Authoring and Publishing for Thought Leaders | David Hancock

Peter Winick

Weighing the needs of the author vs. the wants of a publisher for books on thought leadership.

An interview with David Hancock about his experiences as an author and as the founder of a publishing company.

Today’s guest is David Hancock, the co-author of 16 books including Performance Driven Thinking, The Best of Guerrilla Marketing, and The Entrepreneurial Author. David is the Founder of Morgan James Publishing and Chairman of Guerrilla Marketing International.

David sits down with Peter and immediately puts some commonly held myths regarding publishing to bed. During the course of their conversation, they explore the wants of a publisher and the needs of the author. They discuss the pros and cons of a book advance why it isn’t just free money. Afterwards, they talk about why you might want to negotiate for more than an advance.

Finally, David shares what you will want to look for in a publisher as well as advice for authors about to seek a publisher for their first or next book.

Three Key Takeaways from the Interview:

Thought leaders need to be aware that a publisher is not going to take care of everything for you during the publishing process.
Many try to seek a book advance, but thought leaders would be better served to negotiate for higher royalists.
When seeking a publisher for your book on thought leadership, find a publisher who is going to give you the control you need over your content.

New books should be strategically planned to generate leads, showcase your content, and promote your reputation. Thought Leadership Leverage can help you use publication of the book as a springboard to launch an entire leadership platform. Contact Thought Leadership Leverage to learn now. We can help devise a book campaign strategy and assist you with other aspects of writing or marketing your book.

Transcript

Peter Winick And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is David Hancock. David is the founder of Morgan James Publishing and the chairman of Guerrilla Marketing International. He’s coauthored 16 books, including Performance Driven Thinking The Best of Guerrilla Marketing, and the Entrepreneurial Author. Morgan James Publishing was ranked on the Publishers Weekly, fast growing small press list for eight years. I can go on and on with his bio, but I’d rather just talk to David because he’s sitting here right in front of me. So let’s just let’s just chat away. David So welcome. How are you today?

David Hancock I’m doing absolutely incredible. How are you going, sir?

Peter Winick I am good. So let’s start with maybe let’s have some fun with some math because I spend a lot of my time talking to clients and I don’t I just enjoy it. I mean, I do enjoy it having to break open some myths about publishing. So the typical myth is client educated, intelligent, informed, incredibly successful. Their domain is, I’m going to get an agent and they’re going to go pitch it to a New York publisher and I’m going to get a big advance. And then all I have to do is write a great book. And that New York big publisher does everything. And I’m kind of not I don’t even know what everything is, but they do everything. And then I live happily ever after. So is that would you call that myth or and if you would call that as well?

David Hancock My gosh, yes, I have. And I would call that multiple myth because there’s several points in that conversation that unfortunately, are no longer the case. Now, that certainly could have been the case decades. Yeah, I had a century ago. But that’s not the case today, especially today. And that’s actually a good thing today. We as authors have more control and more flexibility and more ways to monetize their books than we had, you know, decades ago. So it’s not necessarily a bad thing, but part of it is educating the, you know, the experts and the authority in their space with what that really means now today and how to really leverage the fact that it is different in a good way.

Peter Winick Yeah. And I think in the problem, if you sort of zoom up a little bit here is, hey, if I’m a publisher, right, I get paid by number of units sold, period, full stop. So therefore I want to sell a lot of books as an author. It’s not that I don’t want to sell a lot of books, but in the grand scheme of life, with the exception of like 0.02%, the book is either it’s either a marketing tool, it’s in service of something else, but as a straight up revenue line, meaning, you know, the royalties I get or the profit from my book is but a very small percentage of my overall income. I have other interests that the book helped me get entree to, etc.. So I think inherently there’s a conflict built into this lack of alignment because an author might say, Wow, that book was so successful. And then the publisher goes, Well, how many units did you send me? Say, 2000, but to the right people. And it led to this and led to this and led to this. And then the publishers going. But I only got paid my, you know, two bucks per 2000. How would you work with that?

David Hancock Yes, that’s true. In fact, it’s okay with us. We don’t necessarily need to make all the money, but we do have to plan for us. We’ve got to pick the right books to publish. But the reality is, most of us as authors earn far more income and opportunity because of the book than we will from the book sales. And as a publisher, you’re right. The only way I make any money by selling books. It’s a delicate balance. But the struggle is understanding that going into it, both publisher and author.

Peter Winick Well, you’ve got to think. And that’s where you’ve got an interesting perspective because you’ve been on both sides of that, right? So you can look at potential client in the eye and say, listen. Been there, done that 16 times. And let me tell you. And then, you know, put your review of a separate author hat and publish your hat or to use the same.

David Hancock Hat in a separate hat. But they’re diverse in color.

Peter Winick Okay, good.

David Hancock But that’s absolutely right. So I haven’t gone through it myself. I realized the hard way because nobody gave me the heads up. But I first started writing in the 90s and boy, I tell you what, it exploded my business. It more than doubled my business as a banker when I wrote my first book. But, you know, I was struggling to sell books. The publisher was yelling at me for not selling enough. And by my fourth book, I had sold 40,000 copies of my fourth book and still wasn’t able to make the publisher happy. But man, I was killing it. So I think the problem was that the publisher was trying to find the next million bookseller on every single one of the authors, and that’s not a realistic expectation of whether other publishers that will publish 13 or 13 to 15,000 titles a year, hoping that at least one or 2 or 6 they can afford to pay the bills and the rest of the authors just get nothing.

Peter Winick So that’s sort of the Hollywood blockbuster model. If I do one Harry Potter, we can all be live and happy for ten years and all the other things could break even. Let’s do this. Tell me about what? Dave the publisher is looking for in a client in a book you’re going to publish. And then let’s flip it and say, What should Dave, the author, be looking for?

David Hancock No. Good point. So, Dave, the publisher is looking for somebody that’s passionate and enthusiastic in their field and their topic. They don’t necessarily have to be a writer, but they’ve got to have a good angle or a good story or a good way of doing something. And they want to teach others how to do it, and they really care about that reader doing whatever they’re trying to teach. That’s really important to us. But that passion and that enthusiasm has got to be the biggest thing, because I’ve got to catch that passion and enthusiasm and share it with our team just to get an acceptance in the first place. And we all have to be real passionate, enthusiastic with the author to share it with the sales reps and the bookstore buyers. And then together we all, you know, author and publisher need to get enthusiastic and passionate, making sure that the consumer we’re running in by the book.

Peter Winick What I would think is as a as a publisher, if I don’t come in there as an author on fire, passionate about it, you’ve got to be raise an eyebrow going to. Well, if he can’t get excited about it, how the heck can anybody know?

David Hancock You would be surprised. Some of it might be nervous about talking to the news accounts. And I try to give that to, you know, give a little bit of grace that they really need to be, you know, you know, that really on fire person for their content. And they really need to believe that they are the right person saying the right thing at the right time and to the right people.

Peter Winick Cool. And then I.

David Hancock Don’t care about their platform as much as maybe some other publishers. I know that if they’re coachable and they’re willing to do the things that successful authors do and they can hustle with this little bit, there’s a path that any of us authors can follow to build our platform, to get to a point where, you know, we’re moving mountains. But it all begins with that passion.

Peter Winick And what would Dave, the author, be looking for in a publisher? Because I think oftentimes there’s this perceived power imbalance where the author is like, dear, great publisher, please, please, please consider me. And I think it needs to be a relationship of equals.

David Hancock Yeah, absolutely. In fact, as an author, what I wrote and this is why I started Morgan James in the first place, I wanted somebody that could go down this path with me that benefited with me and maybe even shared some risk with me in the perfect world. But I needed somebody that could give me the credibility, the distribution, the opportunity that I figured a publishing house would happen or have. But I wanted them to stay out of my way. I mean, I was a thriving entrepreneur when I wrote my first book, but I had to get permission for everything, and I was limited to the number of copies of books I could buy for my own personal use. Every time I wanted to write an article or be interviewed, I had to make sure that I didn’t give away too much content from the book, or the publisher would yell at me. Even my talks, I had to get approved by my publisher just to make sure I wasn’t giving away too much the content from the book.

Peter Winick So a lot of was really. Yeah, yeah, a.

David Hancock Lot of constraints, but no help. I never had anybody come to me say, Hey, all right, we want to help you sell books. Here’s what other authors are doing. I just got yelled at for not strong enough books, and I learned that was typical publishing and I didn’t like it.

Peter Winick And why would they limit the number of books that you would buy? Wouldn’t they say, Listen, he’s the author, he’s the evangelist, He wants to buy 100 books a day. God bless him. I don’t care if he’s giving them out for Christmas. Right.

David Hancock Right. So it’s all about money and control. So most publishers do allow an author to buy a certain number of books at an author discount. Yeah, And usually it’s 500 to 1000, maybe going to negotiate a little bit more, but very hard to negotiate more than that. And then you can buy as many as you want at retail. Yeah, because they want to make all the money. And for me, I’m a guerrilla market. I recognize that, you know, and making sure that authors have affordable copies of the books, they can give them away or sell them, you know, an income stream for them. But just getting the word out there helps sell units of books. And I never wanted to restrict sell. Our authors can despise me copies as they want at a percentage above the print cost versus like a wholesale or even retail model. But, you know, it’s been proven to me over and over and over again, and I knew it going into it from a guerrilla marketing background that the more that the author did, we could probably outdo in the stores. In fact, we got a couple authors that are literally giving away 100,000 copies a year. But yeah, right, We’re over we’re out selling that number in the bookstores just because the conversation’s being created. So we’re encouraging as many authors as possible, right? So many books as they can.

Peter Winick There’s probably some algorithm, some somewhere that says, for every copy of an author gives away, you know, will sell an additional point seven book. I don’t know what the number is, but there’s probably a direct correlation that you can map out and say, Great, I’ll give that book away. That author at some very, very small percentage of actual cost, because I know I’m going to make it up on Amazon. Another demand that they’re going to generate.

David Hancock Absolutely. And it grows. I mean, the more books that are out there in the field, whether it’s from sales or author giveaways or even author sales, it can grow. That’s one of the reasons why we do something really, really cool with our books is if anybody buys a Morgan James book, they can get the e-book edition for free. And I want them talking about the book. I want them have easy access to the content with them using it in the more conversations that are out there around the book itself, no matter how it got into the readers hands, you can help sell books, which ultimately it was a part of the income stream from the author. But then being that authority in that space, that that thought provider is going to help them earn more money, charge more and negotiate less the way.

Peter Winick They build their book. If you’re enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you’d like to help spread the word about our podcasts, please leave us a review and share it with your friends. We’re available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps as well as at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com/podcasts.

Peter Winick So I want to move for a moment to the business model because again, this is an area where I spend a lot of time talking to clients and for some reason they’re not as fluent, fluent, shall I say, in the business models because, you know, there’s vanity, press, there’s hybrid, there’s, you know, traditional, right? And sometimes the lines are blurry even amongst those categories, broadly speaking. But, you know, the business model ultimately needs to be somebody has to pay for things, write books need to, you know, trees need to be cut, paper needs to get, you know, somebody is paying for that, right? Then it needs to be distributed. Retailers need to get paid. Right. And then the author needs to get a royalty. So the old traditional publishing model was the publisher took the risk. You know, they covered all the expenses. Author got a small royalty, whatever, 15% over a certain amount. You know, they can negotiate more or less whatever. So when you got an advance that wasn’t free money, that was a calculus against We think this book will spin off X dollars. We’ll give you some of that money today. Right. And then after the book earns to a certain point, then you start to get a little bit more. People get obsessed with this advance. And as opposed to thinking about sort of the big picture of it. So could you give us sort of publishing economics one on one, if you will?

David Hancock Yeah, absolutely. And you hit right on the nail there. The advanced liver is what it sounds like. It’s an advance payment against future royalties. And yet be careful because specially first time authors or non-savvy authors, a non-savvy agent won’t realize that there is a negotiation point there where a lot of publishing contracts, in fact default for many of the large houses is if you don’t earn that advance in book sales, you have to pay it back. So it’s got to be really a.

Peter Winick Loan that becomes that’s a loan if I got to pay it back.

David Hancock Exactly. Alone because it gives you an advance against something future. But the advances aren’t what they used to be. And they really they’re just leveraging those advances to take over and do with it as they please. Because publishers know everything. You know, they know what what’s best for you. But they’re exactly right. The reality is it really is. It could be a moot point if the authors are going to get out there and hustle and leverage the book in the first place. I’d rather pay a higher royalty in a smaller advance and make the author really realize that there’s an opportunity to really leverage the power of the book to grow their business and stop trying to sell an individual book to avoid paying the advance back and start leveraging the content, because then you’ll end up selling a whole lot more books.

Peter Winick Right? So when you talk about selling a lot more books. That assumes over a period of time because I think the traditional publishing world thinks of a book as a seasonal item, like, there’s fall sweaters and, you know, summer, you know, blouses or something like that. But the reality is most books that do well do much better year two than year one. And actually it’s the long tail where the big money is. Can you touch on that for a minute?

David Hancock Yeah, absolutely. And we still are following those sales seasons, just like the seasons of the year. But you’re right. And unfortunately, a lot of publishers just don’t have enough patience just to let it ride through. You know, the average traditionally published book only sells about a thousand copies in its life before somebody gives up on it. And you bet your bottom dollar that it will happen sooner than the book was ready for. And I have seen countless examples, even some from a traditional aspect where, you know, the publisher hung in there with the author, but I’ve seen countless examples where the book didn’t take off till a year, two to 3 to 5. In fact, one of our best seller books started taking off like, you know, thousand copies a year to 40,000 copies a year in their seventh year. It took a little bit of patience. Wow. But we hung in there with them. But you’re right. It takes time to grow into that.

Peter Winick Right. But the big house doesn’t have the time because they’re in the spring. They’re working on the spring. In the fall. They’re working on the fall. Rinse, lather, repeat. So the burden is on you. You know, as the author, to make sure you get that tail. Or work with a partner. Work with a publisher that has that longer play. I mean, I know publishers love backlist. They keep selling 2000, 2000 copies a month, 20 years later. That’s heaven, right?

David Hancock Yeah, but they don’t do anything to make that happen. Right. I just.

Peter Winick I won’t tell you what happened.

David Hancock Well, you know, and I’ve got friends in the industry, of course, As you can imagine, we’ve been in the business so long that you. I’ve had conversations with major House publishers, sat down at lunch with. Okay, you know, share my plan, you share your plan. And we come to realize that, my gosh, we’re both so unique. One publisher who I will remain nameless. I love them and their concepts and their brand, but they literally pay for placement into the bookstores. They’ll print 2500 copies to put it put them out there in the Barnes and Noble shelves and others. And if it doesn’t sell out in three weeks, they’ll just take the book out of print, move on to the next author, three weeks for this author’s life to turn around. And it’s a hard task to do. Not many of them.

Peter Winick And think about those three weeks, God forbid, those three weeks. If you were the author that put your blood, sweat and tears to it. And it was during, you know, a bad news cycle or the beginning of a Covid or in a like, you know, a natural disaster or something that happened outside of that. It’s the Super Bowl and nobody’s paying it. Whatever. Like, you catch a cold. Yeah, yeah, right, right, right. Really catch a cold and your you’re in bed for a week of the three.

David Hancock That’s right. One of my books came out about five years, about six years ago now. You know, I had things happen in my life health wise that prevented me from marketing it on time. And I didn’t get a chance to really market my book for five years. Can you imagine? And it worked. I mean, I hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list five years after. But if I had been with a quote unquote, regular publisher, they had given up on me a long time ago. So I’m glad I had patience for myself. Yeah.

Peter Winick Yeah. And it does.

David Hancock Happen.

Peter Winick Yeah. Any final thoughts on folks out there that are considering what to do with their either first book or next book? What a couple. Maybe. Maybe a quick Dave checklist without being overly self-promotional. Obviously, the answer is Morgan Chase.

David Hancock Well, it’s always the best answer. No, really, You’ve got to find the right path. The number three passion about helping authors on the right path. Self-publishing is absolutely better than doing nothing at all. So continue down the path of getting the book done, no matter how it takes. If you can get a relationship with a publisher that has the broader distribution, it can make a significant impact on your bottom dollar. But you need to make sure you find one that will let you do the things that you want to do to stay in control with as much as you can. You know, typically we like to make decisions together with the author recognizing their big picture is more important than our big picture. And really, when you look at it from a Zig Ziglar perspective, heck, even a guerilla marketing perspective, the more successful the author is, the more successful the publisher is going to be, so or so. So an author really needs to pay attention to that and find out where’s that balance, How much can I give away and how much can I keep and how much will they let me do and so forth. So that’s the biggest thing, is there you have options and options are good. Find the right path that gives you the blend of exactly what you need and you should have a home run.

Peter Winick Great. Well, I appreciate your time, David. Appreciate your wisdom. And this this is an episode you might want to listen to once or twice because there’s so much in here and so many mistakes that that really you know, what shocks me is I do see so many smart people doing what in retrospect they will tell you is that was really dumb. And they made the best-informed decision they could at the time with the data that they had. I think David’s trying to give us a little more information so we can make a wiser choice here. So thank you so much, David.

David Hancock Thank you for having me.

Peter Winick Great. Good talking to you. See you. To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. To reach me directly. Feel free to email me at Peter at Thought Leadership Leverage dot com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.