0:00

I think it's, again, providing someone with actionable advice for the information that you're

0:05

disseminating. And of course, sharing those stories,

0:08

those real world examples, help readers connect with the content.

0:11

Yeah, reading a book, you, you wanna read a good story,

0:14

even if the book is technical in nature or about a particular subject,

0:18

there's always gonna be some sort of story behind some of what you're talking

0:23

about. You're listening to Podcast Insider, a weekly podcast, bringing insights,

0:29

advice, and insider tips and tricks to help you start,

0:32

grow and thrive through podcasting. With the support of your team here at Blueberry Podcasting. Welcome.

0:38

Let's dive in. I'm Todd Cochrane, c o and co-founder of Blueberry Podcasting.

0:44

And I'm Mike Dell, the Vice President of Customer Relations here at Blueberry.

0:49

Have you ever considered writing a book for your show or on the same topic of

0:53

your show? So today we're going to talk about the process of writing a book for your

0:58

podcast. And let me tell you, Mike, it can be a process.

1:05

Yeah, it sure can. You know, writing writing a book is hard work. I've done one.

1:09

You've done one or more, I don't know. And yeah, it,

1:14

it can be a real booger. Some of the things I'd,

1:17

I'd like to go over here first though, is why do you,

1:20

why would you want to write a book? I think I've got a little personal experience here on this,

1:25

and I can just give a few of my,

1:28

my of my insights for me as a unique opportunity.

1:33

Because today very few people get, actually get paid to write a book.

1:37

You write a book and usually it's, it's for your own satisfaction.

1:41

But I was fortunate enough to actually get in advance and have a purpose and

1:46

have a copy editor and a technical editor and all those things that go along

1:50

with writing a for, for our main publisher. And, uh,

1:55

so that was definitely a motivation. But I tell you at,

1:59

at the time, to be honest with you,

2:02

I really didn't know what it would end up being.

2:06

But I do realize the end result was definitely establishing myself

2:10

as an expert, writing a book, demonstrated that, uh,

2:14

had a depth of knowledge on the subject and it gave me some more credibility.

2:19

And of course, the first book, the book I wrote was the first book on podcasting. Podcasting,

2:23

you do it yourself Guide. So there was no established experts at the time in that

2:29

field. So it, it was good timing for me to be the first. Yeah.

2:33

You, you were definitely the first one. And, uh, it, it, it was a great book.

2:37

It was done through a publisher and all that stuff.

2:41

One of the great things about writing a book also is you,

2:43

you get out to a wider audience.

2:47

Books allow you to connect with people that may not listen to podcasts.

2:51

A lot of people like to read instead of, uh,

2:54

instead of listening or watching a video or whatever.

2:58

So it definitely gets the reach out there a little bit.

3:01

And establishing yourself as an expert is also great.

3:04

And that's probably the number one reason why a lot of people wanna write a

3:07

book. And I think too is oftentimes podcasts that are on a specific

3:13

topic can write themselves. And what it will allow you to do is provide more detailed information or

3:20

summarization of a topic that you had where someone may not have set through

3:24

three episodes but can get all the information you cover maybe in a chapter.

3:28

And at the same time, you can explore those topics a little deeper.

3:33

Maybe you were informed enough to add to a knowledge space that you thought that

3:37

should get out there. Right? Yeah. 'cause the podcast episodes are generally finite,

3:43

number of, of minutes or, or whatever hours for, in some cases.

3:48

And a book you can really dig deep and, and as long as it's not,

3:53

doesn't get boring <laugh> to the reader,

3:56

but you can really expand on a topic. You know,

3:59

another cool thing about it is passive income. I, I wrote a,

4:03

a frequency guide for air traffic control probably 10 years ago.

4:08

I still get royalties every so often. I'll get a,

4:11

a random check from Amazon and it's like, oh, this is great.

4:14

I haven't had to do anything with it in 10 years. So.

4:18

I think the, the passive income piece though, for me,

4:21

it went on for three or four years, then the book become dated. Sure.

4:26

It's one of those situations where if you write something that is not dated,

4:30

in other words it stands a test of time. And there's a lot of books that are out there by authors that are even today,

4:36

are no longer with us, that are still mainstream,

4:39

go-to business books and so forth. But one thing it can do is it can build a,

4:43

you can build, reinforce your brand or even a legacy BA brand,

4:47

start building a legacy brand. So again,

4:50

a book helps cement your podcast brand. And again,

4:54

your messaging and your authority, it goes back to that authority piece.

4:58

Yeah. And also sponsors and partners and potential guests

5:04

or you guesting on somebody else's podcast or TV show or radio show

5:09

or whatever, a published book. You know, you're a published author now.

5:12

So that gives you a lot more credibility with those type of people.

5:16

And I think I kind of hit on it a little bit, it's you can leverage your existing content and again,

5:21

adapt the best episodes into book chapters more efficiently.

5:25

And for me it definitely helped build a legacy in the podcasting space.

5:29

And the book was one of many pieces. And again,

5:34

not everyone has a book in them, but I think creating a podcast and doing a podcast and being able to leverage

5:39

that content that you have, a book will almost write itself.

5:43

Yeah. It depends on the subject, if that's what you are covering in your podcast, a particular subject,

5:49

or in my case, it was a blog and a website.

5:54

And yeah, it just sort of wrote itself. I mean,

5:57

I took all the tips and tricks and, and everything and put them into,

6:01

into one form. And luckily the subject I'm on doesn't,

6:05

doesn't run outta date <laugh>. So that was, that's kind of cool.

6:09

Another thing it can help you with is promotion. If you have a book out there,

6:13

people will find you in Amazon and other, you know,

6:16

in bookstores or wherever you've distributed the book.

6:20

And that might attract people to listen to your podcast and vice versa,

6:24

you can use Yeah. Vice versa. Use your podcast to promote the book.

6:29

And I think what it really does too is and establishes you and takes your work

6:34

to, to another level and, uh,

6:36

allows you to put your ideas on written paper. And it's,

6:40

it's something that's, at least for me, I've got, uh,

6:44

many copies of my book Still in a Box somewhere, <laugh>, which, you know,

6:47

maybe is not that exciting as collecting dust. But at the same time,

6:51

that book is still in libraries and a, a variety of different places. So,

6:55

you know, you reach people again, who prefer reading.

6:58

Some prefer learning through books and some by, by audio.

7:02

But the biggest challenge folks will often ask themselves, well, how,

7:05

how do I write a book? We're gonna give a bunch of suggestions here,

7:08

but I have a very simple strategy.

7:12

It's just the creation of a very good outline, a structured outline, and what,

7:16

and the, if you create the outline, <laugh>, the book almost writes itself from that standpoint. Yeah. It's.

7:21

It's almost like, think, think about show prep for a podcast episode. Yeah.

7:25

You know, you don't, you don't write it word for word. Most people don't.

7:28

You put the bullet points in there and then you fill in the blanks.

7:34

A well thought out outline, and it took me about a month to get my outline completely. 'cause you know,

7:40

you break it down in chapters and then you break out which each section of the

7:43

chapter's gonna be, and you, you move things around, you kind of get it.

7:46

And all this time you're kind of thinking right about what's gonna be in the

7:51

book. And then again, once the outline is is done,

7:54

you can really rock it through something. So you can span in your best content and you can look to help you build your

8:00

outline. You can look at your podcast episodes, identify stuff that was, uh,

8:05

great discussions. And these are great candidate topics to move into,

8:11

into a book and into an outline. And of course, some of those things, you know,

8:15

had to, that I wrote about required additional research. I,

8:19

I didn't have a Mac at the time and I needed to know the Mac side of things.

8:22

So I actually ended up, ended up buying a Mac just because I needed it to assist me

8:28

with that research piece in the book. Now,

8:30

you may not have to go out and buy a computer, but you know,

8:33

you may actually have to get some other resources to dive in to get

8:37

into the type of content and details you want to in your book.

8:41

Right. And as you were saying, follow a structure.

8:44

That's one of the bullet points we have here. You know,

8:46

outline your book structure ahead of time and that'll help you

8:51

plan it out. And you'll, like I said, you'd be, be able to,

8:54

to just go in there and pick a chapter you wanna work on that day or a subject

8:59

and fill in the blanks. Do it in little pieces.

9:02

And the hardest thing for me was to

9:08

maintain how I normally would talk or write.

9:12

Because sometimes you'd get into the grizzly details and you kinda lose

9:17

your, your style or your tone. And so that,

9:21

that was one of my hard, hardest things to do is, you know,

9:24

I'd write the thing and I'd look at, well, yeah, it's all factual,

9:26

but it's boring <laugh>. So you, you, you wanna,

9:30

you wanna maintain how, how you communicate naturally.

9:34

And I think any good book that I read that is task oriented,

9:39

in other words, maybe it's a finance book or leadership book or,

9:44

you know, something I'm trying to go and learn and not just casual region science fiction

9:48

or something like that. You definitely wanna have actionable advice and you're,

9:54

you're gonna wanna have detailed, practical advice. And it's,

9:59

it's really can even be this step-by-step guide. You don't wanna overwhelm them,

10:03

but you wanna take each section and have actionable action items.

10:08

'cause what I'll find is, and now I mostly do things on a Kindle,

10:12

is I will highlight certain sections of the book and allows you to bookmark

10:16

those and come back to those places real easy. I think it's, again,

10:20

providing someone with actual advice for the information that you're

10:24

disseminating. And of course sharing those stories, the stories,

10:28

the side stories and examples is really where,

10:31

where the meat and where you can really get, you can say practicality,

10:35

you do this, do this, do this. But then when you can relate it to, well,

10:39

I know that Susie over at X did this resulting in y and then

10:44

it's really having those, those stories and examples,

10:48

those real world examples help readers connect with the content.

10:51

Yeah. Reading a book, you, you wanna read a good story even if the book is technical in nature or about a

10:57

particular subject, there's always gonna be some sort of story behind some of what you're talking

11:02

about. And you definitely wanna get that into the book.

11:06

Another thing is addressing critiques.

11:09

Deal with some of the pushback or criticisms that people have had about your

11:12

podcast material and present your counter arguments, you know,

11:16

maybe defend some of your things that a lot of people push back on.

11:21

A little controversy. Never hurt anybody <laugh>.

11:24

But also I think too, you have to remember that you might be reaching a whole new audience.

11:28

So you kind of have to be careful there Yes. On how you're going to, uh,

11:33

put that forth. And you don't wanna completely rehash a podcast episode,

11:38

but you can use the topics from an episode to build into the content of the

11:43

chapter that you're trying to provide. Maybe new analysis on or new insights.

11:49

Yeah, for sure. Another thing, I I, with my, in my case,

11:54

I had to hire an editor 'cause I was self-publishing. And man, you,

11:58

you have to hire an editor. You,

12:00

you need to have somebody else look at it to not only for grammar,

12:05

spelling and punctuation areas, but to make sure that the book keeps your tone

12:11

and flows nicely. 'cause you know,

12:13

sometimes you write a bunch of technical stuff and that's just really boring.

12:18

So throwing in a few things from an editor may help. So,

12:22

but definitely h hire an editor or if you're publishing through a publisher,

12:26

of course they have editors. Yeah, I was lucky how it worked with me is I would write a chapter,

12:31

I'd send it to the technical editor, they would make sure that technically it was correct or put any questions.

12:37

If they had questions, then send it back to me and I'd correct the questions.

12:41

And then we'd send to the copy editor.

12:43

The copy editor would go through the chapter,

12:46

send it back with all marked up. And of course this is days before Grammarly,

12:51

so there was a lot of red mark on my chapters. And then, uh,

12:55

and they would just mark it up, say, make suggestions.

12:58

They wouldn't actually make the edits themselves.

13:01

And I think a good editor does that so that you learn how to write better,

13:04

number one. And then again, once that was all complete,

13:09

we did another round of review. So the editor may see a chapter,

13:14

it's maybe at a minimum two times. And if it's technical nature,

13:18

definitely have a subject matter expert that you trust also review as well.

13:22

It's nothing like putting something out that's blatantly wrong and

13:27

it really diminishes your credibility. So don't be afraid to ask for a technical reader,

13:32

even when it is written before you go to publisher,

13:34

have two or three people that you trust read through it and say, okay,

13:37

give some feedback. Yeah. And some of the ways you can publish a book like you did Todd,

13:44

you worked with a publisher and editors and,

13:47

and publishing house. Not everybody gets that opportunity,

13:52

but try it. Uh, you can self-publish.

13:54

I did it on Amazon and then I think it's called Create Space where they do the

13:58

paperback version print on demand.

14:02

And that worked out pretty well because it looks like a legit book.

14:06

And I had to get the, the Library of Congress numbers and all that stuff and it worked great.

14:13

But you can also self-publish an ebook just to have it downloadable on your

14:17

website and sell it yourself. Uh,

14:19

that's another way you could cut out the middleman that way.

14:22

Now one thing you can have to consider too is my book itself

14:27

was hijacked, some of the texts was hijacked and put into another book by a third party.

14:33

So my editor actually was my copyright control. They were,

14:37

they were the ones that actually went out and said, Hey, cease and desist,

14:40

take this down because you, you've essentially stolen the work.

14:44

And that happens a lot out there. So if you self-publish,

14:49

you have to manage your own, your copyright control.

14:52

You need to be the one that's gonna go out there and, and tell third party, hey,

14:57

and, and issue take down notices and stuff like that. Now,

14:59

I don't know how am if Amazon helps you with that or not,

15:03

but people are pretty, pretty bad these days and they can,

15:06

they'll lift stuff directly. And in my case,

15:10

the publisher went to work. Now I gave up some rights for letting them hold copyright,

15:16

but at the same time their legal arm was much better than my legal arm.

15:21

And again, I think you just have less expensive. Yeah.

15:24

I didn't have to pay some lawyer to send out the cease and desist.

15:28

So I think you just need to also protect your work the best you can once

15:32

something is out. And I think, you know, you just have to keep an eye on,

15:36

on like-minded topics or something that comes out that smells like it might be

15:40

yours. Right, for sure. But don't let that stop you, you know. No.

15:43

No, not at all. Because they say that copying is kind of a compliment 'cause

15:49

somebody liked it, so it's until.

15:52

Cost you money. <laugh>. Yes. Uh. Anyway. Well, not all podcasts lends themselves to book books,

15:59

but you do a news type podcast and you probably would have a hard time writing a

16:03

book directly about all the news,

16:07

but you could still do something on the general subject matter. You're,

16:11

you're in tech, you could write some sort of techie book,

16:14

but it wouldn't be directly related to the podcast necessarily.

16:20

But I think for most podcasters, the goal is really to adapt your podcast material into a book format.

16:27

And the, the key is to add significant value, number one. So your,

16:31

your listeners will still go out and buy it and adding significant

16:36

value that would make people, other people to be encouraged to buy the book that may not be listening.

16:41

And I think from my standpoint, Mike, the,

16:45

my podcast was this marketing machine for my show. I mean, I mean,

16:50

my podcast was the marketing machine for my book and was one of the reasons

16:55

why, for me at least, I was able to build buzz through the podcast in the podcast community.

17:02

And it, New York Times had a weird award at the time,

17:05

like the most talked about dig most talked about book in digital format.

17:10

And again, this was still when bookstores were still pretty popular. Yeah.

17:14

I don't think the Kindle was out then, was it?

17:16

I don't think so. I think it came a couple of years later,

17:19

maybe a year and a half later, something to that effect. But long story short,

17:23

they used that promotion to build buzz to drive sales

17:28

that people have actually ordered. And again, it was early days for Amazon and actually order that physical book.

17:33

You still can get it in digital copy. Not that I appreciate it if you do,

17:37

but if you, if you do just before Worn, it was written before in the very,

17:41

very early days of podcasting. Yeah, I think it was, it might even be before Apple got into.

17:45

It. Yeah, it was before Apple published, before Apple even released podcasting and iTunes. But yeah.

17:50

Yeah. You know, another, another thing to think about is if you're a book author,

17:55

this may be a good way to launch a podcast to promote your book so it could work

17:59

the other way. Absolutely. If you're already an author,

18:03

consider starting a podcast about your book <laugh>.

18:05

This is very popular amongst the folks that do religious podcast.

18:10

Most of them have books before they have podcasts or a lot do. So it is a pop,

18:15

a popular methodology for promoting the book. A k you write the book,

18:20

then you start the podcast to support the book. So yeah, it works both ways.

18:24

Yeah. So I think we, we covered the, at least the basics here.

18:28

You guys ever decide, ever thought about writing a book?

18:32

Have you wrote a book? Let us know. I, I think everyone's got a book in 'em,

18:37

they just gotta decide if they wanna do it. For sure. Well, we'll catch you guys next week.

18:43

Thanks for joining us. Let's meet up next week. And in the meantime,

18:47

for more information to subscribe, share, or follow,

18:50

check out the show [email protected] to check out our latest suite of

18:55

services and help Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast.

18:57

Visit blueberry.com. That's blueberry without the ease.