This is the Creative Funding Show, a podcast for authors, YouTubers, and podcasters who want to fund the work they love. I’m Thomas Umstattd, Jr., and with me today is Bryan Cohen, the dashingly handsome co-host of the Sell More Books Show.
Bryan helps authors sell more books and make more money by helping them write better book descriptions and market their books more effectively. His podcast is one of the most popular in the publishing world.
Thomas: Bryan, you’ve been on Patreon for almost two years now, so why did you start the Sell More Books Show?
Bryan: It was at a time when I really wanted to use some of my skills that weren’t being used in my book writing. I have a background in theater, improv, and comedy, and I love connecting with people through audio. I had done voiceover and video work before, but I didn’t have an outlet for it.
The story of the show is that Jim Kukral, my co-host, was looking for someone to join him. I barely knew him, but I saw his posts on social media. I knew he had an audience from his Author Marketing Club service, so I said, “Hey, I’d be interested.” We had a short interview, and I came up with the idea for the format of delivering the news.
Lo and behold, we’re now at episode 223. We’ve never missed a week. Sometimes one of us takes a break, but the show itself has run for 223 consecutive weeks.
Why did you focus on indie publishing?
Thomas: Your news-and-commentary format could work well in so many other industries. There are a lot of political news podcasts, but not many focused on news in specific professional niches. Yet there are hundreds of industries that could support vibrant, profitable shows like yours.
You do a great job covering publishing news, especially indie publishing. Why did you decide to focus on indie authors?
Bryan: Part of it was that Jim and I both had more experience in the indie world. While Jim had a traditionally published book, he didn’t have a great experience with it, and that perspective influenced our early episodes. I’ve never been traditionally published.
So it was really “podcast what you know.” Indie publishing was our world. Our show became a niche within a niche. It was about indie publishing for people who actually want to know what’s going on.
That hyper-focus has been great for our businesses. Plus, having to report on industry news each week keeps us constantly learning.
How does the podcast support your business?
Thomas: Let’s talk business. You use your podcast to promote what you do. Walk us through how that works.
Bryan: We had been podcasting for about a year when I launched my main business in May 2015, which is a done-for-you book description service called Best Page Forward.
At the time, I didn’t have much of an email list. My only real audience was the podcast, so I promoted the business there. We didn’t do a hard pitch. I just explained what it was and sent details to our podcast email list, which was maybe up to a thousand people.
In the first 60 days, I had over 100 orders. Our listeners immediately said, “Yes, this is what I need. I hate writing book descriptions.”
Since then, we’ve used the podcast to promote other services, webinars, and sales. We even launched a live conference based on the podcast.
Thomas: That’s such a smart approach. Instead of building a product and then looking for an audience, you built the audience first, then asked, “What do these people need?”
For example, a lot of authors would rather write a whole new book than write a two-paragraph sales pitch for the one they’ve already written, so you created a service to solve that problem.