4 Reasons Creators Don’t Sell Direct (and Why You Should)

Matt: Welcome back everybody to another episode of Publish & Prosper. Hopefully the same five listeners that have been following us through the first couple episodes are back for number three. 

Lauren: Oh, come on. I would say seven now. 

Matt: You think we're up to seven? 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Hopefully more, because today we get to talk about one of the things we love to talk about, which is selling your content direct to your readers. But more importantly, we get to have some fun with it, and we get to talk about a lot of the pushback or resistance we receive, at times, when talking with authors and creators about selling direct. So we get to debunk some of the myths that are out there, some of the things that people have been talking about that, quite frankly, there are ways around every single one of those. 

Lauren: Love a good debunking. 

Matt: Me too. Let's go ahead and jump right in. 

Lauren: Sounds good. 

[1:18]

Matt: Awesome. Obviously, we talk about it a lot. We completely believe that selling your content direct is the future for content creators, content entrepreneurs, and publishing in general. I personally believe that we are going to see the publishing industry continue to steer in that direction. I think the big five publishers and lots of other entities are going to have to start paying attention to direct sales, and figuring out ways to incorporate it into their business models. 

This is a topic that we believe wholeheartedly in, the concept of selling direct. And we do spend a lot of time talking directly with a lot of the creators and authors and entrepreneurs that use our platform, Lulu, for selling their content direct and creating their content. We have a lot of data and statistics around our users, but we also pay very close attention to the data that's out there around direct sales channels outside of our platform. Part of the impetus for why we go to our creators to ask about them is not only to understand where they're finding success with selling direct, but also to find out some of the reasons why they were hesitant to start doing it in the first place. 

When we go to events, whether they're creator-driven events or author-driven events or anything else, we love to ask about selling direct, and what people might think, or why they haven't tried it yet. So again, here's a little small collection of some of those myths that we've been presented with, or if you will, reasons why people did not want to try it. And we're going to tell you why these are not accurate. 

Lauren: We also – just to avoid any bias – we also talk to people that are not publishing with Lulu.

Matt: Oh yeah, all the time. 

Lauren: So we definitely will talk to authors and creators that might say, yeah, you know, I've heard about Lulu and I've heard about Lulu Direct and I am interested in the idea of it. But I'm not convinced that it's something that I could do. I'm not ready to move my books from my existing sales platform or add a new sales platform in selling direct. 

Matt: Yup

Lauren: And these are the reasons that they give us. 

[3:06]

Matt: Yup. So the first one we hear probably, I won't say most often, but it's one of the ones that comes up pretty quickly in the conversation is that, you know, we'll hear this: well, I'm a writer, I'm a creator. I'm more interested in writing my books or creating my content. I don't know anything about building a website, or a web store, or whatever it would take to sell my content direct. So, I just can't do that. 

Lauren: You wrote a book. You wrote a book from start to finish. That is so hard. That is so incredibly impressive. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: You can do anything. You wrote a book. You can do absolutely anything. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: So, yes, you can build your own website. 

Matt: I'm always amazed when I hear an author or creator who creates a lot of content – especially written content – when I hear that, because to me, for somebody who's in this industry, when you see what it takes to create a book, to write a book, and then to hear that same person say ‘I can't do this or I can't do that,’ it always amazes me. It is no easy feat to write a book and get it published, whether it's self-published or otherwise. 

Lauren: Yeah. And this isn't – I mean, for me, I can't speak for Matt – but for me, this isn't coming out of like, oh, wow, writing is so hard. I can't imagine how you do that. I literally went to school for this. 

Matt: Wait, whose voice was that? 

Lauren: I'm so sorry. This is Lauren.

Matt: Okay. Was that Lauren in school? 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Was Lauren in a sorority? 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: That's exactly what that sounded like. Let's edit that in post. They shouldn't have to hear that. 

Lauren: You don't want them to hear Valley Girl Sorority Girl Lauren? 

Matt: Okay, we'll leave it in there. 

Lauren: That's gonna happen anyway. It's fine. But yeah, I am coming from a place of knowing exactly how hard it is to write a book. Hear me, I'm telling you this. You wrote a book. You can totally do the rest of this. 

Matt: Well, and the beauty of it too is today, 2023 going into 2024, you don't have to do everything yourself, just like that commercial or whatever the adage is: there's an app for that, right? So, use Shopify, it's such an easy platform to spin up your own website in store. It really is not hard at all. And again, if you have what it takes to write a book, you can build a Shopify store. Hands down, it is not that hard. These sites, they're designed to be accessible specifically for people who are not web designers by trade or things like that. They're very easy sort of plug and play types of platforms and they have lots of templates and all kinds of other things. And honestly, if you still find yourself getting hung up, there are a lot of freelancers out there that that's how they make their money is helping people build out their Shopify and WooCommerce and Wix and on all these other storefronts. Yeah, there's really no excuse for not giving it a shot, especially if you've gotten through the process of actually writing and publishing a book. 

[5:38]

Lauren: Yeah, and I think that's going to be kind of a running thread through all of these, too. Keep in mind with all of these, that the platforms that are available to you for building your own website or selling direct or something like that, they want you to use their platforms. So they want to be as accessible as possible for you. I know for a fact that at least like Shopify, and WordPress, and Wix, and those kinds of websites, they have an abundance of free resources on their website to help make it as easy as possible for you. 

Matt: Yeah 

Lauren: Because they want it to be accessible to you. They want you to be able to use their platforms. 

Matt: That's right. 

Lauren: Don't knock until you try it. 

Matt: A hundred percent. And I mean, honestly, that's probably the same for any platform. It's certainly the same for us at Lulu, the entire marketing team that we work on. You know, 50% of what we create content-wise and what we do as marketers for Lulu is really helping people use our platform better and finding more efficient ways to use our platform. And in Shopify and all these other platforms, it's the exact same thing. There's plenty of resources that you can find to help you navigate these platforms, but they are not overly complicated to begin with. There are certain things that you'll get into when designing your store that you might need a little bit of help, or you might need to read a knowledge base article on, when it comes to things like shipping or something, but you know, even there, there are resources available. So, absolutely do your homework, but saying that you're not a web designer, so you can't build a store or a website is just not an excuse when you're a published author. 

Lauren: Absolutely not.

[7:00]

Lauren: So, okay, let's say we've got them this far. You've got your own website. You've done the thing. You've built it out. Now maybe the excuse is I don't have the time, the experience or the ability to run my own business. It's one thing to have a website. That was a one-time thing. I built it out. Now it's done. It's there. But running a business takes time. I don't have that kind of time.

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would say we absolutely hear this a lot. And I think in general, I'm gonna stereotype here a little bit, sorry. But I think in general, creative people really prefer to stay creative, and keep creating, and they don't often want to deal with the other side of what comes along with being a content entrepreneur or an author or, you know, and that is the business side of things. And so when you're publishing and selling books and using books for other types of purposes, there inherently is going to be a business side that comes with that. And you have to, you have to deal with that one way or the other. 

So, uh, the idea that you're, you can't do it. You don't have the ability or the time or the experience. While some of those might be true in theory, again, there are ways around this. There are ways to deal with it. There are so many resources available. There's online communities with other authors and creators where you can jump in and get some help and ask some questions and small business owners – at the end of the day, that's what you are. You're a small business owner. And so finding ways to push through and treat this as a business, it's something you have to do. If this is what you're going to do long-term, if you're in this for the long haul and you're trying to build a sustainable business from your writing or content creation efforts, you have to do this. 

So again, there are resources out there, but you know, when you talk about aspects of your business, like the simple act of facilitating book sales and fulfilling those, how are they getting manufactured and shipped and things like that, that is the whole point of apps like Lulu Direct and, you know, for Shopify or WooCommerce. You build a Shopify store, you download, you know, the Lulu app for that. You plug that in and every time a book sells from your store, the order just gets transmitted to Lulu. We print it and ship it. Uh, if you're selling t-shirts, you can use apps like Printful or Printify. It's the same concept. You plug their app in. You've set your t-shirt up on their end. And every time one sells that order gets transmitted to Printful on the back end and they print it and ship it. And so you never have to touch it. I mean, there are apps for all of these things that come along with, kind of, this concept of running, running your, your online ecommerce business. You don't have to have an MBA or a degree and whatever it might be that you think you need. You don't have to be a mathematician or an entrepreneur with a longstanding track record of successful businesses to do this. 

Lauren: Thank God, cause I haven't taken a math class since 2006. 

Matt: I only had one math class in college and it was called math for liberal arts. And the hardest thing we did in that math class – this is no lie, by the way – the hardest thing we did in that math class was learning how to balance a checkbook. 

Lauren: Wow. That's a skill that you use to this day, I'm sure.

Matt: I will tell you that as a result, A, I've actually grown to love math, oddly enough. I enjoy doing math in my head. It's fun. And B, I have never, ever once needed the ability to formulate an algebraic equation or use algebra to solve anything in my adult life. Just gonna throw that out there. 

Lauren: Including your sales tax and shipping costs?

[10:11]

Matt: That's right. That's the other thing we hear that too, right? Can I sell direct outside of the US? Yeah, of course you can. Okay. But what about taxes and VAT and all those other things? Again, you're going to get tired of hearing this from us, but there's an app for that. If you don't want to manually adjust in your Shopify store or WooCommerce store, whatever platform you're using – and they all allow for this, by the way. But if you don't want to manually set the taxes and the rates and all of those things, which is fine, cause I can't really understand why anybody would want to do that. 

Lauren: No, sounds terrible.

Matt: Download one of the apps that are out there for that stuff. TaxJar, Payhip, EAS, Zonos, there's a ton of them that you can use to handle taxes. And same with shipping. Although shipping is a little easier than taxes. And you know, some of the tools like Shopify, for example, at certain plan levels or higher, they have a thing called live shipping rates or something. You just check the box and basically it handles all the shipping calculations and costs, so. Again, though, this is not an insurmountable thing. Taxes and shipping, not that big of a deal. There are apps for that. 

[11:06]

Same thing when we talk about this concept of selling direct and really treating it as a business, you’re a small business owner. Your content is a business. Like any other business, you're going to need to provide some level of customer service. And oftentimes what we hear is ‘I don't have the time or the bandwidth or even the skillset to handle customer service.’ 

Lauren: Relatable. Honestly. Who among us? 

Matt: That's fair. I see you're going to play the role of, of the devil's advocate here, or the potential author, but – 

Lauren: As often as I can

Matt: – I would say again, even for that one. The amount of customer support you have to provide in a situation like this becomes infinitely smaller because you're controlling that customer's experience from the start, right? 

Lauren: Absolutely, yeah. You have complete control over the customer journey.

Matt: That's right. When you're selling to one of your fans or followers, they're buying from you because they want to support you. Ideally, you are providing a great experience. You're giving them this piece of content. They're giving you money for it. That's a great transaction or trade to begin with, but above and beyond that, depending on who your service fulfillment provider is, hopefully they get a good quality product. On the off chance that they don't, yes, they're going to reach out to you and say, ‘hey’ – let's stick with books because that's what we're talking about – ‘I got your book in the mail. I was super excited, but it looks like it was damaged in transit.’ Okay. So you have to field that email. It's not that big of a deal. Reply back, ‘I'll reach out to my fulfillment partner or, you know, the print facility and I'll get right back to you,’ or whatever that might be. And I think the important thing is that you're the one that's in control of that customer's experience and journey. And so by crafting the best one possible, you will have the least amount of customer support inquiries coming in. Making sure you research all the vendors and partners you work with, by the way. 

Lauren: Yes, definitely do that. And speaking of, if one of those partners that you want to work with is Lulu Direct, we also have resources available to help you manage that customer experience. 

Matt: That was smooth, by the way. 

Lauren: Thank you, thank you. There's a really great blog article that one of my co-workers wrote about how to preemptively set up your customer journey and customer experience so that you can minimize their need to reach out to you because you've already created – 

Matt: Yeah

Lauren: – so much of the content that they might need, FAQs, stuff like that. So if you're interested in reading something like that, check out the show notes for this episode. I'll link to the blog in there. 

Matt: Joanna Penn does a great job of that. Like if you buy a book from Joanna Penn on her website – and she uses direct sales, by the way, uh, in a number of different ways – but I did notice one day she has an FAQ section, and she's very thorough in talking about what your expectations should be when you buy directly from her and answers a lot of the questions I imagine would have come through in the way of support tickets, or did at some point come through, she's been doing it for awhile. So if you ever need a good example of how, aside from that article Lauren referenced and probably others out there, of how to set up your site in such a way where you might preemptively stem the flow of potential customer support inquiries coming in, Joanna Penn’s site is another good example. She has some really good FAQs and things on there too. So yeah, that's a great point.

[14:09]

Lauren: I also just want to back up just a little bit for a second. 

Matt: Sure

Lauren: Matt is very gamely covering for me as I spend more than half of this episode with my mic muted, coughing. So thanks. Thanks for that, Matt. But I missed the opportunity to jump in when he was talking about this idea of treating your content creation or your authorpreneurship as a small business and that you are a small business owner. And I think that's really important to make sure we're doubling down on that idea. Like, if you're sitting here saying, like, ‘I'm an author, I don't have time to run my own business.’ 

You already are running your own business. Even if you are a traditionally published author, like, you are a brand. You as an author have a brand. You are already promoting a brand, you're running a brand, you are responsible for maintaining a certain image and engagement level and whatever the case may be for your brand. You're already doing that. So if that is your barrier to entry in this selling direct opportunity, I guess, is saying that I don't know how to run my own business. If you are already a published author, you already are running your own business. 

Matt: Yeah, that's a great point, too. 

[15:10]

Lauren: So, okay another one that we hear a lot. You've got your own website, you're okay with the idea of running your own business. You might even be selling your books already on some major retailers, some other platforms. And now the reason that you don't wanna sell direct is because having your books listed on your own website makes it harder for new readers to discover you. It makes you worried that your book is not gonna be discoverable the way that it would be if it was perhaps on Amazon.

Matt: I think to a degree that's a valid statement in some respects, although I would say it would have been a more valid statement five to eight years ago. And obviously, you know, ten years ago, when Amazon and some of these other larger third-party retailers were putting a lot of effort and money into authors gaining discoverability, either through search or through insight search or through suggestive selling tactics. And by that, I mean, you know, if you put something in your cart there, it's going to suggest ten other things or, or five other books, or whatever that might be – which sometimes works against you, by the way – but the discoverability aspect or argument is almost not nearly as valid, and in some cases not valid at all. I mean, there's still a little bit there. 
If nothing else, it's the perception, right? As creators and just as human beings in general, we're living in a world right now where there are a few dominant key players when it comes to ecommerce, buying things in general, whether that's books or toaster ovens, right? And so it's hard not to think that you have to be everywhere all at once. And it's not even necessarily a bad strategy per se. You know, when you're playing the discoverability game, as long as it's not a financial burden to you, then yeah, put your content in as many places as you want to, and try to rely on their discovery or tactics and strategies to help you. 

But when we talk about selling direct and utilizing that, we're really talking about the audience that you work to build. And we're saying, don't give them to a third party retailer. We're not saying don't use third parties, necessarily, to help build, and again, benefit from their discoverability efforts, if any – although you'll discover pretty quickly whether or not they're actually providing any value there. We're just saying that the work that you put into building your own audience, your own followers and fans and customers, whether that's through social media efforts, an email newsletter list or anything else, going to in-person events – don't launch a book and then send them all over to a third party retailer to buy it. You just did all that work to build them up as an audience and to, to sort of wrap your arms around them only to pass them off to somebody else that's just not smart, it's not good business sense. And in the end you’re only hurting yourself because you're losing that profit, and you're losing that data around who actually purchased your book or whatever else it was you were putting out into the market. 

Lauren: Again just to reiterate the point that Matt just made, you can do both. We've absolutely had these conversations with so many different people where they've said ‘I like having my books on Amazon, my readers are on Amazon, I don't want to move to just selling from my website’ and nobody is saying that you have to. You absolutely can sell your books from your own website and from Amazon. So just to make that, I mean, Matt just made that point, but just to make it very clear, to put a nice little underline on that. You can do both. If your hesitation is, well, I'm on Amazon, I want to stay on Amazon. That's fine. But if your reason for wanting to stay on Amazon is because you think readers are going to stumble across your book while browsing the depths of Amazon and they're gonna magically find it and be like, wow, this looks so interesting and appealing and can't wait to read more about it. I'm gonna buy it immediately and read it right away. That's just not shopper behavior anymore. That is an outdated mentality of how shopper behavior works. Which is sad, cause I know we all love the idea of like, that romantic nostalgia of browsing a bookstore and finding the perfect book that you've just stumbled across and it's great. That's just not a thing anymore. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I used to work at a bookstore. I worked at a bookstore for about five years and browsing is – even then – was not, it was not something that people did. It tended to be a last resort. The way that people were actually finding books was word of mouth recommendations, asking booksellers in the store, asking their friends, browsing social media. People would come in all the time and say, like, ‘saw this book on Instagram. I'm looking for it in here.’ Wouldn't even go directly to the shelves, would come straight up to the front counter at the bookstore and say, I saw this book on Instagram, I've heard a lot about it, I'm looking for it, do you have it in stock?

Matt: Yeah

Lauren: If you're clinging to this hope that having your book listed on Amazon is enough of a marketing strategy for you, it's not. So if that's your hesitation for selling directly from your own website, don't let that be the thing that stops you.

[19:26]

Matt: I think it's important to talk about too, though, when we talk about discoverability – because somebody might be listening to this and going, well, great, then how do I find – how do people find my book to begin with? You're actually maybe scaring me a little bit here. And the truth of the matter is we live in a world right now where search is definitely evolving and changing. And when you talk about growing AI concern, search and AI starting to blend. When you talk about things like ChatGPT becoming a search engine for people, or, you know, the opposite of that where Google or some of these other platforms will start functioning more like a chatbot versus a search engine. Discoverability is gonna change and yes, you're gonna have to keep up with that. 

But I would push back and say that the one thing we keep talking about and we keep hammering home, probably on every episode that we do here – and certainly anytime we're talking to authors, whether we're giving a presentation or just talking to them one-on-one – is that you've got to build your own audience and your own community and that's where you build long-term lasting sales and relationships. To the point where you won't necessarily have to rely solely on digital discovery, because that is just a bad model and it's going to get worse and worse as time goes on. 

So what that means in simple terms is, is just take a physical business owner. And I mean somebody like my wife, for example, she has her own small business and it's in the beauty services industry, so not selling a product necessarily. But as a small business owner, whether again, it's something physical like what my wife does or whether you're an author or creator, whatever, as a small business owner, you want to get to a point where the majority of your business – and by business I mean transactions – are happening because of word of mouth, not because you're dumping money into digital discovery or even just dumping effort and time into digital discovery. The more people you can get into your community that have read your content or find value in it and purchase it from you, they are going to tell other people about it. That's just human behavior. That's human nature. You can't not tell somebody about a good experience you had or a great book you read or a book that you found value in because it helped you accomplish something. When you can get to a point where your community is starting to grow solely based off of your content and word of mouth, that's when you've hit kind of the pinnacle in your stride. You will come to rely on digital discovery a lot less than you do in the beginning stages of your journey, for sure.

[21:39]

Lauren: And I think that's a very important reality to keep in mind, specifically for books. I mean, that's a reality for many things in our society right now, but especially for books. Now as Matt was talking, I was just skimming through my list of books that I've read so far this year. 

Matt: Glad I bore you. 

Lauren: You would never bore me. I've just heard it before.

Matt: Alright.

Lauren: I was taking the opportunity to refresh my memory, before I –  

Matt: Alright, sure.

Lauren: – to fact-check myself before I said this, every single book that I have read this year, every single book that I've read since January 2023 and honestly, probably beyond that, came from word of mouth recommendation from a friend recommending it to me or was one of my instant-buy authors. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Which are also authors that I probably discovered initially from a friend recommending them to me. And I am a person that spends a lot of time on book recommendation communities, BookTok, TikTok, platforms that are review-based, and stuff like that. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And that is still the number one way that I get any kind of recommendation for books specifically is word of mouth. 

Matt: Right.

Lauren: So that is much more reliable and something that you should be targeting your marketing efforts much more towards building your community, and building a fan base of true fans that are going to do the work of recommending your content to other people. Cause that is a much smoother way for you to generate sales than hoping that somebody will stumble across your book on Amazon or somewhere else. 

[23:06]

Matt: That's right. You mentioned reviews. That's another one.

Lauren: Yes it is.

Matt: Where we often will have authors say, I'm afraid to start selling direct. I'm afraid to forego the idea that somebody would leave me a positive review on Amazon or Goodreads or some of these other places. And again, you know, that's a fair piece of information to process and take in. But at the end of the day, reviews are also not what they used to be. And I don't know about you, but anytime I do go to purchase something, especially if it's not a large purchase, right? I'm not talking about if I purchase a new refrigerator, but most of the time, these days, if I'm going to purchase something online, which is where I do most of my shopping. I'm not looking at the reviews because I can absolutely tell how many of them are fake or generated by AI chatbots or things like that. And I just don't find reviews to be what they used to be. And more specifically in the world of books and publishing, reviews are so, so subjective. 

Lauren: Absolutely, so subjective

Matt: I've never understood people who bought a book based on a review. It's just never made sense to me. And then a few times that I've actually tried it, like maybe I've read one book by an author and I'm curious about their other books and so I might peruse the reviews and maybe… they're almost never right. You know, we might like the same author, but we might not like the same types of content, stories, whatever that might be. Or you might have a completely different outtake on that book based on one little thing in there that bothered you. And you might give it a three star. Whereas I read the book and I'm like, well, that doesn't bother me. And the book was amazing. So I get it. I think that we've been ingrained, again early on, to rely on reviews, especially pre, I would say pre-COVID, but maybe even before that. But I think that definitely over the last couple of years, if not more, three to five years, reviews have more and more just become dominated by bots. Even the ones that aren't fake for books specifically, it's so subjective. It's so opinionated. It's not something that's reliable. 

Lauren: Absolutely. And like Matt was just saying. You know, you never know when something subjective like a book review, if that's actually going to matter to the readers or to the people that are considering buying your book. I will never forget. This was probably the last book that I read that wasn't a recommendation or a instant-buy author for me. I saw this book and had a really cool cover. That's probably the third category of books for me. Books that were recommended directly by a friend, books that are instant-buy authors and books that have really pretty covers because – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I have an extensive collection of books in my apartment and I like books that look pretty on my bookshelves. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: So, that's fine. So this was one of those third ones. And before I went to buy it, I looked through some reviews for it. And one of the top reviews that I saw said something like, ‘I really liked this book right up until the ending. I'm still so angry about the ending.’ And that almost made me not buy the book. I was really nervous. I was like, I don't know what that means, but it's so pretty. And it's such an interesting-sounding topic that I'm gonna buy it anyway. And I spent the entire, I read the entire book feeling that trepidation about, like ‘oh my god, how is this going to get ruined by the ending?’ And it turned out that the reviewer was complaining that it had a happy ending. 

Matt: I would be so pissed.

Lauren: I was so pissed! I was so pissed. I was like, are you kidding me? The reviewer complained that it had a happy ending. So I spent the entire book dreading the ending only to find out that it was happy. 

Matt: You got trolled. That was the ultimate troll. 

Lauren: I did. But still, I think that was the last time that I bothered reading a book review that came from somebody that I wasn't friends with, because they don't mean anything. They don't mean anything. They're completely subjective and they're completely up to… And if you take these reviews at face value, you might wind up missing out on something. So, I think that if you're an author who's worried about not having those reviews to rely on for potential buyers, maybe that's not as big of a deal as you think it is. Worst case scenario, if you're really like, no, but I really do want reviews. There's an app for that.

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. 

Lauren: There is a way to plug in some kind of third party solution to your website that will allow reviews to be tied in, so that people can see – that are browsing your website and potential shoppers – can see reviews that your fans left. 

Matt: Yeah. And again, if your argument about reviews is basically that; because you think and still hold out hope that positive reviews are generating more book sales just based on those reviews alone, it's just simply not the case these days. And there is data to support that, but there are apps and third party providers that you can use to generate reviews if you want to, that people will feel comfortable and they can trust. There's also those people that say, well, I don't necessarily care about the content of the reviews being what drives the purchases, but some people believe that having enough five star reviews or even four star reviews – an overall score, I should say – is a way to sort of game the algorithms and appear in suggested content and searches and discoverability efforts on these platforms. 

And to that I say: that is changing so rapidly all the time. The algorithms and the way that they decide what content is going to get shown and what isn't. It's not even clear cut these days that having 6,000 five star reviews on your trilogy of epic space fantasy is going to drive you to the top of any sort of search results on some of these platforms. And in fact, you have no idea how much prioritization is going on behind the scenes in some of the underhanded and shady practices that typically happen when it comes to these algorithms. So this idea that driving discoverability through having tons and tons of great reviews is a benefit, that is vastly out of date. And if you want to challenge that, then yeah, it's fine. Stay on these platforms. 

And again, we're not saying necessarily don't, we're saying that the idea that you have to be there, and only there for these reviews, for these other reasons is not valid. It's, it's just simply not true. It's not factual. And I think selling direct, keeping your audience on your platform and not sending them somewhere else, is the key to longevity. If they're not your audience yet, fine. Again, yes, rely on those third parties to see what kind of discoverability they can drive. That's fine. But ultimately, you know, reviews is not a reason to forgo the experiment or the idea of selling direct to your fans. It's just not a good one. 

Lauren: Absolutely not. If you're really that concerned about your book being not only discoverable, but being delivered to the correct audience of readers, you should be focusing more on things like SEO best practices and metadata. 

Matt: Yeah, I mean, there's lots of other things to focus on for sure. And, you know, I know some people listening might say, well, that's all fine and good, Lauren. I don't even know what SEO is, or I don't care. I don't want to mess with it. 

Lauren: Me either. 

Matt: Totally fine. But you know, again, I think the point is there are other ways to drive discoverability that I think are more meaningful and that they will contribute to long-term business and longevity for your business. Yeah. Just putting all your eggs in that basket is not a good idea. 

[30:00]

Lauren: Speaking of long term and longevity, that's a great way to segue into kind of the last myth that we're going to debunk here, which is maybe the least myth-based. The reality that people give us a lot is ‘I just don't have the time. 

Matt: And I can relate.

Lauren: Yeah, so can I. And I'm not going to try to debunk the fact that you don't have the time. Who has the time to do anything, especially start a business these days? You know, I'm not going to sit here and look you in the eye and say, of course you have the time. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: No, what we are going to say instead is that it is worth the time. It's worth making the time now because it will maximize the longevity and the long term benefits for you. 

Matt: Yeah. That's good, because I thought you were going to try to convince me that I do have the time. And so I was going to invite you over tonight to help me with my three kids and all the other stuff that I do on a daily basis. 

Lauren: I have seen your calendar. The hardest part about getting this podcast off the ground has been scheduling time to record these episodes because Matt is usually, if not double-booked, triple-booked for every meeting window for an entire day. 

Matt: I can't say no. I love what I do. But, you know, again, the reality of it is I would be one of those people, I just don't have the time. So again, I'm glad you're not trying to convince me that I do have the time. What you're saying is make the time. 

Lauren: Yes, I'm saying that it is worth it to make the time. There's going to be some time commitment up front. It is going to take time to do all of these things that we've talked about so far. I mean, first of all, it's going to take time to write your book in the first place. 

Matt: Right

Lauren: So if you've done that, you've already, probably figured out a time management strategy that works for you.

Matt: Hopefully

Lauren: Hopefully, because if you're a good writer, you’ve not just binged several thousand words in one sitting and then not written anything for six months. 

Matt? Wait, that's not normal?

Lauren: Oh, I wouldn't say it's not normal. But I would say it's not best practice. I hope you can all hear the air quotes that went around that. 

Matt: All right. 

Lauren: And the languishing Word docs that are sitting on my laptop at home. It's fine. It's okay. NaNoWriMo’s coming up, so I’m sure I’ll write for two days and then do nothing for the rest of the month. 

Matt: Once a year. 

Lauren: Yep. Time for my annual writing binge for 48 hours. 

Matt: Thank god for NaNoWriMo. 

Lauren: Oof. Okay. But yeah, you know, I understand absolutely the, you know, the time management part, hopefully you've got that figured out. But that there is going to be some big time commitments up front when it comes to setting up your website, setting up your store, getting your things listed, getting all the many apps that we've suggested, that you use to help streamline your business and make this business possible for you. You've got to set those all up and that takes time, for sure. Understandable. Like I said earlier, all of these platforms, including Lulu, are gonna have a ton of free resources available to try to help you onboard those things, to try to make it as smooth an experience as possible for you. We don't want it to take a lot of time for you. Obviously, we're gonna try to help you with that as much as possible. 

But more importantly, the time that you put in now is time that you're gonna save later. And I think that's really the detail here. No matter what it is that you're doing, whether it's talking about saying, you know, a big chunk of my time commitment right now is fulfilling orders. You know, the way I've been doing my business right now, I bulk order a thousand copies of the book that I've been selling and I manually fulfill orders as they come in. Great, we can help you with that. Whatever process you're trying to do, chances are there is something that once you get it set up, we can streamline it for you. Or not – not we, the royal we, of whatever apps, tools, or software that you're using. Have a way to streamline that for you and make it an easier process for you to run your business, market your business, fulfill your orders, connect with your customers. 

That's another thing, we've talked about this already, connecting with your audience, connecting with your fans, building that relationship with them. The work that you put in now to do things like access your customer data by selling direct and being able to remarket to them because you have all that information, that will help you later. That work that you're doing now is going to help you continue to grow your business in hopefully years to come. 

[34:22]

Matt: Yeah, I was just sitting here listening to you and looking at some of the notes that we've made here. I was thinking about this and a lot of the conversations we have as we're talking about here, sort of revolve around this concept of being a small business owner and how hard it is for some people to think about that or to think about the idea that their content is a business regardless of whether that's fiction or nonfiction or you know whatever that might be whether you're strictly creating cookbooks…it doesn't matter, but again people grapple with the idea that they are small business, and then talking about things like capturing that data and using that data to build your business, automating the fulfillment of your products. As we're talking about these things, it just dawned on me, probably didn’t just dawned on me necessarily – you just described exactly what Jeff Bezos did before he got to the point where he could get on his phallically shaped rocket and fly off into space. 

He literally, he literally right? Developed a way to start capturing customer data, right? And building the largest customer database in the world. Then he also solved the idea of fulfillment, automating fulfillment and logistics. You're kind of just building your own Amazon. You are your own bookstore. You're your own Amazon. And this is what you're doing at a smaller scale. You are putting things in place to capture that data, to remarket on that data, to get your customers and fans to buy more or to make them aware of the next one coming out, but then you are also doing things like using Lulu Direct and some of these apps and plugins to automate your business and to automate the fulfillment of these products. So in a way, you're becoming your own little Jeff Bezos and you can also someday hopefully buy your own phallically shaped rocket and fly off to wherever you wanna go. 

Lauren: If you sell direct now, one day you can buy a rocket and fly to the moon.

Matt: I stand by that. 

Lauren: Sounds like fun, honestly.

Matt: I guess.

Lauren: Hopefully we have done some of the work to convince you that selling direct is worth it. And if we have not convinced you, hopefully we have at least debunked one or two of the reasons that you might be hesitant to give it a try. If we haven't, if you still wanna learn more about it, you can always reach out to Lulu.com, we're more than happy to talk about selling direct. 

Matt: Or phallic-shaped rockets!

Lauren: Or phallic-shaped rockets.

Matt: Don't edit that in post, by the way. 

Lauren: I'm not, I'm leaving that in. 

Matt: Thanks for joining us, everybody. We'll see you next time. 

Lauren: Thank you!