, that’s awesome. There’s three things. I mean, I feel like we could talk for hours on this stuff. This is so good. There’s three things I wanted to ask you about. One is the Netflix documentary we’ve already talked about a little bit. Second is the quiz. And the third piece is is press and PR, because you alluded to that earlier, like, oh, yeah, I know how to get press and looking at all your stuff, I’m like, Yeah, she definitely knows how to get press. So maybe Lister Netflix documentary. How did you line that up and has that been a big mover of books and stuff for your business or brand or not so much?

Tiffany Aliche [00:34:11] Well, honestly, they came to me. I didn’t know that it was a production company that did documentaries. They sent me an email, say, We’re doing a documentary on money we’d love to see, be interested. And I was like, I don’t know. I sent the link to my one of my sisters. I’m one of five girls, and she said, Oh, I love their documentaries. Like I’m familiar with this company. They do really great. And that’s literally the only reason why I said yes, because I was busy. And so I, we started to tape and then like a few months and they, they’re like, it’s for Netflix. I was like, Wait, what?

Chandler Bolt [00:34:41] So they would tell you that.

Tiffany Aliche [00:34:43] No, they didn’t. That’s not how I know. So I could have said no. And then later. Erdely You know, no. So yeah, that’s how the Netflix thing happened. And it certainly it has raised my profile. It’s sold a ton of books. But I also I did a lot of marketing for Get Smart With Money as if it was my own that you mentioned.

Chandler Bolt [00:35:02] A.

Tiffany Aliche [00:35:02] Lot because I also wanted Netflix to come back to me and say, We’re interested in you, which they have because of my marketing. And so yeah, so. So you can squeeze more more blood in the turn up. Mm hmm.

Chandler Bolt [00:35:13] That’s really, really smart. And so let’s talk about the quiz. We I had Gary Chapman on the podcast who wrote a book called The Five Love Languages, and he talks about the love language quiz. And then obviously they’re string finders, like. And so we talk a lot about quizzes and how they’re one of the best ways to turn readers into subscribers and also get people to buy the book, right, Because it kind of it’s this infinity loop of people who buy the book, take the quiz, tell the friend about the quiz. Their friend takes the quiz, then they buy the book and then they tell them, you know, it just kind of keeps this thing going. How did you land on the quiz? Have you integrated that with the books at all? Absolutely. Was that helped?

Tiffany Aliche [00:35:51] So the book is called The subtitle is Ten Steps to Achieving Financial Wholeness. So the quiz I remember what happened was that the book cover was going to drop and my publisher was like, drop the book cover so people could be excited. But what I know as somebody who markets is you never get more excitement than the initial reveal. What will you do with that energy? You should. Put it somewhere. I’m not going to drop a cover. And people like us, I can get likes. Like, what does that even mean? So we drop the cover. People are like, I love it. I’m like, Great, go take this ten. We are ten step queers. It’s just one minute long to see how financial hold you are. It put it in the comments. And so I think like the first day or two, we got like 10,000 people, you know, took the quiz. And when you take the quiz in order to get your results, you got to put your name and email. And so it was like collect. And then you had it. You took like I get go money list because you’re clearly interested. And at the end of the quiz it says something to the effect like, you get like this downloadable, so check your email so that way you know, we could be integrated into your email list and then it’s a fun at the end. If you get like a result under 60% or whatever, it’s like a finding that says it’s okay if you get something above 60. It says like, Yeah, but either way it says at the end, if you don’t have 100% financial wholeness, then the book is a solution. And then if there’s a link to get the book. MM Yeah. And then we tell people like, you know, share your quick screenshots and share your quiz online. And so we do that too. So the quizzes, I mean, I mean you see over nearly 100,000 people have taken it and so that’s 100,000 people on my email list from this quiz. And so it’s just a great way to like add people to your list, get them to get the book, get them to understand what the book is about, because these are the ten steps that you just took, ten you know, the TED quiz points about, and it makes you introspective and say, Wow, I don’t have a page. I don’t have to. I don’t. And then at the end it’s like, Oh, but the book is going to help me with that. So it was super, super, super helpful.

Chandler Bolt [00:37:50] Wow, that’s crazy. Last question or I guess last question and then maybe it’s part of the run up against our time here. What’s what’s your secret with all this PR? I mean, it’s crazy Good Morning America today. So I think like all these different places, how do you get.

Tiffany Aliche [00:38:11] The secret is that they’ll turn your nose up at local local like so ABC on Good Morning America but they also own your little ABC like whatever in your city like do those things because what happens is producers know producers and producers move around. So who is like that? You know, the producer at your local ABC affiliate might one day be working at Good Morning America? I’d be like, Hey, Tiffany, remember me five years ago? You’re so awesome. Come on over here. Also, Good Morning America does not want to take a chance on someone who’s going to stutter and be nervous on online. So they’re going to want to see where have you been before? If you have nothing and you get nothing, so do these smaller places first, so you can get comfortable. And then you have these like video clips so they can see you and say, We’d love for you to do that here. Also, be active on social. So many times press has reached out to me to say, I love that thing you did on Social Three Ways to Raise Your Credit Score. Can you come on and do that here, you know. Mhm. And so like that helped a lot. Like I got invited to the White House to watch the State of the Union address because of like some like social media post that I did about like here’s, you know, new laws that are going to help you save money or whatever. They’re like, Oh, we love this. Do you want to come to the White House and watch the State of the Union? I was like, I got.

Chandler Bolt [00:39:25] Here.

Tiffany Aliche [00:39:27] Which is really cool, you know? And so so I just say all that and say, your social media will also help because ultimately, when you go on any sort of like media platform, they’re going to want you to write your own segment. Six Ways to Lose Weight. Five Ways to Grow Your Hair long, too, you know? And so like doing those things already and also going live like I was on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, you know, on Netflix, which is that was huge. Like, I didn’t realize how many people watched and they found me because I was doing regular lives and they were like, Wow, we can see Tiffany’s cadence. We can see her how comfortable she is in front of the camera. We want her to come on. So you want to be visible, you want to do those local things and you want to be consistent, and then you want to pitch yourself. Use help a reporter App.com That’s a really great place to start the picture.

Chandler Bolt [00:40:12] So that’s a really good one. Tiffany. It’s been awesome. What what would be your parting piece of advice for the Tiffany from 15 years ago before your first book and the other Tiffany’s out there, whether it’s schoolteachers or just people considering writing their first book.

Tiffany Aliche [00:40:28] Consistency, consistency, consistency that you’re gonna start. You’re supposed to add that over time, if you consistently show up, whether it’s writing, whether it’s live social media, just consistently showing up, actively trying to learn from the times that you’re not doing so well to fix, to tweak, to pivot and to get back in there. Then like you will eventually get better. Like, you know, what happens is then the first ten years I was not so great and then the last five, all the lessons I learned came together and I’m like, you know, like, you know, my cooking with grease now. So show up consistently, consistently for yourself and your book in your projects.

Chandler Bolt [00:41:06] Yeah, that’s awesome. I love that too. I’m like, I thought I was the only one either. I’m the only one that said that phrase or that was like a Southern thing. You’re when I love that we’re cooking with grease. Well, hey, how can Tiffany, how can people buy your books? Check out your stuff. Where’s the best people or the best place for people to go to find out more about you and what you’re up to.

Tiffany Aliche [00:41:27] So if you want to get good with money, you can go to https://getgoodwithmoney.com. Other than that and the budget needs for everywhere TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Probably my favorite. The budget needs the e-com. So all those things are and even the book and all the books are available there too. So ultimately the budget mister dot com.

Chandler Bolt [00:41:47] Awesome Tiffany thank you so much. This is.

Tiffany Aliche [00:41:50] Thank you.

Links and Resources

Disclosure: Some of the links above may contain affiliate partnerships, meaning, at no additional cost to you, Self-Publishing School may earn a commission if you click through to make a purchase.

Get your free audiobook and ebook copy of:

Published: The proven path from blank page to 10,000 copies sold 

Liked this post? Share it with friends!

Interested in working with us?

Book a free strategy call with our expert team!