Episode 147:
Learn to Self-Publish an eBook
Tim Lewis: As you’d probably guess from the title, which takes all this dramatic suspense out of the episode, Ben hasn’t yet finished his book, but he’s very, very, very close.
Tim Lewis: So, in this episode we talk to Ben and discover what it’s like both to be in the manic period just before you finish a book, and also what he’s planning for his book launch.
Tim Lewis: So, with no further shilly-shallying around, let’s get to the interview. Hello, Ben.
Ben Roberts: Hello. I’m sorry, I’m a little bit crazy, sort of loopy tonight. It’s just been one of those nights. I’m excited, but I’m crazy.
Tim Lewis: Yes. Well, we are basically in the situation where it’s 10:05 at night, because of your frantic schedule. So, can you tell the listeners where you’ve got to in your book writing project? Is the book out yet?
Ben Roberts: Tim, no.
Tim Lewis: Oh.
Ben Roberts: No. We’re so, so, so close. As we record this, probably about a week and a half away from launch. It’s so close. It’s with the final proof reader now. All the internal design is done. The external design is done. It’s all pre-uploaded to Kindle Direct Publishing. So, basically, I just need … I’m happy with how it all looks and feels, I just basically need the final edited version back and make a few little tweaks. But, overall, everything has come together. I’ve started doing all the marketing literature and press releases. So, yeah. It’s a week and a half off, but I have one thing that could hold it all up.
Tim Lewis: Yes. And what is that one thing? There’s always some tiny, little thing, isn’t there? But.
Ben Roberts: It is. This is when there’s no ending. It’s not even like, sometimes it’d be like, oh, maybe you’re being a perfectionist, or maybe there’s certain things like that, you haven’t got the design quite right. But, no, this is something now that is out of my hands, and it’s really annoying.
Ben Roberts: In the book I’ve got 10 case studies, and one of the case studies is on a publicly traded company. And basically, because it’s a publicly trade company, anything that gets said about them needs to be approved by them. It means that the case study is with them, and until I get that case study back and approved I can’t really go to print.
Ben Roberts: So, it’s one of those things that they want to care about what people say about them, obviously, but because it’s such a small thing, obviously it falls off the radar and stuff. So, I need to try and get them along a little bit, so fingers crossed that will come in in time for me to launch on March the fifth is the proposed date.
Tim Lewis: Okay. And have you got any contacts at that company to sort of chase up with?
Ben Roberts: Yeah, yeah.
Tim Lewis: I mean, is there somebody saying that you should be done at this date, or is it just in a legal void somewhere in the legal-
Ben Roberts: It’s in a void somewhere at the moment.
Tim Lewis: Yeah.
Ben Roberts: But I have some contacts there to chase up. So, I will be doing that as soon as we finish on this show, Tim. Don’t you worry.
Tim Lewis: Oh, okay. In terms of format, are you doing e-book or paperback? What formats are you doing out of the gate?
Ben Roberts: Yeah, e-book and paperback. I explored the option of hardback stuff. There’s a lot of a mixed sort of response online of whether you should do one or the other, or both. And I decided that hardback, actually, it was nice, it was nice to have, but, really, actually, how many you actually really sold and the real value in that. Was it really worth the cost for people? I decided to not go down that route. I think maybe it’s something I would explore in the future because I think it gives a really nice professional edge. It looks really smart. But I decided to not go down, at least not, it being my first book, I want to just get a paperback one, I was happy with that for number one.
Ben Roberts: Maybe in the future I’ll be like, know what? I wish I’d had it in hardback. I’m sure I can turn it into a hardback at some stage anyway. But I felt like it wasn’t worth the extra effort that it needed right now.
Tim Lewis: Yeah. I mean, I never, ever created any hardbacks. I’ve seen people create hardback books. I think you’re right in that there could be a cache of having a hardback book. If you’re at an event or something and you only give out copies or you want to be impressive looking that you’ve got your hardback version. But yeah, nobody’s going to really buy the hardback version online they’re being a nutter really if there’s a paperback version available, and.
Ben Roberts: Well, that’s it. I think, yeah. If you go at a certain event or you want to give something like a really posh, almost like a posh copy to someone, then it’s great. But I mean I don’t go out and buy hardback series, and I’ve got a hardbacks if I’ve been no someone’s pre order, their pre order list or something, and I was like, “Oh okay, that’s nice to have.” But yeah, I don’t go out and buy hardbacks. But, it’s something to explore for the future, and there’s no reason why I can’t bring out a special edition or something like that with a hardback in the future. I thought to get it out, I wanted to make sure the quality of the book was what was important more than the whether it was hard or soft.
Tim Lewis: Yeah. Okay. What else? So, it sounds like you’ve got quite an extensive marketing campaign lined up. So, what exactly is all going to happen when your, in the first couple of days your book is available, assuming it all goes to plan and the people come back say tomorrow with the approval for the press release.
Ben Roberts: Well, the nice thing is you think it’s all a plan. It mostly is a plan. So, I’ve lined up a couple of press releases for that, so that’s through, so cover one for industry press, one for local press, one for general. So, as I’ve been doing the buildup to the book and I’ve been, as I’ve been doing all the buildup I’ve been featured on a number of podcasts and spoken at a number of events, and just trying to build up that awareness. So, hopefully it’s already sort of catching on a little bit. So, I want to do a press release to capitalise on that. Speaking at events and conferences is something that I’ve been really pushing for. So, I literally am speaking at an event tonight. I’ve got, I’m speaking at a conference in April. Another one in June. I’ve got a sort of smaller event in May, and just trying to build up that portfolio and that awareness of what I’m trying to talk about in the book, which I think is hopefully a really nice thing for the competent organisers to have.
Ben Roberts: So, that’s something else I’m pushing. I’m probably going to do a Thunderclap campaign just after as well, or even like probably a week after. So, once the initial surge has gone of people buying the book, I plan to do a Thunderclap campaign sort of a week or so later, so that way almost, so it doesn’t completely drop off the radar. So, all those people initially get it there, and then actually a week later or just over a week later when everybody’s got the book, they can then actually do part of the Thunderclap campaign, which again keeps hopefully the book ticking over and keep it nice and high on the Amazon charts.
Ben Roberts: And what else have I got lined up? Racking my brain now. Speaking. I’ve got a load of social stuff as well as creating a load of social posts. I also plan, which I haven’t told all my case studies yet, so I probably should tell them that I hopefully want to do like a live video or a special edition of each of the podcasts, my podcast with the, so we can really talk about the case study in the book and actually talk about what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, what the future holds for them.
Ben Roberts: So, I’ll really embracing that element. And I’m also, I’ve got in the marketing pile. I’m also toying with the idea of potentially doing a webinar as well.
Tim Lewis: Yeah.
Ben Roberts: So actually, it’s almost like doing the presentation I would give at conferences, obviously online and trying to do it in a way that obviously the people can get something out of it and actually see what it means in action. And then obviously talk on more podcasts as well. So, I think that’s it.
Tim Lewis: Yeah.
Ben Roberts: It’s reasonably extensive. It’s I haven’t coherently joined it up in terms of this is step one, two, three four.
Tim Lewis: Yeah.
Ben Roberts: I’ve started creating all the stuff and I know this is how my mind works. So, for anyone who listens to my podcast, I have a pretty crazy mind, and I sort of jot, I write all this stuff down and then I join up all the dots later.
Tim Lewis: Yeah. I mean my cynical brain is coming out a bit here, as in like the trouble with things like press releases or even social, is that a lot of the time people might sort of see it, but people seeing your press release in the local press, they might say, “Oh well, we’ll put the story in next week,” or something. Or whatever.
Ben Roberts: Yeah. I think it all depends. I’ve hopefully done enough press releases to be able to get in. That’s why I’ve written four different press releases and try and give it the best chance. So, there’s ones focused on, there’s not that many people who are doing marketing and potentially doing things like I’m doing in my local area. And it’s something that the news editor and the business editor in Newport where I live will be interested in. And then obviously releasing the book, doing the talks in certain areas, and so I have an intrigue because I’m doing a few talks in Bristol. So, there’s a bit of intrigue there, industry stuff, because it’s a slightly different concept of what a lot of other people.
Tim Lewis: Yeah.
Ben Roberts: It’s not just talking about content marketing, it’s all the, a way of thinking. Then hopefully that’s something the other intrigue press may pick up. Yes, and then we’ll go, “Nah, not for me at all.” Absolutely fine, but I think I’m one of those people that I got an idea that it may work, and if it does, brilliant. If it doesn’t, I haven’t really lost anything. Because the good thing about-
Tim Lewis: Oh no.
Ben Roberts: The good thing about press releases is it’s not paid for.
Tim Lewis: Yeah.
Ben Roberts: So it’s all earned media. And actually, hopefully the quality of the content, the press release itself will help it stand out.
Tim Lewis: Yeah. Okay. Wasn’t so much whether it’s effective or not, just that ability to control when the press articles come out, even if it is effective.
Ben Roberts: Yeah, I think hopefully though, because it is timely as in the book has just come out. They’re usually pretty good because it’s timely. For them, if it’s newsworthy, it has to be, it’s timely as well, so actually hopefully with some of them, it will be quite quick because it’s like, well it’s news now. Now if they do it a week later, it’s not news anymore.
Tim Lewis: Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. Okay, so you got that. You’ve got your marketing almost sorted out. Is there anything else that you, I mean, yeah, you’ve just done it on the KDP dashboard at the moment. Is that correct?
Ben Roberts: Yeah. So then the yeah, e-book and the paperback on there. Yeah.
Tim Lewis: Okay. What thought have you given to like categories and key words and that kind of stuff on the KDP dashboard?
Ben Roberts: Right. That I can actually, I say fucking brilliant. My KDP now actually, look at that, I could have been totally prepared. You could have warned me about this, Tim. Right. Let’s have a look in it. So, I think you have to use, I’ve used the same key words and categories at the moment. So, I don’t know whether this is a good thing or not. So, maybe this is obviously what the podcast is all about. Trying to find out. So, in terms of keywords, I’ve got marketing, buzzwords, personal branding, branding, influence, marketing leadership, thought leadership. There’s my seven keywords so far. And categories, I’ve got marketing general and personal success.
Tim Lewis: Okay.
Ben Roberts: So marketing general one, I wasn’t sure, because it is marketing general, but wasn’t sure whether to put that in or take it out. Same with the keywords, whether I keep the one generic like marketing now or whether I do, when you take out those, that sort of general short tail stuff and focus on slightly more medium to long tail stuff.
Tim Lewis: Yeah. Well, I mean I would look for a more specific category than marketing general, but what do I know. When you actually have the book, you can email KDP support and get it added into extra categories, so it’s not just limited to those two. So, you can actually have up to 16 categories, I think. But that, I have tried the email KDP support thing, and they usually put it in some random subgroup of the categories that you give them. You can still get in more categories than the two there, so but yeah, I would put marketing general because that’s, well, it’s too general, basically.
Ben Roberts: It’s too general.
Tim Lewis: Bang east of the branch with all of the subcategories about marketing in it.
Ben Roberts: Well, would you do the same or keywords then?
Tim Lewis: Yeah, well to be fair, I’m not really a keyword expert on Kindle. There is actually, I think Dave Cheston or somebody’s got this KDP rocket thing which does loads of sort of keywords analysis on Kindle keywords. But yeah, I think yeah, you probably don’t want marketing in there, unless, because marketing’s probably too general a keyword. Though not sure what you’d replace it with really. You need to look at, read the book.
Ben Roberts: Yeah, because I thought it was quite general obviously, because it’s literally got marketing not even once, but twice in the title. So, I didn’t know whether that was enough, whether it needed the keyword. Or the fact that I wanted it to be quite heavily played honestly. It’s geared towards marketers.
Tim Lewis: Yeah.
Ben Roberts: So, I don’t know. Yeah, I need to give a little bit more thought to that one. I’ll have a look at the category to see if I think removing of marketing general from the category and add it in later, because we are going to just basically turn to KDP, “Yeah, I didn’t add it into the general one. Can I add it into the general one, please?”
Tim Lewis: Yeah, well pick a couple of them. I mean as I say, I think 16 max the number, I wouldn’t go that far, but if you put in five or six categories, then if it applies of course. I mean, it’s like, but they’re usually so general, and it’s not even necessarily even marketing. I mean, the self help and other sort of nonfiction categories. There might be ones where it kind of applies. So, just giving yourself a chance to appear in any chart is worthwhile even if it’s kind of like social media or something like that.
Ben Roberts: Yeah. No, that’s a good idea. Good plan. You see, every day is a learning day, Tim.
Tim Lewis: Oh yeah. Has to be. Have you got your own ISBN numbers or are you using their one? Or are you going to use their one?
Ben Roberts: I was going to use their one. I didn’t see any real downside in using their ISBN, unless you know any different?
Tim Lewis: Well, there is potentially, but in your case it might not make sense to buy an ISBN. The reason why a lot of indie authors buy ISBN numbers, well there’s a couple of reasons. You can use them for e-books as well. There’s a very minor reason you might want to use it for an e-book, which is some of the obscure e-book stores around the world are available won’t take your book unless you own an ISBN number. But they’re kind of like in Asia, in other places. So, if you go through something like Publish Drive, then they won’t let you submit to stores that need ISBN numbers. But that’s the only real reason for e-books to have ISBN numbers in general. It’s a waste of time to have e-book.
Tim Lewis: Now for paperback books if you use KDP or Create Space’s free ISBN, then your book will be listed under the publisher being like Amazon, KDP, Create Space or whatever. And I don’t know what they call it, Amazon Publishing. And also, there is an issue that you can’t then republish the book easily on another service like Ingram Spark. So, if you wanted to do like a, well actually, in the case of the hardback, you could actually create a brand new ISBN number for a hardback. But that’s another story altogether.
Tim Lewis: But let’s say you wanted to have your book available on paperback on Ingram Spark, which is a rival service for creating paperback books. They have the advantage that they’ve got access to the whole Ingram book ordering network for selling in bookstores. And they also give you much better pricing options so that bookstore will actually stock your book. So, a lot of indie authors will buy their own ISBN number and put that on the KDP one so that they can use the same ISBN number for a, if they want to get another version from Ingram for example, Ingram Spark.
Ben Roberts: Yeah.
Tim Lewis: And the same is if you want to do it with, if you wanted to do a print run separately. I’m mean obviously if you’re not planning to, really it’s more an issue with ordering the book to be honest, because you can’t create one ISBN and then another one for the same format of book. So, then you got like Create Space’s or sorry, KDP’s version sitting out. So, it’s kind of like a future expandability thing, having your own ISBN number for the paperback. But if you’re not thinking that realistically you ever want to want your book stocked in bookstores, or are you going to be doing like something on those lines, then it’s probably not an issue. But it’s just something to be aware of.
Ben Roberts: Yeah, no that’s an interesting thought I definitely will consider. No, so I didn’t think it’s something that I’m worrying too much about, but if it helps future proof the book, then it’s definitely worth considering.
Tim Lewis: Yeah. I mean the only thing to, the downsides of having an ISBN is A, you have to pay for them, which you can save a lot by buying them in bulk. But even so, it’s kind of like, it’s not cheap. And the other thing is it, I think it’s changed now, because I’ve actually Nielson have when I first ordered my ISBN’s you had to do it like a paper-based process and send it off to them. It’s ridiculous how they’ve got line on line ordering thing. But it’s not something you can do right away. So, I think it’s you get them given after a few days.
Ben Roberts: Yeah.
Tim Lewis: So, it’s another potential delay in the process. Certainly my first paperback books were delayed because waiting for the ISBN numbers to come back. So, that is another thing to consider against the ISBN number argument.
Ben Roberts: Yeah. Maybe it’s going to be, well the book, I’ve still got a little bit of time. It just a couple of days. But it’s definitely something I’ll look at tonight/tomorrow.
Tim Lewis: Yeah. Well probably tomorrow give it’s 10:30.
Ben Roberts: Yeah. One other thing I’ve thought about, so going back to categories, would you email KDP now, or would you email them actually after the book is launched? I assume you do it now, but also I’m sort of thinking that they wouldn’t email them until after it’s actually out.
Tim Lewis: Yeah. Well, they can’t change categories until your book’s actually released. So, it doesn’t appear in those categories, then it’s bizarre. It’s just like when your book’s available, you suddenly see, oh, it’s in these extra categories. So, there are extra categories that aren’t even, you can’t even select them in that at all.
Ben Roberts: So, they’ll automatically put, so even though you select your categories, my book will automatically end up in a number of different categories, whether I choose to or not?
Tim Lewis: No. What happens, well, sometimes, there’s a whole like, because the categories you pick in that KDP interface, right, are general global categories for that book, both for paperback and for. Now, in the U.S. and in the U.K. there are special categories for loads of sort of nonfiction and some reason the U.K.’s got a huge amount of autobiography categories, for example. Now, those are the kind of ones where you’re like you can’t get into those categories normally. Now, they do say on the KDP help there are some categories you will get into if you put particular keywords in your keyword search. So, it might be the case that if you put marketing in the keywords, it will actually put you in that general marketing category. I don’t know. I haven’t looked at that kind of help on the KDP thing to say, but it’s kind of like it puts in the U.S. on their like some special category and it’s very odd they way the keywords and categories work in Amazon.
Tim Lewis: So, your best bet is to go onto the amazon.com, the U.S. one, which is kind of where you want to sell the most really, if you can. Right? And you kind of look to see any specialist U.K. or U.S. categories, and then make a note of them that apply to your book, and then after your book’s out, mail those to KDP support and ask them to put it in those categories.
Ben Roberts: That’s a good idea. It’s all these little tricks of the trade, you see, Tim. That’s what this podcast is all about.
Tim Lewis: Yeah. As only I follow them as well. Did I mentioned this to you before? Or somebody I mentioned it to, it’s like GoodReads and sites like that, after your book sells, you want to go and claim your book, create your book on GoodReads. Because I didn’t with my book. And then load of people reviewed it, and it assigned the book to a totally different Tim Lewis as the author, because I was down to Timothy Michael Lewis, because that’s what my other books are basically created under. And GoodReads, and some of the particular site lets the users, people reviewing the book, create the book if it doesn’t exist.
Tim Lewis: So, that’s something that after your book, to put it on your day two or whatever, go into GoodReads and set up your book, and set yourself up as an author on there.
Ben Roberts: That’s a good plan that. I think that’s, it was me you mentioned it to probably. And I have it written down in my notes from the last podcast. I haven’t reviewed them yet, so I hadn’t they. But well the cat just started attacking me, no, I’m with Tim. Shredder, bad. I’m with Tim.
Tim Lewis: I think Shredder’s been on the show before. He’s like, or is it a her? His time in the limelight, they’re very attention-seeking cats, so.
Ben Roberts: Yes, he cannot see that I’m talking to Tim now. This is important stuff. So, I’m so sorry about that, Tim. I’ll lambast him later.
Tim Lewis: Yeah. But while we’re talking about Good Reads, another thing that you can set up is what’s called Amazon Author Profiles. And I think I need to set one of these up myself with my new author name. It’s called like Author Central or something like that. Though I’m not sure if you can do that before you’ve published the book. I don’t think you can.
Ben Roberts: I haven’t seen anything like that.
Tim Lewis: No, you have to go, it’s not the same as the, it’s a separate interface. So, you can set it up in the amazon.com one, and you set one up in amazon.co.uk. Basically, it’s somewhere where you log onto like I think it’s amazon.com, and you set up like a, if you’re the e-book store, for example, and you go to like Mark Shafer’s book.
Ben Roberts: Yeah.
Tim Lewis: If you click on, his name will be highlighted if he’s set up an Author Central. I think it sets one up anyway. If you click on it and it-
Ben Roberts: Yeah, so basically it tells you where all the books are and stuff, I assume.
Tim Lewis: Yeah. But you can customise that page and put your own description in, and put like a link to your blog and everything like that. So, I’ll try and dig out some stuff and send it to you. But yeah, it’s called Amazon Author Central. And you’ve got one for each store if you want it. Well, I think it might be only amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. And there’s separate profiles in each store. So, you probably want to set one of them up as well. I’m not sure you can do that. You might be able to do that now. I don’t know. But I think you need to have a book before you can set up an author profile.
Ben Roberts: Yeah, it would make sense.
Tim Lewis: Yeah, well there’s all sorts of weird stuff that you can do on Amazon, so. Any other, I think we’ve thought of just about everything. Well, the other thing we talked about a bit before, which is a bit advancing and I don’t do, so I can’t really criticise you for doing it, but you might want to consider it because you need extra work obviously because you’re not busy at all, was the whole Amazon affiliate tracking thing. So, if you set up, you probably already got an amazon.com or amazon.co.uk amazon affiliate link for your podcast and others things, have you, or?
Ben Roberts: I haven’t yet. It’s on my to-do list. It’s on actually, I believe it’s on my marketing stuff anyway, be it my marketing to-do list.
Tim Lewis: Yeah. Well, when you set up, I mean describe what an affiliate is to anybody who doesn’t know. It’s basically if somebody clicks through from your affiliate link to Amazon, they will pay you probably about two percent or something of the sale price of anything that people buy, depending on the product. Now the good thing about this is that you can set them up with these different IDs within the same link. So, it puts on the different code on the end of it, so it might be like Ben your link, and then you’ll have Ben and then you’ll have /Owen, or whatever.
Ben Roberts: Yeah, it could be, so I could put like MB podcast and then marketing buzzword podcasts, or I could put podcast guest or so then so I could get any guest. Or like I guess you go to a conference or something, and you put a special link up there that says look everyone, yeah.
Tim Lewis: So, but the good thing about that is that you can work out where you’re getting your sales from. So, you could have your social link or whatever, and then you could have a page you send, the press release links to. So, you see how many sales you actually get directly from the, for like, I mean the press. Depending if it’s online press, then they might have the link. If it’s printed press, then you probably, you’re not going to, but I mean you could, if you send them to a particular page or there’s all sort of ways of doing it. Give you some idea of where you actually get your sales from, which is useful for the next time you do a book because you’ll know that the PR campaign didn’t get you any sales, or maybe the PR’s where you got all the sales from. Or you got all your sales from people on the podcast coming from it, because that’s kind of the link you send them to.
Tim Lewis: So, it’s something to consider in terms of trying to track because it’s very hard to track book sales in general, and affiliate links are probably one of the easiest ways to do it.
Ben Roberts: Yeah. No, I think that’s a great point, isn’t it? Because without the, just having any sort of attribution to the book is going to be better than having no attribution. So, anything that I can help justify that I can sort of see what’s worked well, what hasn’t worked well, will be good. Obviously things like the press releases aren’t, will be to obviously encourage book sales, but that is quite obviously an awareness-driven thing as well. So, it’d be interesting to see sort of a balance and see having the affiliate codes, you’ll be able to do that. And I guess benefit of using the affiliate code as well over any other sort of tracking. If you could just have UTM tracking codes and stuff, it’s a fact that actually obviously it’s in Amazon stuff, so, and you get the payback as well which is actually more of an affiliate and just a tracking code, which is always nice.
Ben Roberts: And if you use any of these affiliate codes, can you get discount off by setting these affiliate codes? So, if someone used that affiliate code, could you say people who use this code get ten percent off the sale price?
Tim Lewis: No.
Ben Roberts: Okay.
Tim Lewis: Unfortunately.
Ben Roberts: You can set Amazon discounts and stuff, can’t you?
Tim Lewis: Not that important aware of.
Ben Roberts: I thought you could set discounts. You could do limited price runs of 99p for your e-book and stuff.
Tim Lewis: Oh. Well, yeah. If you’re in the KDP, KDP select game which you probably will be, because you’re on the go with them, yeah, you can run these countdown deals that sort of select period of time though.
Ben Roberts: Okay.
Tim Lewis: That’s not kind of like a coupon scheme. Actually, I mean it’s a shame that they can’t do coupons. But no, it’s going to like, that is a limited price run basically. So, it reduces the price of your book to 99p for sale week. The book’s countdown deal. Exciting stuff on your Amazon listings. But no, we were talking about UTM codes. UTM codes are like that is something that is great for your, tracking to your website that, because Amazon is an external website.
Ben Roberts: Yeah. Exactly.
Tim Lewis: So, a complete waste of time.
Ben Roberts: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Tim Lewis: I mean you can-
Ben Roberts: And to be able to track anything is obviously sending anyone through to my website to work out how many people were interested in the book from my site, then it’d be useful. And from the podcast. But try to get actually to the Amazon affiliate store and see who on Amazon would actually buy the book and you’d lose all that data, so.
Tim Lewis: Yeah. I mean that’s the trouble. I mean you can actually set up, I think I’ve got this set up on my site, where you can track clicks out to Amazon. But I mean, then you need Google tech manager and it’s actually quite advanced for little piece of data. And you still don’t know if the people have actually bought on Amazon that’s the trouble. Just because they click through to Amazon, they might think oh, whatever. My main issue actually with affiliates is well, it’s a good and a bad issue, is that if they buy anything else that comes into your tracking. So, if somebody goes, uses your affiliate link and goes and buys your book, but then buys a massive driving lawn mower for $2000 or something, you’re then going to get this massive spike in affiliate money when it’s kind of like you being, oh you sold a lot of books, and then it’s like oh, no I haven’t actually when you look at the actual figures.
Tim Lewis: So, yeah.
Ben Roberts: Okay. And just so you know, if you would want to click on my affiliate link and they want to buy a 2000 pound whatever, then you’re absolutely more than welcome. Please do.
Tim Lewis: I think I tried that one time. I put like an effort for some expensive thing. Nobody clicked on it, but I thought, well you never know. So, yeah. I mean, it’s something you want to set up. I mean, you get hardly anything from affiliates, but then again, it’s like everything counts and it’s like any extra money you can make, all the better.
Ben Roberts: Yeah. So yeah. Something’s better than nothing, isn’t it?
Tim Lewis: Oh yeah, exactly. Okay, so I think that’s covered basically everything for now. We’re just in a holding pattern until your book’s out.
Ben Roberts: Yay. We’re circling around the top of the airport at the moment ready to get that docking sequence authorised.
Tim Lewis: Yeah. Hopefully your landing gear can work properly.
Ben Roberts: Yes, I hope so we don’t run out of fuel midair and just crash.
Tim Lewis: I might actually finish the airport, so.
Ben Roberts: Yeah. Or that’s not good to start there. No God, please don’t. No, it will be fine, yes. March the fifth proposed day. And it’s yeah, that’s the dream. So.
Tim Lewis: Yeah. So, I should probably talk to you I guess probably April now, and see how your release went, and then you can be the first person who’s gone through the whole process. Yay!
Ben Roberts: Oh God. I mean, it’s always nice to be someone’s first, I suppose. So, I’ll take that. I mean, the first is rarely ever the best though, so don’t judge me on that. But being the first is always nice.
Tim Lewis: Yeah. Well actually, strictly speaking, Holly Chessman has actually beaten you, but she only had one show. She won’t even know the last stage. So, you’re not quite the first, but you’re the first long-term one.
Ben Roberts: Yes. Oh well, we’ll see. I’m excited for it. I’m happy with the book. I think there are bits that I could maybe do better. Things that I’d change a little bit. But overall I’m, oh I’ll be so glad to get this, get it out now, get into the wild and just see, I know it’s not going to be perfect, but I tell you what, I’ve given it a damn good go. So, that’s what matters.
Tim Lewis: Yeah, exactly. Anyway, thanks for coming on the show again, Ben.
Ben Roberts: Hey, pleasure’s all mine, Tim. Thank you.
If you liked this show then you might like Meet Ben Roberts, Ben Finishes His Manuscript and Is Ben Anakin?
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