The 351 Steps to Publishing Your Book by Ben Gioia
Welcome to the Book Brand Business Podcast, where we dive deep into all things related to publishing, branding, and building a successful business around your book. I'm your host, Ben Gioia, and in today's episode titled "The 351 Steps to Publishing Your Book," we'll be exploring everything you need to know to become a published author and recognized thought leader in your niche.
Join me as we discuss how to get your book to sell on autopilot and make a lasting impact with your message. Whether you've always dreamed of writing a book or you're in the process of bringing your ideas to life, this episode is for you.
As a four-time bestselling author, podcast host, and international radio show host, I've helped thousands of leaders and game changers around the world achieve their publishing goals. In just 5 weeks, I've seen authors write great books, secure 5-figure speaking fees, and attract 6-figure consulting opportunities — sometimes even before finishing their books.
In this episode, I'll be sharing my insights and experiences in the publishing world, including the importance of nontraditional, self-publishing methods. While there may be misconceptions about self-publishing, I'll explain why it can often be the best route for authors looking for maximum control and impact.
We'll also delve into the 351 steps involved in publishing your book, covering everything from writing and layout to cover design and ebook formatting. I'll provide practical tips and advice to help you navigate these steps with ease and professionalism, ensuring that your book stands out and attracts the attention it deserves.
So, if you're ready to take your book publishing journey to the next level and establish yourself as an expert in your field, join me as we explore the 351 steps to publishing success. Let's dive in!
Transcript
Hey. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening wherever you are in the world. Once again, good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you are in the world because we are a global human family. It's Ben Joya from influence with a heart .com. I'm super happy that you are here today, for the 351 steps to publishing your book right? So this is everything you need to do to become a published author and recognized thought leader in your niche or niche, depending on how you say that, and how to get your book to sell on autopilot. So, again, this is the 351 steps publishing your book DIY. Super glad you're here today. Thank you for being in the mix.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:And I wanna thank you first and foremost, for caring enough about your business and the impact you wanna make to actually get your book done. Right, there's a lot of people who have the dream. There's a lot of people who want to write the book, get the book done, bring their book to the world, and make an impact with their message. And most people don't do it. Right? This is not a criticism of most people by any means. It's just a fact of life and state of affairs in the world just now. So thank you for being here and caring about it, because you don't have to die with regrets. Right? I was a hospice volunteer for several years, and, one of the biggest things, right, is people dying with regrets.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:So you might end up regretting something else, but at least you don't have to regret not getting your book done. So real quick, if we haven't met before and also, to give a you folks an opportunity to still join us as they're transitioning from their last meeting. So it's Ben Joy. I'm a four 4 time best selling author, podcast, and international radio show host. My teachings are used by more than 80,000 leaders and game changers around the world. I help folks write great books in as little as 5 weeks, enjoy 5 figure speaking fees, and attract 6 figure consulting. And that's often and even before publishing, sometimes even before finishing the book. Right? So I've done some cool things.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:Really grateful four that I've trained hundreds of millionaires at Stanford University, helped a Fortune 100 company create an empathy video game, and helped launch the world's largest magazine, AARP. It might I'm not sure if it's still the largest, but it definitely was at that time and if you're in the United States, you know, AARP will find you sooner or later. And the last thing which I, I'm grateful to share as well that I won a patient services award from the ALS Association, so that's Lou Gehrig's disease, for creating their 1st mindfulness program back when almost nobody knew the world mind the word mindfulness. So, again, thank you so much for being here. And the things that I'm sharing is terms of my credentials are not to impress you. Right? To but to impress upon you that what I do, helps people and the purse the people I work with, are making an impact with their message. Right? These are the kind of people that I love helping, and, you know, it's really an honor and a pleasure to be able to do this work and people get amazing kinds of outcomes, and help transform the world. Right? Because the world lead needs leaders like never before, and a book is a great way to help establish or further your leadership, your thought leadership, and yourself as an expert in your space.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:So as you heard, if you joined at the beginning or had responded to this invite, these are the 351 steps to publishing your book. Right, and you might be wondering, hey, Ben. How are we gonna talk about 351 steps, you know, in the next 15 minutes or so? I'll show you in just a moment. But remember that bringing your book into the world today is a little bit different or a lot of bit different than ever before. Right? A lot of us have grown up with the idea of traditional publishing, and we have to get a an agent and be chosen by a traditional publisher to get our books out there. And that is certainly a path that we can take, that you can take. But I strongly recommend, right, if you're like me or like us, people on this call, people that you know, people that I know, right, the most benefit that we're gonna get for our books comes I'm nontraditional publishing, meaning self publishing. Right? And you might have that pause and go, what do you mean self publishing? Right, there's terrible self published books out there.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:You're absolutely right. There are terrible self published books out there. Right? But professional self publishing, 9 times out of 10, or I would even say 99 times out of a 100 is the way to go for your book. Right, but if you're thinking about doing it yourself, you know, there are 351 steps to doing it. Depending who you're talking to, there might be, like, 400 or 700 steps to doing it. Right? The first one being, you know, the interior layout of your book. Well, actually, the very, very first one is to write the freaking book. Right? You can't publish a book if you don't write it or have it ghostwritten.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:I would encourage that you write the book for yourself or work for a ghostwriter work with a ghostwriter who is going to really understand what your book is about. Right? Don't give this away. Right, don't rely on somebody else to bring forth your message in the way you want to. Don't rely on artificial intelligence to bring forth your message in the way you want to. Right? Those tools, those people can help you, of course, right, but they are not the answer. Right, so you commit to getting getting the book done, you get the book done. Right? And then the first thing you wanna do is lay out the interior of the book. Right, and if you dig deep and look at all the things you need to do to lay out the interior of a book, right, and just talking about the print book at the moment, we haven't even gotten into digital yet.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:You know, there's, like, 70 steps to take. Okay? And then you gotta get your cover done. Right, and you don't wanna design your cover because if you're like most people, right, your cover is gonna look terrible. No offense to you, no offense to me, but your cover is gonna look terrible because most people don't know how to design and especially for book covers that are compelling. Right, because if you remember, your book cover is not only going to be seen in print in, hopefully, many people's hands, but a lot of times, your book cover is gonna show up really small on somebody's phone or on their tablet or their computer, so you wanna make sure you're designing that cover effectively or getting it designed effectively. Right? And, you know, to design a cover effectively, you know, there's, like, 50 steps in doing that. Right? And I'm intentionally not digging into the 50 steps because of our limited time and because what I'm gonna tell you after I tell you the big picture steps. Okay? From there, you get into the ebook design.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:Right? The Kindle design. Right? You have to do all the formatting for the book and up upload it the right way to Amazon and, you know, the other book, booksellers that you're using. Right, there's all sorts of formatting and things to be aware of, and your print book is not gonna operate in the same way that your ebook is gonna operate. Right? Because you wanna make sure that no matter how anybody is consuming your book, right, in print, digitally, right, that it's gonna look good no matter what. Like, you wanna look professional because, hey, you're a professional. Right? And you wanna be able to attract people with your book I opened the door to conversations and possibilities and greater impact. Thanks to what you're doing. Right? So all the things to design the ebook the right way and format the book the right way.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:And then you get into the actual publishing of the book. Right, the ISBN number, you know, the different platforms, the softcover, the hardcover, all of these different, not only design considerations, but, how should I should I call them administrative configurations or metadata configurations? Right, I I said earlier on this presentation, right, that 9 times out of 10, we wanna do self publishing. But, you know, hint, hint, hint. You wanna have a professional do yourself publishing. This is really, really important because of all of these different kinds of steps, and because self publishing means so much more than just publishing your book on Amazon. Right, this is a big thing that people misunderstand, and this is a big reason why people lose all sorts of opportunities with their book. Now, don't get me wrong. Amazon is a great source for selling your book, for making people aware of your book, for running a bestseller campaign, right, like, people like you and me, most of the time, we're going to do a bestseller campaign, on Amazon.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:Right, because when you start looking at doing a bestseller campaign on something like The Wall Street Journal list or USA Today, you know, then you're getting into the investment space of, like, $10,000 just for the book launch. Right? If you're looking at trying to be a New York Times bestseller, you know, then you're looking at more like $50,000 plus. Right? Nothing wrong with that. But 9 times out of 10, you, me, folks like us, we can get the leverage that we need, you know, being, having that moniker, that credibility piece of being a best seller from doing it on Amazon, and it's so much easier, so much more effective. Let me say it like this. It's so much easier on Amazon because we can become a best seller, you can become a best seller simply by following a set of best practices. Right? Having your books book in the right categories, getting the right keywords for your book and then following the actual best practices steps for inviting everybody and their mother to come buy your book on that single day of your bestseller launch. Right, so as I'm laying out these things for you, right, I'm giving you bits and pieces of the 351 steps.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:You might be starting to go, oh my god. This sounds like a lot of stuff. Yeah. This is an incredible amount of stuff. Right? We haven't even gotten into updating your author central page on Amazon, right, or creating a dedicated landing page, a dedicated single website page for your book. Right? Because you don't want people to just go buy your book over on Amazon because you can't capture their email addresses. Right, and you wanna make sure also if you're doing the bestseller campaign and, you know, you're doing it focusing on Amazon, you wanna make sure that if people are coming to buy your book from around the world, that they're gonna go buy your book on their appropriate Amazon page. Right? So the UK, Canada, right, whatever country where that customer is buying, right, you don't wanna send everybody to Amazon US.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:Right? That doesn't work as well because people wanna buy on a website that they're comfortable with, in a currency that they're comfortable with. Right? Right? Really, really important. And So, you know, all the steps for the publishing the ISBN, you know, getting author central in place, right, all of those pieces of the puzzle, I mean, that's a good, you know, 70, 80 more steps. And then we haven't even gotten into distribution. Right? Distribution of your book. Like, did you know, and this is really really cool, did you know that you can make your book available for sale self publishing, you can make your book available for sale in 40,000 places around the world. Right, how cool is that 40,000 places around the world? Like, yes, Amazon, yes, Barnes and Noble, yes, Chapters, yes, Koba, and, you know, 30,339,996 or whatever that other number is. Right? So your book can be available anywhere and everywhere around the world or at least almost.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:Right? But most people don't know this, don't know how to do this, and there are a lot of publishers out there, right, who are like, okay, I'm gonna publish your book. Right? But they don't even know all of these things. Right? So really, really important to I strongly encourage you, work with a professional self publisher. Right? And think bigger picture about your book. Right? This is something that so many authors make a mistake with. Right, because they find their way to a publisher, whether it's a self publisher or even a traditional publisher, and they operate under the the myth and misunderstanding that came to us originally from Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, if any of you remember that. Right, the quote, you know, if you build it, they will come. No way.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:Absolutely not true for most of us most of the time. Right, and I'm not saying that to disappoint you, make you scared, make you sad, but just to help you understand. Right? Unless you have a really big following, a really big email list. Right? The mere active publishing your book is not gonna be what make things makes things happen. Like, yes, you're gonna get credibility. Yes, you're gonna get authority. But if you're using your book as a bridge to make more things happen in your business, right, if you're using your book as a tool to make greater impact to get your message to more and more people, just publishing the book is not gonna make the difference. There's a really interesting, piece of information that I came across recently, contemporary musician Billie Eilish.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:Some of you may be familiar with this person. Right? Billie Eilish has some crazy number of Instagram followers, like 99,000,000. And this is not hyperbole when I say this. Right? 99,000,000 followers, published their book and only 64,000 book sales. Right? Now you and me, 64,000 book sales would be tremendous, right, on the one hand. But if you think in terms of 99,000,000 followers, right, that is a a a pittance, right, compared to the size of the audience. And then if we peel back the layers or open the curtain a little bit, you know, a little bit wider, if you're using a traditional publisher, right, which is what I recommend that you don't do. If you're using a traditional publisher, remember that that publisher and, potentially, the agent that you have to hire to get your book in front of that publisher, those entities, those humans are gonna take something like 90% of the royalties from your book.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [: a: Ben Gioia ("joya") [:Well, why am I gonna write a book anyway? Because there are people who need your book right now. It's really important. There are people who need your message. There are people who need your transformation right now more than any other time in the world. Right? So we go back to the math quiz. How many books do you need to sell to make a $100,000? Right. First part of the answer is, yes. Use a professional self publishing house to take care of all of your needs for something like that.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:And how many books do you have to sell? The answer is 0. Wait. Wait. What? The answer is 0. You can make a $100,000, thanks to your book, by selling 0 books. Why? How? Ben, what are you talking about? Right? Because you use your book to develop relationships with those 1 to 10 to 20 people depending on your business model, that can get you to that $100,000 much, much faster, much more effectively. Right, and when I say all of this and I'm focusing on the money for the moment, it's not all about the money. Right? It's about the impact we can make with our message, and we can make a greater impact with our message by partnering and collaborating with individuals and organizations who can say yes to us.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:Right, 1 person saying yes can open the door to 1,000, if not hundreds of thousands of people, literally. Right, some of you know the story of how I write wrote my 2nd book in 5 weeks. And as a result of that process, I got a 10 month speaking gig with a Fortune 100 company helping them create a video game. Right? Now that all sounds kinda cool. You know, it was kinda cool. It was very cool. More importantly, I was able to get my teachings into the hands of 20,000 people that I wouldn't have been able to access otherwise. Literally, because 2 people said yes to me and hired me to come impact that organization.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [: half of a: Ben Gioia ("joya") [:And as I like to say, some results may vary. That's totally okay. But if you think about it for a second, if a company were to buy a 100 of your books or 50 of your books or if you thought strategically and included 50 or a 100 of your books as part of your speaking fee, or you brought books in as part of the consulting that you're doing for an organization. Right? Think of the impact that you can make in that kind of context, right, where your book suddenly has so much more power and so much more efficacy. Right. Really, really important to help shift shift the mindset around this. Right, so if we go back to our main topic today, right, the 351 steps to publishing your book, right, sure you can do that, but don't do that. That's not a good idea for you to spend the time trying to learn those 350 one steps implement them and then not screw them up.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:Right? This is why you wanna hire a professional. Right? You don't want to deal with your own septic tank. Right? You don't wanna deal with your own plumbing. You don't wanna deal with your own electricity. Hire a professional to do it, to do it right, and to save you, you know, save you from death or stink or making some terrible mistakes, because what you should be doing let me let me let me rephrase that. I used the s word. What I invite you to be doing instead of trying to learn and implement those 351 steps, is to be out there talking to your ideal clients and your ideal strategic partners, about the book you're writing or about the book that you're going to write. Right.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:Here is the gold right here, and this is where so many experts make a mistake is because they're like, hey. I'm an expert. I have great things that help people, and I'm gonna put it in a book. Now that's all well and good. Nothing wrong. Right? I encourage you to do that. But don't just put it in the book and think it's gonna work because it's not gonna work. Right? No offense to you.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:No offense to your content. No offense to your reader, but the most the mostest, bestest thing that you can be doing is using your book, whether it's an idea, whether it's halfway done, whether it's already published, to have conversations with your ideal clients, with your ideal strategic partners, because it makes it so much easier to get on the phone with somebody to have a conversation about a book than it just than just trying to get them on the phone. Right, if you reach out to somebody and you're like, hey. I'd like to ask you some questions about your challenges and stuff. You know, if they say yes, that'll be amazing first off. But very often, they're they're gonna say no because they think you're secretly gonna try to sell them something at the end of the conversation. But if you engage and position the conversation differently, say, hey. I'm writing a book about a topic that we both care about.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:Right? I'd love to get your input and write a great book so I can help my people in the best possible ways. I would love your insight. I would love your perspective. It's so much easier for people to say yes, and you can use that conversation about to about the book to lay the groundwork for a deeper conversation and a relationship that can turn to somebody becoming client, somebody becoming a strategic partner. So to wrap it up here, yes, there are 351 steps, maybe 700 steps to publishing your book right, you know, to getting it out into the world, blah blah blah blah blah. And don't do all of that. Right? Cut to the chase. Right? You deserve to get to the goal, the ongoing goal much faster, the people that you serve deserve to hear from you much sooner, because there are people waiting for you right now.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:And there are some people in the world that the only person that they will be formed deeply transformed by in their lifetime, whether it's their business or life or both is gonna be you. Right? So you have this beautiful responsibility, opportunity, and privilege to go do that with your book, with your message. So go write your book, gosh gosh darn it. Go finish your book, gosh darn it. And if I can help you, please reach out to me. Please message me. You can always email me, inflow pardon me, ben@influencewithaheart.com. You can also we have a fun event coming up little later this year at podcast and book.com, that's the podcast and book road map.
Ben Gioia ("joya") [:Right? So you can we can go deeper into everything I've talked about today. And if you're thinking podcast as well, it's a great opportunity to understand what to do and when and really think in terms of how to create ROI right now. Right? Get a return on your investment long before your book is done, before your podcast is done. And thank you so much for being here. I will catch you again next time. Take good care.
