The Path to Author Success with Steve Kidd

Imagine having the power to crack the code of Amazon's algorithm for author success? Join us on an enlightening journey with our accomplished guest, Steve Kidd. An established author, business coach, radio host, entrepreneur, and minister, Steve shares the secret behind Amazon's mysterious algorithm and reveals how to leverage it for your advantage as an author. Learn about the vital importance of verified purchase reviews and why a minimum of 10 is the key to opening the floodgates to organic traffic and successful Amazon advertising.

As we delve deeper, we discuss the challenging journey many authors face on their path to becoming a bestseller. Steve highlights the critical role of the right formula and mindset in achieving positive outcomes and breaks down the nuanced language of marketing required for book success. We also tackle the common missteps authors make when publishing their books and sharing their purpose. The discussion takes an interesting turn as we explore the significant differences between writing and speaking words, and how these nuances can impact your reader connection.

Find Steve’s Books here:
https://www.amazon.com/Only-Beginning-Secret-Unlocking-Ongoing/dp/B0BKD67129
https://www.amazon.com/-/es/dp/B07FLQMK7M
Connect with Steve Kidd here:
Website:         https://thrivingbestsellers.com
Facebook:      https://www.facebook.com/stevekidd
Instagram:     https://www.instagram.com/askstevekidd/
Twitter:           https://twitter.com/AskSteveKidd
LinkedIn:        https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-kidd-90236655/
Goodreads    https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4875393.Steve_Kidd
Connect with Steve Kidd for his coaching programs and author services here:   https://calendly.com/askstevekidd/radio-interview
Steve is offering a FREE Ongoing Wealth Guide download for listeners:  https://thrivingbestsellers.thrivecart.com/only-the-beginning/

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome back everyone to the Writers Parish where we are guiding author and writer dreams to a perfect landing. We have with us today a very special guest, steve Kidd. He is an author, writer, business coach, radio show host, entrepreneur and minister, and we're going to talk to him about a couple of his books. Firstly, best Seller is only the beginning and he has some extraordinary information for all of the authors out there wanting to get on the best sellers list. But of course, we have a little bit of housekeeping to get done up front. We would love for you to go ahead and smash that like button. Go ahead and follow us here on YouTube or whatever platform you're listening to us from. We would also love for you to follow us on social media. We are on Facebook, instagram, tiktok, twitter and now on threads at Writers Parish. That's Writers Parish without an S, so let's go ahead and get started.

Speaker 1: 0:55

Of course, we always start the show off with our topic of the week. Here on season two, We've been focusing on reviews and I want to thank our guest today, steve Kidd. He is bringing us the topic and actually he's going to talk to you about ads with Amazon and reviews and some very interesting details. I think you guys will find fascinating. Thank you, steve, and I will go ahead and let you talk about it.

Speaker 2: 1:20

Yeah, it's really interesting, you know, because reviews are so important and yet and I want to purpose this before I go into what I'm going to teach and that's everybody's going to get a bad review, and all of us know that when we get that first bad review, it is like somebody telling you your child's ugly. You know what I mean. It is the biggest insult. So I want to, you know, kind of release everybody from that. Take a deep breath first, and then I want to talk to you about the number 10. 10 verified purchase reviews. Now, what's a verified purchase review? A verified purchase means that somebody actually went into Amazon, purchased the book and then left the review, and a unique person and not your mom. Okay, there's a few nuances in there, but a verified purchase review you need a minimum of 10.

Speaker 2: 2:16

There is something and I've talked to all kinds of pros besides all the years that I've been doing this there's something magical literally in Amazon's algorithm that when you hit that 10th verified purchaser review, it opens up a whole new world in Amazon. First and foremost, it opens up organic traffic. You will not hit organic traffic whatsoever in Amazon without having those 10 reviews. Second, and most importantly, is, if you've ever want to spend money advertising on Amazon. It is a total throwaway until you get to that 10.

Speaker 2: 2:55

If your book is not in a place where you have the 10 verified purchaser reviews, amazon will gladly take your money and they'll kind of throw you out there, but it's not gonna really do you any good. They really need you to be at that level. Again, keep in mind that the core and heart and soul of Amazon is a search engine, a search engine based in the relevancy platform. That is the whole thing that made Google so cool when it first came out. They want to really show people the most relevant of data and that reviews and the 10 from actual purchasers that makes a huge difference for them in their algorithm. So again, 10 verified purchaser reviews and it's gonna open up just a whole new world for you and everything you do, but especially in your advertising.

Speaker 1: 3:48

Okay and I have a couple of follow up questions. I think that they would have. Number one does this 10 reviews have to be on one version of your books? Let's say you have a hardcover, a softcover and an ebook. Do those 10 verified purchase reviews have to be on a single version of your book or can they be spread across all of them, as long as they're all listed under your author central account?

Speaker 2: 4:11

They can all be spread across them if all of them are linked together. So there's the two different ways where you can have your ebook and your print book and they don't have the little squares side by side. It's funny because I have an Amazon up on this other screen so I can actually literally see that right now, and the same would be true with your audiobook. If all three of those are options available, then those count. If they are separate, then they don't.

Speaker 1: 4:41

Okay, so I'm gonna follow up with a second question. So what if when they originally put it up on Amazon, it is separate and then they ask to have them linked? If any of those reviews come in before they are linked, do they still count or not?

Speaker 2: 4:57

They should all count. If they don't, you wanna contact back Amazon and have them go back and catch your reviews? That means they did something wrong on the technology side of things, because when they're linked, it should just show you your reviews overall for the book. It shouldn't change between how many reviews you have, whether you're looking at the e-book or the print book version.

Speaker 1: 5:21

Okay, awesome. Well, this has been a very good information for the audience and I do appreciate you sharing that with us. It's really important. As he said, reviews are kind of like king for authors and writers. It's how we get discovered, it's how word of mouth happens, is literally a review is word of mouth, it's a person's opinion about your book, what they liked about it, what they didn't like about it. He did mention bad reviews and I have a different kind of take on bad reviews. Bad reviews are actually not bad because what happens a lot of times and this is interesting I had this happen just last week where somebody was posting about their first bad review and of course they're naturally upset and I don't discount that feeling. I mean, you put a lot of heart and soul in your book and so getting a bad review is hard. But I reminded this person I'm like you just created a call to action and you just advertised your book and look at all the people responding that now know about your book, who might now go review it, might now go purchase it and might now go read it. So sometimes you get to eliminate out of that lemon. So just remember it's not the end of the world and, quite frankly, I think it actually elevates your credibility, because if you only have five star reviews, then people are a little suspicious. So I know that when I purchase things I look at the good reviews, but I also look at the moderate reviews and I look at the bad reviews, because sometimes that bad review helps me decide if this is really the book for me. I may discount what the person has to say, it may not be something that bothers me, but it might give me useful information. So just keep that in mind. But thank you, steve, for sharing that with us today. We appreciate all of your knowledge and we wanna get on to introducing Steve.

Speaker 1: 7:23

Steve Kidd is an author, writer, business coach, radio show host, entrepreneur and minister. He has several books out we're gonna be talking to him about. Best Seller is only the beginning. He has another book out called Become a Best Seller Today how To and why you Need to Be a Best Seller. And then he has a 10 book series on thriving success. So Steve Kidd is a bestselling author and also an entrepreneur, business coach, radio show host and third generation minister. Along with other samples, he has a series of 10 books Thriving Success where he shows the reader how to showcase their talent and guides them on a journey to do so, starting with having passion and love for what they do, followed by the challenges they might face in the process of becoming successful. He also has a radio show called Thriving Entrepreneur, which has been broadcasting for almost eight years and has aired on more than 350 episodes.

Speaker 1: 8:17

Steve's mission in live is to spotlight amazing heart centered individuals and helping them to become successful authors and best sellers. He's helped thousands, bringing their message to the world, and has impacted millions in the process. His big heart sets him apart, along with being an extreme visionary, the best in the world at seeing the up level. If you want insights into trends, projects, opportunities, and you're also looking for a powerful clarity that compassionately unleashes passion, steve is your guy. Welcome to the writer's parachute, steve. I know you've already been talking here, but we want properly introduced you. How are you today?

Speaker 2: 9:00

I'm good. Thanks so much for having me, donna. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 9:03

Well, I am so excited to have you here. I mean, you have so much knowledge. It's like I was having a really hard time trying to pick and choose what I wanted to talk to you about. You had so many great quotes in this book. Best seller is only getting.

Speaker 1: 9:19

We're gonna talk about a couple of them, but it's like this one. I just loved it. It just kind of stopped me in my tracks and I'm like, yes, it's on page 25 and it's just like a doctor keeps learning and growing. You too will continue to learn and apply, learn, grow, make mistakes and change. That's professional development. All about a never ending growth to your advanced degree in what you know best. I absolutely love that quote. I'm like, yes, this is what we do. This is why we don't do it perfect the first time, why we get better each time, because we're growing and learning. I love that. And another one that I really, really like. It's on page 29,. It says when you tell somebody you're a best selling author, they immediately trust and believe in you, and I absolutely agree with that. So this new book best seller is only the beginning. I wanna know how this project came together and what was your inspiration behind it.

Speaker 2: 10:21

So you know, and I've been working with authors for oh gosh, 17 years now and I've helped so many people become best sellers. But the problem is is that I was likened to the movie Fields of Dreams. You know, people become best sellers and they think, oh, it's just going to be the end, you know, end all been, you know, and it really isn't you know. That's why in the book I refer it as though you're graduating from medical school. It's really the equivalent of that, because it is the certification that says you know your stuff. It's a third party says hey, here's a seal of approval on that, so that you can then really actually earn the right to go out and learn to be able to do and show that what you do know you can do. So that was kind of the inspiration behind it.

Speaker 2: 11:11

Secondarily, you know, back when I started in this, there was nobody that had a best seller program. In fact, most anybody that you know that has a program to help you become a best seller is probably using my system and probably doesn't know it. I've been the man behind the curtain for a lot of years doing that for a lot of people and it's really interesting because people have this opinion of their growth to best seller. And what I know as a marketing company is is best sellers are marketing strategy. That's what we're going to do to your book on day one. It's the foundation. It's like building a house we're going to put a really solid foundation under it in this case, best seller and then build everything else in marketing that we do on top of your best selling book and you being a best selling author.

Speaker 1: 12:04

Right, and what I find is people have different opinions and ideas of how to get to best seller, and I think some of them are not a ways to the best credibility of the author themselves. So I I don't know if you agree with me, but I do believe that there is a correct and right way to do it, and then there's some of those that are a little questionable.

Speaker 2: 12:32

Well, it depends on which, and we'd have to have a long discussion about whether those are. But again, you know, I mean because I'm always approaching it from a marketing standpoint and because the whole concept of creating a formula for becoming a best selling author happened because, as a marketing company, I needed it to market the multimillionaires that I was working with. It is like you said it's a foundation, it's a starting place. So it doesn't matter whether you're using one of those People call them what you said less than formulas or you're using another version of it. It is about the beginning of your marketing, and where does your marketing start, and what marketing language do you want in it? I mean, I'll put it to you this way, donna, when you go into your doctor's office and doctor, whomever walks into the room.

Speaker 2: 13:29

we don't sit that person down and say, okay, where'd you go to school? What did you graduate in your class? What kind of grades did you have? What's your GPA? Where did you go to undergraduate? You know we don't interview the person Comes in or she comes in and is a doctor and we immediately then tell them what our issue is and take whatever diagnosis they give us and go and get the prescription or go and get the further care that we need. Best seller is really another one of those kind of things.

Speaker 1: 14:02

Right? Well, you know, like I said, I've experienced some issues where it kind of as you said at the top of the show, it becomes the be all, end all and the pursuit of it in some what I would call questionable ways. But I'm not going to trip up too much on it. It's like I'm going to suggest anybody that wants to become a best seller that maybe they should go check out your programs and your books, because I think you have the best, most legitimate path to get them to a best seller, which is why I have you here on the show, because I want to share your information with my listeners in my audience. So what is the first step for authors who want to become a best selling author, or an international best selling author, as you usually refer to it?

Speaker 2: 14:54

Well, and, of course, step one is you've got to stop going to have a book and you've got to actually put your book out there and you know, a lot of times when I'm having these discussions I forget to mention that. But that really is step one is moving from the I'm going to do my book to. You know that terrifying moment of you.

Speaker 1: 15:15

put it out there and and let the whole rest of the world judge you Right it is it's it's you know I I liken it to jumping off of a you know off of a mountain and having to build your parachute on the way down. Yeah, so it's a bit scary, but you know you have the tools to do it. So in your book, best sellers only beginning use state and it's another quote your message to the person you're meant to serve is like water to a person lost in the desert. That's from page 18. So I want to ask you what you meant by that, and how does it illustrate why a best seller designation is so critical?

Speaker 2: 15:56

So the cool part about it is and why I love that analogy is because if you offer somebody that's truly dying of thirst water of any sort, it is literally the difference between life and death for them. The same is true because all of us get in our head it doesn't matter whether, like me, you've got 21 books and several others you're working on, or it's your very first book, every single book we always get in our head and we start talking about well, what if it doesn't mean anything to anybody? What if it doesn't help? And so when we think about that one person and the fact that what they need and it just happens to be that the way you said it, even though everybody else in the world may have said it a million times over the way you said it makes it through to that person and it makes the difference.

Speaker 2: 16:51

I'll give you a really real world example of that concept when my youngest daughter, who was at the time going through acute myeloid leukemia, was in the hospital. Now I always jump forward and let everybody know she's fine, she's married, she's doing great, she's in full remission, she's doing great. So you don't have to worry the whole time through the story that my poor daughter when she was in the hospital, though the people that were online, that were sharing their stories from there, were two weeks or two months or a year ahead of where we were in the journey. Those were life and breath to us. Those were sometimes literally the difference between that sensation in your gut as a parent of what am I going to do if my child doesn't make it, and them having that story meant the same difference, and that's what your book will be to that one person. When we focus on that person, that truly is what's going to make all the difference.

Speaker 1: 17:53

Well, and I happen to agree with you, it is primarily what we do here on the writer's parachute is we're trying to get the information out to authors and writers who are struggling. I can't tell you the number of times, with my writing coaching, that I have authors go oh, it's just me, I'm the only one that I'm like no, no, you're not. You know, you're not. There's so many other people that struggle. They may struggle with something different than you do, but everybody has a journey to go through to get there.

Speaker 1: 18:23

It's not an easy task. If it were, everyone would do it. I mean, it does feel like everyone's doing, but that's not true. It's actually a very small percentage of people who actually finish write and publish their book and an even smaller percentage who make it to the international bestseller list. So it's, you know, it is what we do as writers, is the reason we write something is we have something to say, and you have to think about who needs to hear that.

Speaker 1: 18:54

And I do tell authors as to all the time when they get to that imposter syndrome is like there is somebody somewhere just waiting breathlessly to hear your words and the way you told that story, because to them there's some connection where there may not be a connection with other people. So that's that's extraordinarily valuable to to authors to understand that it does start with, as you said, that passion. But the passion has to be towards the reader, not ego, I guess, is where I usually go with that so. But so I know that you have so much information in this book, so I want to know what you think are the top three missteps or confusion that authors have or make around publishing their books and sharing their purpose.

Speaker 2: 19:50

Oh gosh, these may not necessarily be in the one, two, three order. I'll give them to you as they come to me. First and foremost is and this is the hardest part in my life is when I have to explain to somebody that they don't really own their book. Now, first of all, most, all of us know, most people know, if you go through a traditional publisher, part of that whole agreement is they now own your book. Okay, so if you don't mind that we're first publishing companies as loan sharks, because if you want to get the ownership of your book back, you're going to pay that kind of a rate to get your book back.

Speaker 2: 20:29

So, but the more nuanced version of that is if somebody uses their email address to log into Amazon. You know Amazon selling 90, 95% of all books sold. So one way or another, your book needs to be on Amazon. If they're the ones that are loading it up to Amazon through their email address, as far as Amazon's concerned, they have a contractual agreement with the owner of that email address. That's the person who owns your book. Unfortunately, if that company, that person, that email address goes away, you're then stuck having to have to prove to Amazon that the form field name, that is, your author, which may be your real name or could be a pen name, because you could put anything in there. You want pretty much that that's actually you and it always has been. So that's number one is, you really want to make sure that you truly own your book and then that way you don't have to later on get permission when you create a course from that book to be able to use the material that goodness you don't own. So that would be them.

Speaker 1: 21:37

Yeah, and I'm going to interrupt you there, because this is why you know it's so important that you do file the actual official copyright paperwork. I know that people say it's not necessary, but you know what I would rather be sure, I would rather be 100%, have everything registered and write. This is also why we do the ISBN numbers and the control numbers with the Library of Congress. That's why we include the copyright or publication page in your book, because it does clarify that. And you know, yes, they do own the one copy of the book that they purchased. However, there are some restrictions under, you know, copyright and free use laws, but I do understand what you mean. It's like they're kind of the owner of your book. But, yeah, this is why it's so important to do all of those steps correctly. So continue, sorry.

Speaker 2: 22:26

So you know. The second mistake that people make is perfection. There is no such thing as a perfect book None. Okay, there are such a fun list and you'd have to go to the Internet and look up all of them of mistakes that have made it all the way to print of books, even like the Bible. There's a version of the Bible that actually has it say you shall kill Really different concept, you know, and those are people whose literally their life's purpose is to make sure that things like that don't happen. It still goes through.

Speaker 2: 23:06

So when we give up and I'm not saying don't have your book, be good, don't, you know, pour through it, but when we give up the need for it to be word perfect and we understand we can always go back and fix it when we find something wrong, that it then goes back to the somebody's waiting on you that we were talking about earlier. Better to have a typo in every sentence and help the person in need than to have it be grammatically perfect sitting on your desk and never put out because you're just still pretty sure you missed a comma somewhere. So that would definitely be. The second one is is a correction, is the enemy of the good and it really becomes an ego issue when we get to the point where we don't just put it out and then continue to develop it. So that would be the second. The second thing that I see people run into I think the third one really boils down to because of the fact that I deal with best sellers and everybody's heard of the New York Times. Everybody's like well, do you mean the New York Times bestseller list? It's really about understanding what. Well, first of all, where books are sold and what the different bestseller lists mean. So Amazon's is the only statistically driven list that I know of, meaning that if your book's at number two and another book's at number three, your book sold more copies than the book at number three. Amazon doesn't care whether it sold at $0 or $1 million. They're looking for unique individuals. They define a unique individual as a unique email address and they want to know hour by hour what is right now, the bestselling books. So it's a really powerful phrase when you say my book was on the bestselling list. Even if your book was on the bestseller list last week and it isn't this week, that's because there may have been 100,000 books that have been published since last week. I mean, given these days, that might be a little high, but it's not too far off, and so it's important to really understand that nuance when we go to New York Times.

Speaker 2: 25:21

New York Times is an editorial page that is based off of. Actually, it's a list that the Nielsen company the same people that do TV ratings, which I loved it. I was interviewing a guy and said, well, yeah, but that's a totally different group of people than the ones that you really have reading your books, which is true. They take that list and then they write an editorial of what they believe to be the bestselling books. And the list, first of all, is based off of wholesale purchases by big box retailers Walmart, sam's Club, et cetera. It doesn't mean that anybody read your book. I mean they may have sold all 50,000 copies, they may not have sold any of them. And then, secondarily, again, like you said, it's an editorial.

Speaker 2: 26:03

So there are a lot of different kinds of nuances and I don't really want to get into all the different issues of why it could be. But they're a privately held company. They could have the list. They could just go into a bookstore and look at 50 copies of books and say those are the top 50 books and they own the company. They're allowed to do that. So we want to be really sure we know that. The third group of bestseller lists are ones where, if you pay a certain amount, they'll just put you on your list. It's basically an ad and they generate ad revenue that way. So it's important to really understand what bestseller is so that you then know when it's your goal. You also understand why it's your goal and what it really means and what's really practical to achieve.

Speaker 1: 26:50

Right, absolutely. And that's extraordinarily useful information, because I get the same question a lot when you mean bestseller, do you mean the New York Times bestseller, do you mean the publisher, weekly? And it's like, again, you're right, they have different goals and different means and opinions about who belongs and why they belong on that list versus Amazon, which is strictly based on sales. So that's good. And I did want to talk about this perfection thing that you brought up as item number two, because I see this a lot and I try to tell people it's really hard to be perfect. Number one you don't learn anything from being perfect, you learn from messing up. And number two, it's like I don't want to get bogged down. And the other side of that is, if I'm perfect with this book, that means I have to be perfect with every other book that comes after, because I've sent that precedent for my readers and it's impossible to live up to.

Speaker 1: 27:55

And, honestly, if somebody's waiting to share your words, they just need to hear your words. They don't have to be perfect words. When we talk, we mess up, we stumble around, we look for the right word and readers are not going to be bothered by that Now. They will be bothered if you didn't have any editing in there, but the occasional misword it's like. I often find readers think of that as like a treasure hunt. They're like oh, there's a mistake, I found it and they feel like they've achieved something. So I don't mind leaving those in there. And for myself. I know I have mistakes in my book. Yes, I could go fix them after the fact and correct them. But I really thought deep about that and I felt like for me it was better to let my readers see that I improve each time I write a new book, so I don't worry too much about it. It's like it's done, it's passed. I continue to promote it, I continue to do all the things I need to do, but I don't need to rewrite that book. I already did that.

Speaker 2: 28:57

Well, and here's another fun piece of information for people so that they can also relax and breathe. If you were to give your book to a thousand different professional editors and have them go through and edit your book, you would end up with a thousand different edits of your book. Every single one of them would tell you why the other person was wrong and they were right. And then, secondarily, if you waited long enough that they didn't remember it was their edit, they'd go back through and they'd tell you all the reasons why that edit that they had done was wrong. Editing is really not a science. It truly is an art form. I know we weren't taught that in grade school, but that really is what what editing is. So you know it's okay and you know if somebody gets all up and again, I love one of my friends said. She said I love it when people correct my grammar, because I know immediately they're not listening when I'm saying they're looking for the errors and it helps me know that they're probably not going to be my ideal client.

Speaker 1: 29:58

Exactly. And you know, I myself am an editor and I tell people all the time it's like, just because I'm an editor, I may not be the great, the best editor. For you, it's like there's a partnership between the author and the editor and you know, the editor has to see the vision. They have to hear the voice, they have to know what the person is trying to go for. But yeah, it's like I can't imagine, you know, having that many different editors. And again, it is based on an opinion.

Speaker 1: 30:28

You know editors, you know they're trained, they, you know they have trained for certain things. But it's not just about. You know commas and periods and you know punctuation. You know other punctuation or spelling or grammar or anything like that. There's a lot, you know.

Speaker 1: 30:44

I've challenged authors to make sure that you know that if they say something that's a little, a little outside the lines, I challenged them to make sure that they understand that they are kind of coloring a little bit outside the lines and they understand that and they have a reason for doing that. There's no rules or anything. It's always guidelines and guide rails and yes, if you want to jump over the side, you can, but you better have a good reason for it and also to make sure that their book is caught. You know, has that continuity to it. So there's so many different aspects of being an editor and looking at a book. And and you're absolutely right you can look at a book you know this year and look at the same book a year from now and you're going to have a different opinion about it because you're a different person, just like any other normal person.

Speaker 1: 31:32

Editors are person. People were human. We make mistakes, we change our thoughts and opinions about things, so you know. That's why it's really important, if you're looking for an editor, to find an editor that works for you, get those sample edits, make sure that they're working with you, not against you, and you know, and sometimes it's a personality clash and that's okay. That's why there's a bunch of us out here. So I want to know what you think are the critical steps that author needs to take to set themselves up to be a bestselling author.

Speaker 2: 32:08

So I mean, there's several of them. The first one really goes back to that mindset part, though, and yes, number one is that somebody's waiting on you. You will say the thing in a way that's going to reach somebody else. Secondarily, you know your book may, and probably will reach millions, but the focus on the one is really the most powerful way to do it Because, honestly, if your book saved somebody's life, reached somebody in a way or at a time when they needed it, that would be more than enough. So you know, those are the beginning pieces of that, and then, from there, it really boils down to understanding.

Speaker 2: 32:55

Amazon is a system, amazon is an algorithm, and there is a system to it. I always feel like, when I get to this part of the interview, that I'm telling people that they didn't know that. You know it's not Santa Claus putting the presents under the tree. Your mom and dad are doing that, and that's true with becoming a bestseller. It is understanding the algorithm of Amazon doing the things that you need to do, and then you know, really working with them. I'll give you a perfect example Pre-sell campaigns, which I know a lot of people are really, really high on. Pre-sell campaigns work amazing on day one, but the algorithm on Amazon on day two takes. So what happens is on day one. You know, you pre-sold a thousand books. Let's say On day one. The minute that that book releases, amazon's system looks at it and says look they just sold a thousand books in like a minute.

Speaker 2: 33:54

Wow, that's amazing, you know of course it's a bestseller, but then day two, the algorithm catches up with itself and it says, oh no, actually they sold a thousand books over the course of this last year and it was an average of about one and a half, you know, every hour over the course of 365 days or something like that. And so that, dramatically, on day two changes your algorithm. So it's really about understanding that and it really is part of why where we start, where day one for your book is from a marketer standpoint you know, ultimately I'm a marketing company that works exclusively with authors, so I'm always thinking from a marketer's mindset. That's why step one is, you know, of our launch is we make the book a bestseller and then we build everything on top of that. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1: 34:48

Yes, absolutely. And you know, and you know I mean this is something that I talk about all the time just marketing in general. You can't just go market and hope for the best results. You have to have a result in mind and market towards that. And you know, I mean I hear this all the time and they're like, oh you know, this author did something and they got an amazing result. Well, what was it? I don't know, I did it, I can get a good result. Well, what did you want? Well, I don't know.

Speaker 2: 35:19

I think this is going to be a great thing. Do you want to sell more books?

Speaker 1: 35:27

Do you just want to try to get to that bestseller or are you trying to get reviews? You know, are you just trying to build up your platform, get interviews. What is it that you are trying to market towards and I think that's clearly illustrated in going for this bestseller, like you have to be marketing towards that result.

Speaker 2: 35:50

Yeah, and really again, best seller is a credential. It's a thing we need to then make our marketing plan work. So if our plan for our book is, this is gonna be my free giveaway. You know originally we talked about it earlier that I have a 10 book series now that originally was supposed to be a free giveaway. I sat down to write out a free giveaway and 110, 8 1⁄2 by 11 single spaced pages. Later I had a little bit more than a free giveaway, obviously, but being able to have a free giveaway and say I would like for you to give me your email address in exchange for my best selling book on, or I'd like to do a course with you, taught from my best selling book, that best seller credential is really huge when it comes to our marketing and that, in most cases, is our why behind it. But it's also the thing we need to understand then as we go into creating our marketing for everything we're doing in our business, why it's a mandatory, foundational element to everything that we do in marketing.

Speaker 1: 37:07

Absolutely, and it's attention grabbing. It's like you are going to automatically assign higher credibility level to somebody who is a best selling author or an award winning author, especially if they're both best selling award winning author. It's like you're like oh wow, they've hit the pinnacle, kind of thing, and it does capture the attention. It's almost like a magical fairy dust on your book.

Speaker 2: 37:41

Oh yeah, yeah. When I tell people that I've been a marketing company for 37 years, a lot of times they even almost are like well, a why have you been doing it so long? B why are you so old? And C how come you don't have a bigger results from it? When I tell them that I've written now 21 international best selling books, all of a sudden they're like oh well, tell us some more please.

Speaker 1: 38:04

Exactly. It's all as I try to tell people. It's all the way in. You present yourself. If you present yourself with the credentials and in a positive manner, then people are gonna take it that way. If you're, I deal with shy authors and there's nothing wrong with being shy or introverted. But if you're going to be an author, you are automatically a public figure and you have to find a way to present yourself that is going to get that attention, because if you don't, there's kind of not a whole lot of purpose behind having your book out there, because who's gonna find it, who's gonna read it? It's kind of like screaming into the wind, it's like it's not gonna get you very far. So I wanna know what obstacles or challenges have you had to overcome in writing and publishing your books?

Speaker 2: 39:08

Gosh, there's so many. Would you like a list of just the top 10? That's kind of what I wanted to say the first time. I thought the top two but I mean the number one, of course is that self-doubt and that fear. It's the question of what do I have to say? That hasn't been said a million times over.

Speaker 2: 39:32

With my first book I actually sent it to my mentor, dr Donald Joy, who at the time he had 44 published books plus about 2000 articles because he was a professor. So that's what he did for a living was write articles, and I really actually expected him to send it back and say this was cute, just kind of pat me on the head, you know, but he was really encouraging. He even wrote the forward for me and that was really where I began to get that different perspective of the fact that all of us have something we need to say and wherever you're at at the place, whether you're like my granddaughter when she was eight and wrote her first book, and the only thing you know is that you love your best friend more than anything else in the world and you just want to tell everybody in the world about your best friend so she wrote a book about meeting her best friend. You know it's a cute little book. I love it, you know, whatever that might be, so there's somebody that really needs that. So that's the biggest piece of it. Is that fear?

Speaker 2: 40:38

And then, secondarily, is the nuance between typing, slash writing and speaking out your words. And this may gravel against some people, because some people are just love writing. But if you go back and you look at something you've spoken out versus something that you've written out, you will find a commonality. This is why journaling works so powerfully. The things that you write out yourself, they're very cathartic, they're very much about what you're thinking and feeling and what you're going through when you talk. If you have somebody in mind, you know if you're not just talking to yourself, it tends to be user, reader, listener focused. And that makes a really huge nuance then in our ability for what our words are doing to reach the people that we want to reach with them.

Speaker 1: 41:30

Right, because I think it becomes very stilted. And you know I do tell my writers that you know, before you do any of the you know sending it off to an editor or finalizing or something sit down and read it out loud because it's amazing, the things your ears will hear that your eyes will never see. And you want, whatever you're writing, whether you're writing in fiction or nonfiction, self help, whatever it is, you want it to be a story, so it needs to be more conversational. How would you say this to somebody you were having coffee with, rather than how would you say it if you're in front of a big group of people? Because that doesn't. You know that tonality comes across. You know they don't feel that connection if you're speaking as if you were speaking to a crowd and it's all just kind of a generic thing. But if you're being more coffee conversational, then they feel that it is just you and them having that conversation, that you are speaking directly to them and it's kind of one of the really important keys in getting your book across is talk to that one reader. Don't talk to the crowd, talk to the reader, because you know people read books one at a time. It's one person at a time. You don't generally have a group of people getting together reading a book. I mean, it does happen occasionally, but generally even those people have already read the book before. I mean, sometimes, you know, there's some caveats with children's books and stuff like that, but for the most part people are reading the book If they love the book, even if they've heard it read to them, if it was done well, if that tonality was done correctly, then they're going to want to read it for themselves too. This is why we have these beloved books where people are just oh, I have to read it. You know, 10 or 20 times I read it every year or every six months or something like that. So I think that's clearly important.

Speaker 1: 43:37

And you know, self-doubt is kind of one of those things that comes with writing and publishing, simply because, as you said earlier, we're putting ourselves out there. You know they do say that writing is like you know, opening a vein and bleeding on the page, and it is to a certain extent because you're having to pre-trust that your audience is going to not rip you to shreds for what you have to say. I don't think that happens really often. I think people are generally kind and understanding and it's like if it's not for them, then they just kind of avoid and go on about their business. So there isn't as much of that ripping to shreds. But you know, there is a certain fear in that that.

Speaker 1: 44:23

You know people are going to have something to say and so they get an opinion and I'm like well, you know, everybody has an opinion. It doesn't necessarily mean that it is the right opinion, it just is an opinion. So you know, this is what we talk about reviews. Just because somebody didn't like your book does not make your book a failure. It just means it may not necessarily have spoken to them and that's okay, because we can't be everything to everyone all the time. We have to. You know we have to pick and choose. It's like, you know, when you have characters in your book, when you're writing fiction, you know you have to determine who or what they're going to be.

Speaker 1: 45:05

Now somebody may have an opinion about, well, they should be something different. Well, again, that's their opinion. And if they want to write a book and change that, they're certainly able to do that. But that does not necessarily mean their opinion is wrong. It just means that it's just not relevant. So just keep that in mind. So I know you have another book that we mentioned at the top of the show called Becoming a Best Seller Today how To and why you Need to Be a Best Seller. So I wanna know what readers are gonna get from that book. Separate from this, best seller is only the beginning.

Speaker 2: 45:38

Well, number one, when we talked earlier about editing. I've actually got it on my desk right now because I'm editing all kinds of things that I found that were wrong in it. So, first of all, what you're gonna get is freedom to know that, no matter how badly edited your book is, you can still do a lot of really great things and help a lot of people with it. That's totally a side note that doesn't have anything to do with the book, but I was just noticing that the other day and I was like, oh my goodness, but the whole concept of that. I have a workshop that I do that's called Write your Best Seller in One Hour, and I wanted to put that into book form and go into a little bit more detail about how to write your book. And so we do actually talk the specifics of how to write your book. It was funny. I actually got a review. We were talking about negative reviews. I got a review of best sellers only at the beginning and the negative review was they didn't tell you how to write your book. And I was like, well, that's not what that book was about. Go see the book about how to write your book. So that is really what it is. But we also go into what kind of book do people want to read? And we talk about what Amazon calls short reads, and I even share some of the statistics of the fact that how much people are demanding shorter books these days. We live in a Twitter world where people have whole conversations 140 characters at a time, so a 350 page book is overwhelming to them, not to mention if you get it in an audio and they tell you it's gonna take you 18 hours to listen to the book. So we go into all of those kind of things and talk about what can you expect to experience from it and then literally walk through the process of okay, if you wanna write your book, here are the fundamental elements. I actually, before I created my system way back 17 years ago, I actually went through all the books I've ever read a whole bunch of books on my shelf and stuff like that and I discovered that there's really basically four elements to every single book, every book, and every time I do this, somebody's like well, what about? You know? I was like okay, there's some outliers, but substantially speaking, there are four elements to every single book.

Speaker 2: 47:54

You know we start off with the no-like and trust factor, fiction or non-fiction. You know, in fiction we gotta buy in, we gotta like the primary character. We're not gonna finish the book, we're not gonna care. In non-fiction, if they don't believe in trust in you, they don't care what you have to teach, you know. And then we go from there into the meat and potatoes. We're either building the tension in fiction, you know, building the story and the plot and the premise, or in non-fiction we're literally just telling them what we're gonna tell them, telling them it, teaching them it and then going back and telling them what we told them.

Speaker 2: 48:30

That's, you know, part two, part three is always the downturn, the takeaway. In fiction, you know, it's Han Solo and Luke Skywalker in the trash compactor and the droids are outside hearing them scream and they think that they're dead. You know, that's a perfect, you know quote unquote act two in a three act play where we have that everything goes wrong kind of a situation In non-fiction. That is the, you know, I wish I would have known this before. Or here's the advice I'd like to give to the 20 year old version of myself.

Speaker 2: 49:05

And or even hey, you know, you need to feel free enough to choose to not do what I'm teaching you here and here's what you're likely gonna experience or have been experiencing and are gonna continue to experience, and then, ultimately, we have part four, which is the outcome, you know, the victory, the. You know the good guy wins over the bad guy. Or in a non-fiction book, you know this is where we're gonna give them specific something to do, something to take action on. You know, in a non-fiction book, you should well, actually, in marketing in general, the last step of all of your marketing should be inviting the person to take another step with you, and that really, literally, is the very, very simply put and I go into more detail on the book, but very, very simply put the four elements to every single book that exists.

Speaker 1: 50:00

Yes, you've done an excellent job of breaking that down and you know it's like we talk about this. It's a call to action. You know you need to have that call to action. We talked about this just recently on one of the episodes about reviews and not getting the results. People were like, oh, you know, I listened to you and you said you know, make sure that you know be promoting your reviews when you get there. And I'm like, yes, but you can't just go on social media and go hey.

Speaker 1: 50:21

I got a review and everybody's like okay, great, congratulations, and they move on. But if you go, hey, I got this amazing route, have you read my book, have you reviewed my book? Then they know that you want them to do something. It's as simple as that. If you don't tell them you want something, then how do they know?

Speaker 1: 50:38

I mean, we're seriously not mind readers and you know, it can be more complicated and a little more nuanced about that, but you know that's an easy way to say, hey, I got this amazing review. Have you reviewed my book? Have you read my book, you know, and people are like, oh, maybe as you can check it out. So you know, I mean not necessarily gonna give you the results you want, but that's better than just going, hey, I got this amazing review.

Speaker 2: 51:08

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 51:09

So, because to me the difference is the one hey, I got this amazing review. That's an announcement. The other one is an actual call to action.

Speaker 2: 51:18

Go review my book.

Speaker 1: 51:19

Go buy my book go read my book, do something. So I agree with you there. So I could sit here and talk to you for hours and hours about this, but you know we have to keep this to a level that you're talking about. I do wanna mention one thing. What you're talking about about these shorter reads, yes, and I have this conversation more often with nonfiction authors than I do with fiction authors, although fiction too, it's like you know, pare down those stories. It's like you know, exceeding 30 to 40,000 words is a recipe for a problem in lists. Of course you're working in maybe fantasy, thriller or sci-fi, and again, that has more to do with the world building, part of it. But even those could be pared down a little bit.

Speaker 1: 52:07

But you know, I see a lot of these nonfiction books where they're like, okay, I'm gonna teach this and then I'm gonna have places for them to do journal entries and then I'm gonna have like workbooks and questions. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, break that into three books. Marketing tells you that people are more willing to pay more money for three separate books than they would be for one all-inclusive book, because it seems overwhelming and it doesn't seem valuable if it's all in one book. They're like well, why would I pay that much for that book? But if you break it down into three books, and the total of the three books is even more than the one book, they're still willing to pay for it. Which is, you know, you have to. You know there is a certain marketing aspect that you have to think about the way you present your book too, and I think that's a very important point that you brought forward. So what is next on your agenda?

Speaker 2: 53:05

Oh goodness. Well, I mean I actually have five-ish. It's actually closer to seven books that I'm actually working on right now. You know my, actually after Best Sellers Only in the Beginning came out, I actually put out a Christian book that's called Playing Hitted and Quitted with Jesus and it's talking directly to men about the respect and the nature of their relationship with their wife, and it's actually called Playing Hitted and Quitted with Jesus, and I'm working on a more in-depth version of that that's called Mother Fairy Lust, jim, talking very directly to men about some of the transitional phases and some of those kind of things. It's a much more nuanced, much deeper book than many of the other books that I've written.

Speaker 2: 53:56

I've got a couple of nonfiction books. I'm doing a follow-up book to my Romeo the Suicidal Parakeet book, which is a comic-based book. It's so much fun, you know, just kind of looking at the world through the eyes of why we actually literally had this parakeet, that, for whatever reason, he kept dropping himself on his head in his cage. And so, you know, I for years contemplated why did this crazy bird drop himself on his head? And so I wrote a book and just kind of took modern day things that were going on, and so I'm doing a follow-up book on it that's going to look at some other kind of things that people are experiencing in the world through Romeo's eyes and his very snarky, sarcastic way of saying something about it and then dropping himself on his head over it.

Speaker 2: 54:46

So you know, I've got all of those that I'm working on, plus I've got a couple other marketing books, and then, in addition to the books that I'm writing, we are in the process of building an even tighter community. We have a great community of people, but an even tighter community of people that want to be on board with us to help really change the world for authors. There are a lot of us that are blessed to be able to, in one way or another, put our book out, and there's a lot of people out there with amazing stories that they either live impoverished here in America or in a lot of countries that they would never be able to even contemplate putting a book out, and so we're putting together a whole formula for them so that their books can get out and get shared with the world and still make it to Basel or really impact some lives. So always a lot of really cool things going on, but that's just kind of a little taste of a little bit of them.

Speaker 1: 55:46

Wow, that is amazing. You are an amazing person and, of course, you know when you're ready to come back. We would love to have you come back and talk some more about these new books that you're working on. So, of course, here on the Writers' Prayer Shoot in season two, we've been focusing on reviews, so I'm going to put you on the spot. I would love for you to give us a review of your book. Best Seller is Only the Beginning.

Speaker 2: 56:10

Oh, give you my review of my book. Best Seller is Only the Beginning. Is the book written on purpose to help you be able to understand how to maximize your marketing and your reach in the world, so that you can impact the life of the person that you know you're meant to serve, but you've struggled with knowing how to be able to truly get to them. We want to show you what the magic secret sauce behind really truly reaching people is.

Speaker 1: 56:44

Awesome five-star review. And the reason that we put our guest here on the spot is we want to illustrate for all of our listeners that reviews are not complicated. They're not difficult. It's probably most difficult to review your own book because it feels like your own child or talking about yourself. How do you review yourself? Well, it's a little difficult. But to illustrate the point, we are doing it so that you know that reviews are not that difficult. They don't have to be complicated. It could be something as simple as I enjoyed this book. I like this book. I recommend this book to this group or this person, or I didn't like this book for this reason or any other. It is an opinion. It is your opinion, based on what you felt when you read this book.

Speaker 1: 57:27

We would love to have you go check out Steve's book Best Seller's All in the Beginning. Become a Best Seller Today how To and why you Need to be a Best Seller or one of the books from his 10 books series Thriving Success Once you read a book. If you're reading Steve's book or anyone else's book, please remember to go leave a review. Reviews are so critical and so important for authors. It is how they get discovered. It is how they get elevated in the sphere of readers. Next time you read a good book, recommend it to someone. Make sure that you let the author know what you think of their book. The best way to do that is with a review. Don't forget and I encourage you to go check out Steve's books. We'll have the links for those for you in the show notes, along with any other information that has links, so don't worry about running and grabbing a pen and paper. So I want to know where we can find your books. Obviously on Amazon Anywhere else.

Speaker 2: 58:31

Well, I mean, Amazon is going to be your main place to get it. Yeah, I mean, I've got their rebroadcasting Goodreads and all those other places, but the primary place to go get it would be on Amazon.

Speaker 1: 58:43

Okay, awesome. Well, as I said, we'll go ahead and list that for you. I know that you offer a I put editing here, but I don't think that was correct but you do offer coaching services. So where can listeners reach out to you to connect with you about those different services in your coaching programs?

Speaker 2: 59:03

My website is thrivingbestsellerscom, and, yeah, I have everything from concept to marketing strategy editors, publishers, story development editors, formatters, graphics people, and then, of course, we have 100% success with the over 4,000 or 5,000 people that we've worked with, helping them to become our next bestselling author. You could be the next one.

Speaker 1: 59:31

See, that would be so awesome. See, I could just put that behind my name. I'm just going to talk to you after Ruda. I don't want to take up their time talking about my books, but we do appreciate you being here. So you also are on social media. So where can they follow you on social media if they would like to reach out and follow what you're doing?

Speaker 2: 59:52

Yes, on Facebook, I'm Steve Kidd. On Twitter, I'm Ask Steve Kidd. On LinkedIn I'm Steve Kidd, with a bunch of weird numbers behind it. But if you look up Steve Kidd and you look up bestsellers or thriving bestsellers, you'll find me there. And then, of course, I have Steve Kidd, which is actually Ask Steve Kidd, on YouTube as well. They've got that new at Ask Steve Kidd that you can do and find me on YouTube as well.

Speaker 1: 1:00:21

New TikTok or threads yet.

Speaker 2: 1:00:24

I have a TikTok account. There's nothing on it and, honestly, until you said threads today, I wasn't even aware of threads. So now I got to go check out a new social media.

Speaker 1: 1:00:34

Okay, well, I think you'll enjoy it. It's very similar to Twitter, which I guess is now X, so we'll just keep moving forward. So I do think that Twitter personally would be amazing for you, because it's usually just little video clips and helping authors and people do the things that they do. So I think it would be an absolute amazing program for you. And it's like a lot of times I just share clips from my YouTube stuff anyway over on Twitter just to kind of get to those people that don't necessarily always go to YouTube. It's kind of give them a little taste, a little tease, of what they can go get.

Speaker 2: 1:01:14

So I would yeah, ask Steve Kidd on Twitter. I've got now actually 11 years. It just showed me the other day 11 years of content on Twitter.

Speaker 1: 1:01:25

Wow, that's pretty amazing. Well, of course, we will have all of those links for you in the show notes so that you can go follow Steve wherever he is located, and, of course, if we get any updates on new platforms that he's on, we'll go ahead and add those for you too, as we pick those up. So any upcoming events that our audience should know about.

Speaker 2: 1:01:49

You know, the best thing to be able to do would be to follow me on one of the or all of those I've got almost every month. I do the right year best seller one hour workshop. I do it either as a LinkedIn event or from one of those social medias and then do it in Zoom. So just depending on when you listen to this, whether it's the day it comes out or it's a year and a half later, because they're going to be evergreen, you know, just go over to the social media and look at it for it and find the next one that I'm going to be teaching.

Speaker 1: 1:02:21

All right, awesome, we'll do that. So if you're interested in any kind of newsletter, giveaways or freebies that people can download from your website that you'd like to tell them about, we always love freebies and downloads.

Speaker 2: 1:02:33

Oh yeah, I love giving free gifts. In fact, I put together a free gift on purpose. If you go to ongoingwealthguidecom that's ongoingwealthguidecom you know that isa five step formula for you to be able to regardless of what the bank account might look like live in abundance, know the process of what you need to do to continue generating, if you will, abundance in your life. And the cool part about it is, if you don't already have my book, you can actually add it on for only $0.99 into that, versus the. You know the ebook version is usually $2.99, so you can add it on there. But you can get ongoingwealthguide at ongoingwealthguidecom for free.

Speaker 1: 1:03:21

All right, awesome, we'll include that in this show notes. So what about newsletters or calendar events on your website that they can go sign up for so they get alerts?

Speaker 2: 1:03:32

Well, the nice thing about it is that that's all included in that. So when you do that, that'll automatically put you on my mailing list for my newsletter and we'll get you into all the things and share with you anything we've got going on our social media. I always tell my followers in my you know, in my group and on my newsletter first everything else that I've got coming out.

Speaker 1: 1:03:55

Okay, great. Well, like I said, we'll go ahead and include that information for them, and we hope that you guys do go check out his website, check out his programs, check out his books, and I do encourage you to follow him and listen. He has a vast amount of experience and I am so thankful that we get to share his information here. On the writer's parachute, was there anything else that you wanted to include before we go do our tip of the week?

Speaker 2: 1:04:24

The only thing I would say is somebody's waiting on you. Don't let your book wait, not even another day. You could be a published bestselling author as soon as a month from now, but it's never going to happen until you don't start. And so somebody's waiting on you. Get started today.

Speaker 1: 1:04:43

Absolutely so. Our tip of the week we're going to talk about some of the things that Steve mentioned when he said he was having obstacles and problems and complications when he was writing his books, and one of the things, the themes that he kept talking about, was his fear, the self-doubt, the imposter syndrome and waiting, and so I think we covered the topic of why that happens. But I want to give you some tip of the week of things that you can do to help you. Okay, number one if you can't focus on that person that is waiting to hear what you have to say, sit down and write a letter from your future great fan. Think about what they would say to you about your amazing book that you're about to write and how it impacted their life. Now, I know this is coming from you, but it's a very cathartic. And then, once you've done that, I want you to put it somewhere where you see it on a regular basis, and when you're feeling down and you're feeling like you're afraid or you're feeling that imposter syndrome or that self doubt, reread that letter. That's your focus, that's your purpose.

Speaker 1: 1:05:53

Number two seek out accountability partners. Join writing groups, join critique groups, join whatever you have to do to be included in the writing community. There is so much information out there. There's so many helpful people. Steve is one of them, one of the ones that I promote regularly, and I do not get any kind of compensation for this. I just think it's. A good program is shut up and write. You can go to shutupwritecom. They have meetings online and in person around the world pretty much any hour in the day or night, to get you connected with other authors and writers. They don't generally give any kind of advice, they just give you a place to connect with other writers and get some writing done. I think that's a good place for a lot of people to start. But find an accountability partner, somebody that you check in with, even if it's a group, because this will keep you motivated and working forward.

Speaker 1: 1:06:53

Think about the words that matter. It's like how would you want somebody to tell you what you're going to say? Again, we talked about this a little bit the difference between teaching and speaking and writing. Writing is a very personal. Reading is very personal, so make it personal. Think about the person you're speaking to and the way you're speaking to them.

Speaker 1: 1:07:18

The other thing is motivation and a mentor. There are mentors out there. There are mentors just like Steve, I try to be a mentor here on the writer's parachute. So seek that information. There are so many mentors in books. Go find some mentors that will help you and find that motivation.

Speaker 1: 1:07:38

The motivation for me is that I have something to say that needs to get out into the world. I have something that I feel is important. Now it may only be important to a few people, but it's important for me to say it. But a lot of times your motivation should be what it is, that you're trying to achieve. It's a goal, it's a purpose. Be realistic with it. Try and keep yourself moving forward. Even one sentence is better than nothing. As an editor, I say this all the time. You can't edit a blank page, so don't worry about if it's not perfect. If you write it down the first time, there's always multiple tries to get it right, and so just keep working forward. Keep yourself motivated. Find those mentors, find those accountability partners. Look for writing groups to be a part of the community, and I think you'll find that a lot of that fear goes away, or you could take my advice on this.

Speaker 1: 1:08:41

If you've watched the show, you know I've talked about this. It's like my internal critic. I've named him George because I believe if you name the monster, they're less scary. So when George annoys me with his self-criticism, I generally send him to the closet until he can't come out, until I'm ready to listen to him again. I also have a internal critic about my writing. It's my self editor and his name is Richard. He also joins George in the closet quite often. So sometimes you have to do these things to trick yourself, and don't forget you are doing something that is incredibly personal and incredibly difficult and you are going to have emotional reaction to it. What that just means. Your reader is probably going to have that one too. So just be kind to yourself, be generous, give yourself grace and just keep working forward. It's not a sprint, it is a marathon and run your own race. That's about all I can add. Did you have anything else you would like to add?

Speaker 2: 1:09:48

You know, to steal the phrase from Nike, just do it. There you go, put the book out, make it out there and then go from there.

Speaker 1: 1:09:57

Exactly. You'll never know what you can achieve if you just believe in yourself and go. I want to thank Steve for being with us this week here on the Writers Parachute Guiding author and writer. Dreams show perfect landing and, as always, I am so grateful to be the host here on the Writers Parachute and we hope that you find this a safe, creative space to land your dreams to as well. Until next time, happy writing everyone. Bye.