Fiverr challenged me to help one of my subscribers successfully publish a book in 90 days, and for some reason, I said “yes”!
The clock was ticking!
I needed to pick a subscriber, assemble a team of book publishing experts and Fiverr freelancers, and put all of this together in time and make it happen!
I immediately messaged my assistant, Ava, to find a subscriber.
In the meantime, I began assembling my team. I needed the best book description expert out there, the very best book editor, and I needed to get marketing and promotion dialed in as well.
I love my network. I was able to put together an incredible team and you’ll see them throughout this season of Book Rescue.
Do you think we can publish a book in 90 days?
Meet Sarah Hualde!
Ava sent me a list of subscribers who applied to be Book Rescue candidates. (You can do this too over here.)
After a sleepless night or two, I found her, our Season 2 candidate!
This is Sarah Hualde, a paranormal cozy mystery author with a deep catalog of books who has gained no lasting traction over the last 5 years.
Sarah is a resourceful stay-at-home mom who homeschools her two children while writing in her free time.
I was amazed at that alone, knowing that moms get little down time.
The meager earnings she gets from her books get invested back into her business in the hopes of making a big breakthrough someday sooner rather than later!
Success in self-publishing for Sarah would mean more freedoms her family could finally afford.
I gave her my usual disclaimer:
I can’t guarantee results. All I can do is give you my best effort and guidance to course-correct what you’re already doing in hopes of helping you sell more books.
It’s going to be a ton of work and none of it is easy, but Sarah assured me she was up for the task.
Off to the Races!
So, we’ve got to publish a book in 90 days. One thing…Sarah is publishing the 6th book in a series. If we’re going to do this right, we need to revamp the lot.
We’re not only going to publish a book in 90 days, we’re also going to rescue the entire series.
First things first, let’s take a deeper look at what we need to make this Sarah’s most successful book launch to date.
I think it’s pretty clear she has a marketing and promotion issue because her catalog doesn’t look terrible. However, there are some aesthetic qualities that we can improve upon as well as some other fine details having to do with her metadata.
Typically, what I will do is look at a catalog and ask myself:
- How do the covers look?
- How does the description look?
- How do the keywords look?
If those 3 fundamental things are out of whack, it doesn’t matter how much money and marketing we pour into this thing, no one’s going to come over and buy the books.
Sarah’s Honey Pot Mystery series looks stellar. It’s got fantastic covers, and I really wouldn’t change anything here. We just want to change up her copy so it really relates to readers and makes them want to pick up her books.
It’s her Paranormal Penny series that I see the most issues with aesthetically speaking because she’s kind of hitting the mark as far as cozy mystery covers, but it’s missing something.
We want to get her books covers looking great across the board. We’ve got to fix all of her book descriptions, so everything is super tight and readers can easily see what they stand to gain from buying Sarah’s books.
Last, but not least, we need to get behind her KDP dashboard and make sure she’s using her keywords in areas like her author bio and A+ content. Don’t miss those opportunities to make your book more discoverable.
If we get these 3 things dialed in, then we can start marketing and promoting.
I also want to give Sarah a bit of a leg up because I noticed a couple of reviews said her work is good, but needs a little work. Let’s go ahead and get an editor to have a look at her upcoming book before we dive into anything else.
Sarah Goes to Work
It was also time to put Sarah to work. I needed her to track all of her publications in one place to make life a little easier for us in the future. This would also make it where I could give her feedback actively from a shared document. I had Google Sheets in mind.
This spreadsheet needed to include:
- All her books
- How many words in each
- How many pages in the print version
- Trim size
- Paper type
- Keywords
- Description
EVERYTHING!
Later on, if we want to change something, we will know exactly what we started with and then what we changed.
Sarah was about to have her hands full for a while, but how do you eat an elephant?
Once you’ve felt the overwhelm of writing the book, editing it, getting beta readers, marketing, promoting and everything else in between, you’re also going to get tired!
How do you eat an elephant?
One bite at a time!
When you feel overwhelmed, remember, just one step in the right direction can get measurable results!
I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed when you watch Book Rescue. You don’t have to do it all at once! Just do a little at a time and it will add up!
I was sure this spreadsheet would take Sarah a week, so I started looking through Fiverr for the freelancers I planned to hire for this job. Fiverr sponsors Book Rescue, but I actually use their services all the time.
I love working with OliviaProDesign, so for sure, she’s doing the book covers.
SamWrightWrites has never failed me at editing and proofreading, so I’m going to put him to work editing.
I could gush about so many of these providers, but Sarah’s already done with that spreadsheet! Here’s my list of vetted providers – https://dalelinks.com/list
This sheet is so beautiful, that we got an outpouring about it in the comments on YouTube, so I’m providing it here for you completely free with Sarah’s permission.
When you visit the links below, you’ll notice the files are View Only. To get a copy you can edit, click File and then select Make a copy from the drop-down menu.
Here’s the version with Sarah’s data for examples – https://bookrescueshow.com/sarahsample
Here’s the template for you to fill in – https://bookrescueshow.com/trackingtemplate
87 Days to Go
Go figure, Sarah Hualde got her first assignment completed in record time. That should have taken at least a week…maybe two!
Did you see how nicely she laid out the data?
This gives me hope we can actually get this done in time.
Stick around so you don’t miss any of it!
If you’d like to support what we’re doing at Book Rescue, you can do so at no cost by subscribing and also by liking, commenting, and sharing the content both from YouTube and here on the website. Share buttons are provided below!
If you want to contribute more, purchase a service on Fiverr at no extra cost to you via one of our links in the content above.
Do you think you’d make the perfect candidate for a future season of Book Rescue? You can apply here.
Always Looking Forward,
Dale