📚 Anatomy of a Book Launch (Without Social Media) — with Jessica Lackey

Amelia Hruby (00:00:27.481):
Hello, and welcome to the Off The Grid Clubhouse.

Amelia Hruby (00:00:32.204):
I am your host,

Amelia Hruby (00:00:32.903):
Amelia Hruby,

Amelia Hruby (00:00:33.944):
and this is our super secret slash live on Substack space for friends,

Amelia Hruby (00:00:40.146):
fans,

Amelia Hruby (00:00:40.587):
and super fans of Off The Grid podcast.

Amelia Hruby (00:00:44.008):
That public show is all about how to leave social media without losing all of your

Amelia Hruby (00:00:49.531):
clients,

Amelia Hruby (00:00:49.991):
your income,

Amelia Hruby (00:00:50.931):
or,

Amelia Hruby (00:00:51.153):
I don't know,

Amelia Hruby (00:00:52.152):
your social life.

Amelia Hruby (00:00:53.912):
And this private space is where we go really open,

Amelia Hruby (00:00:59.297):
honest,

Amelia Hruby (00:01:00.358):
sometimes even a little scandalous on the behind the scenes of what it actually

Amelia Hruby (00:01:05.502):
really takes for a small business to succeed without social media or without

Amelia Hruby (00:01:10.166):
relying on social media.

Amelia Hruby (00:01:12.348):
And if you've been listening to any of this fall's episodes,

Amelia Hruby (00:01:16.171):
you know that I have just launched a new book.

Amelia Hruby (00:01:20.234):
I have just published my newest book, Your Attention is Sacred, Except on Social Media.

Amelia Hruby (00:01:25.559):
And today,

Amelia Hruby (00:01:26.460):
I am coming to the clubhouse to share with all of you the quote-unquote anatomy of

Amelia Hruby (00:01:32.063):
my book launch.

Amelia Hruby (00:01:33.004):
where I'm going to tell you exactly what I planned,

Amelia Hruby (00:01:35.527):
how it went,

Amelia Hruby (00:01:36.168):
what's working,

Amelia Hruby (00:01:36.749):
what's not working so far,

Amelia Hruby (00:01:38.211):
and give you a sort of one week update on sales because my sales opened to my wait

Amelia Hruby (00:01:43.297):
list one week ago as I'm recording this.

Amelia Hruby (00:01:46.401):
So you're hearing it super live and fresh, my friends.

Amelia Hruby (00:01:50.964):
Thank you so much.

Amelia Hruby (00:02:09.705):
We are in the book launch process together and we've launched pretty differently.

Amelia Hruby (00:02:13.967):
We've had different strategies, different goals.

Amelia Hruby (00:02:15.868):
And so I thought that it would be fun for Jessica and I to talk through all of this

Amelia Hruby (00:02:20.370):
together so that those of you tuning in can begin to sort of parse out like,

Amelia Hruby (00:02:24.232):
oh,

Amelia Hruby (00:02:24.852):
this would really make sense for me.

Amelia Hruby (00:02:26.413):
I don't think I'd do it that way.

Amelia Hruby (00:02:27.753):
I like how Jessica did it.

Amelia Hruby (00:02:28.854):
I like how Amelia did it.

Amelia Hruby (00:02:30.414):
And sort of imagine your own strategies for launching books without relying on

Amelia Hruby (00:02:34.856):
social media to spread the word.

Amelia Hruby (00:02:36.397):
So that's what we're going to get into in this episode.

Amelia Hruby (00:02:40.319):
If you're a paying subscriber, you can hear the whole thing.

Amelia Hruby (00:02:42.879):
If you're not,

Amelia Hruby (00:02:43.700):
you will have to upgrade at this point to hear my amazing conversation with

Amelia Hruby (00:02:46.901):
Jessica.

Amelia Hruby (00:02:47.987):
Thank you for the support.

Amelia Hruby (00:02:49.362):
As always, please buy a book.

Amelia Hruby (00:02:52.303):
And for now, let's dive in.

Amelia Hruby (00:02:56.830):
Hi, Jessica.

Amelia Hruby (00:02:57.324):
Welcome to the clubhouse.

Jessica Lackey (00:02:58.906):
Yay.

Jessica Lackey (00:02:59.365):
Excited to be here.

Amelia Hruby (00:03:00.166):
I'm thrilled you're here.

Amelia Hruby (00:03:03.667):
I would love for you to open this up by telling folks who you are and what is your book.

Jessica Lackey (00:03:09.552):
So my name is Jessica Lackey.

Jessica Lackey (00:03:11.153):
I'm a business and operations strategist.

Jessica Lackey (00:03:13.695):
I help solos and small businesses implement the sustainable foundations for growth.

Jessica Lackey (00:03:19.260):
So some people talk about marketing and I talk about business as a whole.

Jessica Lackey (00:03:23.924):
My book is called Leaving the Casino,

Jessica Lackey (00:03:26.687):
Stop Betting on Tactics and Start Building a Business That Works.

Jessica Lackey (00:03:30.470):
Because when you walk into the entrepreneurial space,

Jessica Lackey (00:03:34.333):
it feels like you're walking into a casino,

Jessica Lackey (00:03:35.935):
the entrepreneurial casino,

Jessica Lackey (00:03:37.236):
where you are seduced and dazzled by shiny promises and told that all you have to

Jessica Lackey (00:03:43.742):
do is spin the wheel and pull the lever and your viral dreams will come true.

Jessica Lackey (00:03:49.167):
And that advice is designed to win the house money and make you a little poorer.

Jessica Lackey (00:03:54.855):
So my book is a foundational business text about how to leave the casino and start

Jessica Lackey (00:04:01.004):
making decisions from a place of agency in your business.

Amelia Hruby (00:04:04.594):
I love it.

Amelia Hruby (00:04:05.875):
And for folks tuning in, Jessica has been my business coach.

Amelia Hruby (00:04:09.757):
We work together on developing and growing softer sounds.

Amelia Hruby (00:04:13.639):
And I've been super excited for your book because I have the utmost respect for how

Amelia Hruby (00:04:18.782):
you teach people to build businesses.

Amelia Hruby (00:04:21.723):
I think that so many of us, myself included, have been

Amelia Hruby (00:04:26.446):
drawn in by the Stripe screenshots and the promises of like five-step plans that

Amelia Hruby (00:04:31.609):
will make you 10-figure months.

Amelia Hruby (00:04:34.232):
And it's so alluring.

Amelia Hruby (00:04:35.932):
It's so tempting.

Amelia Hruby (00:04:37.353):
And I think that I really appreciate how you have called it out.

Amelia Hruby (00:04:42.095):
And it also aligns with everything we do at Off The Grid.

Amelia Hruby (00:04:44.077):
Obviously,

Amelia Hruby (00:04:44.637):
like I'm always trying to help people step back from taping tactics together and

Amelia Hruby (00:04:50.740):
hoping that works for their business and actually deepening into their like

Amelia Hruby (00:04:55.303):
energetic sovereignty what feels right for them how do we align with like the

Amelia Hruby (00:05:00.709):
sharing methods that you like amplify that into your marketing build a business

Amelia Hruby (00:05:04.394):
that suits your energy all of these sorts of things yeah so all of those types of

Amelia Hruby (00:05:07.998):
agency and autonomy and business

Jessica Lackey (00:05:10.359):
That Dua of Words shows up a few times in the book.

Amelia Hruby (00:05:13.480):
Yes, mine too.

Amelia Hruby (00:05:16.061):
And my book is not a business book.

Amelia Hruby (00:05:18.082):
It's actually a philosophical and spiritual manifesto about how to reclaim our

Amelia Hruby (00:05:24.904):
attention in this era of reality.

Amelia Hruby (00:05:27.745):
fracture and distraction,

Amelia Hruby (00:05:29.968):
as well as how to understand what algorithms really are and why the algorithms on

Amelia Hruby (00:05:35.034):
social media are so problematic for our attention.

Amelia Hruby (00:05:38.558):
And then the book ends with a sort of process or method for cultivating your

Amelia Hruby (00:05:43.243):
attention like a garden.

Amelia Hruby (00:05:45.068):
So from the outset,

Amelia Hruby (00:05:47.614):
Jessica and I are both small business owners.

Amelia Hruby (00:05:49.835):
We both have books that are building authority or sort of establishing ourselves as

Amelia Hruby (00:05:55.538):
thought leaders in our area.

Amelia Hruby (00:05:57.820):
But our books are also very different, right?

Amelia Hruby (00:06:00.861):
So Jessica has written a business book that leads directly into memberships and

Amelia Hruby (00:06:06.304):
courses and coaching and all of these things.

Amelia Hruby (00:06:08.806):
And I have gone out on a limb, right?

Amelia Hruby (00:06:13.504):
a manifesto that my dream for that,

Amelia Hruby (00:06:16.268):
though,

Amelia Hruby (00:06:16.507):
will be that I'll get invited into different types of like speaking opportunities.

Amelia Hruby (00:06:20.530):
You know, I can imagine taking this book to universities.

Amelia Hruby (00:06:23.192):
I can imagine like leading workshops and retreats around these ideas.

Amelia Hruby (00:06:27.156):
Like my book is very ideas focused.

Amelia Hruby (00:06:30.139):
I want people to read it and have a sort of like aha,

Amelia Hruby (00:06:33.361):
like light bulb breakthrough moment about their relationship to social media.

Amelia Hruby (00:06:37.185):
That's my dream.

Amelia Hruby (00:06:38.866):
Jessica, what do you hope your readers take away from your book?

Amelia Hruby (00:06:41.267):
What's your goal for it or your dream for it?

Jessica Lackey (00:06:44.049):
My dream for it is that every business owner that picks it up is like,

Jessica Lackey (00:06:48.951):
oh,

Jessica Lackey (00:06:49.811):
this is the book that I didn't know I needed when I started.

Jessica Lackey (00:06:52.853):
Let me give it to Five Friends.

Jessica Lackey (00:06:55.014):
That's the real dream.

Jessica Lackey (00:06:56.795):
Most business books are...

Jessica Lackey (00:06:59.156):
A blog post that is stretched out with anecdotes for 10 chapters so it can be sold in airports.

Jessica Lackey (00:07:05.601):
My book is 10 courses distilled into 300 pages, right?

Jessica Lackey (00:07:12.525):
It's like a very dense book.

Jessica Lackey (00:07:14.387):
Like, you know, if we put our book side by side, yours is what, like 150 pages, 100 pages?

Jessica Lackey (00:07:19.010):
112 pages.

Jessica Lackey (00:07:20.194):
112 pages, right?

Jessica Lackey (00:07:21.571):
Mine is like a brick of a book.

Jessica Lackey (00:07:23.713):
It's like 300 pages.

Jessica Lackey (00:07:24.674):
That's pretty, it's pretty dense.

Jessica Lackey (00:07:26.035):
And a workbook.

Jessica Lackey (00:07:26.995):
And a toolkit and the amount of we'll talk more about it,

Jessica Lackey (00:07:30.157):
but like the amount of things that had to get put together on the back end of each

Jessica Lackey (00:07:33.319):
of our launches is insane.

Jessica Lackey (00:07:35.561):
But it's meant to be sort of a touchstone book that people can come back to year after year.

Jessica Lackey (00:07:39.303):
It's meant to be that that handbook,

Jessica Lackey (00:07:40.964):
you know,

Jessica Lackey (00:07:41.184):
most also most business books and courses are like,

Jessica Lackey (00:07:43.686):
let me tell you what you're supposed to do,

Jessica Lackey (00:07:45.107):
but not actually you have to sign up for the high end mastermind for that.

Jessica Lackey (00:07:47.909):
And I'm going to be like, I'm going to tell you what to do.

Jessica Lackey (00:07:49.190):
I'm going to give you the formulas.

Jessica Lackey (00:07:51.231):
And then you're going to be like, this is cool.

Jessica Lackey (00:07:53.352):
I want to learn from Jessica.

Jessica Lackey (00:07:54.073):
And you're going to sign up to work with me.

Amelia Hruby (00:07:56.232):
Okay, so with all of this in mind, let's talk about our different book launches.

Amelia Hruby (00:08:01.216):
So for folks who've been watching what I'm doing in the off-the-grid space,

Amelia Hruby (00:08:06.700):
let me just try to break down how I planned my launch succinctly.

Amelia Hruby (00:08:11.024):
My launch was really focused on a pre-launch strategy.

Amelia Hruby (00:08:16.790):
So I have been talking about my book all year.

Amelia Hruby (00:08:20.632):
and doing that in different places.

Amelia Hruby (00:08:22.432):
So a lot of episodes actually here in the clubhouse,

Amelia Hruby (00:08:24.513):
this is where most of the sharing happened earlier in the year,

Amelia Hruby (00:08:27.334):
where I shared why I turned down a book deal.

Amelia Hruby (00:08:29.578):
I talked more about what was coming up in different forecast episodes.

Amelia Hruby (00:08:33.878):
So I've kind of been trying to build some lingering excitement about the book

Amelia Hruby (00:08:37.279):
throughout the year.

Amelia Hruby (00:08:39.080):
But when I finished season six at the end of July,

Amelia Hruby (00:08:44.343):
my final episode of the last season of the podcast was like,

Amelia Hruby (00:08:47.564):
here's a preview of my upcoming book.

Amelia Hruby (00:08:49.665):
join the waitlist for the book.

Amelia Hruby (00:08:51.206):
And so that was like sitting at the top of the podcast feed for a while.

Amelia Hruby (00:08:54.667):
And I spent most of July and all of August just trying to get people on my book waitlist.

Amelia Hruby (00:09:00.770):
Then six weeks before my launch date,

Amelia Hruby (00:09:03.651):
I started emailing the waitlist and I shared some essays about my relationship to

Amelia Hruby (00:09:07.652):
social media,

Amelia Hruby (00:09:08.413):
just some things that were more evocative and trying to pull people into like

Amelia Hruby (00:09:11.694):
wanting to read my writing about this.

Amelia Hruby (00:09:14.055):
And then in like the two weeks leading up to my book launch date, I

Amelia Hruby (00:09:19.497):
started sharing more of just like the logistics, like here's what's inside the book.

Amelia Hruby (00:09:22.078):
Here's what you're going to get.

Amelia Hruby (00:09:23.058):
Here are the bonuses if you buy early.

Amelia Hruby (00:09:24.898):
Here's the retreat that I'm doing with it.

Amelia Hruby (00:09:26.719):
So there was this whole pre-launch strategy.

Amelia Hruby (00:09:29.219):
My goal was to really build a lot of excitement around the book.

Amelia Hruby (00:09:33.900):
And then the purpose of the wait list was to be like this sort of really

Amelia Hruby (00:09:37.141):
concentrated space of people who have opted in because they really want to buy the

Amelia Hruby (00:09:41.582):
book.

Amelia Hruby (00:09:42.202):
They know they want to buy the book.

Amelia Hruby (00:09:43.282):
They want to hear more about the book.

Amelia Hruby (00:09:44.823):
It's not just my general email list.

Amelia Hruby (00:09:46.363):
It's like specifically book people.

Amelia Hruby (00:09:49.132):
And overall,

Amelia Hruby (00:09:50.473):
you know,

Amelia Hruby (00:09:50.973):
I have a mailing list of about 2000 people on my off the grid list and I'm like a

Amelia Hruby (00:09:55.578):
thousand more in Substack.

Amelia Hruby (00:09:57):
There's some overlap there, but I'm not entirely sure how much.

Amelia Hruby (00:10:00.804):
And my book waitlist leading up to the launch right before it was, I think, around 350 people.

Amelia Hruby (00:10:06.129):
So like a small fraction of my overall waitlist.

Amelia Hruby (00:10:08.948):
email audience, like wanted to be on the book waitlist.

Amelia Hruby (00:10:12.251):
And then people on the waitlist got to buy the book a few days early.

Amelia Hruby (00:10:14.974):
So the book launch date I picked for myself was October 1st.

Amelia Hruby (00:10:18.237):
Sales open to the waitlist September 29th.

Amelia Hruby (00:10:21.360):
So that was sort of my like lead into the launch strategy.

Amelia Hruby (00:10:26.184):
I guess that's like the marketing side,

Amelia Hruby (00:10:27.985):
but there's also like the product side of it,

Amelia Hruby (00:10:30.046):
like how I chose to package and sell the books.

Amelia Hruby (00:10:32.608):
So for me,

Amelia Hruby (00:10:33.529):
and I'm so curious how you think about this too,

Amelia Hruby (00:10:36.110):
Jessica,

Amelia Hruby (00:10:36.550):
like I was looking at my audience size and I'm like,

Amelia Hruby (00:10:39.235):
okay,

Amelia Hruby (00:10:39.411):
well,

Amelia Hruby (00:10:39.571):
only a fraction of this number of people is probably going to buy my book.

Amelia Hruby (00:10:43.334):
And if I sell $10 paperbacks...

Amelia Hruby (00:10:46.515):
I look at mass market short manifesto books, and I'm like, $15, $19.

Amelia Hruby (00:10:50.658):
If I go that route, I'm not going to make very much money on my book.

Amelia Hruby (00:10:53.340):
I really wanted to find a way to raise the value of the book itself and of these

Amelia Hruby (00:10:59.865):
bundles I was selling so I could make more money per purchase.

Amelia Hruby (00:11:03.567):
So that I could, frankly, like just recoup the costs of doing the book.

Amelia Hruby (00:11:07.091):
Also, I really want to go on a book tour with you and others next year.

Amelia Hruby (00:11:10.094):
And I need funds to do that because 2025, frankly, has like drained some of my business savings.

Amelia Hruby (00:11:15.020):
So like I can't just rely on money on hand to do fun things like that.

Amelia Hruby (00:11:19.364):
I actually need the book to earn its own tour in a certain way.

Amelia Hruby (00:11:21.970):
Yeah.

Amelia Hruby (00:11:22.888):
That led me to decide to do these book bundles.

Amelia Hruby (00:11:25.910):
And I worked with a strategist named Lexi Merritt,

Amelia Hruby (00:11:27.892):
who really recommended I host a retreat alongside the book launch.

Amelia Hruby (00:11:32.035):
And I thought that was really, really smart.

Amelia Hruby (00:11:34.136):
And so for the first month of my book sales,

Amelia Hruby (00:11:36.598):
you basically I'm really pushing these book bundles where you get multiple versions

Amelia Hruby (00:11:40.741):
of the book and a free ticket to the retreat.

Amelia Hruby (00:11:43.402):
And then I'll host the retreat and then the bundles will go away and just books will be on sale.

Amelia Hruby (00:11:48.129):
So yeah.

Amelia Hruby (00:11:48.806):
I think that that is a sort of succinct overview of like how I've packaged the book

Amelia Hruby (00:11:54.851):
in these bundles or just book only,

Amelia Hruby (00:11:57.633):
and then how I built in a pre-launch to try to sell it.

Jessica Lackey (00:12:01.156):
I'm curious, when did you have with the, because you were with Ingram too, right?

Amelia Hruby (00:12:07.181):
Yes, we've both self-published through IngramSpark.

Jessica Lackey (00:12:09.665):
When did you have the final proof approved on IngramSpark where you're like,

Jessica Lackey (00:12:15.751):
yes,

Jessica Lackey (00:12:16.010):
I've ordered it?

Jessica Lackey (00:12:18.995):
How far in advance of October 1st were you like, yeah, I can order some copies now?

Amelia Hruby (00:12:25.143):
Yeah, not that far, because I went through different rounds of revisions on my book proofs.

Amelia Hruby (00:12:34.846):
So I think that the first time I held the book in my hands was in June.

Amelia Hruby (00:12:43.208):
And then over the summer, I was making adjustments, mostly to the text.

Amelia Hruby (00:12:47.929):
When I got the first proof, I reread the whole book and I made quite a few changes.

Amelia Hruby (00:12:52.270):
And then I ordered another proof.

Amelia Hruby (00:12:54.592):
And then I recorded the audio book because I knew when I read it aloud,

Amelia Hruby (00:12:59.072):
there'd be things I'd want to change.

Amelia Hruby (00:13:00.892):
And then I did another round of proofs.

Amelia Hruby (00:13:02.472):
And then I think there was like one more typo.

Amelia Hruby (00:13:04.793):
And I was like, I really just want to fix this before it goes live.

Amelia Hruby (00:13:08.353):
Then when I went to order my final proof,

Amelia Hruby (00:13:11.154):
The IngramSpark book builder like broke on me.

Amelia Hruby (00:13:14.135):
And so I spent over a week like working with support and just like sending daily

Amelia Hruby (00:13:19.858):
request emails to be like,

Amelia Hruby (00:13:21.018):
have you fixed it?

Amelia Hruby (00:13:21.578):
Have you fixed it?

Amelia Hruby (00:13:22.159):
Do you know why it's not working?

Amelia Hruby (00:13:22.919):
Can you tell me what's happened?

Amelia Hruby (00:13:24.740):
So that took a week.

Amelia Hruby (00:13:25.560):
So I think I ordered my final proof.

Amelia Hruby (00:13:31.548):
September 8th.

Amelia Hruby (00:13:35.891):
So I would say I had like final proof in hand September 15th, book going live October 1st.

Amelia Hruby (00:13:42.116):
Once I got the final proof, I ordered 500 books and then they arrived.

Amelia Hruby (00:13:46.280):
I rush shipped them and they arrived shortly after.

Amelia Hruby (00:13:49.841):
What about you?

Amelia Hruby (00:13:50.382):
Tell us about your process.

Jessica Lackey (00:13:52.425):
Well,

Jessica Lackey (00:13:52.663):
so I was working with a custom publisher,

Jessica Lackey (00:13:55.964):
so it's not quite self-publishing because you have a publisher doing all the

Jessica Lackey (00:14:00.285):
things,

Jessica Lackey (00:14:00.505):
but you have to,

Jessica Lackey (00:14:01.745):
you pay them to do all the editing and things like that.

Jessica Lackey (00:14:04.245):
Mine, again, a 300 full color, lots of illustrations, lots of charts and things like that.

Jessica Lackey (00:14:08.426):
No way could I have done it myself, right?

Jessica Lackey (00:14:10.326):
So I got the final manuscript, like fully edited, fully proofread, all the graphics, like

Jessica Lackey (00:14:19.441):
September, like August 31st or something like that.

Jessica Lackey (00:14:23.827):
Wow.

Jessica Lackey (00:14:24.243):
Okay.

Jessica Lackey (00:14:25.025):
Quite late.

Jessica Lackey (00:14:25.804):
Quite late.

Jessica Lackey (00:14:26.544):
So I ordered the first round, September 8th.

Jessica Lackey (00:14:29.466):
The second round, September 18th.

Jessica Lackey (00:14:32.167):
But I didn't know truly how long it was going to take Ingram to do anything.

Jessica Lackey (00:14:36.269):
So I didn't have like a pre-order.

Jessica Lackey (00:14:37.970):
Like I didn't have a pre-launch.

Jessica Lackey (00:14:39.030):
Plus also, I had been launching a bunch of other things in the business.

Jessica Lackey (00:14:43.072):
So I'd had...

Jessica Lackey (00:14:44.773):
I launched my cohort in the early September.

Jessica Lackey (00:14:47.356):
I'd launched a big course in June.

Jessica Lackey (00:14:49.738):
So I'd been launching lots of other things.

Jessica Lackey (00:14:51.940):
And I had zero idea when I was actually going to have the books in hand.

Jessica Lackey (00:14:55.843):
Like the reason I like launched October 1st is because I'm like, well, the books are here now.

Jessica Lackey (00:15:03.762):
50 of them are here.

Jessica Lackey (00:15:04.763):
Let's go.

Jessica Lackey (00:15:05.503):
Let's go.

Jessica Lackey (00:15:06.643):
Okay.

Jessica Lackey (00:15:07.423):
And these books are not small.

Jessica Lackey (00:15:08.743):
So like your 500 books fit into what, like 10 boxes?

Amelia Hruby (00:15:13.664):
Nine boxes that were just sitting on my dining room table.

Amelia Hruby (00:15:16.304):
They kind of, the boxes covered the whole table for scale.

Jessica Lackey (00:15:18.945):
For my book, 18 fit into a box.

Amelia Hruby (00:15:21.745):
So if you ordered 500, you would get 28 boxes.

Amelia Hruby (00:15:27.466):
Yeah, that's a lot.

Jessica Lackey (00:15:28.487):
It's a lot, right?

Jessica Lackey (00:15:29.408):
So I've been ordering like

Jessica Lackey (00:15:31.437):
batches of 50 and things I ordered one with standard shipping like like two weeks

Jessica Lackey (00:15:35.579):
ago and that still hasn't even printed so I just keep ordering like things with

Jessica Lackey (00:15:38.621):
rush printing so I didn't have like a launch pre-launch campaign because I didn't

Jessica Lackey (00:15:44.224):
know when the hell I would launch it and I had already been like I kind of like

Jessica Lackey (00:15:48.326):
launched a cohort in August September so we're kind of like all right it's live now

Jessica Lackey (00:15:55.011):
You know,

Jessica Lackey (00:15:55.371):
I've been kind of seeding interest over the summer with my I had a book club where

Jessica Lackey (00:15:59.293):
every month I do these dialogues.

Jessica Lackey (00:16:00.874):
They're just free classes.

Jessica Lackey (00:16:01.815):
And I'm like, well, I'm tired of making new stuff.

Jessica Lackey (00:16:03.315):
You know, I'm going to just send a copy of the chapter to people.

Jessica Lackey (00:16:07.239):
Because I was also going to do as for a part of products.

Jessica Lackey (00:16:10.939):
I was thinking about doing a video bundle.

Jessica Lackey (00:16:14.721):
And then I just gave up on that idea.

Amelia Hruby (00:16:17.054):
Yeah, it's too much.

Jessica Lackey (00:16:18.659):
Well, no, I have the video classes.

Jessica Lackey (00:16:20.840):
And so I have three of them now loaded in the membership,

Jessica Lackey (00:16:24.982):
which is my,

Jessica Lackey (00:16:25.622):
like,

Jessica Lackey (00:16:26.485):
you know,

Jessica Lackey (00:16:27.184):
community membership,

Jessica Lackey (00:16:28.223):
kind of like your interweb.

Jessica Lackey (00:16:29.444):
So I have, like, the first three chapters have, like, a class associated with it.

Jessica Lackey (00:16:33.045):
But I thought it would be confusing at the sale to be like,

Jessica Lackey (00:16:35.126):
you get three classes now,

Jessica Lackey (00:16:36.207):
but,

Jessica Lackey (00:16:36.367):
like,

Jessica Lackey (00:16:36.867):
seven more classes over the next year.

Jessica Lackey (00:16:38.248):
It was, like, really confusing.

Jessica Lackey (00:16:39.068):
So I just, like, stripped it down.

Jessica Lackey (00:16:40.269):
Plus, as we have both figured out, selling a digital copy, a physical copy...

Jessica Lackey (00:16:45.971):
And then like course material all have different tax requirements.

Jessica Lackey (00:16:51.118):
And I was just like, you know what?

Jessica Lackey (00:16:52.759):
No, no, no.

(00:16:54.542):
I can't figure it.

Jessica Lackey (00:16:55.223):
I literally can't figure out how to do this.

Jessica Lackey (00:16:56.804):
So we're just going to launch...

Jessica Lackey (00:17:00.222):
the books, the video.

Jessica Lackey (00:17:01.944):
Like I'd done a little bit of drumming up of interest over the summer,

Jessica Lackey (00:17:04.726):
but really I just kind of rolled in.

Jessica Lackey (00:17:06.468):
I'm like, books are here.

Jessica Lackey (00:17:07.829):
It's go time.

Amelia Hruby (00:17:09.412):
Yeah.

Amelia Hruby (00:17:10.314):
Yeah.

Amelia Hruby (00:17:10.752):
I mean, okay.

Amelia Hruby (00:17:11.293):
So many things on what you just said.

Amelia Hruby (00:17:12.794):
One,

Amelia Hruby (00:17:13.375):
I think we both experienced that making the transition from being an online

Amelia Hruby (00:17:17.939):
business person who's selling services and digital products and

Amelia Hruby (00:17:22.626):
is very different than selling physical products.

Amelia Hruby (00:17:26.788):
I know that every single product-based business center out there,

Amelia Hruby (00:17:30.610):
all my artists,

Amelia Hruby (00:17:31.451):
all my people who are going to market selling their goods are like,

Amelia Hruby (00:17:34.426):
yeah,

Amelia Hruby (00:17:34.912):
obviously,

Amelia Hruby (00:17:35.513):
you too.

Amelia Hruby (00:17:36.653):
You should have known this.

Amelia Hruby (00:17:38.214):
But we're living that transition in real time.

Amelia Hruby (00:17:41.416):
And I think that even for me, I had

Amelia Hruby (00:17:43.857):
sold books before.

Amelia Hruby (00:17:45.317):
When I was very on social media, I was selling books and I was shipping them out.

Amelia Hruby (00:17:49.418):
But I was doing that.

Amelia Hruby (00:17:50.801):
I looked at my past orders.

Amelia Hruby (00:17:51.859):
I think I sold fewer than 100 total copies of my first self-published book.

Amelia Hruby (00:17:56.580):
So for this, I was gearing up to sell hundreds of copies.

Amelia Hruby (00:17:59.561):
It's a whole different scale.

Amelia Hruby (00:18:01.461):
Also back then, I didn't even have a business entity registered.

Amelia Hruby (00:18:04.462):
So I really was floating very under the radar.

Amelia Hruby (00:18:09.143):
I was not

Amelia Hruby (00:18:10.223):
Paying sales tax, which I should have been.

Amelia Hruby (00:18:11.945):
I was not doing all these things that like should have been happening because I was

Amelia Hruby (00:18:14.728):
running such a small operation and I wasn't really thinking about that.

Amelia Hruby (00:18:18.753):
Also, I literally like did a lot of stuff in person.

Amelia Hruby (00:18:20.916):
I walked people's books to their houses and they had money like it was very

Amelia Hruby (00:18:25.581):
informal when I previously had done a book.

Amelia Hruby (00:18:27.984):
So this was something quite different.

Amelia Hruby (00:18:31.212):
I think that while we could both go like very deep into the logistics of it,

Amelia Hruby (00:18:36.237):
I'll just tell folks that where we landed is both of us are selling books from our

Amelia Hruby (00:18:40.001):
Squarespace websites because there's a shop function there.

Amelia Hruby (00:18:43.064):
We've integrated with Pirate Ship to do all of the U.S.

Amelia Hruby (00:18:45.546):
shipping for our books.

Amelia Hruby (00:18:47.788):
We're doing digital products a little differently.

Amelia Hruby (00:18:49.609):
I've set up automations through Squarespace's email campaigns to deliver some of my

Amelia Hruby (00:18:53.872):
digital products.

Amelia Hruby (00:18:54.593):
You have BookFunnel doing some of your delivery.

Amelia Hruby (00:18:57.094):
So there are so many logistics that go into how you sell a self-published book as

Amelia Hruby (00:19:03.866):
an online business owner.

Amelia Hruby (00:19:05.100):
But...

Amelia Hruby (00:19:07.967):
What I want to go into next is actually like just sort of with our different launch strategies.

Amelia Hruby (00:19:12.752):
You know,

Amelia Hruby (00:19:13.151):
I did so much pre-launching organized around like this is the date the book will be

Amelia Hruby (00:19:18.174):
out.

Amelia Hruby (00:19:19.355):
And you did so much like logistics around like, how do I get the books to my house?

Amelia Hruby (00:19:23.962):
And then once they were there, you're like, great, it's go time.

Amelia Hruby (00:19:27.161):
Things are on sale now.

Amelia Hruby (00:19:29.082):
And I want to talk a little bit about what result that had for our sort of like week one sales.

Amelia Hruby (00:19:33.727):
So Jessica,

Amelia Hruby (00:19:34.348):
will you tell the people like,

Amelia Hruby (00:19:36.551):
how many books have you sold and how do you feel about that?

Jessica Lackey (00:19:40.356):
Yes, I have sold roughly 90 copies, 41 book workbook bundles, 24 hardback.

Jessica Lackey (00:19:48.201):
So like 60 and I sold that on 20 orders.

Jessica Lackey (00:19:51.303):
So like 60-ish hardback plus book bundles and then 24 digital downloads.

Jessica Lackey (00:19:56.566):
Part of that is I am actually going to be on Amazon because...

Jessica Lackey (00:20:01.329):
That's the kind of book you have.

Jessica Lackey (00:20:02.270):
That's the kind of book I have.

Jessica Lackey (00:20:03.732):
And so I told everyone that if you want an international copy,

Jessica Lackey (00:20:08.895):
fun fact,

Jessica Lackey (00:20:09.436):
I couldn't sell the hardback on Amazon even if I wanted to because of the print

Jessica Lackey (00:20:13.339):
cost of colored hardbacks on Amazon,

Jessica Lackey (00:20:16.542):
but I can sell the paperback on Amazon.

Jessica Lackey (00:20:18.423):
So...

Jessica Lackey (00:20:19.344):
But there was a whole conversation about like not being able to pre-launch it on

Jessica Lackey (00:20:22.870):
Amazon,

Jessica Lackey (00:20:23.126):
which we can talk about.

Jessica Lackey (00:20:24.387):
But a lot of people who are like,

Jessica Lackey (00:20:25.988):
I want a copy and just going to wait for you to put it on Amazon so I can get a

Jessica Lackey (00:20:29.489):
print copy.

Jessica Lackey (00:20:30.350):
So we're sort of in like this limbo of like, some people can get it.

Jessica Lackey (00:20:34.992):
Some people are like, I want it now.

Jessica Lackey (00:20:36.293):
Some people are like, I just want to wait for the Amazon copy.

Jessica Lackey (00:20:39.955):
So for the first week, I feel really...

Jessica Lackey (00:20:43.877):
good about the fact that i'm like buy this thing now and people bought it without

Jessica Lackey (00:20:48.540):
sort of a lot of like build up to it i'm like it's coming it's here and that was

Jessica Lackey (00:20:53.302):
like it's coming went out on like a sunday and then like it's here is on a friday

Jessica Lackey (00:20:56.584):
and i'm like all right well now you know we're just we're literally just tapping

Jessica Lackey (00:21:00.146):
into goodwill that i've built up for like five years yeah and i think that you

Amelia Hruby (00:21:04.228):
obviously you have such a like clear view of kind of what's happening here right

Amelia Hruby (00:21:08.170):
like how it's functioning and i think it can be helpful to know like how many

Amelia Hruby (00:21:11.912):
people are really like

Amelia Hruby (00:21:14.242):
ready to buy, even if I'm not like on maybe my pre-launch, pre-marketing A game.

Amelia Hruby (00:21:19.865):
And so now you know that.

Amelia Hruby (00:21:21.786):
I also think it's important what you're saying and we've implicitly said,

Amelia Hruby (00:21:24.728):
but haven't like you made more explicit.

Amelia Hruby (00:21:26.228):
It's just like how distribution works.

Amelia Hruby (00:21:27.989):
So when you self-publish a book,

Amelia Hruby (00:21:30.012):
you know,

Amelia Hruby (00:21:30.210):
the logistics I just mentioned of the Squarespace site and the pirate ship,

Amelia Hruby (00:21:32.752):
like that's all when you're selling it from your own personal website.

Amelia Hruby (00:21:35.573):
But then books are normally distributed through other places on the Internet and bookstores.

Amelia Hruby (00:21:40.415):
And so part of why I decided to publish with IngramSpark,

Amelia Hruby (00:21:43.836):
I'm assuming part of why you did as well,

Amelia Hruby (00:21:45.496):
is that they do a lot of distribution.

Amelia Hruby (00:21:47.357):
You can distribute your book through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, all of the major platforms.

Amelia Hruby (00:21:51.938):
Small bookstores can order through Ingram and get your self-published book instead

Amelia Hruby (00:21:56.628):
of,

Amelia Hruby (00:21:56.783):
you know,

Amelia Hruby (00:21:57.161):
if I didn't do my book through IngramSpark,

Amelia Hruby (00:21:59.442):
I could have carried copies around to small bookstores and asked if they would buy

Amelia Hruby (00:22:03.165):
them.

Amelia Hruby (00:22:03.385):
But with this model,

Amelia Hruby (00:22:04.765):
they can just order them through the channels they already order books through or

Amelia Hruby (00:22:08.007):
even find them through those channels.

Amelia Hruby (00:22:11.169):
So when you want people to buy the book off of your site,

Amelia Hruby (00:22:15.412):
that's different than them buying it through Amazon.

Amelia Hruby (00:22:19.055):
And also you make different amounts of money when that happens, etc.

Amelia Hruby (00:22:22.278):
So I'm hearing you on, you're feeling really good about 90 copies sold.

Amelia Hruby (00:22:27.202):
Also hearing that a lot of people are waiting to purchase it on Amazon.

Jessica Lackey (00:22:31.761):
And then, of course, working with a publisher.

Jessica Lackey (00:22:34.263):
I love my publisher.

Jessica Lackey (00:22:35.843):
However, there's things that they don't really tell you.

Jessica Lackey (00:22:38.524):
Like, I was like, oh, when's a Kindle version going to go live?

Jessica Lackey (00:22:40.785):
And they're like, January.

Jessica Lackey (00:22:41.625):
I'm like, what do you mean January?

Jessica Lackey (00:22:43.206):
Because they have to convert a PDF to EPUB file.

Jessica Lackey (00:22:46.227):
And that because it's a comp, it's like lots of images and lots of tables and text.

Jessica Lackey (00:22:50.649):
And so they they're slammed with like Q4 holiday campaigns for like because they

Jessica Lackey (00:22:55.210):
run a catalog business,

Jessica Lackey (00:22:56.031):
too.

Jessica Lackey (00:22:56.771):
So like they're yeah, like they're a little come in January.

Jessica Lackey (00:22:58.412):
I'm like,

Jessica Lackey (00:22:59.432):
What?

Jessica Lackey (00:23:00.855):
Yeah, that's rough.

Jessica Lackey (00:23:02.057):
Yeah.

Jessica Lackey (00:23:02.395):
Well, it's not a bad thing.

Jessica Lackey (00:23:03.436):
It's like, okay, like, you know, I now get like 15 launch windows, right?

Jessica Lackey (00:23:07.739):
And if I want to launch an audiobook, I now know how to do that.

Jessica Lackey (00:23:11.202):
I know how much that's going to cost.

Jessica Lackey (00:23:12.283):
And so it's like,

Jessica Lackey (00:23:13.464):
oh,

Jessica Lackey (00:23:13.604):
it'll be,

Jessica Lackey (00:23:14.445):
paperback will be live,

Jessica Lackey (00:23:15.948):
Kindle will be live,

Jessica Lackey (00:23:16.627):
and it'll be all live at different times over the next like four to six months.

Jessica Lackey (00:23:20.790):
So it's kind of nice because I have a reason to talk about it a whole lot.

Jessica Lackey (00:23:25.014):
But it's also like,

Jessica Lackey (00:23:26.295):
if you want it this way, wait.

Jessica Lackey (00:23:27.716):
If you want it this way, if you wait.

Amelia Hruby (00:23:29.596):
It's kind of a nightmare to be like, eh.

Jessica Lackey (00:23:32.802):
Yeah.

Amelia Hruby (00:23:33.798):
This is why I wanted to have you on,

Amelia Hruby (00:23:34.859):
though,

Amelia Hruby (00:23:35.019):
to talk about it,

Amelia Hruby (00:23:35.699):
because I think that this is really important.

Amelia Hruby (00:23:38.180):
And I think you're seeing both sides of it.

Amelia Hruby (00:23:39.661):
It's like when I talked about launching the book back in the spring,

Amelia Hruby (00:23:43.662):
the way you're doing it now is kind of how I thought I would do it,

Amelia Hruby (00:23:46.343):
where it's like you have one version and then there's another version and another

Amelia Hruby (00:23:49.164):
version,

Amelia Hruby (00:23:49.446):
and it's spaced out over time.

Amelia Hruby (00:23:50.925):
And you avoid that sort of like

Amelia Hruby (00:23:53.226):
Launch and it's over.

Amelia Hruby (00:23:54.147):
You're finished.

Amelia Hruby (00:23:55.047):
One and done.

Amelia Hruby (00:23:56.969):
That sort of like sequential over time,

Amelia Hruby (00:23:59.751):
different versions,

Amelia Hruby (00:24:01.452):
I think is a really aligned way to launch.

Amelia Hruby (00:24:04.234):
It really sort of like avoids that one and done moment.

Amelia Hruby (00:24:08.357):
And also I hear you on,

Amelia Hruby (00:24:10.558):
it means there's never that moment of like everybody's in the room for the launch

Amelia Hruby (00:24:15.482):
or like everybody's buying now.

Amelia Hruby (00:24:17.823):
And I think that part of why I'm really happy we're launching this

Amelia Hruby (00:24:22.026):
at the same time, but doing it quite differently.

Amelia Hruby (00:24:24.110):
So we can look back like a year from now and be like,

Amelia Hruby (00:24:26.638):
OK,

Amelia Hruby (00:24:27.613):
how do these different launch strategies play out and how did they really feel?

Jessica Lackey (00:24:32.164):
I didn't intend for the book to launch this way.

Jessica Lackey (00:24:34.001):
Like I didn't intend for its kind of driven drive out.

Jessica Lackey (00:24:35.743):
Like I really wanted it to be more of a moment.

Jessica Lackey (00:24:37.785):
But with, you know, like I'm like, I had my manuscript to them at like the end of like March.

Jessica Lackey (00:24:42.670):
Right.

Jessica Lackey (00:24:42.848):
So I didn't realize the creative part was going to take quite as long as it did.

Jessica Lackey (00:24:45.950):
But also what you did in your launch was really nice was because you sent out pre

Jessica Lackey (00:24:51.994):
copies to people that were like,

Jessica Lackey (00:24:53.514):
you know,

Jessica Lackey (00:24:53.714):
I got a copy early so I could read it and be prepared for.

Jessica Lackey (00:24:58.917):
to not just like talk about how excited I am,

Jessica Lackey (00:25:02.500):
but actually have read the book by the time you launched.

Jessica Lackey (00:25:05.482):
And for me,

Jessica Lackey (00:25:05.942):
I didn't have a chance to get out reader copies to people because the manuscript

Jessica Lackey (00:25:10.506):
has done so late.

Jessica Lackey (00:25:11.387):
So I'm kind of thinking about like,

Jessica Lackey (00:25:13.248):
well,

Jessica Lackey (00:25:13.808):
I'm sad that the Amazon paperback is delayed a little bit and I will never be able

Jessica Lackey (00:25:17.171):
to pre-sale the Amazon one because it's technically already on sale.

Jessica Lackey (00:25:21.414):
But now when the paperback version goes live,

Jessica Lackey (00:25:24.194):
I will have readers who have read the book who can review it on Amazon the day it

Jessica Lackey (00:25:28.475):
comes out.

Jessica Lackey (00:25:28.875):
So it's like that wasn't intended to be like the Amazon presale,

Jessica Lackey (00:25:33.376):
but it turned out to be the Amazon presale.

Jessica Lackey (00:25:35.616):
But you had people that were like on day one ready to celebrate the book.

Jessica Lackey (00:25:40.537):
They'd read it.

Jessica Lackey (00:25:41.697):
You had like swipe copy.

Jessica Lackey (00:25:43.618):
So it's like you actually like did the like the launch team properly.

Jessica Lackey (00:25:48.119):
And I'm basically using the first 50 books.

Jessica Lackey (00:25:51.219):
as my launch team which because my manuscript came out so like we were done so late

Jessica Lackey (00:25:57.125):
until the time that I really want I wanted it to go on sale this fall and I knew if

Jessica Lackey (00:26:02.189):
I didn't like just start shipping it I was gonna miss the window because this you

Jessica Lackey (00:26:06.233):
know I we get like what to like early December to ship this bad boy and then we're

Jessica Lackey (00:26:09.996):
you know the shipping costs are astronomical at that point I would imagine yeah

Amelia Hruby (00:26:13.829):
Yeah, and they've already gone up.

Amelia Hruby (00:26:15.830):
Like holiday shipping rates started today as we're recording this, I believe.

Amelia Hruby (00:26:20.192):
So like I saw my books now cost about 50 cents more per book to ship.

Amelia Hruby (00:26:24.853):
So yeah, it's just like a lot of things that I hadn't thought about.

Amelia Hruby (00:26:29.515):
Hey,

Amelia Hruby (00:26:30.037):
Clubhouse members,

Amelia Hruby (00:26:31.037):
Amelia here,

Amelia Hruby (00:26:31.957):
interrupting this episode that's exclusively for you,

Amelia Hruby (00:26:36.460):
paid members of the Clubhouse,

Amelia Hruby (00:26:39.263):
because I want to offer you a little something,

Amelia Hruby (00:26:42.225):
something from my heart,

Amelia Hruby (00:26:44.246):
from my business.

Amelia Hruby (00:26:46.788):
as a thank you for not only being a paying member of the clubhouse,

Amelia Hruby (00:26:50.710):
but also listening to these episodes.

Amelia Hruby (00:26:54.272):
I know that there's a lot going on in the world and a lot going on in your life

Amelia Hruby (00:26:58.656):
specifically,

Amelia Hruby (00:26:59.256):
I'm sure.

Amelia Hruby (00:26:59.835):
And I'm really grateful that you invited me to accompany you on whatever it is

Amelia Hruby (00:27:04.718):
you're doing today as you listen to this.

Amelia Hruby (00:27:07.380):
And as a thank you for that,

Amelia Hruby (00:27:09.341):
I want to offer you a discount code for purchasing a copy of my book.

Amelia Hruby (00:27:15.448):
So if you have not yet purchased a copy,

Amelia Hruby (00:27:17.891):
you can go to offthegrid.fund slash attention and use the code clubhouselove

Amelia Hruby (00:27:25.198):
one word, all caps, Clubhouse Love for $5 off any version of the book.

Amelia Hruby (00:27:30.923):
So you can get just the ebook with $5 off would be only $15.

Amelia Hruby (00:27:34.946):
Or you could get the print book bundle,

Amelia Hruby (00:27:38.289):
which includes the paperback,

Amelia Hruby (00:27:40.613):
the audio book,

Amelia Hruby (00:27:41.414):
the ebook,

Amelia Hruby (00:27:42.032):
and a retreat ticket.

Amelia Hruby (00:27:43.673):
And with your $5 off, it would then only be $45 with free shipping.

Amelia Hruby (00:27:48.357):
So you can use the code Clubhouse Love for $5 off any version of the book.

Amelia Hruby (00:27:54.802):
And if you are a Clubhouse member who has already bought the book,

Amelia Hruby (00:27:58.125):
you are truly like one of my favorite people.

Amelia Hruby (00:28:00.407):
Thank you.

Amelia Hruby (00:28:01.728):
You're about to hear in this episode how much that really means to me.

Amelia Hruby (00:28:05.263):
And also,

Amelia Hruby (00:28:06.492):
I'm happy to comp you one month of the Clubhouse for your $5 because normally a

Amelia Hruby (00:28:11.677):
month of the Clubhouse is five bucks.

Amelia Hruby (00:28:12.939):
So

Amelia Hruby (00:28:13.480):
It's too late to get your discount on the book,

Amelia Hruby (00:28:14.900):
but I'll give you a free month here in the clubhouse.

Amelia Hruby (00:28:17.140):
To get that, all you need to do is send me an email.

Amelia Hruby (00:28:19.361):
So you can reply to the email that you received with this episode,

Amelia Hruby (00:28:24.483):
or you can email hi at offthegrid.fun,

Amelia Hruby (00:28:27.086):
H-I at offthegrid.fun.

Amelia Hruby (00:28:29.388):
And just let me know what email you use for Substack,

Amelia Hruby (00:28:32.246):
and I will comp you a free month as thanks for having already purchased the book.

Amelia Hruby (00:28:36.508):
So it's either or,

Amelia Hruby (00:28:37.348):
either use the $5 discount code to buy a book or get a free month of the clubhouse

Amelia Hruby (00:28:43.170):
if you've already bought a book.

Amelia Hruby (00:28:45.271):
And I just wanted to drop that in here to say thank you.

Amelia Hruby (00:28:47.891):
Again, I'm really so, so grateful and I'm so thrilled to share this book with you.

Amelia Hruby (00:28:52.393):
And there's so much more I have to say about the launch.

Amelia Hruby (00:28:54.773):
So let's go ahead and get back into my conversation with Jessica.

Amelia Hruby (00:28:58.594):
Thank you so much again for being here.

Amelia Hruby (00:29:02.824):
I mean,

Amelia Hruby (00:29:03.104):
the pricing of this is a whole other conversation we could have around like,

Amelia Hruby (00:29:07.510):
how do you price different bundles and editions of your book?

Amelia Hruby (00:29:11.034):
I've had this thought so many times around like,

Amelia Hruby (00:29:13.337):
if you just buy the paperback on my website right now,

Amelia Hruby (00:29:16.302):
it's $30 and it's signed and it comes with a custom postcard.

Amelia Hruby (00:29:19.203):
Like there's a little more to it, but like,

Amelia Hruby (00:29:22.441):
When I think about like if I was in a shop and I picked up my 112 page manifesto,

Amelia Hruby (00:29:26.745):
like I wouldn't pay $30 for it.

Amelia Hruby (00:29:29.188):
So it's like,

Amelia Hruby (00:29:29.648):
how do I like these different pricing logics of like,

Amelia Hruby (00:29:32.690):
how do I price right now when there's this like added value and like closeness to

Amelia Hruby (00:29:37.155):
me and all these things happening versus like I still haven't decided what price

Amelia Hruby (00:29:41.499):
I'm going to set the book at when it goes live on retailers December 1st.

Amelia Hruby (00:29:45.422):
I've been thinking about different options for months and I haven't decided.

Jessica Lackey (00:29:49.423):
Yeah,

Jessica Lackey (00:29:50.186):
my you find out pretty quickly that you there's a retail price and then there's,

Jessica Lackey (00:29:53.688):
you know,

Jessica Lackey (00:29:54.304):
everyone takes a different cut.

Jessica Lackey (00:29:55.505):
Like,

Jessica Lackey (00:29:55.727):
you know,

Jessica Lackey (00:29:56.005):
like for retailers to actually stock it,

Jessica Lackey (00:29:57.625):
they have to have like a 60 percent discount to stock it.

Jessica Lackey (00:30:00.166):
And then you have to actually cover your print cost because mine is so expensive.

Jessica Lackey (00:30:04.227):
It's, you know, full color.

Jessica Lackey (00:30:05.707):
Like I couldn't give a 60 percent wholesale discount.

Jessica Lackey (00:30:09.768):
Like literally I couldn't because then my book would be like 40 bucks.

Jessica Lackey (00:30:13.689):
before shipping which is just it's no it's just insane so that's why the hardback

Jessica Lackey (00:30:18.373):
can't be on amazon because the the color printing cost is too high for the hardback

Jessica Lackey (00:30:22.457):
to go on amazon not that i would have put it on anyways that's what's why the

Jessica Lackey (00:30:25.920):
amazon copy will not be available in australia sorry because they do not do

Jessica Lackey (00:30:28.903):
interior color paperbacks fun fact oh interesting but yeah i think the and also

Jessica Lackey (00:30:35.729):
thinking about pricing which is like super crazy like you

Jessica Lackey (00:30:39.526):
This is the weird thing about pricing books is,

Jessica Lackey (00:30:42.531):
you know,

Jessica Lackey (00:30:43.450):
people will sell like you just like a two hour workshop and they'll charge $97 and

Jessica Lackey (00:30:47.195):
feel like it's fine.

Jessica Lackey (00:30:47.955):
And I'm like, like my, your book is like an amazing manifesto.

Jessica Lackey (00:30:52.599):
My book is, you know, 300 pages of like

Jessica Lackey (00:30:55.602):
zillions of course material codified.

Jessica Lackey (00:30:57.703):
And we were like freaking out about charging more than $40 for it when it's like

Jessica Lackey (00:31:03.685):
because of how it's positioned and because it's a book versus like a course,

Jessica Lackey (00:31:06.746):
it's just the economics of it are quite insane because you have basically distilled

Jessica Lackey (00:31:13.628):
so much learning from how many off the grid interviews have you done?

Jessica Lackey (00:31:17.430):
Over 100, right?

Jessica Lackey (00:31:18.069):
This is not just like something you like just like came up with,

Jessica Lackey (00:31:21.292):
you know,

Jessica Lackey (00:31:21.510):
in the shower one day and decided to write down.

Amelia Hruby (00:31:23.391):
And you have like a decades long career doing this work at the highest possible

Amelia Hruby (00:31:27.673):
level that you've distilled into your book.

Jessica Lackey (00:31:29.755):
Right.

Jessica Lackey (00:31:30.035):
And so like I'm like,

Jessica Lackey (00:31:31.116):
I want to put this as a quote unquote,

Jessica Lackey (00:31:32.616):
you know,

Jessica Lackey (00:31:33.637):
lead magnet tripwire thing is like pricing is so weird because it's so much more

Jessica Lackey (00:31:38.259):
valuable than almost anything else that we do.

Jessica Lackey (00:31:41.161):
But we have to price it in comparison to everything else on the shelf.

Jessica Lackey (00:31:46.784):
And I'm really glad you're doing the bundles.

Jessica Lackey (00:31:49.045):
Basically,

Jessica Lackey (00:31:49.648):
I find these like,

Jessica Lackey (00:31:50.848):
yes,

Jessica Lackey (00:31:51.227):
the book is helpful and I loved your book and I listened to it.

Jessica Lackey (00:31:54.267):
But some of this is just like,

Jessica Lackey (00:31:55.868):
it's kind of like a Patreon subscription with an actual deliverable,

Jessica Lackey (00:32:00.770):
like an actual physical copy.

Jessica Lackey (00:32:02.251):
It's like,

Jessica Lackey (00:32:03.271):
I don't care what the book was about.

Jessica Lackey (00:32:05.073):
I know your book is good because I read it like, you know, three or four times.

Jessica Lackey (00:32:08.255):
It wouldn't have mattered if it was good because I would have bought it just for

Jessica Lackey (00:32:11.939):
you because I want to thank you for the emotional and mental and physical and

Jessica Lackey (00:32:16.983):
financial labor of the past five years.

Jessica Lackey (00:32:19.425):
And I'm like, yes, people bought my book because it's helpful.

Jessica Lackey (00:32:22.668):
But I think people also bought my book just to say thank you for doing what we're doing.

Jessica Lackey (00:32:27.732):
And like, this is like a really easy way to do it without like a recurring commitment.

Amelia Hruby (00:32:31.627):
Yeah, I mean, I feel this so much too.

Amelia Hruby (00:32:33.369):
And it's been a sort of challenge for me since the book has come out because I

Amelia Hruby (00:32:38.014):
think something that you and I share that I've had to realize not everybody feels

Amelia Hruby (00:32:41.778):
this way is that I feel that same way.

Amelia Hruby (00:32:43.740):
It's like,

Amelia Hruby (00:32:44.561):
if there's somebody whose podcast I listen to every week and they come out with a

Amelia Hruby (00:32:47.304):
book,

Amelia Hruby (00:32:47.546):
I'm going to buy their book.

Amelia Hruby (00:32:48.906):
Or I'm going to have them on my podcast and maybe I'll get a press,

Amelia Hruby (00:32:51.688):
an ARC or something like that.

Amelia Hruby (00:32:52.668):
But I'm going to buy and support their book as a way of trying to support their work.

Amelia Hruby (00:32:56.911):
I have two personal policies in my biz friend relationships that I hold to very

Amelia Hruby (00:33:02.816):
strongly,

Amelia Hruby (00:33:03.295):
which is one,

Amelia Hruby (00:33:04.636):
if you publish a book,

Amelia Hruby (00:33:05.817):
self-publish or otherwise,

Amelia Hruby (00:33:06.817):
I will buy it.

Amelia Hruby (00:33:07.418):
And two, if you have a podcast, I will give it a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

Amelia Hruby (00:33:12.002):
I will always do these two things for my biz friends because the podcast thing cost

Amelia Hruby (00:33:16.802):
me nothing and the books,

Amelia Hruby (00:33:18.503):
I know enough about the economics of books to know that it matters that you buy the

Amelia Hruby (00:33:21.744):
book.

Amelia Hruby (00:33:22.725):
Again,

Amelia Hruby (00:33:23.205):
whether I read it or not,

Amelia Hruby (00:33:24.526):
whether I think it's really for me or not,

Amelia Hruby (00:33:26.911):
if we are legitimately friends,

Amelia Hruby (00:33:28.287):
I will always buy the book.

Amelia Hruby (00:33:29.488):
And I've had to learn that not everybody thinks that way and honestly get a little

Amelia Hruby (00:33:34.950):
bit out of my ego about it.

Amelia Hruby (00:33:36.131):
I think there was definitely a part of me that's like,

Amelia Hruby (00:33:39.492):
I've made this podcast for free for three years.

Amelia Hruby (00:33:42.434):
And when people don't join the interweb or when they don't join the clubhouse,

Amelia Hruby (00:33:45.457):
I don't have any feelings about it.

Amelia Hruby (00:33:46.558):
I'm like, yeah, maybe that's not for you.

Amelia Hruby (00:33:47.799):
You didn't join, whatever.

Amelia Hruby (00:33:48.980):
But there's something about like when they don't buy the book.

Amelia Hruby (00:33:51.041):
I'm like, wait.

Jessica Lackey (00:33:53.311):
And I also think part of it,

Jessica Lackey (00:33:54.572):
and I don't know how you feel about this,

Jessica Lackey (00:33:55.973):
I am like wildly hyper attuned to like right now,

Jessica Lackey (00:34:00.035):
like this is my life,

Jessica Lackey (00:34:01.819):
right?

Jessica Lackey (00:34:01.996):
Like,

Jessica Lackey (00:34:02.176):
you know,

Jessica Lackey (00:34:02.396):
my hobbies are writing the book and packing the book and setting up the Squarespace

Jessica Lackey (00:34:05.638):
shop and setting up the kit integrations to send people thank yous and downloads

Jessica Lackey (00:34:09.780):
and shit like that.

Jessica Lackey (00:34:11.101):
But so like the minute I could buy your book, I bought it.

Jessica Lackey (00:34:14.286):
Like I'm so attuned to what everyone is doing because it's also how I've grown my

Jessica Lackey (00:34:19.194):
business is being like wildly,

Jessica Lackey (00:34:20.897):
slightly unboundaried about what I pay attention to for people.

Jessica Lackey (00:34:23.661):
Yeah.

Jessica Lackey (00:34:25.345):
And I love it about you.

Jessica Lackey (00:34:26.246):
Yeah.

Jessica Lackey (00:34:27.068):
But I'm like,

Jessica Lackey (00:34:28.409):
I know when your book's coming out,

Jessica Lackey (00:34:30.491):
I'm waiting with bated breath to be able to support you because the feeling that we

Jessica Lackey (00:34:36.818):
get...

Jessica Lackey (00:34:37.419):
I just assume that everyone's sitting on their phone waiting to buy my book.

Jessica Lackey (00:34:40.722):
That is not accurate.

Jessica Lackey (00:34:41.783):
Yeah.

Jessica Lackey (00:34:42.424):
I know that like my best friend, she's in the acknowledgments.

Jessica Lackey (00:34:45.026):
She's posted about it on LinkedIn and texted me about it.

Jessica Lackey (00:34:47.288):
She hasn't bought it yet because she has three kids and they're in the midst of school things.

Jessica Lackey (00:34:51.472):
And she'll eventually get to it.

Jessica Lackey (00:34:53.593):
But I'm kind of like waiting for her to be like, come on, buy the book, buy the book.

Jessica Lackey (00:34:58.097):
And I recognize that like buying the book is like 17th on the list of her priorities.

Jessica Lackey (00:35:02.803):
She only gets like three a day.

Amelia Hruby (00:35:04.602):
This is also one of the downsides of being a self-published author is that we are

Amelia Hruby (00:35:10.189):
intaking all of the sales orders.

Amelia Hruby (00:35:11.911):
So when somebody tells you,

Amelia Hruby (00:35:14.013):
oh,

Amelia Hruby (00:35:14.235):
I can't wait to read your book,

Amelia Hruby (00:35:15.615):
you're also acutely aware that they have not bought the book.

Amelia Hruby (00:35:17.779):
So you're like, well...

Amelia Hruby (00:35:19.620):
I don't know when you're going to read it.

Amelia Hruby (00:35:20.600):
I guess whenever you buy it, that's cool.

Amelia Hruby (00:35:22.220):
And it's messy.

Amelia Hruby (00:35:23.581):
It's hard.

Amelia Hruby (00:35:24.521):
It's hard to have a whole conversation with someone about how excited they are

Amelia Hruby (00:35:27.281):
about your book when you know they haven't bought the book.

Amelia Hruby (00:35:30.462):
Holding those things together is challenging.

Amelia Hruby (00:35:32.962):
And it's definitely made me reflect on, oh, this is perhaps a benefit of traditional publishing.

Amelia Hruby (00:35:37.783):
I hated that I couldn't see my sales numbers on my traditionally published book.

Amelia Hruby (00:35:41.184):
It was so hard not to know.

Amelia Hruby (00:35:43.304):
But there is some grace and goodness in that not knowing that

Amelia Hruby (00:35:47.125):
Now that I really acutely am aware of like every single purchase and that I'm like

Amelia Hruby (00:35:52.228):
shipping them out with my hands.

Amelia Hruby (00:35:54.050):
So there's like joy and stress in both experiences.

Amelia Hruby (00:35:56.511):
Like I love shipping the books.

Amelia Hruby (00:35:57.612):
I love writing little notes on the packages to like all my interweb members who

Amelia Hruby (00:36:01.114):
bought a book or my friends,

Amelia Hruby (00:36:02.716):
you know,

Amelia Hruby (00:36:03.036):
like I love that.

Amelia Hruby (00:36:05.177):
But it also comes with the fact that I'm aware then of people who have told me

Amelia Hruby (00:36:08.619):
they're buying the book and haven't bought it or things like that.

Amelia Hruby (00:36:10.840):
And I just feel like there's this expectation that I should be like super humanly

Amelia Hruby (00:36:15.922):
regulated in my nervous system and emotions that I shouldn't care about these

Amelia Hruby (00:36:19.265):
things.

Amelia Hruby (00:36:20.104):
But I think it's much more freeing to just be honest and be like, well, I don't know.

Amelia Hruby (00:36:23.606):
I'm only human and I'm maybe a little too aware of these sorts of things.

Amelia Hruby (00:36:28.209):
But like, I'm just really trying to hold that space of it's OK to have feelings and

Amelia Hruby (00:36:33.411):
I'm going to own them as my own feelings.

Amelia Hruby (00:36:35.015):
I'm not going to project them onto other people or have them shift my relationships

Amelia Hruby (00:36:39.084):
or anything like that.

Amelia Hruby (00:36:40.287):
It's just honest.

Jessica Lackey (00:36:42.435):
And I think we're also,

Jessica Lackey (00:36:43.924):
you and I specifically,

Jessica Lackey (00:36:44.957):
because we're launching at the same time together,

Jessica Lackey (00:36:48.219):
the time moves very differently for us right now.

Jessica Lackey (00:36:52.161):
It's concrete during a launch.

Jessica Lackey (00:36:53.642):
You're like,

Jessica Lackey (00:36:54.562):
I know people are sending me emails back to the shipping notifications telling me

Jessica Lackey (00:37:00.186):
how excited they are.

Jessica Lackey (00:37:01.226):
And I like, like, it's like you feel those like amazing things.

Jessica Lackey (00:37:05.709):
And then you're like, but quote unquote, it's only 100 people.

Jessica Lackey (00:37:10.653):
holy shit, 100 people are going to see it.

Jessica Lackey (00:37:12.313):
But it's like we're in this like weird world of bigger is better.

Jessica Lackey (00:37:17.435):
And,

Jessica Lackey (00:37:17.697):
you know,

Jessica Lackey (00:37:17.955):
like in your case,

Jessica Lackey (00:37:18.616):
though,

Jessica Lackey (00:37:18.956):
you know,

Jessica Lackey (00:37:19.396):
you need a certain number to like,

Jessica Lackey (00:37:20.596):
you know,

Jessica Lackey (00:37:20.857):
hit your financial goals.

Jessica Lackey (00:37:22.037):
And I'm just like, I want audaciously to sell like a couple thousand copies of this thing.

Jessica Lackey (00:37:27.880):
And I'm like, I really want to see if I can hit a thousand in the first year.

Jessica Lackey (00:37:30.601):
And I literally don't have any idea how I'm going to do it because I'm like,

Jessica Lackey (00:37:34.543):
I haven't started guesting on the podcast and things like that.

Jessica Lackey (00:37:38.044):
And we are both in the timeframe between the books have shipped and yet they

Jessica Lackey (00:37:44.269):
haven't been able to been consumed yet to be recommended and spread.

Jessica Lackey (00:37:48.912):
So we're in that like weird Schrodinger's cat moment of like, did they like it?

Jessica Lackey (00:37:55.018):
Do they tell a friend?

Jessica Lackey (00:37:55.998):
Does that friend buy the book?

Jessica Lackey (00:37:57.259):
Do I start seeing names that I don't recognize by the book?

Jessica Lackey (00:38:00.401):
And we're before that period.

Jessica Lackey (00:38:02.423):
So it's like a super tender time to be like,

Jessica Lackey (00:38:04.663):
did anyone like my book?

Jessica Lackey (00:38:06.364):
Did you find it helpful?

Amelia Hruby (00:38:08.545):
Yeah, it is very tender.

Amelia Hruby (00:38:10.748):
I really appreciate you naming that.

Amelia Hruby (00:38:12.329):
And I've noticed this as well.

Amelia Hruby (00:38:13.930):
It's like my calendar in September was full of all of my like pre-podcast

Amelia Hruby (00:38:19.735):
interviews and all this pre-press I was doing for the book.

Amelia Hruby (00:38:22.197):
And then October, it's like empty.

Amelia Hruby (00:38:24.219):
And I realized that's because people haven't gotten the book and read the book and

Amelia Hruby (00:38:28.323):
they're not recommending it yet.

Amelia Hruby (00:38:29.484):
Like

Amelia Hruby (00:38:30.024):
I actually think it'll be next year before I really start to see those things.

Amelia Hruby (00:38:33.186):
I think that like my book is pretty well-timed for like New Year's digital wellness stuff.

Amelia Hruby (00:38:38.190):
And so I think in January,

Amelia Hruby (00:38:39.491):
people will really be like reading,

Amelia Hruby (00:38:40.793):
recommending,

Amelia Hruby (00:38:41.432):
sharing it,

Amelia Hruby (00:38:42.413):
which is also partially why I felt so confident,

Amelia Hruby (00:38:44.875):
like only distributing it myself for these first two months and then moving to

Amelia Hruby (00:38:50.098):
general distribution through retailers in December.

Amelia Hruby (00:38:52.520):
Cause I was like, I think that's like, this book will pick up a lot next year.

Amelia Hruby (00:38:55.962):
Yeah.

Amelia Hruby (00:38:57.103):
But yeah, it is a really tender time and it is challenging.

Amelia Hruby (00:39:01.226):
And I think this is probably a good moment for me to share my sales numbers,

Amelia Hruby (00:39:05.529):
which I haven't shared yet.

Amelia Hruby (00:39:07.750):
So for context,

Amelia Hruby (00:39:09.332):
like when I say that the book has sold fewer copies than I was perhaps expecting,

Amelia Hruby (00:39:13.755):
what I was basing that off of is my waitlist.

Amelia Hruby (00:39:16.036):
So I thought that about half of the waitlist would buy a copy of the book within the first week.

Amelia Hruby (00:39:23.141):
That was my guess.

Amelia Hruby (00:39:24.742):
Obviously, like traditional like e-commerce email rates would be like 3%.

Amelia Hruby (00:39:30.009):
So I'm like X-ing that by a lot.

Amelia Hruby (00:39:33.774):
But my take was this is a small segment of my much larger list who has opted in to

Amelia Hruby (00:39:40.302):
learn about the book now.

Amelia Hruby (00:39:41.764):
The only thing I'm giving them is book stuff on here.

Amelia Hruby (00:39:44.006):
So I'm going to guess about half of them will buy it.

Amelia Hruby (00:39:45.848):
So it was 350 people.

Amelia Hruby (00:39:47.269):
So half of that would have been like 175.

Amelia Hruby (00:39:50.592):
That's how many copies I expected to sell in the first week.

Amelia Hruby (00:39:53.958):
And actually more than that.

Amelia Hruby (00:39:54.816):
Because then I thought when it went live to the public, maybe I would also get like

Amelia Hruby (00:40:00.358):
5% of my whole list to read or to buy a copy of the book.

Amelia Hruby (00:40:04.600):
As of right now, I have sold about 150 print books and I have sold around 35 digital or eBooks.

Amelia Hruby (00:40:16.086):
And that's across the bundles and the book only versions.

Amelia Hruby (00:40:19.748):
So

Amelia Hruby (00:40:21.189):
I'm thrilled with the sales.

Amelia Hruby (00:40:22.871):
I'm very happy about it.

Amelia Hruby (00:40:24.472):
And also I'm sitting with like,

Amelia Hruby (00:40:26.274):
oh,

Amelia Hruby (00:40:26.394):
that was somewhat less than I expected based on these numbers I was looking at.

Amelia Hruby (00:40:32.579):
I also realized this weekend when my period started that I launched my book like

Amelia Hruby (00:40:37.844):
deep in the luteal phase of my cycle,

Amelia Hruby (00:40:40.006):
which if I had chosen,

Amelia Hruby (00:40:42.431):
I would not have done it.

Amelia Hruby (00:40:44.995):
Because it definitely made it a little harder to just be excited about the great things.

Amelia Hruby (00:40:49.741):
As any menstruating person knows,

Amelia Hruby (00:40:51.584):
when you're like in the last three days before your period,

Amelia Hruby (00:40:54.007):
as I was when my book launched,

Amelia Hruby (00:40:55.829):
all the bad things feel way worse.

Amelia Hruby (00:40:57.672):
So I'm holding that space for myself as well, that that was happening during this time.

Amelia Hruby (00:41:03.779):
But yeah, so, so far my book launch has made just over $6,000, I believe.

Amelia Hruby (00:41:09.887):
And that roughly covers my expenses for my book.

Amelia Hruby (00:41:13.532):
So I'm feeling really good that...

Amelia Hruby (00:41:16.809):
In the first week of my launch, the expenses are almost covered.

Amelia Hruby (00:41:19.590):
That feels like a huge win that from here,

Amelia Hruby (00:41:22.951):
I can actually start profiting off of the book,

Amelia Hruby (00:41:26.893):
making money on the book.

Amelia Hruby (00:41:29.014):
And then my ultimate goal that I've shared,

Amelia Hruby (00:41:32.235):
I've built a book sales tracker that I'll link in the show notes so that people can

Amelia Hruby (00:41:36.156):
actually look at my sales.

Amelia Hruby (00:41:37.337):
I update it most mornings or most weekday mornings.

Amelia Hruby (00:41:40.398):
But my goal is to sell 500 books by the end of the year.

Amelia Hruby (00:41:43.059):
I ordered 500 for myself.

Amelia Hruby (00:41:45.880):
So I want to sell through all those books by the end of the year and then make

Amelia Hruby (00:41:50.363):
hopefully like $18,000 total.

Amelia Hruby (00:41:53.386):
And that means I can like afford to go on book tour.

Amelia Hruby (00:41:55.848):
I've covered my expenses.

Amelia Hruby (00:41:56.989):
I can pay myself a few thousand dollars for writing the book.

Amelia Hruby (00:42:00.291):
And I think I'm on my way.

Amelia Hruby (00:42:01.972):
The other thing I think that really fucked with my head,

Amelia Hruby (00:42:03.654):
and I'm curious how you feel about this,

Amelia Hruby (00:42:05.716):
is book launches are so different than online course launches or membership

Amelia Hruby (00:42:10.701):
launches or any other type of launch I've practiced doing,

Amelia Hruby (00:42:13.904):
where my whole job was to get everyone to buy in the first week.

Amelia Hruby (00:42:17.988):
Books are not time-bound in this way.

Amelia Hruby (00:42:19.810):
And I have built in incentives to...

Amelia Hruby (00:42:23.914):
try to make that happen.

Amelia Hruby (00:42:24.815):
Like a big part of me hosting this retreat the first week of November is to have a

Amelia Hruby (00:42:29.017):
sort of deadline for people of like the bundles are going away.

Amelia Hruby (00:42:32.500):
You will not be able to get a ticket to this,

Amelia Hruby (00:42:34.481):
nor will you be able to buy the book with all the versions together after November

Amelia Hruby (00:42:38.664):
3rd.

Amelia Hruby (00:42:38.924):
So like I'm trying to build in that sort of date,

Amelia Hruby (00:42:42.346):
but it feels so different to launch something that doesn't have like there's no

Amelia Hruby (00:42:46.329):
like cart is closing email to send on my book.

Jessica Lackey (00:42:50.778):
Yeah, that's both.

Jessica Lackey (00:42:51.680):
For me,

Jessica Lackey (00:42:52.058):
it's like kind of like there is no card closing,

Jessica Lackey (00:42:53.719):
which means that like this book can be an asset for me forever.

Jessica Lackey (00:42:57.261):
Right.

Jessica Lackey (00:42:57.542):
Yes.

Jessica Lackey (00:42:58.482):
It has longevity, which is great.

Jessica Lackey (00:42:59.723):
Yeah.

Jessica Lackey (00:43:00.106):
Right.

Jessica Lackey (00:43:00.704):
And so I will be interested to see whether or not you,

Jessica Lackey (00:43:03.566):
after the first 500,

Jessica Lackey (00:43:04.766):
continue to stock it in some meaningful capacity on your site.

Jessica Lackey (00:43:08.069):
Because like this is,

Jessica Lackey (00:43:10.251):
I think,

Jessica Lackey (00:43:10.710):
true for both of us,

Jessica Lackey (00:43:11.431):
even though your book has a it has a finite date to it.

Jessica Lackey (00:43:14.433):
Right.

Jessica Lackey (00:43:14.593):
Like you're like, all right, I want to sell 500 copies this year.

Jessica Lackey (00:43:17.575):
The Internet's only going to get shittier.

Jessica Lackey (00:43:21.346):
Oh, I hate that.

Jessica Lackey (00:43:22.037):
But yeah.

Jessica Lackey (00:43:22.701):
Well, yeah.

Jessica Lackey (00:43:23.178):
Social media is only going to get worse.

Jessica Lackey (00:43:24.838):
Like even today,

Jessica Lackey (00:43:25.579):
there's some like,

Jessica Lackey (00:43:26.681):
you know,

Jessica Lackey (00:43:26.899):
shenanigans about Substack with like Barry Weiss actually,

Jessica Lackey (00:43:29.659):
you know,

Jessica Lackey (00:43:29.939):
going out at CBS.

Jessica Lackey (00:43:31.400):
And so it's like, well, what's going to happen there?

Jessica Lackey (00:43:33.180):
Like it's only going to get more compelling and timely over time.

Jessica Lackey (00:43:37.541):
Right.

Jessica Lackey (00:43:37.681):
So you have this like short term goal and kind of like activation moment.

Jessica Lackey (00:43:43.223):
But again, you wrote a timely book about a timeless concept.

Jessica Lackey (00:43:47.327):
Right.

Amelia Hruby (00:43:47.924):
I hope so.

Amelia Hruby (00:43:48.644):
Yeah, I definitely am hearing you.

Amelia Hruby (00:43:51.025):
I do think people say books have a long tail.

Amelia Hruby (00:43:53.945):
I think there's longevity.

Amelia Hruby (00:43:55.065):
I mean, but same for your book, right?

Amelia Hruby (00:43:57.866):
These are timeless business concepts.

Amelia Hruby (00:44:00.026):
You'll be returning to this book and selling it for a very long time.

Amelia Hruby (00:44:03.870):
And I think this is where mostly I talk about the difference between a book launch

Amelia Hruby (00:44:08.528):
and a sort of online product or course launch to kind of emphasize this.

Amelia Hruby (00:44:12.249):
Like,

Amelia Hruby (00:44:13.389):
I tried to use a lot of what I know about launching online things to inform my book launch.

Amelia Hruby (00:44:19.275):
And in some ways, I think that worked really well.

Amelia Hruby (00:44:20.976):
Like I sold 100 copies of the book on day one,

Amelia Hruby (00:44:24.421):
I think because I would use such a strong pre-launch strategy.

Amelia Hruby (00:44:27.862):
I really like built in these what I knew how to do.

Amelia Hruby (00:44:30.845):
But now I have to shift my frame of reference because I'm no longer in that like

Amelia Hruby (00:44:36.027):
cart's going to close and then I'm done launching sort of mentality.

Amelia Hruby (00:44:40.529):
This is like long term.

Amelia Hruby (00:44:42.070):
It's, I guess, a marathon, not a sprint, although I'd never use running metaphors.

Amelia Hruby (00:44:45.992):
So who knows?

Jessica Lackey (00:44:47.199):
I think if you'd asked me how I felt about my book launch and I'd launched it like

Jessica Lackey (00:44:51.562):
a course,

Jessica Lackey (00:44:52.142):
I would have been crushed.

Jessica Lackey (00:44:53.543):
And I think that's where if I had assumed it was like cart open,

Jessica Lackey (00:44:56.965):
cart close,

Jessica Lackey (00:44:57.765):
or if I'd like been gunning for a new bestseller list or gunning to be on the New

Jessica Lackey (00:45:00.767):
York Times,

Jessica Lackey (00:45:01.247):
it really would have been a one and done.

Jessica Lackey (00:45:02.768):
And I think I would have been very disappointed.

Jessica Lackey (00:45:04.709):
Like I put in...

Jessica Lackey (00:45:06.750):
three years of work and I only got a hundred sales, like I would have been devastated.

Jessica Lackey (00:45:13.760):
Right.

Jessica Lackey (00:45:14.535):
And like,

Jessica Lackey (00:45:14.854):
so by not thinking about it as like cart open cart close,

Jessica Lackey (00:45:18.437):
I'm like,

Jessica Lackey (00:45:18.819):
okay,

Jessica Lackey (00:45:18.996):
this is a,

Jessica Lackey (00:45:19.776):
this is something that I'm going to send to every client when they enroll.

Jessica Lackey (00:45:23.058):
I'm going to be able to ship to influential people in my life, people who find it and find you.

Jessica Lackey (00:45:28.141):
And they're going to be able to like buy this thing of yours that you've so carefully crafted.

Jessica Lackey (00:45:32.423):
Right.

Jessica Lackey (00:45:33.183):
That does so much heavy lifting for what you want to do in your life.

Jessica Lackey (00:45:38.127):
Like, that's the power of an asset like a book versus something ephemeral.

Jessica Lackey (00:45:43.251):
Like, yes, podcasts are forever, but it's different.

Jessica Lackey (00:45:46.642):
100 percent.

Jessica Lackey (00:45:47.216):
It's very different.

Jessica Lackey (00:45:48.176):
I think if like that's kind of where I'm like, well, we're going to use them there.

Jessica Lackey (00:45:50.738):
It's like it's a marathon, not a sprint.

Jessica Lackey (00:45:52.279):
I actually think it's like an ultra marathon because we have just completed mile 25.

Jessica Lackey (00:45:56.542):
Right.

Jessica Lackey (00:45:56.743):
Like, oh, no.

Jessica Lackey (00:45:57.743):
Yeah.

Jessica Lackey (00:45:58.725):
I hate running.

Jessica Lackey (00:45:59.645):
We have like, you're at mile, you know, like an ultra.

Jessica Lackey (00:46:02.469):
It's like,

Jessica Lackey (00:46:03.091):
you know,

Jessica Lackey (00:46:03.329):
when you celebrate with your community at the retreat day,

Jessica Lackey (00:46:06.612):
you're going to feel like you crossed the finish line of the Chicago Marathon.

Jessica Lackey (00:46:11.057):
But then you're going to be like, oh, wait, no, I'm running a 50 miler here.

Jessica Lackey (00:46:15.101):
There's 26.

Jessica Lackey (00:46:16.802):
Now, but you can walk it and you can hydrate and you can take a break and...

Amelia Hruby (00:46:21.787):
Yeah, it's very much a long game.

Amelia Hruby (00:46:25.031):
And I think that our job is to be excited about that.

Amelia Hruby (00:46:29.312):
Like, again, I think everything I knew about launching was helpful to get me to launch day.

Amelia Hruby (00:46:34.716):
And now I have to let all of that go because having a book in the world is a

Amelia Hruby (00:46:38.339):
totally different thing than having just finished selling a course or something

Amelia Hruby (00:46:41.520):
like that.

Amelia Hruby (00:46:42.120):
So that's definitely a lesson I'm taking away from this experience and our conversation.

Amelia Hruby (00:46:47.964):
And

Amelia Hruby (00:46:50.727):
Any final thoughts that you want to share with people,

Amelia Hruby (00:46:52.808):
Jessica,

Amelia Hruby (00:46:53.309):
before we sign off on this Clubhouse exclusive episode?

Jessica Lackey (00:46:57.353):
Launching a book may be the most demanding,

Jessica Lackey (00:47:00.396):
challenging thing you can do and arguably the most worthwhile activity that you

Jessica Lackey (00:47:07.703):
might be able to spend your time on.

Jessica Lackey (00:47:08.804):
So if you have an idea for a book, it is hard, it is challenging, it is so worth it.

Amelia Hruby (00:47:15.413):
Yeah, I think that's beautiful.

Amelia Hruby (00:47:17.436):
And I will also just add in that it can be really easy.

Amelia Hruby (00:47:21.640):
It's just not how we did it.

Jessica Lackey (00:47:24.246):
don't know I don't know if it can be really easy I haven't met anyone who's like oh

Amelia Hruby (00:47:27.587):
it's a dream it's I think that if you like take your time if you sort of use your

Amelia Hruby (00:47:33.668):
launch strategy of just like when it's ready it's ready uncoupled from sort of like

Amelia Hruby (00:47:39.230):
big dreams for the impact the book will have I think it can be very simple I

Amelia Hruby (00:47:43.311):
remember my first self-published book being so chill and I was just so happy to do

Amelia Hruby (00:47:47.532):
the whole thing

Amelia Hruby (00:47:48.812):
But that's because I had no expectation for what would come of it.

Amelia Hruby (00:47:51.555):
And I truly just did it for the love of it.

Amelia Hruby (00:47:53.618):
So I think that a book launch,

Amelia Hruby (00:47:56.842):
it's such a spectrum of writing a book and publishing a book and putting it out in

Amelia Hruby (00:48:00.606):
the world.

Amelia Hruby (00:48:01.487):
I think you and I are doing it on a bit of a hard mode.

Amelia Hruby (00:48:05.092):
And that's because of who we are as human beings.

Amelia Hruby (00:48:07.475):
Yeah.

Jessica Lackey (00:48:08.760):
Yeah,

Jessica Lackey (00:48:08.900):
if you want to do it on easy mode,

Jessica Lackey (00:48:10.402):
put it in KDP and let them handle all the shipping and let them handle it all.

Jessica Lackey (00:48:14.667):
And it'll be brilliant.

Jessica Lackey (00:48:16.869):
We chose not to do it that way.

Amelia Hruby (00:48:18.431):
Exactly.

Amelia Hruby (00:48:19.432):
But it's very rewarding all the same.

Amelia Hruby (00:48:21.855):
So thank you so much, listeners, for tuning in to this Clubhouse episode.

Amelia Hruby (00:48:25.478):
I hope that...

Amelia Hruby (00:48:27.020):
You enjoyed my and Jessica's reflections literally one week into each of our book launches.

Amelia Hruby (00:48:33.524):
If you would like to buy Jessica's book,

Amelia Hruby (00:48:35.426):
you can do that at deeperfoundations.com slash casino,

Amelia Hruby (00:48:40.449):
which is also linked in the show notes.

Amelia Hruby (00:48:41.910):
If you'd like to buy my book, you can find it at offthegrid.fun slash attention.

Amelia Hruby (00:48:46.633):
I'm also linking my sales tracker in the show notes if you want to keep up with

Amelia Hruby (00:48:50.258):
sales,

Amelia Hruby (00:48:50.917):
as well as my book promo kit.

Amelia Hruby (00:48:53.039):
If you want to spread the word about the book or you're just curious what I put in

Amelia Hruby (00:48:56.302):
a promo kit that I sent to all my advanced readers,

Amelia Hruby (00:48:58.484):
that will be in the show notes for you as well.

Amelia Hruby (00:49:01.427):
Please do buy copies of our books if you are so inclined.

Amelia Hruby (00:49:04.590):
We would be forever grateful for your orders and

Amelia Hruby (00:49:08.173):
And otherwise, there will be more book updates here on the Clubhouse feed.

Amelia Hruby (00:49:12.814):
And the audio book will also be dropping here for all of you in November.

Amelia Hruby (00:49:18.716):
So that's coming your way.

Amelia Hruby (00:49:19.837):
It's going to be a little Clubhouse exclusive as thanks for coming along with the book journey.

Amelia Hruby (00:49:25.319):
And I think that's it for today.

Amelia Hruby (00:49:26.879):
So thank you so much, Jessica, for joining me.

Amelia Hruby (00:49:29.099):
I'm so happy to be in this book launch season together.

Amelia Hruby (00:49:32.800):
And thank you, listeners, for sticking around.

Amelia Hruby (00:49:34.581):
Until next time, we will see you off the grid and in the clubhouse.

(00:49:40.263):
Let's go off the grid.