Bestseller Scam Teaser

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Mostly it's emotional pitches, from what I can see, you know, will make your book a bestseller. That's a complete lie. It's just they're tricking Amazon's algorithm. It's you're not gonna sell a lot of books, you're just gonna lie about being a best-selling author. I guess that appeals to some people, I don't know, but it's unethical, of course.

Meet Michelle De Filippo

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Hi friends, this is Read and Write with Natasha Podcast. My name is Natasha Tines, and I'm an author and a journalist. In this channel, I talk about the writing life, review books, and interview authors. Hope you enjoy the journal. Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Read and Write with Natasha. I have with me today author and publishing expert, Michelle De Filippo. She has more than 50 years of experience in book publishing. She's the author of Publish Like the Prose. Her company 1106 Design makes it easy for authors to release a top quality book, keep control of it, and earn more money, more money every time they sell a copy. Michelle is on a mission to help authors ask the right questions and to make informed decisions about publishing their books. Alright, this is exciting. Thank you for being here, Michelle. Thank you for having me. Yeah, especially to talk with someone who's a veteran like you in the publishing industry. And I'm excited to talk about self-publishing, especially now that I'm seeing if you agree with the statement that self-publishing no longer has the stigma that it used to have in the past, whereas they used to call it vanity press or vanity publishing. So I'd love to hear your opinion about first the stigma around self-publishing and is that changing.

Why Self Publishing Is Respected

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Well, you're absolutely correct about that. Self-publishing is accepted now, mostly because it's really difficult to be traditionally published. Very difficult for authors to be picked up by a major publisher. And so now that we have the technology and the expertise uh readily available to authors, many of them, instead of just going away and being disappointed that they can't get a publishing deal, they can publish it themselves, and that's great. There's a lot of misunderstanding about self-publishing, though, and that's that's the reason I like to do these podcasts, and we can get into that.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

Oh, great. So what I've been hearing lately from authors, and I talk a lot of I talk with a lot of authors, especially on this podcast, is that the shift now that in the past they would tell you, oh, if you self-publish, no publishing company would look at you afterwards. You're you're like banned for life, right? But then now the shift is you self-publish, you have a big audience, the publishing company will actually approach you after you self-publish. Do you agree with the statement that it's kind of things are reversed now that they're and some authors that I talked to, they said they were approached by publishing companies and they actually turned down the pub, the big one of them is like the top was it? I think it was Random House or somewhere like one of the top five, because they did the math and they had a big audience, so it did not make any sense for them to go with the top. So I would like to hear your thoughts

Hybrid Publishing Revenue Traps

SPEAKER_00 3:27

on that.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Well, that's actually the key point now. See, it used to be that you had to work with a publisher because they were the only ones who could get you distribution to the retailers, and they were the only ones that could give your book enough publicity so that it could sell a decent number of copies. But that's all changed with self-publishing. Amazon changed all that. Now it's possible for anyone to get distribution to the to the public without much effort at all. And so, especially for authors who already have that big list, they really don't need a publisher of any kind. And that's that's uh sort of where the misunderstanding is coming in. A lot of authors don't realize you do not have to work with any sort of publisher to self-publish your book. You need services, and there are plenty of author service companies like mine that can help you get everything done that you need to get done, but you do not have to work with any publisher who's gonna share your revenue from sales.

SPEAKER_00 4:24

So your business model is you help them self-publish and and you don't take a cut from like you don't take royalty cut from the royalties, or what do you do? Or like what is your business model? That's correct.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Traditional publishers usually shoulder all of the expenses to to create the book, right? And then they pay an author a small royalty in return so that they can recoup most of uh they can recoup their investment from book sales, and that's just that's a fair business model. But today's publishers, some of them are call themselves hybrid publishers, whatever name they go by, they're charging the author to produce the book, and they're also taking revenue from sales on the back end. So that doesn't work out really well for authors, and that's that's really my main mission is to try to get that message out because it's it's becoming forgotten. People think they need a publisher to self-publish, and you really don't. But you do need professional services to produce a good book, and that's what we help authors do. We help them with all of these services, editing and design services. We help them get uploaded on the print-on-demand platforms so that when a book is sold, they get all of the net revenue deposited directly to their bank account. We don't take a penny. I see.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

So, what are the main mistakes that self-published authors do? That's why people say, oh, it's a self-published book, it's not good enough. So, how do they actually try to avoid these mistakes so that their book would look and feel like like professional book rather than like a quote-unquote self-published book?

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Well, well, to get a professional book, you have to hire professionals who know what they're doing, right? And that's that's the the the narrative out there is that self-publishing means doing it yourself or finding someone who's really cheap on Fiverr who will do it. And and that's not likely to get you the professional level book you need. Good editors, good designers take a lot of time with your book and they charge accordingly for their time and their talent. So if you're going, if you're serious about publishing a book for your business, let's say, you should really expect to invest a significant amount of money to get the top quality people that you need to do the job. Now, if you're

What A Professional Book Costs

SPEAKER_01 6:41

publishing as a hobby, it doesn't matter. You can hire anyone. But the problems come in when you're publishing professionally or you aim to publish professionally, and then you take the hobbyist approach and hire people who are not really qualified to do the job.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

I see. So if if we want to think like numbers, what would should be the bulk number of investment that authors should keep in mind to have a self-published book, whether they do it on their own or whether they hire a company like yours, what kind of money are we looking at?

SPEAKER_01 7:16

Okay, well, I yeah, they shouldn't do it on their own unless unless they're qualified to do that work, right? But but so so for us, typically a non-fiction book will be in the nine to ten thousand dollar range for a 50,000-word book. That's full service, all the way from editing all the way through to distribution setup and all the hand holding and advice you need along the way. Uh fiction would be a little less expensive, more in the $8,000 range.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Why why is fiction less expensive? I'm curious.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Well, it's simpler, right? If you look at it at the uh interior pages of a novel, they're very quick and easy to do, whereas nonfiction might have tables and charts and the heads and the subheads and outline type text, all of all of that. So it takes longer to design the interior of a nonfiction book.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

So your team would have an editor, a cover designer, a typesetter. Like w who are you who's who are your team members? Like what are their roles? I I didn't quite hear that. It broke up. Ah, sorry, like what are the roles of your team members? Like I would expect a designer, an editor, what else? Like, who are the the team members that you hire?

SPEAKER_01 8:26

Yeah, I have a team of 20 people now, and we work, we yeah. So when a book comes in, I can assign it to an editor who has experience in that in that genre, right? Whether it's fiction or nonfiction or business or religious or philosophy or whatever it might be. And then I have I have designers, I have proofreaders, I have cover designers, interior designers, proofreaders, ebook formatters, the whole thing, audiobooks, if people want to do that. So we can we can handle just about everything. But our main our main strength is that we're a small company, we're not gonna put you on a big company, publishing company assembly line and and give everybody the same solution. It is custom work and it's in collaboration with you, so that we do our best to bring your vision to life. It's always a two uh you know complete collaboration.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

I see.

AI Hype And Real Limits

SPEAKER_00 9:18

Okay, I want to talk a bit about AI and the role of AI now since and it's it's moving really fast and it's improving. How do you feel about using AI, whether in the cover design or even in producing the audio using and a voice claw user companies like Eleven Labs and so on and so forth? So, what is how were these done when it comes to the use of AI now?

SPEAKER_01 9:47

We've actually done a series of articles about this on our Substack newsletter. I think it's great and valuable in terms of helping authors research and get ready to write the book. I don't think it's well, it's not there yet in terms of quality, but I don't think it's a good thing to try to use AI to replace human creativity, human advice, human collaboration. I it's it's not there. It's just it's a it's a machine that's gonna spit out information, but but it's not it's not a real conversation, even though it's even though it sounds like it is. It's not the same as as someone who has decades of experience sitting down with you and saying, okay, here's what I think we should do. What do you think about it? Here's my idea for a strategy. You know, who do you want to market to? What is your book about? You know, that can't be replaced.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

What about using it for design? And you can go back and forth with the AI. You say, like, I don't like this, fix this, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Well well, the problem I have with that is it's scraping material from somewhere, right? It's probably scraping material from some artist's portfolio somewhere along the line to generate that idea. It's also not ready yet. You see covers where people have six fingers on their hand, and you know, it's just it's not the same as the human design process. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

What about AI in terms of audio? Uh, because I've uh I went to a conference the other last week, and they were talking about audio cloning. So I can go to a company like 11 Labs and they would uh clone my voice even with this accent, and they would clone my voice, and instead of me paying thousands of dollars, they will they would just I use the clone to read record my book and I'm done. I can hear the difference, can't you?

SPEAKER_01 11:44

It sounds flat. It's not the same as a human being uh uh uh giving emotion to the text. I can't I you know maybe 20 years from now it'll it'll be you you won't be able to hear the difference. I don't know. We're at the beginning of something really big and really brand new, and we'll have to see it. But I I still think that that people matter. Uh I hope we don't all have to just interact with some gigantic machine in order to live our lives and create our our content.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

So do you use any AI tools in the production of of your books for your clients?

SPEAKER_01 12:25

No, not in the production, because that's again, there's thousands of decisions that we make along the way in terms of how to design the book and and even when you're formatting a book. Today they call it formatting. People don't remember that there's such a thing as book typesetting, which was which is a specialty all its own, and great care is taken there too, to get the spacing just right so that the reader is not distracted in any way, and the reader can focus on your text and comprehend your text. It's a big, it's a big it's a big uh task. We work for traditional publishers as well, you know, as uh as indie authors, and they're very fussy, and and when that book is done, you you can tell that all of that attention to detail went into it.

Publishing Futures And Format Myths

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Okay. So you're someone who's been in the publishing industry for a long time, 50 years, right? That's a really long time. So you're you've seen a lot of changes, right? From the pub the publishing house changes, all of that. So where do you see the future? Is are we reaching a point where we might not need the big publishers anymore if if the tools are there? Like where where are we headed in terms of the future?

SPEAKER_01 13:44

I don't have a crystal ball. I I I don't know. I I I've been around long enough to hear people predict that this or that is going to be eliminated by the latest innovation, and it doesn't seem to happen, right? Ebooks were, you know, television was supposed to replace radio, ebooks were supposed to replace print books, audiobooks were supposed supposed to replace ebooks and print books, and that has never happened ever. You know, I I think all of the all of the choices are still there, and that's good because people can engage with content however they want to.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

So when do you think people should make the choice to self-publish? So for example, I do book coaching, and my clients, after they finish their manuscript, they say, now what? So I tell them, like, okay, start with the traditional publisher, you need an age, but and then the minute they hear that it might actually take them years to even just get their foot on the door, they immediately say, No, life is too short. I'm gonna self-up. So when do how do you advise your client when they come to you and they tell you, hey, what when do you think I should switch to the self-publishing route? When is the deciding factor?

SPEAKER_01 15:02

Well, we've worked with a number of people who were traditionally published, and then they got sick and tired of that model and and decided to self-publish, right? So for the reasons you stated at the beginning, the revenue they get is is almost nothing, and you know, you it's delayed a long time before they can get paid. So self-publishing addresses those issues. But I think I think what indie publishers could do better is more research about whether or not there's a market for their book even before they begin writing.

Research Your Market Before Writing

SPEAKER_01 15:32

Right. A lot of a lot of indie authors will just write the book that that they think is a good idea without without checking and seeing if anyone else would be interested in it. So so that that's an improvement that could be made. And then, of course, a a lot of them make the mistake and and follow the the do-it-yourself narrative online, which leads to a terrible book, usually. So they're they're hurting themselves. They're trying to save money, but they're hurting themselves and they're they're actually preventing their own success.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Yeah, I see. Okay. So how can

Finding Clients With Transparency

SPEAKER_00 16:08

like people find you or find your services? And you know, in addition to going to podcasts, how do you market yourself online to tell people, hey, I'm here, come get my books. I'm curious how do you position yourself in the marketplace?

SPEAKER_01 16:24

We do a little bit of everything. We have a Substack newsletter that goes out twice twice a month. Uh, we try to write about content articles that are of interest to authors, right? Our website is 1106design.com. And if you go there, you can download my book for free in PDF format. I we we have all kinds of samples, and my pricing is there. Believe in 100% transparency. We have tons of educational articles, podcasts. I put up every podcast I do on the website so people can can go on those things too.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

So, in terms of client acquisition, I I like to talk business as well because there's a lot of authors who are also, you know, they have their writing business. In terms of client acquisition, where do you think your most clients come from?

SPEAKER_01 17:13

Oh, definitely LinkedIn. We do a lot of LinkedIn outreach, and that's that's because a lot of business people or career people are more likely to write a book than than it's it's easier to find customers on LinkedIn because many of them write books, whereas to go out to the general public and just try to find anyone who's thinking about writing a book is is nearly impossible from a marketing standpoint.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

So you actually convince them to write the book to tell them, hey, I think you have a book anyway, why don't you publish with us? Or do you look for people who are already working on a book and convince them to publish with you?

SPEAKER_01 17:49

Well, both. We post a lot of articles on LinkedIn and other social media and we direct them to our newsletter and post samples and try to keep a conversation going. It's difficult because you never know what anyone is gonna see. Yeah. So what publishing trends are you keeping an eye on? Definitely AI, because that's nobody knows where that's going right now. Um I'm a little worried about it, as well as I I think the opportunity is great when there's no more barriers to information. I think it's gonna be exciting to see what that does to the world.

Scams And Fake Bestseller Claims

SPEAKER_01 18:25

You know, but at the same time, you may have noticed I I've noticed that the the the scoundrels have discovered AI too. And now what we used to be able to easily identify spam, and it's it's getting a little less easy now to to identify scoundrels when when they send a cold email to you.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

Yeah, yeah. I got a lot of those, like um uh and I they almost tricked me. So I would get people who claim to be hosting a book club and they want to host your book uh book. They use real names of established book clubs. They tell me, hey, we want to promote your book, we want like our 100 members to buy your book, but you have to pay us a fee. So I it sounded shady, so I immediately googled it and I realized it's an ongoing scam. They come, they go after authors by telling them, come come on our book club. But so in in terms of the future of publishing and AI, do you think we would ever reach a point where everything's gonna be manufactured by AI except maybe for the writing pro for the original idea of the book?

SPEAKER_01 19:39

I hope not, because for even AI text is flat, right? Just like an AI voice is flat. I, you know, and of course there are people who are jumping on that in terms of it being, you know, the easy way to get content out. But just think of the authors you love to read, right? For me, it's Stephen King, Dean Koons. You just cannot replicate how they put words together and the creative creative stories they come up with. I I I sincerely hope we don't all wind up being attached to some emotionless, faceless machine that is not accountable to anyone.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

So, in terms of your media consumption as a professional publisher, how do you what are your media sources to keep up with the publishing news and the latest trend? What do you follow? Who do you follow? Podcasts, authors, substacks. I'm curious to see yours who do you how do you keep up with with what's happening?

SPEAKER_01 20:42

I do Substack. We also, oh, it just kind of flew out of my mind there. I read LinkedIn a lot. I'd like to know what other people are saying there. A good organization to to for any author to consider is Ally, the Alliance of Independent Authors. They have Ally. Okay. Ally, and it's self-publishingadvice.org. They for decades now have maintained a watchdog list to warn self-publishers about the scammers in the industry, and they have tons and tons of educational content that every author should take advantage of. They're a forum where you can ask questions. I participate on that as much as I can.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

What are the scammers? How are they targeting self-published authors?

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Mostly it's emotional pitches, from what I can see, you know, will make your book a bestseller. That's a complete lie. It's just they're tricking Amazon's algorithm. It's you're not going to sell a lot of books. You're just going to lie about being a best selling author. I guess that appeals to some people. I don't know, but it's unethical, of course.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

How do they trick the algorithm by using ads and keywords? Or how how do they do that?

SPEAKER_01 22:43

They get they get people to buy the book. They get a lot of people to buy the book within a 45 minute. Times period and Amazon's computer is not a thinking human. So it's it it's just oh this is this book is flying off the shelves. It's a bestseller. But it's all you know, so so then the author can take a screenshot of that and and claim to be a best selling author from from then on. But it's it's it's they've destroyed the meaning of the word bestseller because now nobody believes it. They just yeah, you know, that's true.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

I I I I actually don't believe it anymore. Yeah. When I see because everyone is claiming to be a bestseller these days. They're not like what defines a bestseller in your eyes?

SPEAKER_01 23:28

I do have a client who's a who's a literary agent, the real thing. And and a bestseller is defined by by a a book that has sold more than 10,000 copies in the last week.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

That's a real bestseller. And do you use what list? New York Times list, or do you use the Amazon list or the USA?

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Well, by according to Nielsen, which tracks bookstore sales.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

I see. Okay. Okay. So one thing I wanted to ask you is about the distribution part for ND

Distribution With KDP And IngramSpark

SPEAKER_00 24:04

publishers or self-published. So there's Ingram Spark, that's and I think draft to digital. What do you use to distribute the books of your clients?

SPEAKER_01 24:16

We recommend they use KDP and Ingram Spark together. Okay. Okay, using KDP to feed all the Amazon channels at a 40% wholesale discount, and then Ingram Spark to feed the expanded distribution channels, which is bookstore, physical bookstores, libraries, other distributors, and so forth. And for that, you need to offer a 55% wholesale discount. So by using both platforms together, you get the widest distribution at the lowest cost.

SPEAKER_00 24:47

Okay. I want to I want to have a technical question about Ingram Spark. So I put my books on Ingram Spark, and that that was it. And I know there's a second part to it, which is if you clients or you put their books on Ingram Spark, how do you guarantee that the books actually the bookstores actually order them from Ingram Spark?

SPEAKER_01 25:07

What is it? It's all once your book is is uploaded to Ingram Spark or KDP and and distributed fully, it's all automatic. You can get reports every month about the sales. You will get reports every month about the sales.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

Yeah, but how would the bookstores know about your book when it's on Ingram Spark?

SPEAKER_01 25:27

Oh, well the Ingram, neither KDP nor Ingram Spark publicize the book for you. That's always yeah, you have to do that. You have to market your book. And that has always been the case, even for traditional publishers. It's the publisher's job, and as the indie author, you are the publisher. It's the publisher's job to drive people to the retailer to purchase the book.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

I see. But I think Ingram Scrub Scrub offers like ads where you can drive the book sales.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

But publish uh bookstores are not gonna buy from KDP because no, no, and that's another reason to use Ingram Spark and KDP together because bookstores will never purchase from Amazon.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Individuals will buy from Amazon and bookstores will order from Ingram Spark. So your job as an indie author is to go actually to the bookstore and tell them, hey, my book is here, order it, or something like this.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

Well, see that that's another thing that the stuff the the the uh scammers uh tell authors, which isn't quite correct. They'll say, We'll distribute your book to bookstores nationwide, these these hybrid publishing companies. Well, what that means is they're gonna put it up on their Ingram Spark account, and they will get the sales reports and they will get the revenue, and and hopefully you'll get paid, but there's no guarantee of that because you're not seeing any of the reports. Right? But uh bookstores may or it's it's really difficult to get on a bookstore shelf. You may you may be able to do that with a local bookstore and they'll see whether your book moves or not, but but you're probably not going to be on the shelf. You will be in the Ingram database where it can be ordered.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

What are the top marketing tips you would give to a self-published author?

SPEAKER_01 27:23

Marketing tips,

Marketing That Starts With Quality

SPEAKER_01 27:24

the biggest, the best marketing tip I can give anybody is to prepare an excellent book in the first place. Okay, right. Because people will recognize that it's a quality book and tell others about it if it's well edited, if it's well designed, if the cover is well designed, your cover has to look like it was traditionally published. Right. It's it's a it's a it's the first impression, it's the statement that tells people that you you have you are a serious author, right? So don't skimp on the cover. And even the interior pages have to be typeset well because you don't want to, if if the reader stumbles over poorly typeset text, they might blame you, the author, and say, I didn't like that book. But it might not be that it might not be what you were writing, it might be that it wasn't properly typeset. So so so prepare a quality product. Yes, it's a yes, it's a risk. Nobody knows whether the book is going to sell, but the answer to that risk is not to put out an amateur-ish product. And that's where people go wrong.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

What what other tips would you offer them in terms of marketing?

SPEAKER_01 28:33

Well, find well, you should actually know where your audience hangs out and who you're writing for before you even begin. And then after that, you there's research available. It's one of the products on our website. There's research available to find out where your target audience hangs out online, and then you can start to to to focus your marketing efforts where your target audience is rather than just shotgunning it to everyone.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

I've been hearing a lot about Facebook groups, especially like genre Facebook groups, genre focused uh Facebook groups. How how do you feel about authors hanging in these like Facebook groups? And are somebody said, Oh, they're just authors promoting each other's books. So yeah, that it it is. How do you feel about these Facebook groups?

SPEAKER_01 29:25

You want to find the groups where the audience is, not where other authors are.

SPEAKER_00 29:31

Sometimes But authors are big readers, so they buy books.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

I I didn't hear that. That broke up.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

I'm saying, but authors are also big readers, so the authors also buy books.

SPEAKER_01 29:43

Yeah, but you really you yeah, but you really want to try to find your your public audience where lots of people hang out to discover new books.

SPEAKER_00 29:51

Can you give me an example? Let's say I write about like I write women fiction, right? Where do you think I can find my audience?

SPEAKER_01 29:58

I I I'm not the not a marketer. I hire that service out to my clients who want it. So I couldn't begin to tell you, but they know how to dig and find the the face group, the Facebook groups and the reviewers and so forth to find that audience.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

Well, Michelle, it's it's been wonderful chatting with with someone with your experience and learning all the tricks of the trade. And uh how can audience reach you? How can, you know, if you can just tell us your website, your social media, how can how can they reach you?

SPEAKER_01 30:29

Okay, yeah, our website is 1106design.com. You can tell us about your book, fill out our contact form, and we'll respond with a friendly conversation. We don't engage in

Where To Follow And Closing

SPEAKER_01 30:39

high pressure tactics like some of the other companies in the space do. We want it to be a good fit for both of us, so we'll see if we could work together. I'm at on all the social media under the handle at 1106design. So you can find us there. You can find us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, the whole thing. Great. And our and our Substack newsletter is is Published Like the Pros.

SPEAKER_00 31:03

Sorry, I I I lost you here. What's the name of your Substack? Substack is Published Like the Pros. Uh Publish, okay, I'll follow you. I'm pretty active on Substack. All right, great. So thank you very much for your time, uh Michelle. And thank you for anyone who's listening or watching for another episode of Read and Write with Natasha and until we meet again. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in to Read and Write with Natasha. I'm your host, Natasha Tines. If today's episode inspired you in any way, please take the time to review the podcast. Remember to subscribe and share this podcast with fellow book lovers. Until next time.