Become a Authority by Becoming an Author

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:20 — 106.1MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | Email | RSS | More

Henry DeVries – Indie Books International

 

Podcast Overview:

00:00 “Why Editing Matters”
03:19 “Nonfiction Books as Business Cards”
08:03 “Don’t Cut Corners on Publishing”
10:01 “Authors Question Publisher Practices”
13:52 “How to Get on TV”
19:00 “Expert Publishing and Education”
20:55 “Overcoming Traps to Publish”
25:35 “Rise of Print and Amazon”
28:26 “Books as the Ultimate Brochure”
31:13 “Indie Publishing Support Network”
35:35 Editing and Writing Service Costs
36:52 “Delegation and Leadership Insights”
41:49 “AI in Publishing: Challenges & Risks”

Sponsors:

Live Video chat with our customers here with LiveSwitch: https://join.liveswitch.com/gfj3m6hnmguz

Some videos have been recorded with Riverside: https://www.riverside.fm/?utm_campaign=campaign_5&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=rewardful&via=james-kademan

Podcast Transcription:

Henry DeVries [00:00:00]:
The world changed. There was two parts of the digital revolution that changed the business. One was print on demand publishing where you didn’t have to do big print runs to get the cost down. So my first book, you know, first run was 2,500 books. Second run was another 2,500 books. It was called the second printing. The joke is, yeah, my book went to two printings because the first one was blurred, but no. So you would earn extra printings.

Henry DeVries [00:00:24]:
But with print on demand it’s just, just as economical to print one book as the unit price. On the 2500 books.

James Kademan [00:00:35]:
You have found Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes can be found the podcast link found at drawincustomers.com we are locally underwritten by the Bank of Sun Prairie Calls On Call Extraordinary Answering Service as well as the Bold business book and live switch. Today we’re welcoming, slash, preparing to learn from. Let’s see here, Henry, I’m going to try to say your last name. Devries.

Henry DeVries [00:01:06]:
There you go. Henry Devries with the cheese.

James Kademan [00:01:10]:
I love it. Of Indie Books International. And we’re talking books and marketing and all that jazz. So Henry, how is it going today?

Henry DeVries [00:01:18]:
It is so great. I’m so excited to talk about the virtues of a book marketing with a book that you’re proud of.

James Kademan [00:01:26]:
I love it. I love it. You know, you raise an interesting point here. I just want to give you a really quick anecdote before we run down the road of marketing with your book. I was given a book by someone that they were hustling as something I suppose like a business card. Probably what we’ll mention.

Henry DeVries [00:01:43]:
Sure.

James Kademan [00:01:43]:
And I had started reading it and it was, it was bad. It was really bad. It’s not to say the content itself was bad. I felt like it was very poorly written and not edited at all. So I saw this guy later at a different networking function. I’m like, hey man, your book was interesting. Who did you use for an editor? And he’s like, oh yeah, I edit it myself. I don’t need to pay someone to edit it.

James Kademan [00:02:08]:
And I was like, oh, okay, great. Fantastic. Way to go. You can totally tell I didn’t say that.

Henry DeVries [00:02:15]:
James, we have a saying. The world does not need another crappy self published book.

James Kademan [00:02:21]:
Oh, I love that saying. That’s perfect. That’s perfect. So let’s start with what you got going on, Henry. How long have you been in the book marketing world?

Henry DeVries [00:02:32]:
Indie Books International. We started on April 1, 2014. I’d been a ghost writer for books for years before that. So officially 11 years publishing over 200 books in that time.

James Kademan [00:02:48]:
All right, well, that’s a fair number that is Any specific genre.

Henry DeVries [00:02:55]:
Yes. Well, business books. So according to Barnes and noble, there are 16 subcategories of books. And then since we’re nonfiction, some of our books fall under self help, or they’ll fall under whatever industry the person is in. So it. It. But it tends to be these nonfiction books to help business people find right fit prospects.

James Kademan [00:03:19]:
Right on. You know, it’s interesting you say that. I, I assume as you know, I wrote and published a book, and it was interesting because I use it essentially as a business card. But I had somebody ask me if I ever made money from the book, and I was like, no, no, I would love to be Stephen King or something like that. Where you’re making thousands of dollars every month off your book and to not have to fight to find a publisher, that was not the case. So in that non fiction realm, I guess I’m saying that to say I feel like in the non fiction realm, that’s more of the case rather than the fiction realm. I don’t. Correct me if I’m wrong here.

Henry DeVries [00:04:01]:
Well, in the nonfiction realm, it’s all about marketing with a book. I didn’t write the book marketing a book. I did it marketing with a book, meaning it’s what happens as a result of the book. And our authors have found they’ve gotten returns of 400 to 2000% ROI by marketing with a book and a speech. We like to say publishing the book is the starting line. The book is your ticket to ride. It’s your ticket to get into the game.

James Kademan [00:04:32]:
I love. Okay, so essentially what you’re saying is the book is a marketing tool. You’re not marketing the book, you’re marketing with a book. Okay, that’s way better. Clarification.

Henry DeVries [00:04:42]:
One of my authors made a million dollars, and he didn’t even care how many books he sold, but he gave away hundreds and hundreds of books. And. And that resulted in clients. Five figure clients. And that he says it adds up to over a million dollars that he got as a result of being the author of that book over and above what he would have made.

James Kademan [00:05:07]:
I love it. All right, so let’s dig into why someone would want to market with a book rather than throwing ads on the Internet or a big billboard or cold calling or something of that nature.

Henry DeVries [00:05:18]:
Well, because you want to be seen as the authority in your Space for a certain group of people who have a certain problem. You’re the authority and you can’t spell authority without the word author. So authors are respected because of the research they’ve done, the people they’ve talked to and the results that they share. And then that attracts people especially right fit prospects to them. And they’re not chasing the prospects. It’s like a magnet that’s attracting the prospects to them.

James Kademan [00:05:51]:
I love it. You mentioned self publishing. Is that typically where you’re steering people to or what you’re steering people to do?

Henry DeVries [00:05:59]:
Oh no, we call it self publishing, the S word. Even if you do it, don’t ever say your book was self published because that has a stigma to it. It’s like what crazy old grandpas do? You indie publish your book. You might cobble together a team to help you indie publish the book. The person in your example, he missed a big player at it. An editor. And there’s different types of editors. I’m a developmental editor.

Henry DeVries [00:06:26]:
I help people develop a manuscript, an idea how it would play in the marketplace, how to bake marketing into it. But you also need line editors, people who make sure that you don’t use the wrong word or the styles right, or a typo. James, I’ll tell you, you triggered my all time worst story of somebody who came up to me, was so proud of their book and he handed me his book and he said, what do you think? And on the COVID it said forward F O R W A R D by this name. Well, it’s actually F O R E. W O R D is a forward, a word that comes first in a book. So he had this major glaring typo on the COVID of his book.

James Kademan [00:07:16]:
Oh no.

Henry DeVries [00:07:17]:
And he said, well, what do you think? I said, well, I’ve got to point out you have this glaring typo on the COVID of your book. Oh, oh, I printed 5,000 copies. What should I do? And I said Fahrenheit 451. If you know science fiction and Ray Bradbury, that’s the temperature books burn at. Fahrenheit 451. Famous science fiction book. So I was telling him to burn 5,000 books, which he did. Because I said I don’t even want you to give these away or donate them to some thrift store because every time somebody sees your name and this book and that typo, it’s bringing you down in the market.

Henry DeVries [00:08:03]:
The same thing with a crappy self published book where they said, oh, you know, I can do it cheap. I said, okay, well, let’s say you have a big speech and people have paid you $5,000 to come speak to them, and you got to wear something. Are you going to go to Goodwill and see if somebody donated something good that week? Or, you know, maybe there’s an Armani suit there, but it needs a knee patch. Are you going to go out with that? Well, no, don’t be ridiculous. Well, don’t be ridiculous. If the book is representing you in the marketplace, that you’re going to cut corners and do a bad job, you might not be published by a traditional publisher. I have been with McGraw Hill and my Warren Buffett book, but also there’s this third alternative, the indie press, also known as the hybrid press. Publishers.

Henry DeVries [00:08:51]:
There are probably about 70,000 of us in the United States, so we bring the rigor of traditional publishing, but we can get a book out much faster. And you retain 100% ownership and you get all the royalties. With McGraw Hill, they give me 15% of the profit of the book and they keep 85% when I can catch them, it’s very hard. They’re pretty slippery. Publishers hate to pay royalties after the advance. Oh, interesting.

James Kademan [00:09:28]:
What do you mean? When you can catch them? You have to keep calling them, saying, hey, it’s been a few months. I know. We sold some books.

Henry DeVries [00:09:33]:
There’s all these stories. It’s like one guy, he was at a client, and the client had bought 250 copies of his book. And he’s there, he had it, and he had the invoice in his hand, but he got zero royalties, that quarter from his publisher. So he called the publisher and said. He said, well, we’re so sorry. No. No copies of your book sold. He goes, I’m holding an invoice, a paid invoice for 250 books.

Henry DeVries [00:10:01]:
They said, well, that’s our story, and we’re sticking to it. I had another author tell me this week about. He did book clubs and book clubs would buy his book. And there’s probably 20 people in the book club, and several of these book clubs bought his book. And the publisher for each book club, they listed it as one sale. Oh, so they gave him royalty for one sale when 20 books sold. So am I saying that a lot of traditional publishers are thieves? Not exactly, but you could look it up on the Internet. A lot of authors will share their stories about that.

Henry DeVries [00:10:41]:
I like to say my publisher has a 45. Excuse me, 45 story tower in Manhattan. And they didn’t get it by being generous paying their authors.

James Kademan [00:10:53]:
I always Think of the Simpsons with Bill Gates, right? We didn’t get rich by writing checks. Buy him out, boys.

Henry DeVries [00:10:59]:
We’re the thing where he beat up Homer Simpson. You didn’t read the fine print in that when you accepted the terms.

James Kademan [00:11:06]:
Buy them out, boys. You know, it’s interesting when you’re talking about the. The impression that you’re giving as a business owner. I was teaching a business planning class years ago, and one of my students, I don’t know when we were talking about business cards, she came in the following week with some business cards that she had printed herself on an inkjet printer. You could still see the little perforations.

Henry DeVries [00:11:28]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:11:28]:
And she was so proud. And on this inkjet printer, you could see the bands of ink, like a week. Or just rarely use inkjet printer put out so you can see, like there’s stripes on it. The perforations are still there. And I told her, you can’t. You can’t give these to people because they’re gonna laugh at you. And she. This was her first business.

James Kademan [00:11:48]:
She had no idea. She was so proud that I got business cards. I got business cards. Like, throw those away. Throw those away. Because the first thing people are seeing is cheap, fly by night, not even worth the paper that they’re printed on kind of thing. Spend the 25 bucks. Get real business cards.

James Kademan [00:12:04]:
Step up your game. And I kind of felt bad because she was in tears after a little while. That was not my intention, but I felt like she had put so much in the design and the time, and she was so proud of herself. But when I pointed out the fact that people are going to look at these and compared to every other business card they’ve gotten, they look like the worst business card they’ve ever received. It’s actually doing her a terrible disservice.

Henry DeVries [00:12:31]:
Terrible disservice with a book. Wrong title. That’s one. I did a workshop in New York City and this woman was there, and she worked in. In network television News in Washington D.C. and she had this book, and the title of the book was Lose the Moomoo. And I said, what is this book about? And she says, oh, there’s a great story in chapter three. It’s about a woman who came on to be in the national TV and she’s wearing a moomoo.

Henry DeVries [00:13:02]:
I said, yeah, they’re never going to get to chapter three. So what is this book about? She goes, well, Henry, you don’t understand. She goes, every day people come up to me and they say, how do you get on tv. And the crowd there went. I said, I have the title of your book. And she says, what? And I said, how do I get on tv? She said, oh, okay. Or something like that. I said, no, that.

Henry DeVries [00:13:29]:
That’s what everybody’s asking you. Did you hear the reaction in this. In this crowd when you said it? But she said, I’ve published, you know, I’ve printed up 5,000 copies of the book. What should I do with them? Class, Fahrenheit 451. I made her cry. Six months later.

James Kademan [00:13:50]:
Intended. Right. It just happens.

Henry DeVries [00:13:52]:
Yeah. Six months later, she came up and said, I’ve got to thank you so much. I changed the title to How Do I Get on tv? And the book is just selling like hotcakes, and men and women buy the book. And it’s. It’s, you know, produced a lot of business for my media consulting firm. And I train people when they go on tv, you know, said, you’re welcome. You know, or as they say at Chick Fil A, my pleasure. So.

Henry DeVries [00:14:19]:
But they. They. A lot of people shoot their foot off with that problem.

James Kademan [00:14:24]:
Yeah. You know, it’s interesting because at the moment, or the moment after you told her that advice, if someone were to ask, hey, what do you think of Henry? She’d be like, that jerk. But then six months later, someone’s going to ask, what do you think of Henry? And she’s gonna say, this guy’s a freaking genius. So it’s interesting how sometimes six months. What’s that?

Henry DeVries [00:14:44]:
Yeah, he’s learned a lot. Six months. James, I’m working on something because let me true confession here. There was this Silicon Valley executive, and he calls me up one day and says, you know, are you Henry devries? Yeah. He goes, I want to hire you to do my book. I said, well, that’s great. Why? He goes, goes, well, I found five of your authors. I interviewed them, and.

Henry DeVries [00:15:09]:
And I’ve decided to work with you. I said, well, I’m curious. What did they say? They all said the same thing. I said, well, now I’m really curious. What did they say? He said, they all said you were honest. Well, James, I’m all kind of proud. I thought, oh, you know, honest, that’s a good reputation to have. And then he said, yeah.

Henry DeVries [00:15:24]:
One of them said, he told you his idea for the book, and you said, well, nobody’s gonna buy that book. And I said, yeah, brutal honesty sometimes, but I’m working on the brutal part. I’m trying to be more kind in how I deliver the message. But I Never lie to people. I’m not a yes person. Or, oh, this is great. Greatest idea. You know, we don’t.

Henry DeVries [00:15:47]:
We don’t publish everybody who comes to us. People are surprised at that. But no. And I go, yeah, like, yeah, maybe one in four. I agree to do one in four. That comes to us.

James Kademan [00:15:59]:
And oh, wow, okay. So knocking away 75%.

Henry DeVries [00:16:03]:
Yeah. No, yeah. It’s like, because, you know, now as a joke, we’ve mentioned the Simpsons. My wife bought me a magnet. It’s Crusty the Clown. And we have it on our refrigerator, and it says, I heartily endorse this product or service. So, you know, that’s crusty. But we said, no, we’re not going to be that business.

Henry DeVries [00:16:25]:
We’re going to be generous. That’s going to be part of our brand. We’re going to be fun. That’s part of our brand. Family. We call the authors the family, and we help them promote each other. But we’re not going to sell the dream. There’s a lot of people make money off people.

Henry DeVries [00:16:39]:
And I hear these sad stories all the time that, you know, GI spent $70,000 with a business coach. Somebody just told me that today and got nothing from it. Now I owe $70,000. So I can’t retire because I’ve got to pay off the debt. So it’s like, yeah, so we’re not going to do that. We don’t do that. And we back up with testimonials and you can vet us and you can talk to people and we’ll show you case studies. You know, I’d say, well, how could we be around for 11 years and have 200 clients and 80% of our clients come from referrals?

James Kademan [00:17:21]:
Well, it’s incredible.

Henry DeVries [00:17:22]:
Well, it must work. Yeah, we found a little niche in the market that it’s not so much how many copies you sell. Usually if you sell 1,000 copies in three years, you can break even on the publishing. But we’ve got recorded ROI of 4x to 20x 400 to 2000%. If you look at it that way.

James Kademan [00:17:44]:
I suppose if you’re talking about the resulting business, which is the point.

Henry DeVries [00:17:47]:
Resulting business. So you got it from consulting, you got it from paid speaking. An expert with a book should be speaking in the 5 to $10,000 range. And we train people on how to do that. And then training programs, my hall of Fame speakers and other people say that’s where the real money is at. Because, you know, like we use the football analogy. Who’s a good team Right now we’ll say the LA Rams. Why do the LA Rams practice football every week? They know how to play football.

Henry DeVries [00:18:23]:
It’s because the games are so important. So, you know, why do you work on getting better and do this all the time? Well, because it’s so important and you need to do that same. Same thing with training where companies like, it’s not come in, do a three hour seminar and now everybody knows what they need to do. Whatever your area of expertise, it’s the hybrid models. You come in, train them and then do something online once a month where they go over what they did. Or you role play with people and you keep at it. That’s how you learn. So an author who’s an authority on a subject can do that.

Henry DeVries [00:19:00]:
So we also teach people, the business models that are out there. I have people all the time come to me and you know, I say, what’s the goal? Yeah, I don’t know, you know, why do you want to do a book? Well, you know, always thought people could do this or maybe I could make money off doing a book. Those are the people we don’t work with because they, they, they need to get educated about this business of being an expert and an authority. And we, we offer training and articles and I’ve written books. There’s a lot of information out there. So it’s a screening tool because when we publish somebody’s book, we’re intimately involved with them for years. So we’re like a fine winery that just does, you know, 36 cases a year. We only publish about 36 books a year.

James Kademan [00:19:57]:
Okay.

Henry DeVries [00:19:57]:
Because I’ve got a staff and that’s what’s good. And could we do more? Sure. But the quality would go down and our reputation would go down. Sort of like the woman handing out the jet printed business cards. Probably because she couldn’t find a crayon to make her business cards. Yeah, right.

James Kademan [00:20:18]:
One, one step above that, or maybe behind, depending.

Henry DeVries [00:20:21]:
Right. And I don’t mean to be unkind to people, but this is a business, you know, this is a business we’ve chosen. And you need to do research and you need to do homework and you need to be willing to try and you need to get professional help. I don’t mean psychiatric, I mean in getting the work done. Maybe the psychiatric too. Sometimes I feel like a therapist for some people because it’s hard to do a book. People fall into the perfection trap. Well, my book’s not perfect.

Henry DeVries [00:20:55]:
Or the comparison trap. It’s not as good, as good to great or Eat Pray, Love or the Belief Trap. Who am I to write a book? Or what do I have to say? We have to get people through those traps to get out there and do the best book that they can and then don’t wait to be discovered. Mail out copies of the book every month to people who make a difference. Do showcase speeches where you’re in front of a target rich audience and you’re talking about the book. So we train people to do that, get on other people’s stages or attend events where your target rich audience hangs out. You want to be there. And those are all the things we train people on.

James Kademan [00:21:40]:
I love it. Let’s shift into your history. What was the first book that you published?

Henry DeVries [00:21:49]:
Well, the first book I wrote was in the third grade. It was the Three Little Pigs Go to War, but I couldn’t find a publisher for that.

James Kademan [00:21:57]:
Still looking.

Henry DeVries [00:21:58]:
Yeah, my first book, Self Marketing Secrets. I co authored that book in the 90s and it was a modest business bestseller. And then, you know, that was the first of 20 books that I’ve written.

James Kademan [00:22:13]:
And then you said in the 90s.

Henry DeVries [00:22:16]:
In the 90s, yeah.

James Kademan [00:22:18]:
So that was a whole different world from a publishing point of view.

Henry DeVries [00:22:21]:
Oh, it was. I had to have an agent. My co author says, you know, we had our first agent. She says, well, we’re going to go up to Hollywood, we’re going to meet this agent. And I said, does he, like have an open shirt and lots of hair and gold chains? She goes, oh, you’ve met him. I said, no, no, but I bet people like him. We went up there, but that didn’t work out. And then we found a very serious person in San Diego and, you know, he went after all these publishers, get our book published.

Henry DeVries [00:22:51]:
But then the world changed. There was two parts of the digital revolution that changed the business. One was print on demand publishing, where you didn’t have to do big print runs to get the cost down. So my first book we, you know, first run was 2,500 books. Second run was another 2,500 books. It was called the second printing. The joke is, yeah, my book went to two printings because the first one was blurred. No.

Henry DeVries [00:23:19]:
So you would earn extra printings. But with print on demand, it’s just as economical to print one book as the unit price on the 2500 books. That change happened then. The next change was Amazon.com Jeff Bezos created the world’s biggest bookstore. And we weren’t competing to get into 200 Barnes and Nobles, which is now down to like 75, 750. Excuse me. You know, from 2000 to 750, Barnes and Nobles, everybody’s computer was a bookstore. And the average Barnes and Noble will hold about 200,000 books, different titles.

Henry DeVries [00:24:00]:
Last time I checked with Amazon, there were over 40 million titles for sale on Amazon. So it’s created an explosion in authors. Also changed the economics. That with the marketing, with a book formula, you can have like a thousand people interested in your book and that could feed you for life, your business or whatever you’re doing, you know, you don’t need to appeal to everybody. That’s sort of the dream.

James Kademan [00:24:29]:
50,000 copies or anything like that.

Henry DeVries [00:24:31]:
No, no. Well, the one guy I talked about made a million dollars. He just gave away hundreds of books. He, you know, when he got a royalty check from me, he was kind of like surprised. And one person said, you know, when I used to get your royalty checks, I’d go buy pizza. And then I started going to Costco. But my real money was I upped my speaking fees from, you know, 2500 to 7500 a speech. And that’s where the real money is.

James Kademan [00:25:01]:
That’s fair. Yeah. To make up five grand you got to sell a lot of books. Make up that kind of money.

Henry DeVries [00:25:05]:
Yeah, especially if you’re traditional like me. My royalty on the Buffett book is a $50, but I have a co author, so I get 75 cents. Yeah, you gotta sell, gotta sell a lot of books.

James Kademan [00:25:19]:
And that’s trusting.

Henry DeVries [00:25:20]:
One speaking engagement. I, I make five to ten when I go out to speak professionally.

James Kademan [00:25:27]:
Very nice. So when you, when did the whole indie book publishing realm come around? Because it wasn’t in the 90s, was it?

Henry DeVries [00:25:35]:
No, it wasn’t in the 90s. And then in the 2000s I started writing about it and I, I, one of my clients was Hart Hanks, which is a billion dollar traded company and media company and they really had all this equipment for print on demand publishing. And I learned about that guys, I helped them market that concept and then it really went diverse. And then, you know, we really didn’t have much of an Internet. It started in 93Web, know, World Wide Web. But it wasn’t into the 2000s that it started to get traction. And you know, Amazon came along and, and Jeff Bezos said, your margin is my opportunity. So he looked at all those inefficient bookstores and what they were making on books and he could pay a higher royalty and make more than the bookstore sell selling and just became a master of logistics and There’s a lot of hands.

Henry DeVries [00:26:42]:
Yeah, yeah.

James Kademan [00:26:42]:
When you have agent, publisher, all the people that are working for the publisher, the sales people, the marketing people, all that jazz, let alone the editors, book designers, all that Jazz, warehouses, distribution, you get rid of.

Henry DeVries [00:26:56]:
Well, there’s a lot of people who would like to sell all that stuff to you as a, as an independent author. And we like to say they have plans for your money.

James Kademan [00:27:07]:
You know, it’s interesting because when I first I pumped out a book just as a, as a practice on Amazon, so I did the S word thing self published mainly because I’m impatient. I mean, my sister’s a published author. She’s got agent and publisher and all that kind of stuff. And I got the what do I have to do? From her. And my thought was, wait, how long does that take? And what are the variables that I don’t have control over? Nah, screw that, I’m just gonna go self publish. So I pumped out this book and it was just an experiment to see how the whole thing works. And I just got inundated with all these publishers and these book marketers and stuff like that, saying, for just $10,000, we’ll do all this, that and the other thing. And I remember asking one of the marketers like, hey man, this $10,000.

James Kademan [00:27:58]:
Seems like you got a good email here. How many books do I have to sell to make, to break even? And then I’m not in the game of breaking even, I’m in the game of making money. So how am I going to double that? How many books do I sell to make 20 grand? And can you promise that you can make that happen? Like, no, there’s no promises. All I can promise is that I’ll take your money.

Henry DeVries [00:28:20]:
Yes.

James Kademan [00:28:21]:
So it’s interesting game.

Henry DeVries [00:28:26]:
You know, we work with publicity firms and marketing firms and it’s, it’s common knowledge. And the, the honest, legit ones will say it is, there is no way that you will earn back in royalties the money you give us to market this book. The money that’s an honest answer right there, is what happens as a client. So I’ll have conversations with people and I’ll say, how much do you make from a new client? And if, and then I’ll say, so how many clients would you have to get for this book plan to make sense? And if they say one, I go, well, what would you like to do? You know, because I’ll say, do you think if you’re a published author and you spoke more and, and had some publicity around that you would get one more client than you have right now. Well, he said, well, of course I said, what do you want to do? So if you are in the trust business, where you’re selling your expertise, you’re a management consultant, you’re an advertising agency, you’re health tech consultant, you’re one of these people, you know, you’re in the B2B space. And the book is more than a calling card. The book is the greatest brochure. I was once at a big technology conference.

Henry DeVries [00:29:53]:
I’m also a journalist. I’ve worked for Forbes Digital and now I work for the California Business Journal. And I was covering this big conference in Las Vegas and I was in the press room, and everybody had their folders with their brochures and, you know, color products and. And I. I’m at a table making some notes, and I’m sitting next to the trash can, and I saw a journalist after journalist pick up the folder, kind of flip through it and throw it in the trash. I’m thinking like, oh, they just threw, I don’t know, $50, $100 in the trash. I thought, hmm, what if they’d put it in a book? One, it’d be more compact, it’d be more respectable. And two, you don’t throw books away.

Henry DeVries [00:30:34]:
You probably stack the book back up on the table or something. But our fourth grade teacher, you know, Sister Mary Elizabeth, or mine, was Mrs. Bandy, taught us that you don’t destroy books. So I thought, well, how much would that book cost? Well, to print it, $6. It’s more trustworthy than the. The folder full of crap, as we used to say. So that. That was some of the genesis for the idea for Indie Books International.

James Kademan [00:31:04]:
That’s awesome. So how do you differentiate yourself from other indie book publishers? Because they seem to pop up, I don’t know, 5 million a day or something like that.

Henry DeVries [00:31:13]:
Yeah, it’s sort of like that joke when I worked at the university about investment bankers that we were going to start to use investment bankers in research rather than lab rats, because, one, they’re plentiful, and two, there’s some things a rat won’t do. So with indie publishers, yeah, there’s 70,000 of us, last I checked. So what I decided to do different was to say that publishing the book is the starting line. And we stay with you as your marketing advisor, and we have this family of 200 authors that we get them together and you cross market with them and they hear you speak, and then they could recommend you as a speaker. So that’s what we created. We have two live events, some author expert conferences. We do. We’re sponsored by the University of California, San Diego, and we do our conferences there in San Diego.

Henry DeVries [00:32:11]:
And then we do online things to help people. And then my ghostwriters all have a business journalism background, so they’ve been with Forbes and Inc. And Entrepreneur magazine and, you know, New York Times. So we’ve got these people and then the training people for our speakers. My business partner is the past president of the National Speakers Association. He’s trained a thousand professional speakers. One of my authors is the first female president of the National Speakers Association. I’ve got a dozen chapter presidents of the National Speakers association, several hall of fame members from the National Speakers association, and then I’ve got three world champions from Toastmasters International.

Henry DeVries [00:32:58]:
And they teach the business of speaking. So we have this faculty, if you will, that are in the marketplace. They’re in the arena, to quote Theodore Roosevelt. They’re out there on the lecture circuit and they help make connections for people and make introductions and also teach you this is the level you’ve got to be at. So I used to say, I don’t know, this might been pre Covid, but I used to say, if you want to catch a cold, I suggest you go to urgent care because you’re going to surround yourself with people with a cold. If you want to catch success, hang out with people who are successful at what you want. So we’ve. We’ve got that together.

Henry DeVries [00:33:41]:
So with these successful people. So thanks for asking. I think that is our competitive advantage is the indie books family of authors.

James Kademan [00:33:51]:
That’s incredible. Tell me you alluded to it a little bit. But I want to ask you more specifically. Tell me about the marketing funnel that you’re bringing your authors through to get them successful. Whatever they measure that successfully.

Henry DeVries [00:34:05]:
So you don’t mind if I give you some pushback, do you?

James Kademan [00:34:07]:
No, please, by all means.

Henry DeVries [00:34:08]:
We don’t use the word funnel at indie books, man.

James Kademan [00:34:11]:
I am just doing all kinds of bad words here.

Henry DeVries [00:34:14]:
We got self publishing. I know you use the F word and the S word, so the funnel.

James Kademan [00:34:18]:
And the F word.

Henry DeVries [00:34:20]:
Yeah, I know. We’ll wash your mouth out with soap later. So we use a staircase. And our staircase message is the first thing you do is you publish a book and you give away a lot of books. You don’t wait to be discovered. You get the books in the hands of people who can get you on a podcast, book you as a speaker, hire you, and then the next thing you do is you put on monthly events on the Internet which are Q&As about the topic of your book and you form a community around your subject and then the next thing you do is some kind of paid training. I, oh, can I give away $365? I’ll do it right now. James.

Henry DeVries [00:35:04]:
I do a monthly class. It’s a two hour class and it’s the book kickoff class. It’s the seven questions you have to answer before you can write a book or promote a book. And if they mention your name, I will comp people in. There’s no code or anything. You have to send an email to me. Henry@indie booksintl.com or henry@presuadewithastory.com either one of those. I will comp you into the class.

Henry DeVries [00:35:35]:
Okay, we haven’t spent much yet then. If you need somebody to be an editor, you know, that starts around $5,000 where I’ll work with people for three to six months. If you need somebody to actually go out and help you write the first draft, that’s around 10,000. I fly to wherever you’re at and we spend three days together and we produce our first draft book. And you know, if you want ghost writing, that’s, you know, that depends on how long the book is, but can be 20,000. Most people need a developmental editor. They don’t need a ghostwriter. A ghostwriter though, if you’re the CEO of a company, if you, you know, own a big ad agency or something like that, it would be malpractice for you to take all the time out to write a book.

Henry DeVries [00:36:24]:
You get somebody on your team who knows how to write books, who can interview you, who can transcribe it, who can draft it, and you take that work off your plate. So you do what you need to do, which is we have a saying, if you’re not on the mic, we aren’t making money. Which other means if you’re not speaking, if you’re not presenting, if you’re not on a phone call to somebody, the company is not making money. It’s not making money when you’re writing a book.

James Kademan [00:36:50]:
So I love it.

Henry DeVries [00:36:52]:
Farm that out to somebody else. One CEO said, I feel kind of guilty, Henry, because, you know, he was a home builder, you know, building homes. I said, oh, okay, Buck, why do you feel guilty? Well, you know, my name is on this, but you did most of the work. And I said, oh, well, let me ask you a question. How many homes are you going to build this year? He said, a Thousand. I said, wow, Buck, your arm is sure going to get tired from all that painting and hammering. He said, don’t be silly. You know that I’m going to have people build a thousand.

Henry DeVries [00:37:23]:
You know, I have people with tools will do that. And I said, well, think of me as your tool. I’m your tool to get the book done. But it’s your words, your thoughts, your inspiration to get the book done. So that’s when I like people to think beyond that. And then also, the highest compliment I got was from an author with the first name of Henry, by the way. But Henry said finding you was like finding an uncle in the business. You looked out for me, you know, you made introductions.

Henry DeVries [00:37:56]:
You. You did all these extra things above and beyond the agreement that you were going to help me write and publish the book. So I. I have office hours where I meet with my authors every week. I. I do monthly events where they can, you know, get educated on things. I. Twice a year, I have online retreats, and I don’t charge for any of that to my authors.

James Kademan [00:38:20]:
Nice. Tell me a story about the ghost writing to get the voice of, let’s say. Would you say the guy’s name was Buck? How do you get the voice of Buck?

Henry DeVries [00:38:29]:
I got a call one day, James. I got a call one day, and a guy said, Is this Henry DeVries? And I said, yes, Henry DeVries, the ghostwriter. I said, well, yes. He says, well, my story takes place in an old mansion on October 31st. It’s a thunderstorm, and they’re having a seance in the parlor to contact the spirit of the departed owner. And I said, I have to stop you right there. I’m not that type of ghostwriter. What I am as a business book ghostwriter.

Henry DeVries [00:39:01]:
Business leaders hire me to interview them, have them do the book, and basically be invisible. You know, I don’t say I ghost wrote their book. They usually thank me as their editor. In the acknowledgments page, I want to thank my editor, Henry Devries, of indie books. And that’s where I get. And. And I’m okay with that because from an early age, I got excited about getting ideas in print. First my own, but then other people.

Henry DeVries [00:39:35]:
My sister doesn’t understand it. She goes, why don’t you just spend all this time writing books and speaking and doing all that? Why are you helping all these other people? I said, I get just as much a thrill from helping them. And it’s a noble work, because think of all the people who’ve been helped Because I helped these people manifest a book that solves problems for all these other people. Very true. Yeah. So we’re doing that. So what you don’t want to do is be the writer who puts it in their voice. It’s a real skill to be able to interview somebody.

Henry DeVries [00:40:15]:
And this is why I insist on recording and transcribing, because I want to capture their language and their nuances. So when you read the book, you feel like you had a conversation with that author, because it sounds like them. And when you meet them, one of the problems is sometimes people say, yeah, you know, I read the book, but the person I met, that’s not the. You know, there’s a disconnect. It’s not the same person. And sometimes it was just that person trying to be more polished or use different words or more fancy, highfalutin words than they normally use. And people see through that. So a great ghostwriter.

Henry DeVries [00:40:56]:
I made a mistake once in my first. I ghost wrote a column. I worked for a advertising PR agency. I wrote a column for the president, and it was very funny, and it was very well received, but somebody who knew both of us said, oh, nice column. It didn’t sound like Ronnie. It sounded like you. And that was their way of saying, yeah, you know, that’s not what you need to do. So from there on, I really worked hard at capturing the other person’s voice and making it the best that they could be.

James Kademan [00:41:33]:
Right on. Right on. I want to shift gears here because we don’t have a ton of time. I want to ask you about the dread. I’m going to dare say another word that you’re not going to like. Tell me about the world of AI and how this messes with or changes the landscape of the AI word.

Henry DeVries [00:41:49]:
Okay, so, yeah, no, I do a lot of book for financial advisors, people who own wealth management firms, and all this. And there’s a certain group out there that’s using AI to write books, and they’re putting templates out on this, and they’re sort of basically saying the same thing. It’s an echo chamber, I call it, or regurgitation. And it’s just another extension of that bad business card story because is that what you want to represent you in the marketplace? And also Amazon has a policy against publishing AI generated books. And programs like Grammarly can spot if material is plagiarized or if it’s AI created. I like to say AI is like your drunken uncle. Sometimes they say something good, but a lot of times they’re. They’re just hallucinating.

Henry DeVries [00:42:47]:
We don’t know what they’re saying. So you have to do it. Now. AI is a tool, like fire, like electricity. What’s electricity? Can cook a man’s dinner or can cook a man, you know, if you use the tool wrong. Right. Yeah. So it’s great for brainstorming or coming up with creative ideas, maybe for headlines or chapter heads and subheads and all that.

Henry DeVries [00:43:19]:
We’ll play around with things with AI with that. But we’re clear that. And I have all my people sign a policy that they’re fully disclosing how they’re using AI and here’s all the things that they can’t do with AI because it’s like those students in college, like, oh, what a shortcut, you know, that I could, I, I could get this done in half the time. No, the people who hire us, because I’m a, I’m a Amazon.com best selling author in four categories for the Warren Buffett book. They want a best selling author to help them with their book. And as far as I know, AI didn’t get a best selling book on Amazon.

James Kademan [00:44:04]:
Fair. Fair. Does it, I guess, does it get used with book cover design or editing or anything else besides writing of the book?

Henry DeVries [00:44:16]:
Yeah, I saw an interesting book that had illustrations throughout it and all the illustrations were AI generated, you know, and I’ve seen the commercials, you know, from AI and everything. So it’s getting amazing on art. But for the most part we have art directors who’ve worked for major publishers and they might get some help or inspiration from AI on their thumbnails. But the one thing is, I’ve seen this happen. You don’t want your product to look like anybody else’s product. I saw this once where there’s, you know, you can go to Getty and buy images and two different publishers use the same image on the COVID Henry.

James Kademan [00:45:07]:
I appreciate your time here.

Henry DeVries [00:45:09]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:45:09]:
This has been Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. My name is James Kademan and Authentic Business Adventures is brought to you by Calls On Call, offering call answering and receptionist services for service businesses across the country. On the web at https://callsoncall.com and of course, the Bold Business Book, a book for the entrepreneur and all of us available wherever fine books are sold. And we got liveswitch at https://liveswitch.com to help you talk with your employees, talk with your clients, talk with your customers with live video. If you’re listening to this on the web. If you could do us a huge favor, give us a big old thumbs up. Subscribe and of course share it with your entrepreneurial friends and especially those friends that have a business past. Episodes can be found morning, noon and night at the podcast thing found@drawincustomers.com thank you for joining us.

James Kademan [00:46:01]:
We will see you next week. I want you to stay awesome and if you do nothing else, enjoy your business.