Matt: Welcome back everybody to another episode of Publish & Prosper. And today we are going to be discussing some really cool tools and services to help you get your book from manuscript to market. 

Lauren: How many? 

Matt: So, uh, somewhere in the range of five to eight, depending on who you ask. If you ask Lauren, there's five, but I count better than Lauren. And I think I come up with eight. So we're going to say the range is five to eight. And these tools will help you draft, publish, and market slash sell your books. 

Lauren: You can tell us at the end how many we actually recommended. 

Matt: Well, yes, you can do that. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: You can email us and tell us how I was right. 

Lauren: That's all you want. That's all you want is for somebody to email you and tell you that you were right. 

Matt: If anybody's actually listening to this episode, please keep a tally of how many tools we actually name and talk about, and then email us and tell us about it. And the first person to email us and tell us the count, I will personally put together a Lulu swag box and send it to you. 

Lauren: Ooh. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: That's promising. 

Matt: Podcast at Lulu. 

Lauren: All right. There is some cool Lulu swag. 

Matt: Yeah, there is. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: How many pieces of Lulu swag? 

Lauren: An infinite number of them. 

Matt: Five to eight. 

Lauren: More than five. 

Matt: Whatever. All right. 

Lauren: Okay great. 

Matt: So yes, five to eight cool tools to help you get your manuscript to market. 

Lauren: Sounds good to me. 

[1:52] - Fictionary 

Matt: Okay, let's jump in. 

Lauren: All right. 

Matt: First one we're gonna talk about is one of our favorites. It's a writing and editing tool. It's called Fictionary, right? 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Yeah?

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I’m just kidding. 

Lauren: You just want me to say you're right. You should also keep a tally of that too. 

Matt: After everything I say, I'm going to be like, right? Right? 

Lauren: I understand the prompt now. 

Matt: Oh, okay. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Fictionary. So it's as the name would imply, mostly, if not solely for fiction writing for the most part, although I'd be willing to bet you could probably crank out some nonfiction if you wanted to with it. 

Lauren: Yeah, I'd actually be really curious.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: To know if that's true. It's - so it is a tool that is designed to help authors navigate their journey from first to final draft. It has built in features that include helping authors outline their story and also draft their story with a roadmap to follow based on that outline. So like, I don't know if that part necessarily would translate to nonfiction writing, but they also have some very robust editorial tools built into their platform. And I think that could be used even if you were writing nonfiction. 

Matt: Yeah, the idea of having some things that help you outline and roadmap where you're going, I think, could be beneficial for nonfiction writers. 

Lauren: Oh! 

Matt: Nonetheless. 

Lauren: Matt said it, not me. 

Matt: Right.

Lauren: I'm the one who's a huge advocate for outlining everything you write.

Matt: I never said don't outline. What I said was I use ChatGPT for outlines because that's where I always get stuck, is with an outline. 

Lauren: That's fair. 

Matt: Once I have a solid outline that I'm comfortable with, I don't have a problem writing. But I'm notorious ever since college or even high school, really. If I had to get an outline together, literally that's where I would waste hours, days, like. So. 

Lauren: Oh yeah. So I didn't I didn't outline in college. 

Matt: Oh god.

Lauren: I didn't start outlining until I went to grad school, and then I became like - I don't know what converted me, but something like within a single semester. I went from somebody who was purely like a vibes writer to - 

Matt: Unhinged, you mean. Who goes through all the way through to grad school without ever doing an outline? Unhinged. 

Lauren: I mean, I had to sometimes, especially like in high school and stuff like that, where they would make you, like teachers would make you submit an outline. But I was never like that was never my go to in creative writing or essay writing. And then all of a sudden in grad school, I turned into somebody who was like, I can't write, I can't even write a single chapter without having an outline in place. Like I have to do this. And I've been that way ever since. 

Matt: Yeah, well. 

Lauren: So in that case, Fictionary can definitely help you with that. It has a really cool tool that can help you out with that. So it's great for new authors, because it's going to help you build a lot of the foundations that you need to continue building a writing habit. It's got the stuff that's going to help you outline novels. It's going to help you with figuring out that roadmap and templates. 

It also has the built-in developmental editing tools to help you. I think it's actually, if I was understanding it correctly, their editing tool works on the fly. So as you're writing, it is suggesting developmental edits, as well as copy edits. It also has progress tracking tools built into the platform, which is a really, really important way to help you build a writing habit that sticks. Like those habit building progress tracking tools are so, so important. 

That's really great if you're a new author, or if you're looking for something that's going to keep you on track, if you're like, I'm going to get this done. This is the year I'm going to do it. I'm going to get it done. Like this is a great tool to help you out with that.

It's also something that you can use, like we said, just as an editorial tool if you want to, which can be great for, in theory, nonfiction authors. I'd be very curious to hear if there are any nonfiction authors that have used Fictionary’s tools. Please let us know if you have, or if anyone from Fictionary is listening to this, let us know if that's something that you think would be possible or not. 

But also, if you are an author that has already published and you're kind of facing some lackluster sales, or you've been getting some critical feedback from readers that you think that your book could benefit from another round of editing. This is a great alternative to paying for a professional developmental editor or copy editor and probably cheaper too. 

Matt: Yeah, I would imagine cheaper for sure. What does it cost to use Fictionary? 

Lauren: That's a great question. I didn't put prices in the outline. I didn't want to timestamp this.

Matt: Fictionary has two paid tiers. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: We won't say what the prices are just because sometimes prices fluctuate or if you're listening to this episode two years after it was recorded, the pricing may be different, but they have two pricing tiers, right? 

Lauren: I think I remember what they were if you want. 

Matt: I wouldn't. It's okay. 

Lauren: Okay. All right. Regardless, I'm pretty sure it was a monthly pay structure. 

Matt: Yep. Do your homework first. 

Lauren: Yes. There were two different paid tiers that you can use. There's just their basic Fictionary Storyteller, which had a little bit more limited access to their outlining and editing tools, but still look super useful. That's definitely the one that if it was me, I was going to, I would start with that one, start exploring those tools and then see if I needed the more robust built out version of it. 

Their second tier is Storyteller Premium. And that has full access to all of their outlining, writing, and editing tools. And it also includes access to a six week guided course that's led by actual, like writing and editing coaches, which is an incredible resource to have.

Matt: Yeah, and it looks like currently they're also doing 14 day free trials. So that's pretty cool too, yeah. 

Lauren: So definitely if you're starting from step one, check out Fictionary. 

Matt: Yeah. And I'll just say again, you know, for nonfiction, we're pretty sure you could probably accomplish nonfiction with Fictionary, but Atticus, which we'll talk about next as well, if you're writing nonfiction, we know Atticus supports nonfiction in their writing and editing tools and formatting tools. So that's always another good option besides Fictionary if you're a nonfiction writer and you just wanna go with something that you're positive will really support what you're creating from a nonfiction standpoint. 

[7:41] - Atticus & Vellum

Matt: Next is formatting tools. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Right? And so Atticus and Vellum are what we're gonna talk about.

Lauren: Yes, and since Matt already started with Atticus, we'll start with that one. Also, that's actually probably a better segue anyway, because Atticus is an all-in-one writing, editing, formatting tool. Vellum can technically be a word processor, but it's generally people, reviews were like, just use it as a formatting tool. So if you wanted to start with Atticus, you can actually write your book in Atticus, edit your book in Atticus, and format it and export your formatted print files or EPUB files. 

Matt: Yeah. And what's great about Atticus too is that again, you can kind of choose if you already know which print provider you're going to use. If you're doing print and they'll help you format your files to fit, whether you're using Lulu or somebody else, they've got those specs and formats kind of built into the platform so it makes it easier for you. 

Lauren: Yeah. Atticus is a tool that was created by an author. I don't know how to pronounce his last name. 

Matt: It's Dave Chesson. 

Lauren: Sorry, Dave. I don't know how to - I mean, it was, I could have guessed, but I didn't want to get it wrong. But I mean, personally for me, I always think that any tool that's designed by somebody who is the target user is just, I'm inherently gonna trust it a little bit more than something designed by somebody who hasn't. 

Like, anything that you're like, oh, I was looking for the right software to do this or the right tool to do this or the right whatever that I needed to do this and I couldn't find a version that provided exactly what I needed, so I created one myself. Like that to me tells me that you've probably thought through all the different things that an author would need. 

Matt: Yeah, I think that's pretty fair. Although there are instances where that doesn't work out - 

Lauren: Sure. 

Matt: Because you went so deep into what you needed, which might've been so different from everybody else. And that's why you had to create something different. I will say that at least for this tool and for Dave Chesson, everything he's built, I think most people find extremely helpful. And he does usually come from a place of, yes, he's a writer, but also Dave Chesson is very good at spotting gaps and voids in the market where other tools are falling down on the job and not providing what people need and then he just creates it. It is a very well thought out tool as well as a lot of the other stuff that Dave puts out and he's a nice guy, so. 

Lauren: Ooh, that's always a bonus. 

Matt: Yeah, most of the time. 

Lauren: It is also, you know, unlike Vellum, which we'll talk about in a little bit, Atticus is available on all types of devices. 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: Vellum is only applicable to Mac, so.

Matt: Which is the superior product, but - 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: - hats off to Atticus for trying to accommodate other people as well. 

Lauren: Yes. Yeah. Matt and I are both certified Apple groupies in every way possible, I think. Between us, we probably have the entire suite of Apple products. 

Matt: You're welcome, Apple. 

Lauren: What can I say? I like what I like. It's fine. 

Matt: As far as fees go Atticus, you basically, you can do, I believe there's a one-time fee or they may even have a monthly fee. I can't remember. 

Lauren: I think it is a one-time fee. It's also, I don't think that they have a free trial or a free version, even just like a watered down free version. They do, I believe, offer a 30 day money back guarantee. If you decided that it's not useful to you or you don't like the way it works. So you can always have that. 

Also for both of these tools, for both Atticus and Vellum, we have blog posts that are reviews of them that also kind of break down the process of using them. They have a lot of screenshots, a lot of like step by steps, and details, and also links out to other resources that the companies themselves have provided. So I will link both of those in the show notes. They're not sponsored posts. Paul's just a nerd. You can always check those out if you want to kind of see a preview of what these look like without committing to either one of them.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: But I would definitely - if you're looking for a tool that's going to help you format your print files and your ebook files, if that's something that you want to try to save a little bit money on by doing it yourself instead of hiring a professional to do it. I think that one or both of these platforms would be the way to go. Check them both out. Try them out if you can. They do both have a cost to them, but both of them are going to cost you less than a professional formatter would.

Matt: Way, way less - 

Lauren: Way less. 

Matt: - than a professional. 

Lauren: Yes, way less. And unlike a hiring a pro to do it, it's only a one-time fee for both of them. Both of them have a one-time use fee or a one-time, like, licensing fee that once you've paid for it, you can create as many files as you want. 

Matt: Yeah, and again, this isn't to take away from the idea that if you can afford it and you're not as creatively savvy that you shouldn't go pay a professional to do it, by all means, do.

Lauren: Oh yeah.

Matt: This is more for the people who like to do these things themselves or they're somewhat talented, you know, when it comes to these types of things. So these tools are meant for people who are really ready to just jump in and do it themselves. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Or I think, cause a lot of the tools it's - it's funny, cause a lot of the things that we were talking about in this episode are things that we've said in the past, we would recommend hiring a pro to help you with. 

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: So this is something that if you're trying to stay on a strict budget, these are alternatives to hiring pros to help you out with it. Or these are things that might mitigate the expense of hiring a professional. 

Matt: Sure. 

Lauren: So like I wouldn't say, I would never say that you should only use an editing tool like Fictionary and that's all the editing you need. 

Matt: For sure. 

Lauren: But if you had a couple of rounds of like, if you made a couple of passes at editing using the Fictionary tool, then you might only need one round of editing from a professional editor, which means you'll pay a lot less than if you were paying for a developmental editor and a copy editor. 

Matt: Well, but again, yeah, so there, or you still pay an editor and you use Vellum or Atticus for strictly just the formatting itself. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Which saves you some money as well. That requires a little less ability when you're using a tool that does most of the work for you, but formatting is not easy per se. So when you have a good tool, it can be easier and much cheaper like using Vellum or Atticus. And by the way, those are the only two tools I think I would really consider for formatting. We like Vellum because the people who started Vellum used to work for Pixar -

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: - and as Disney freaks, we can fall in line with that. But also we love Dave Chesson. So take your pick, do your homework, but... 

Lauren: I also really like Vellum because the logo for it looks a lot like a demogorgon when its mouth is open. 

Matt: It kind of does, doesn't it?

Lauren: It absolutely does. And if you look in the blog post that Paul wrote, I made that comment to him when we were reviewing the copy draft of it and he put it in the blog post. 

Matt: Man, that is a missed opportunity on Halloween. Vellum, if you're listening for Halloween, your logo should be a demogorgon from Stranger Things. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: If you don't, you're an idiot. 

Lauren: Yeah, this is the time to do it too.

Matt: That'd be so awesome. You're welcome.

Lauren: Yep, you guys can have that one. But yeah, it covers all of our bases. 

Matt: Well, and Atticus has a French Bulldog as their logo. So -

Lauren: Oh yeah, they're both - their little bulldog is so cute. 

Matt: Yeah, but I don't know that does much for them for Halloween. But as the owner of French Bulldogs, I love it. 

Lauren: You could put a little like mask or something on it. 

Matt: You could. Sure. 

Lauren: All right. Just in case we weren't exactly clear about what these do, they are they're both tools that you can use to customize the interior formatting of your book. But what I think makes them both really great is both of them have like, a design feature where you can template out what you want your interior pages to look like and then just very easily apply those templates to your project, which is a… 

Formatting is a pain. I know it is. We know it is. We understand why it's one of the more difficult things to do, not because it's difficult, but because it's tedious. So having something that you can design one template and then use it throughout your whole book is super helpful. It's also something that I would say if you're going to write multiple books, whether you're writing serial fiction or you're publishing nonfiction, but you're gonna be publishing multiple books. It's nice to have a uniform look throughout your books as part of your like brand and style guide. 

So having it, like, this is one of those things that in theory, if you design your interior format templates once, you can just use them over and over and over again. So it's one of those things that you commit the time now to save time later. 

Matt: Yeah, for the most part - 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I agree. Yeah. 

[15:53] - Lulu’s Cover Design Tool

Matt: So we've got the book written. And we've got it formatted. Now we need…

Lauren: A cover. 

Matt: A cover, of course. Now, we're gonna talk about the Lulu cover tool. Here's why. A, because we're Lulu and it's our podcast and we can do that. 

Lauren: Yeah we can. 

Matt: But B, we just rebuilt our cover tool and relaunched it last year, and it honestly is super amazing. 

Lauren: It is, it's really cool. 

Matt: Really easy to use and you can create amazing covers off of it. But C - was I doing numbers or letters? A, B, C, or was I doing one, two, three?

Lauren: I don't remember, but stick with C anyway. 

Matt: C. Yep, C. Everybody normally says use Canva. That's fine if you're doing just strictly an ebook cover. You can crank them out in Canva all day long. They have templates for them. It's not a problem. If you're doing a print book cover, things get exponentially more complicated or complex, however you want to look at it. 

Finding a tool that will help you design a good book cover is not nearly as easy. There are not many out there at all. And so you may be stuck with a choice between some of the really high end complicated tools like Adobe InDesign, which is what most designers actually use. There is a less expensive version that Affinity puts out called Affinity Publisher, I believe it is. 

Lauren: I think that's the one we recommend for interior design. 

Matt: Is that their layout tool? 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Well, Affinity has - 

Lauren: Affinity has a whole suite - 

Matt: That’s right. 

Lauren: That's comparable to Photoshop and InDesign and Illustrator. 

Matt: Right, it's not any easier to use. You still need to be a fairly skilled designer to use them, but it is much cheaper than the Adobe products. Outside of that, you're really relegated to things like Canva and again for a print cover, that's not the best option in the world. So we are gonna - 

Lauren: I’m also - sorry. 

Matt: I was just going to say we're going to highlight the Lulu cover tool. 

Lauren: Okay. I'm going to say that this is an unpopular opinion, but I actually don't find Canva to be particularly user friendly. And I say that as somebody who has Adobe suite experience and knowledge. I don't think that it's easier to use than a lot of those other platforms. 

Matt: You know, sometimes I think you just say things to be contrarian.

Lauren: No. Absolutely not. 

Matt: I mean, listen, I'm not a Canva shareholder, but I have used Canva on many occasions. I do think it's pretty easy to use in comparison to Adobe products. And maybe, maybe your opinion is because you are skilled in Adobe and you've gotten used to using more advanced tools that you find Canva to be less than. 

Lauren: I will say - okay, that's a fair point. I do find - 

Matt: Okay cool, move on. Who's keeping tally out there? Come on. 

Lauren: All right, fine. We don’t have to. 

Matt: Nope, alright, go ahead, finish your thought. 

Lauren: Well, to me, I often find that something that I want to be able to do with Canva, I can't do. Which I find, so maybe not, maybe not that it's difficult to use, but that it's more limiting than I want it to be. 

Matt: For your experience though. 

Lauren: For my experience. 

Matt: Yeah. Again, I'm not a shareholder at Canva. I could care less, but I do find that for a lot of things, it's easy to use. I think your issue is just that your skill set is more advanced because you've been using Adobe. So it's kind of like going backwards for you into Canva where, like you just said, oftentimes there are things you want to do and you can't, it's limiting. 

I think for a lot of other people, there's actually way more in there than they know what to do with. Either way, they're not very well set up to create print book covers. You can do it. And we actually have a blog article on how to do it on the Lulu blog, but it's not easy. It can be done, but it's not easy. So you're better off just coming to Lulu, using our cover tool. You'll be amazed, you'll send us a thank you card, and then you'll move on to publish. 

Lauren: That's… can't argue with that. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Yeah, no, but actually, genuinely one of the things that I think is… one of the things that I think is so useful about our cover tool, and that I would just highly recommend that everyone at least try it out, and then test it out and play around with it, is that it will automatically create a canvas that is the correct size for your book.

And that's something that even in the five and a half years that I've worked at Lulu, like I remember when I first started here I was reading something on our website that was basically a math equation for how to calculate the exact width of your spine based on the size of your book and the number of pages that you had. 

Which, I took a look at it and I was just like, who's doing math? Like, what do you mean? Why do I have to do math to do this? And now we've reached a point where literally all you have to do is upload your book file to our publishing tool and it will automatically generate the exact correct cover size that you need. 

And it's got all the guidelines on it. So it's got everything that you need to make sure that your spine placement is correct. Your cover placement, front cover, back cover, even things like adding a barcode and your ISBN to it. It's going to lay all of that out for you and it makes it really easy to just get everything right on the first try. 

Matt: Yeah, again. These are for people who are either trying to save a little bit of money or really want to try it themselves, have a go at it because they're creatively inclined or technologically savvy. But again, Lauren and I will always recommend you pay a professional - 

Lauren. Yes. 

Matt: To do things like cover design, editing, layout. So just wanted to put that little disclaimer out there. 

Lauren: Yes, absolutely. We've said it before. We will say it again, cover design and editing are the two things that we are always going to recommend if you spend money on hiring a professional to help you with those are the two you should do. But if you are trying to save money, if you're trying to do a little something, if you're just creating a small project for yourself or for a small group of fans and followers, you're not trying to like, change the world with a book release that's going to sell a hundred thousand copies. Yeah. 

Matt: Yeah. I mean, that's actually a good point. There are situations I think where you're creating a book project where the importance of cover design and editing as it relates to the saleability of the book aren't necessarily a factor, because maybe you're creating something that's going to be a lead magnet for your business and you're going to be giving it away for free anyways. Just create a nice looking cover.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: If the book is going to be free because it's meant to drive business indirectly from other areas or avenues, then okay. Yeah. Maybe you don't want to go spend 1200 bucks on like, a top of the line cover, or between $500 and $1200. Maybe you don't want to spend $3,000 on developmental and copy editing because again, this is being used as a lead magnet to bring people to your consulting business or whatever it is you're doing, your nonprofit. So that's understandable. 

Lauren: I would argue that maybe if you want to impress people with your business and you want to bring in new customers for your business, you should at least have a copy editor so that they're not reading a book riddled with typos. 

Matt: Well, I mean, there's not a tool on the planet these days that doesn't take care of typos.

Lauren: That's true. 

Matt: So. 

Lauren: Well, it depends. I mean, but it also depends on what kind of typos… 

Matt: You're just trying to be a contrarian again. It's only Tuesday, by the way. 

Lauren: I know.

Matt: Tuesday, Tuesday. That's some Friday behavior. 

Lauren: We're recording another episode on Friday. 

Matt: Dang. 

Lauren: We're recording three episodes this week. So, sorry in advance for what the next one's going to sound like, because we're definitely going to be off the walls by then. 

[22:23] - Bublish AI Author Toolkit 

Matt: All right. So, we've written the book. We formatted the book. We've designed the cover. What's next? 

Lauren: Now we got to figure out how to position it just right in the market. 

Matt: So it'll sell. 

Lauren: Exactly. 

Matt: Okay, what do we use to do that? 

Lauren: We are going to use this very awesome tool. Bublish is a very cool resource in general for self-published authors. 

Matt: Bublish sounds like a soda. 

Lauren: Yeah, it kind of does. 

Matt: You're telling me they make - 

Lauren: Michael Bublish 

Matt: publishing tools - hey, you might want to edit that one out. 

Lauren: What, Michael Buble is going to sue us for…? 

Matt: No, but I don't know how many dads are listening to that dad joke that'll get it. I mean. 

Lauren: It's my goal in life. 

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: It’s okay. 

Matt: It reminds me of one of those sodas, though, that you see it like Target. Like some sparkling water, like, yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: But it works. 

Matt: It's a book company.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Book marketing company. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: They are a full service provider. They offer everything from editorial services, marketing services, distribution services, things like that. But what we're talking about today is they have this really cool new AI tool. 

Matt: But no sodas. 

Lauren: You know what? If we should pitch to them doing a line of sodas.

Matt: At the next trade show, that should be the swag they give away. 

Lauren: That would be so cool. Like custom cans or even custom can koozies. 

Matt: So we've now helped Vellum and Bublish. 

Lauren: Wait. Bublish. Take this one. This one's for free. Koozies for swag at your next event.

Matt: Don't do that because we have koozies for our swag at our next event. 

Lauren: Oh my god, I know and I'm so excited for them. 

Matt: You're not getting any.

Lauren: Yes I am. 

Matt: No you're not. 

Lauren: Yes I am. 

Matt: They're shorties, they won't work for your Monster cans. 

Lauren: That's okay, they'll work for LaCroix and Coke Zero. 

Matt: I didn't know you were a LaCroix boy.

Lauren: I am. 

Matt: Coke Zero too? 

Lauren: I think I'm the reason - well no. I only drink Coke Zero when we're in the office and I need an afternoon boost. I can't get a Monster in the office. The nearest place to get one is too far away, so. 

Matt: Or our director of marketing. She's a monster sometimes. Just kidding, Lals. 

Lauren: She is not.

Matt: All right, Bublish. 

Lauren: How dare you? 

Matt: What are we using them for? 

Lauren: Anyway, we are checking out their new AI author toolkit. 

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: It is a really awesome AI tool that is designed specifically to help authors properly position their book in the market. 

Matt: What does that mean? 

Lauren: That's a great question. 

Matt: That's why I asked it.

Lauren: I actually really don't know how to answer it. 

Matt: Add that to mu tally. 

Lauren: Add that to the tally. I actually, I do think that we could do an entire episode. I don't know how to answer it succinctly. I think that we could probably do an entire episode on positioning your book in the market. 

Matt: Positioning is a lot like branding - 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: To a degree. Positioning your book in the market means all that metadata that's associated with your book that tells distributors, retailers, libraries, where your book should be, what it's about, all the, the information that's going to make sure it's in the right place to be found by the right people and sold. That's kind of positioning in a lump. 

This tool, apparently, you can run all your information through this tool. It will tell you some of the best categories to choose on the retail sites. What BISAC categories are probably best served by this book. It'll help you write a really good description of your book and a bunch of other really cool stuff, if I'm not mistaken.

Lauren: Yeah, it'll even give you title suggestions. I think it'll also provide a list of comp titles, which is really cool. 

Matt: Yeah, that's very helpful when you're looking at pricing and other stuff. 

Lauren: Yeah, for sure. If you're listening to this and you're like, that sounds suspicious. How is it possible that they're able to do that? Basically, it's - they have this proprietary AI tool, and you upload your manuscript to it, and it'll process your manuscript and give you back a report with all of these suggestions. 

Obviously they’re suggestions. You don't have to take any of this information if you don't want to, but if you're paying for access to the tool, I would assume that you would be interested in taking these suggestions. 

Matt: Yeah, we ran, internally, a bunch of tests with it. And, you know, we ran Bram Stoker's Dracula through it. We ran a few other files through it. And what it came back with was actually really cool and pretty much on target better than what we could have thought of. 

Lauren: I don't doubt that. If this also, if it sounds familiar to you, we did mention this in our London Book Fair episode, because this is where we first learned about it. We were talking with… I'm so sorry, cause I don't remember her name, but we were talking with somebody from Bublish at London Book Fair. And she was telling us all about this tool and we were like, Oh my God, wait, this sounds really cool. It sounds like it's going to be a big game changer, and by all accounts so far it is. 

I do also want to add the caveat, in case you're still concerned about this and listening to this and you're like, again, not sure that that sounds super, super ideal. If you are an author that is concerned about sharing your manuscript with an AI tool because you don't want it to be stored in the system, you don't want it to be used to train… oh my God, large language learning models. 

Matt: LLMs? Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. No. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yes. Okay. They do explicitly - Bublish does explicitly state on their website that they do not save the manuscripts that are uploaded to there, and they do not use them to train either their own tool or any other AI tools. So that's not something that you'd have to be concerned about. This seems like a really cool tool. We're really excited about it. And I think that if that's something that sounds interesting to you, you should definitely check it out. 

Matt: Yeah, I agree. 

Lauren: And also, if you want us to do a whole episode on how to position your book in the market, let us know, because that could be either really fun or really boring, as we just recite metadata info for you for 45 minutes. Which again, I would find very fun and interesting, but I recognize that the average person probably would not. 

Matt: Probably not. 

[27:58] - Lulu’s Order Import Tool

Matt: A lot of people in general like to use Kickstarter for their books. 

Lauren: We've done a whole episode on it. 

Matt: A lot of people like to do pre-orders. These types of sales activities require ways to batch produce your books. Is there a good tool out there for that? 

Lauren: You know what? There is. 

Matt: I knew you would know.

Lauren: And it is in fact another Lulu tool. 

Matt: I knew you would have a good answer.

Lauren: I do. The Lulu order import tool is pretty… pretty darn cool. And this is coming from somebody - I don't think I've said this out loud to anybody on the team before. When we first started talking internally about getting ready to launch this tool, my first reaction to it was absolutely like… okay, like why is that a priority? Like what, how is this going to be useful? 

And then I was just immediately corrected on that impression. Like as soon as people started talking about what this tool could be used for, I was like, nevermind, I'm wrong. This is one of the coolest things we've put out in the time that I've worked at Lulu.

Matt: It is, it's funny that it took us this long to put this tool out and nobody else had done it, and still hasn't besides us.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Because it's so simple. And essentially, it basically is the catchall for if you're doing pre-orders, but whatever platform you're using doesn't really play nice with pre-orders, or you just want to do them differently. If you're doing a crowdfunding campaign through Patreon or some of the others, if you're taking orders at an author event and those orders are for print books, and then you need to come back and have those produced and shipped out - all kinds of situations where you might get a lump amount of orders at once, preferably in like a CSV or Excel file. 

You can come to your Lulu account and upload a CSV file with all those orders, the names and addresses, and then the book that you're, you know, you have a project ID for Lulu that's assigned to each of them. And then Lulu just prints and ships all those orders out one by one. So all you're doing is uploading that spreadsheet once and covering the cost to manufacture and ship, that's it. 

So instead of hand entering those orders one at a time, which is what everybody had to do prior to this - which is why I say it's crazy that we didn't do this sooner and that nobody else has either, although I'm sure people are already working on it now that we've done it. It really has become one of the fastest growing tools that we've ever put out there and it's just so easy to use. 

And so we've also found that people who are using ecommerce platforms that we don't have plugins for, so we have plugins for, you know, to sell direct. We have Shopify, Wix, WooCommerce, some people who are using, you know, something like Squarespace or some other like ThriveCard or some of these other ecommerce platforms where we don't have plugins for them yet. They just take their orders each day, a CSV file or once a week, bring it into the order import tool and print them and ship them. 

So it's kind of almost the same thing as having a plugin. It's just one extra step until we get the plugins made. That's been a really cool way - so, what happened was we built this tool for one or two specific uses, and immediately we saw people using it for like 20 different things. 

Lauren: Yes, that was one - I'm drawing a blank, but there's someone who uses it as… to fulfill magazine subscriptions. I believe there's at least one user that does that to fill, whether it's a monthly or a quarterly magazine, whatever it is, has the list of subscribers. And just when they upload the new edition - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Uploads that list of subscribers and is immediately able to just have it completely dropshipped and delivered by Lulu, and doesn't have to deal with the distribution on their own. 

Matt: It could be Mob Journal. But yeah, there's so many different uses for - and again, we developed this tool really for just a couple of use cases that people were asking about. And then immediately everybody out there started adapting the tool to all these other cool things. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So that was really cool to see. 

Lauren: That's also probably one of my favorite things about self-publishing as a whole is getting to see like, we'll put out a tool or a product type or something that we had a thought in mind for like what it could be used for. And then people are so creative. They just like, immediately turn around and find a new way to use it that we hadn't thought of, but they're, they’re making the most out of it. And it's really cool to see. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Whether it's like really cool, unique book products or utilizing this order import tool in a great way. It's always really fun to see. So if you want some ideas on how this could be helpful to you that you can use it, I'm gonna link another blog post in the show notes that is eight ideas for how you can use it. And I'm sure there are a number more than that too. 

Matt: Yeah, you actually have one listed here that I didn't even think about, but sending review copies or ARCs out to people. 

Lauren: I stole that from Paul's blog post. 

Matt: Oh, okay, good. Well, good for Paul. 

Lauren: So that was his idea. 

Matt: Good for you. Yeah, that's another cool way that you could use it.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: If you've got ten, you know, advanced readers that you're gonna send a copy to, or beta readers, or whatever you wanna call them, you could hand enter each of those ten orders in your user account, or you could get the ten copies shipped to your house and then ship each one to - 

Or, actually, you could just use the order import tool, upload the spreadsheet once and we print and ship all ten of those. 

Lauren: Yeah, it doesn't… It's not something that has to be used for an order of hundreds of different books. Like it can be just, oh no, I've got to ship ten copies to ten people. I'm doing a giveaway on Instagram. I'm giving away five copies to people - do it that way. It's simple enough to use. It's literally just uploading a CSV file. 

Matt: Yeah, because almost every tool on the planet that allows you to sell something will then allow you to download a CSV file of all your orders. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: So regardless of what platform you're using, any platform that's facilitating orders will allow you to pull down a CSV file of those orders. 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt:  And that's all you need. 

Lauren: Yep. And I know Matt had referenced, you know, if you're selling direct, if you're using a sales platform to sell direct that we don't yet have a plugin for, this is a great option. But it's also a tool that you can use even if you're not selling direct. If you're just using the Lulu bookstore or if you're using global distribution, I think you can even use it actually for books in private access. Is that? 

Matt: Yeah. As long as you have a corresponding project ID in your Lulu account, whether it's private or not, it should work. 

Lauren: Yeah. So yeah, that's definitely something that if it sounds useful to you, I would highly recommend checking it out. We have a bunch of resources, everything from like, a step-by-step video for how to use it to blog posts and landing pages that kind of break down how it can be useful. 

Matt: This could also come in handy around the holidays. 

Lauren: Oh yeah. 

Matt: When you might be sending out books as gifts to friends, family, colleagues, coworkers, whatever, just having a spreadsheet of all their names and addresses and just take care of it in one fell swoop. 

Lauren: Oh yeah. I mean, if you're doing a, I'm creating a calendar, I'm creating a 2025 calendar as a gift for everybody in my family that's going to have family photos from 2024 in it, and I want to get ten of them printed and shipped to everybody that I'm not going to be spending the holiday with. And this is - this way I can just ship it right to them. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Or if you're a business and you're doing a, you know, annual yearbook or an annual, annual report, whatever it is, and you want to send it to all of your employees. 

Matt: Yearbook is another great one. Yeah. 

Lauren: Oh yeah. That - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Just the yearbook in general.

Matt: What do your bracelets say today? 

Lauren: Oh, good question. Uh, one of them is still, oh no, I didn't wear that one today. One of them says Hi Barbie. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Uh, one of them says 2ourdust, which - 

Matt: Tour dust? 

Lauren: Tour dust - but it's also a two instead of a T for tour. 

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: It's the Fall Out Boy - 

Matt: Oh God. 

Lauren: Last year, their album So Much for Stardust, when they went on tour, they called it tour dust. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: And then when they did the second leg of their tour, they made it a two. Yes. 

Matt: Alright. 

Lauren: I'm as much of a Fall Out Boy boy as I am a Swiftie. I'm just not as vocal about it. 

Matt: Okay, I can respect some good wordplay. 

Lauren: Thanks. The last one says you'll be fine. 

Matt: Okey doke. 

Lauren: That one is a Taylor Swift reference. 

Matt: That's quite a mix today. 

Lauren: Yeah, it is. I needed a little extra energy today.

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: A little extra support for my bracelets.

Matt: Alright. 

Lauren: I also realized when we were having lunch that I forgot to put any other jewelry on. 

Matt: I wouldn't have noticed. 

Lauren: Which, I mean, no, but I noticed. I noticed when I went to like - 

Matt: You mean all your rings. 

Lauren: I don't have any of my rings on. I don't have a necklace on. I don't have earrings on. Like I literally just put the bracelets on. 

Matt: Thanks for just rolling out of bed this morning and - 

Lauren: Apparently. 

Matt: Coming on into Lulu. 

Lauren: I don't usually come into the office on Tuesdays. My brain wasn't fully firing. I was busy watching men's gymnastics until late - 

Matt: Oh my goodness. 

Lauren: - late into the evening. What? 

Matt: Nothing. 

Lauren: It was, I was just so excited for these nerds that were so excited. They were so, so. 

Matt: That's not very nice. 

Lauren: No, it was - 

Matt: Why would you call them nerds? 

Lauren: Have you seen them? 

Matt: Yes. You're talking about the dude with the glasses that did the pommel horse, right? 

Lauren: Yeah. Who killed it. Like, absolutely. 

Matt: Yeah, he did. But why does he got to be a nerd? 

Lauren: Because he's definitely a nerd.

Matt: Because he wears glasses? 

Lauren: No. 

Matt: You wear glasses. 

Lauren: I'm wearing glasses right now. 

Matt: Exactly. 

Lauren: He is definitely a nerd. 

Matt: And you wear glasses and you play Dungeons & Dragons and you make your own bracelets.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So, I’m saying your  - 

Lauren: I didn't say I wasn't a nerd.

Matt: You’re a bigger nerd than this guy. 

Matt: What's his name? 

Lauren: Sorry. Nerd affectionate. 

Matt: Alright. 

Lauren: Does that help? 

Matt: I'm just messing with you. 

Lauren: Steven something. 

Matt: He does kind of look like a nerd. 

Lauren: There have been all these really great videos, including NBC Olympics Instagram themselves made a video. That's the sound that's like, I can't believe that it's you and me just, or like you and me and you and me, and you and me and your friend Steve, whatever it's called. I don't know if you - 

Matt: I have no idea what you're talking about. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: You might want to edit that out in post. 

Lauren: No, I'm going to leave it in. 

Matt: Well, whatever the dude is. 

Lauren: I’ll show you the video later. 

Matt: He crushed that pommel horse. 

Lauren: Yeah, he did. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: He did an amazing job.

Matt: Yeah, like at the very end, he's like basically upside down and he's already grinning - 

Lauren: Yep.

Matt: like he knew he wanted. He knew. 

Lauren: Yeah. No, it's awesome. 

Matt: He's like, when those glasses come off, like get out of the way. 

Lauren: Yep, yeah, that was the lesson learned. He was activated, he was up, he was ready to go. 

[37:19] - Written Word Media and BookFunnel 

Matt: All right, so we've written the book, we've formatted the book, we've created a cover. Now we've run all of our details through Bublish’s really cool AI toolkit that helps us better position our book for sale. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Especially in distribution and retail. Helps us identify some new audiences, maybe some comp titles so we can get our retail pricing straight. We've talked about if we were running a Kickstarter or doing pre-orders, how we could easily facilitate a bulk order with just one upload using Lulu's order import tool. And then the last thing is really, I mean, now that it's published and out there and for sale, we need to market this thing, right? Do we have any cool tools that we want to talk about that will help with the marketing of it? 

Lauren: So this is where the debate came in -

Matt: Here we go. 

Lauren: - about number of tools in this episode.

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: I don't know that I would necessarily call these tools the same way that I would call them service providers. 

Matt: All right. So let's break this down. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: How would you define a tool? 

Lauren: Something that you can use automated on your own without input from another person.

Matt: Okay. And a service?

Lauren: Something that there are other people on the other side of it helping you. 

Matt: Got it. 

Lauren: That isn't just an automated thing. 

Matt: Okay. So the first marketing tool we'll talk about comes to us from Written Word Media.

Lauren: Okay. Go ahead. 

Matt: I call it a tool because they have a self-service portal. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: So essentially you can just go and create whatever campaigns you want to do and pay for them and you're off to market. So in my opinion, if you can do that without the input or help from a human being under your definition, it qualifies as a tool. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Right? 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Who's keeping tally. 

Lauren: You are right.

Matt: Now. That doesn't mean that they don't have services that you can interact with that do require help from their team. But we do like Written Word Media. They do a lot of great things. They are the ones that run free booksy, bargain booksy, red feather romance, new in books and audio thicket. So basically they have all these different avenues or channels, if you will, to market and sell your book. Mostly ebook, they will be, I believe, expanding into print and some other stuff too, but. 

Anyways, most people, if not everybody we've talked to that have used them, have had good success with them. We know the people at Written Word Media. They're actually in the same city. We are, we trust the things that they do. So Written Word Media is a big one for us and I classify it as a tool, but they do have a service backend so you can call it whatever you want.

Lauren: Por que no los blah? 

Matt: Do not edit that in post. 

Lauren: I will not. Por que no los dos? 

Matt: Oh my god. So the second one or another one, yes, I believe is what you were referring to there in some very broken Spanish. But good try. 

Lauren: It's a meme. It's fine. Did you watch Good Omens season 2?

Matt: I didn't see season 2, no. Nope. 

Lauren: Okay. Probably for the best because I don't, never mind, don't worry about it.

Matt: Did it jump the shark? 

Lauren: Oh, no, it was fantastic. 

Matt: Oh, okay. All right. 

Lauren: It was fantastic. 

Matt: Well that’s good. 

Lauren: There's a great scene in it where David Tennant does a dance that is an apology dance to Michael Sheen. That is… I was or you were right. You were right. I was wrong and you were right. And I feel like we're just getting to the point where you're, you're going to make me start doing the apology dance. 

Matt: No, I wouldn’t do that. 

Lauren: But also we would both die of embarrassment in that situation, so. Let’s not.

Matt: Totally fine. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: So yes, as a marketing tool, Written Word Media has a lot of different things you can use. Their self-service portal does allow you to plug in a few different things and it'll help guide you to which of those channels you might want to utilize to advertise and sell your book. 

The other one we'll talk about real quickly as well is BookFunnel. So a lot of people know BookFunnel as a way to distribute or deliver your ebook and audiobook to your buyers, but they have a very, very robust and massive sort of marketing component there similar to kind of what Written Word Media does sort of, but it utilizes a lot of email lists and list building techniques to again sell your books to potential buyers. 

I like the collaborative nature of BookFunnel where users, authors can go in and piggyback on each other's lists and emails that get sent out to sell their ebooks and books. I think that's pretty cool. They might not qualify as a tool under your definition. 

Lauren: I’ll still give you this one. 

Matt: They might qualify a little more as a service, but nonetheless, I think these are two really good options for people who are looking for a little extra marketing juice on their books and sales, so. 

Lauren: Okay, I'll take it. I'll allow it. I'm going

Matt: Thanks. 

Lauren: - to throw one last one in there too, that I'm going to call a resource. 

Matt: Oh, okay. 

Lauren: And that is - 

Matt: A resource.

Lauren: - this podcast. 

Matt: Oh look at you. 

Lauren: We have talked a lot about marketing on this podcast. We've done a lot of episodes on different elements of marketing. 

Matt: Well, technically, we're marketers. 

Lauren: Yeah, it's kind of our bread and butter. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: So… I'm not saying it's a bad thing. 

Matt: Just making that clear. 

Lauren: I like our marketing episodes. But if you are going to try to market your book and you don't want to try to contract a service provider or use a tool that might be available to you, you can always start by listening to some of our marketing related episodes. 

Matt: Fair enough. I like that. 

Lauren: Thanks. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Cool. 

Matt: So that should technically get you from manuscript to market essentially. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Obviously there are lots of other tools and paths you can take, but these are some of our favorite tools used by various members of the Lulu team, and other people that we've come into contact with, and ourselves at times. So again, we didn't just pluck these off some list we found out on the internet. 

Lauren: Oh, yeah, I yeah - that's definitely important to me. We didn't, this isn't like a, we didn't find a random article somewhere that was like best tools to use.

Matt: Right.

Lauren: For self publishing. These are all tools that have been vetted by us and our team. A lot of times our team tests them out on our own dime, not on our own dime, but like, you know, these aren't sponsored. We, no one's paying us to recommend these tools. Like these are things that we discovered and learned more about - 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: And tested out and are now sharing with you. 

Matt: Yep. Cause we can. 

Lauren: Yeah. That’s what this platform is for. 

Matt: Anything else you want to add to that?

Lauren: I don't think so. 

Matt: No?

Lauren: No, I think we covered a lot of good stuff in this one.

Matt: Yeah, for the most part. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: We'll see. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: All right. First one to email us at podcast at lulu with the accurate count of how many tools we actually talked about will get a Lulu swag box. 

Lauren: I think the swag box should include the whatever the number of tools is. So like, if it was seven tools, they should get seven items of swag. 

Matt: Yeah, we'll see. 

Lauren: Cool. All right. 

Matt: I'm gonna pull it all out of my office. So whatever I have - which I keep a little bit of everything in my office.  

Lauren: I know you do.

Matt: So we'll see. You'll have a personally hand-packed Lulu swag box from me

Lauren: Sounds pretty neat. 

Matt: All right, until next time. Thanks for listening. If you did, if you didn't listen, then you won't hear this, but we don't care. Have a good day. 

Lauren: Thanks for listening.