Self Publishing Stories: William May Kindle Publishing Newbie

About this video

Dale Roberts interviews new self-publisher William J. May, a Century 21 real estate agent in Torrance, California, with six and a half years in real estate (he says he sold six properties his first year, against an average of two to three). After his friend Jason Morris, a Myrtle Beach agent whose Facebook group Real Estate Agents That Really Work was nearing ten thousand members, urged him to repackage what he knew the way Men’s Health repackages fitness topics, May dictated his first book, Top Ten Expired Objections, into Google Docs voice typing on his iPad and iPhone, chapter by chapter, then fine-tuned it at home. He got his cover on Fiverr, drew editor quotes he renders as six, eight, twelve, and eighteen hundred dollars, and chose Dale’s recommended editor, Ava, who edited, proofread, and formatted the roughly eleven-thousand-word, roughly eighty-page book and helped with his website. Morris wrote the foreword, and May loaded all ten categories for both the Kindle and print editions. About three weeks after launch he reports the book was number one in two Amazon categories and number four in a third, sitting around the twenty-thousand rank in the paid Kindle store that morning. He credits relationships and support from agent groups over publish-and-pray, and is already planning follow-ups on holiday prospecting and on cold calling, saying he made a hundred thousand dials and talked to six thousand people in the first half of the year.

Key takeaways

• Repackage proven knowledge in your own voice: Morris’s Men’s Health analogy is that the same topics return in a new author’s style, which is how May chose expired-listing objections from his own experience
• Dictation removes the typing barrier: May dictated chapters into Google Docs voice typing on his phone or iPad whenever ideas struck, then edited at home, and wrote the book while working his real estate job
• Budget for a real editor: his quotes ran from about six hundred to eighteen hundred dollars for a roughly eleven-thousand-word book, and the editor he chose also formatted the book and helped with his website
• Use all ten categories on both editions and launch through existing relationships: foreword by Morris plus support from his agent Facebook groups drove the book to number one in two categories within about three weeks
• Lead with a system and honesty rather than guru claims: May positions himself as a working agent sharing what helped him, and says persistence and consistency matter more than expecting a first book to succeed

Episode details: published September 8, 2017 · 34:08 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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