Ep. 320: How Can I Sell Books Online Directly to My Customers? w/ Django De Gree II

[00:00:00] So what I thought was, if we could empower the author, get money in their hands faster, help them understand the data and make sense of how to actually connect with their readers, then maybe there could be more author success and less of a focus on like, it's just about getting

[00:00:13] the book out. Welcome to Hustle in Faith. This podcast is dedicated to helping women who want to analyze, apply, and amplify their God-given gifts. We accomplish this by discussing topics

[00:00:39] such as business, self-improvement, health and beauty, and my random thoughts about life from a Christian perspective. I'm your host, Latasha Johnson. Django De Gree is a CEO and co-founder of Focus on Words, an independent bookstore and publishing platform that helps authors and publishers succeed through high royalties, marketing tools, reader data, and sales insights. He's also an independent author himself, best known for his book, I Hope You Wake Up. With a background in tech and

[00:01:07] publishing, Django is passionate about building a more transparent, empowering future for creatives. Welcome to the show, Django. Thank you so much for having me. Yes, yes. So why don't you tell the audience about yourself? Yeah, my name is Django De Gree. I am an author. I have my book here, I Hope You Wake Up. And then I'm also the co-founder and CEO of Focus on Words, and we are focused on helping authors sell more books and keep more money, and we make sure to pay them faster so that we can all

[00:01:36] have success. And that is what drew me to you because I, my goodness, because I also recently released a book, How to Live an Extraordinary Life with or Without Mr. Right. And I heard, I saw you advertising and I thought, ooh, the whole concept was very interesting to me. So why do you think, what are the biggest flaws in the traditional publishing industry space?

[00:02:04] Hmm. Well, I always like to preface it, all systems that exist work for someone. So like, we wouldn't have made it a system if it wasn't working for someone. Now, what I learned when I got into the book industry was as I was writing my book is that 90% of books never sell more than 250 copies, that the majority of books never recoup their investment, that authors, especially traditionally published authors, you know, may get, let's say, even on the highest side of $40,000 upfront money for

[00:02:32] the book. I can't think of the word for some reason right now, but then that 40K has to kind of survive them for two years sometimes because there's a whole time period where you get paid. And so what I started learning was as authors, you're expected to drive the sale of your book once it's beyond the bookstore, which is typically what happens. And in turn, you're typically not making enough money to actually do that effectively. So we could blame the author and say, you could do better. But at the same time, if you're making a dollar to $3 a book, what kind of ad structure can you run

[00:03:01] where the customer acquisition cost needs to be less than a dollar? Like I can't do that. I know I can't do that. So how do you do that with the book? So what I thought was, if we could empower the author, get money in their hands faster, help them understand the data and make sense of how to actually connect with their readers, then maybe there could be more author success and less of a focus on like, it's just about getting the book out. You know, it's not, you're not going to make money on this. I was like, well, sure you can. It's $150 billion industry. Someone's making money. It's just

[00:03:28] author typically. So that was our goal. I love that so much. And it's, you, you mentioned this a little bit earlier in your comment, the advance, so many folks focus on the advance, right? And so I love the fact that you have thought to put the power back into the author, because I feel like so many of the, and I'm not trying to knock the traditional published

[00:03:53] publishing space in any way, shape or form, but a lot of it is very heavily geared and skewed towards them making the profit and not necessarily the author, in my opinion. So, you know, many authors struggle to get past that traditional publishing gatekeeping, right? So how does self-publishing give them more control over their work and audience? Well, let's just take a step back with, with the traditional publisher, you know, 50% of traditional publishers don't make it past three

[00:04:23] years. And so publishers in a weird way are making their own gamble on whether or not they think a book is going to have success. And a lot of books don't. So I can understand, hey, I put the money up front. I want to make money on it. It's, it's a, it's a give and take where the author doesn't have to worry so much about some of the harder parts for people who are first time authors, like, you know, making sure your book is structured well, or having a good cover and all of these other things. But for the authors, when you self-publish, you do give yourself the power to actually be able to connect directly with

[00:04:51] your reader, to have a little bit more ownership of things that you really believe in for your book, because a publisher will have sometimes more creative rights in how your book goes out based on the best practices that they believe in. But self-publishing still fundamentally has the same challenge where you're not connected with your readers. If you're selling on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Books Million or any independent bookstore, you're typically, you're typically divorced from the reader. And that's where

[00:05:17] we've been just sort of taken on this, this role of what if the author could sell their book, their book directly to their reader and actually understand who their reader is so that you can continue to connect with them, to be able to grow with them, to be able to understand where they're coming from. Like that's typically the hardest thing. Like if you're traditionally published, you're super divorced from that. If you are self-published, you can kind of get a little bit closer to that in some cases. And sometimes you can make a little bit more money than you might being

[00:05:45] traditionally published. But again, it's like that give and take of like, how do I actually learn who my reader is, where they are, and how I can connect with them and grow with them so that, you know, my second book or third book, I can reach back out to those same people. And I think that's so important. So my background is actually in market research. So as a data nerd, having the ability to have that, the ability to actually analyze that, I think that's what really

[00:06:11] drew me towards learning more about you because that is something that's kind of missing. I have yet to really see anyone attack that. And I thought that was very out of the box. I like that. That's what drew me to wanting to learn more about you. And so, you know, some people still have this kind of outdated mindset, if you will, in terms of thinking that self-published books

[00:06:38] are of lower quality. So how has that perception changed over the years? And what can self-published authors do to ensure that their books compete just as, you know, as fairly as the traditionally published ones? I think something to highlight is that a traditional publisher has created books in the past. And honestly, it's one of the biggest value adds that they can have. They understand the norm

[00:07:07] for the, for the books, the industry you're in. Like I think about, you know, the difference between a, like, you can look at these two books. Like this is one of the books that we distribute, Wrestling Dreams, and I Hope You Wake Up My Spirituality Book. Like these two covers are not the same, but they're, but they're good for what their market is expecting. So like working with a publisher who actually understands like what the market expects is very helpful because you may hire someone who's the wrong type of cover artist and they make a cover that doesn't quite translate, doesn't use

[00:07:37] the right colors, doesn't do like certain things. So I can say without a shadow of a doubt that typically that is the big value add of having a traditional publisher help you publish your book. But there's so many people out there who, if you are willing to spend a little bit of money that can help you make sure that your book is structured correctly, that you have print ready files that are your own, that you, um, you know, are using the right colors and asking the questions about evoking a certain emotion when a person walks by. So like a self publisher, if you're self publishing a book,

[00:08:06] I think sometimes self publishers will skimp on spending any money on like the actual process of making sure that the book is right is looks a certain way. And so I think you can do that, but it does require you to do that piece that you're giving up when you become traditionally published, which is to work with someone who has probably created books within that space. And so like I spent over a thousand dollars kind of getting everything together for my book. And I think, you know, it translated well, but all those people I hired, I had to source, I had to spend time with, as opposed to if I had been traditionally published,

[00:08:36] I could have just said, Hey, here's my book. I've written it, you know, edit it, give me the cover. And then I can trust, you know, hopefully that this, this company would do it for me. So, you know, it's like a varying degree of difficulty where maybe there's more variability for the author because Hey, I could get it wrong, but for the publisher, typically, you know, they're tried and true. That's why they're even in business in the first place. That's the hope at least. So, yeah, I guess I'm a little biased on that. I, I, I feel if you're going to go the

[00:09:01] self publishing route, put the money, spend the money. It's well worth it. I did the exact same thing. It's well worth it. And plus it's an extension of who you are because it, in the event that you want to further leverage that book to build authority for your brand, you know, I I'm always thinking ahead. So I, that's something you want to keep in mind, you know, I agree with that. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:27] So how does focus on words assist independent authors in creating personalized e-commerce sites to sell their books directly to readers? Yeah. So with focus on words, we actually believe that the author is our customer, not the reader. So we give all of the information of the people who are purchasing books on our platform to the reader. So we are launching a full online store with all

[00:09:53] the profiles that our authors have created. So there are over 700 authors on the platform now. And when you sell a book, we give you an 85 to 90% royalty within 72 hours. The reason we do this is that we know you're driving the sale. Like I heard Barnes and Noble at any event say, when you are in our store, we need you to drive the sale as an independent author. And in my mind, I was like, okay, well, if you have to drive the wholesale to get the sale, that means that

[00:10:17] the person who came to our site or came to your site within our store is there for you, not for us. And so that's why we made it in a way that drives directly to the customer. And so you can use the platform for completely free. It'll be, if you decide to sell with us, we pay an 85% royalty. And then if you go to the paid version, we give you a 90% royalty, but then we can also give you like attribution of the sale because we're passing that information along. So we can say,

[00:10:43] hey, it was this ad that did really well. It was this event that you did, this QR code that you used that is actually the thing selling. And then you can double down on that where you typically can't do that when you're using Amazon or any of the others, because you just don't know who bought. So you can't reach out to that person and say, hey, how did you find my book? It's actually our way of, we think, winning with the author. Because if you sell a million books, we sold a million books. And that's a winner. Yeah, very, very true. Okay. So the nerd in me is like, okay, so what does the segmentation look

[00:11:12] like? So is it just... Sorry. Can you go into that a little bit or is that... Yeah. And you're talking about the segmentation of the marketing? Yeah. So the segmentation of the marketing, but also the ability for the author to... Will the author be able to tag like this was the particular promo that did this? How are you doing that? So typically if you run an ad, a lot of people, I mean, to go all the way back to marketing,

[00:11:40] when you're running an ad, typically like Facebook, Meta, Google, they'll say to add a pixel to your site so that you can actually understand attribution of an ad because the pixel carries where the person came from, what they clicked on, if they're willing to share the data, like if they're willing to share the cookies. So if we are working with you and running ads with you, so we put together the ad with you and now it's your $100, $200, $300 that were spent, we have the pixels on all of the sites so

[00:12:07] we can actually see the attribution of where people are coming from and where they're going. So if you run the ad with us, because we're not hiding it behind a wall, we'll be able to come back to you with the plan that we put together and say, hey, we can definitively see that this, let's say, retargeted ad was the reason that this person purchased because that's how you get attribution when you're doing a sale to your website. You can actually see the click-through data, you can see where the person came from, sometimes what devices they were using. I mean,

[00:12:34] it's a lot of data that just is typically hidden behind Amazon or anywhere else because they're not... They'll tell you like, hey, someone clicked through, but most times you're not necessarily going to get the attribution of which ad specifically did the sale because at that point it breaks off because that's where they actually keep the data behind the wall. So we're keeping that open for the authors. That's amazing. So I've got a couple of follow-up questions. I know

[00:12:59] other folks are going to be interested in this as well. So can you share a little bit more about the different differences within the plans? And also does the author, how does the fulfillment work? I know a lot of folks are very into that. Not everyone wants to have a stack full of books in their house. So... So we... Just to give you background, we've been building this with authors for almost a year. A lot of people have been like, okay, where is this coming from? It's like, we've been doing it for

[00:13:26] over a year, building things out with our partners. So for the last year, we've been sitting down with authors, building out the entire platform, making sure it was best for them. So what we realized was, fulfillment is one of the more complex things. And that's why Amazon is so amazing. They do fulfillment probably better than almost anyone, them and Ingram. So what we did is when it comes to print, we have a number of print partners because it all depends upon what kind of book you

[00:13:47] have. If you have a children's book compared to a young adult book, personal development, spirituality, hardcover, paperback. I mean, there's all these different versions and different printers do better jobs at different things, whether it's color, black and white, whatever. Whether you're doing offset printing or digital printing. So we didn't want to just say, hey, you only have this one printer where you can do print on demand. We have four partners that

[00:14:13] we're working with. And so that's how we do the actual physical books. So you can... We meet with you. We find out all the information about your book, size, how many pages, what kind of pound paper you want, whether it's color or black and white on the inside. And then we give you the best price we can find. If it works, awesome. If it doesn't, you want to use Ingram or anywhere else, you can do that. And then when a book is purchased on our platform, then awesome. We will either do the print

[00:14:38] on demand ourselves or you can do the fulfillment yourself. And then if it's an ebook or audio book, we're currently using BookFunnel, but we are building a platform to help send ebooks and audio books directly to the reader so that they can use them on the platform that they want to use it. And yeah, it's complete. Our goal is to just be infinitely flexible for authors so that whatever it is that you need to do, whatever kind of book you have, we can support you through that process. I love that. And another follow-up question regarding that, a lot of authors, myself included,

[00:15:08] want to have a copy of an author's proof, if you will. So is there the ability... I know you said you work with various printers, but is that built into the platform or is that something... How would you go about requesting that? Yeah. So we just, we literally, when we go through the whole process, give you the pricing, how many books would you want to print? And then we send in the print ready files and then they send the proof. So like we get a proof on every book that someone is going

[00:15:33] to do before we actually send it out. Yeah. So... Okay. So the author themselves can look at the proof too, right? No, we send the proof to them. So like at the end of the day, like if I get a proof and I'm like, oh, I think it's great. And then the author says, I think it's terrible. It doesn't matter what I think. So we send the proof to the author. We don't take the proof, let them get it and say, hey, I like it. I don't like it. I mean, we talk to the printer, if something's offset or, you know, like, you know, the sleeve of the cover is off or something, that's a pure, like, hey, that just

[00:16:02] needs to be fixed. But, you know, sometimes there's coloration differences. Sometimes there's, you know, font differences once you see it in the book that I don't know, maybe you as the author had a vision for your book that we didn't know. So we make sure you have the proof and you say, yes, this is good. And then we start printing. And now a word from our sponsor. Hey ladies, I just wanted to share my new book, How to Live an Extraordinary Life with or Without Mr. Right. I'm dismantling harmful stereotypes and empowering women to see

[00:16:32] that singlehood isn't something that you have to survive. It's a place to thrive. Through Biblical Wisdom in Real Talk, this book is going to answer key questions such as, what does the Bible actually say about singleness? And how can I reject society's misguided views and embrace God's plan for my life? So if you've ever asked yourself these questions or wondered if something was missing in your life,

[00:16:58] this is the book for you. It's time to stop waiting and start living. Your life isn't on hold. It's happening right now. Grab your copy today in audio or paperback format at www.withorwithoutmrright.com. Back to the show. I love that. I love that. So I'm curious too, a lot of authors out there

[00:17:26] are starting to publish under their own company, if you will, like they're setting up their own company. So I feel like I remember when I was looking on the platform, there was an opportunity to actually put like where, oh. Where the book was published. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Which I thought was interesting. If you have your own company, are you able to do that? Because I guess when I looked at it

[00:17:53] at the time, it looked like it was preset. Yeah, it's preset, but we're going to, so we needed to add a tool tip. We still need to do this. That's not what I'm wondering. Okay. Okay. If you have your own company, you can email us and we will add you to the list. The reason we don't make it public is like, let's say for instance, just like we'll use Penguin Random House. If someone put in Penguin, then someone else put in Penguin Random House, then someone misspelled Penguin, then now we have three different versions of it. So we typically, so like up to this point,

[00:18:21] we've met with, we have offered every author a meeting. So if you say, hey, I'd like to meet, I'd like to discuss, we're here for you. We'll do it. We'll sit down. If your publisher is not there, you can email us. We're going to automate that eventually. But the biggest issue with automating out of the gate for any company is that you can't think of every variable. So like if we just automated and said, hey, you can make your own publisher, because that would have been the easy thing to do. We could have like 30 variations of Macmillan because no one knows how to spell it.

[00:18:48] Or Simon & Schuster, S&S, S&S, S with the symbol S, you know, S-N-S. We like, then now I've got to do data cleanup because- Oh, I totally get it. Trust me. That's why we, that's why it was templatized, but we allow for the authors to reach out. The other thing is, is we do offer full distribution for authors. So if you want it to be on Barnes & Noble and Books A Million and all the others, we can help you with that. Granted, Ingram can do it. KDP can do it. Anyone can do it. So it's not a specialized thing.

[00:19:15] But if you do that, you can be hosted as the imprint for that. And we obviously handle everything for your royalties and everything else. So we're just here to support wherever you need us. And we wanted to build the most flexible platform possible. It sounds absolutely like a dream. And I truly want this to take off for you. And I, not just for you, but for selfish reasons for myself and all the other authors out there. Because when I heard about your ability to pay royalties faster, I'm like, wait, what?

[00:19:44] Like, you don't have to wait for, who knows, till eternity? Because that's what it feels like sometimes. Yeah, 100%. I mean, look, I under, again, to backtrack on the book industry, I can slander the industry on how things end up working. But what I've realized is like, the book industry is in a weird space. Like, if I get my books into a bookstore, that bookstore is not necessarily like just super wildly successful, crushing it every single day, you know, blowing their numbers

[00:20:11] out every month. So they're trying to mitigate the chaos of choosing to bring on books. And so if they're going to bring on these books, and they don't sell well, it would be great to be able to return the books, which I understand why they do that. And so I understand why then there's a six month sort of hold on how many books are going to come back. And then I also understand as a publisher, you don't want to end up in the negative. So I need to wait three to six months before I pay you as a traditional publisher, because I need to make sure I don't put you in the negative. So now I'm asking you to give me money back. So I completely understand that concept. That's why we

[00:20:41] said, Hey, we're not going to necessarily just be driving people here to make impulse purchases, because they might return it. We're not going to buy your books at a 50% discount. Instead, we'll help sourcer your book with you, and then just give you all the money so that you're handling the print. Like, I just think it's the other side of the model that potentially could work for certain authors. I love that. I love that. So again, trying to kind of get back to this particular question regarding the traditional publishers. Traditional publishers typically take a larger

[00:21:11] percentage of the sales. So while platforms like Focus on Words allows authors to keep 90%, why is it so important for authors to retain control over their earnings and reader data? Especially that last part. I think, so I think that it's a balance. Like some authors I've met have no interest in going through the process of understanding their data and doing that work. And if you're a super hands-off author,

[00:21:37] I think you should go publisher. And in that case, I think as a publisher, you should maximize the earnings that you get because you are in charge of basically trying to make this book a book that people buy. But if you are like me, or it sounds like you, where you're like, I want to get to know my reader. I want to meet them. I want to build my brand. I want to sell a second book. I want to get out there and do it. If that's the choice that you're making for your business, which a book is a business, then you should self-publish it in that case. Because owning that data and knowing that data is

[00:22:05] what empowers you to do the next thing. Like I was talking to someone the other day about this. Most children's books are bought as gifts or like, you know, you're a first-time parent and you're buying these books that are going to be in your house. It's like a very specific use case for where you can sell the book. Understanding that requires a certain type of outreach and marketing, as opposed to like my personal development book, which is rarely ever impulse purchased. Like, because like you have to think about, does this person actually understand me? Do I agree

[00:22:31] with their beliefs? You know, you're probably going to follow me and then see my posts. And then eventually one of those posts or podcasts or something I'm on is when you buy the book, as opposed to like a fantasy book. So like knowing who's buying, getting an idea of like the demographic, where they're buying from, why they're buying are all things that can help you better understand how to get in front of the reader in the future. Cause you know, now you're getting a better concept of that and can build on that as opposed to, you know, some authors have, I've talked to some authors

[00:22:59] and they're like, I want you to make me a bestseller. I don't want to do anything. Here's my headshot. And I'm just like, okay. And then you're like, I want a million dollars. Like what? Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's like, okay, maybe, but this is just going to require money because like I can't just generate content for you. So, you know, there, I've met some people who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads to get to a certain point where then you're just making money on how many people know about your book. Like that's just straight ad spend. It is possible to

[00:23:27] spend your way into potentially, I don't know, being a bestseller or something, but it's not easy. It takes a lot of money. So that's why I say like, if you want to write a book, you should, I mean, I would hope you would care to connect with your readers. And if you can, that'd be awesome. But if you don't want to, I mean, everyone's different than I think, Hey, try to find a publisher who can help you with that process. That's maybe very specialized. Um, that can get you into like a store that like specifically could probably sell your book really well because the readers there and things,

[00:23:53] you know, so that's just kind of how I see it. Yeah. Well, I think, I think you're going to find out there's probably a lot more nerds that are similar to us. So that really want to connect with their readers because I feel like, and it may be, I'm just talking out of turn when I say this, but I feel like if you have taken that step to go the self-publishing route, that you're probably kind of thinking about the future, about leveraging that for something else. And if not, I, I hope that

[00:24:22] I just planted the seed for you to think that because that's a lot of work, right? A lot of work and time and money that you spend into that. And I think that's something you should explore. So, uh, I think your platform is not saying, I think your platform is going to do an amazing job trying to, you know, position folks in the ability to see that. So how do the AI powered analytics

[00:24:45] offered by focus on words, optimize book sales and enhance authors understanding of their market performance? Yeah. So I would take a step back and say the analytics themselves are not necessarily AI generated as much as they are just capturing the data about the people who are coming to your site. So like when you're looking at your dashboard, you can see how many people have come to your site, where they've come from, what they've clicked on and like what the sources. So like,

[00:25:14] was it TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, whatever the case is, right? When you have that data, and then you also have sales data, I could sit there and try to roll through all this data personally and try to find what are like the intersections of value. Like, oh, okay. So from everything I've seen and everything I know about your book and everything I know about you, these are the things we should double down on. From that point, the AI book marketer is, comes in handy where for an author who doesn't understand click-through data,

[00:25:42] they can ask questions and be like, hey, my click-through data says this, what does this mean? And that gives you a better understanding. Like I can calculate my customer acquisition costs by knowing that I sold 50 books and it costs $100 to get them. So my customer acquisition cost is like $2, right? The AI can also get an understanding of, okay, Django as a black author who went to Lynchburg College, who is a part of these programs and as a CEO who wrote this book called, I hope you wake up. That's about these things. When you put all that information in, that can at

[00:26:11] least help us like get to a starting point of like, hey, potentially you could go back to school, to your school, do a speaking engagement, talking about your company while also pivoting to talk about your book. Like that's a way I could sell my book that maybe otherwise isn't available to another person who wrote the same book. It could be, you know, as a co-founder, you could, you know, sponsor an event for founders and in Charlotte, North Carolina, that could help you do XYZ. As you also look at like what kind of people have purchased your book. Like that's the thing AI can

[00:26:40] do that. Like it would just take me so long to do. If I were to try to comb through all the aspects about a person, all the aspects about their book, all the aspects about like their click-through data and who's purchased and what ads have worked. Like that's what I think, like I know that a lot of people are afraid of AI and what it means for books, but it can help us better understand things that otherwise it would just take us so long or we just wouldn't even be able to see the connections that are available. So we take that second part of the AI and taking the data that you have and

[00:27:06] taking the things about you and your book and all the other stuff and seeing like, where are the intersections where you potentially could sell your book in a way that no one else could, you know, that like you as a individual person with your individual book might be able to just do something that no one else could do. You know, I think that's like the coolest part about the AI. Cause I, you know, I spent all this time thinking about all these ideas for my book. And then I plugged all the information about my book into the AI and plugged in things about myself. And then out of it, I'm like, oh my God, this is such a great idea. I would have,

[00:27:34] I don't know if I ever would have come up with this, you know? So that's how we think about it. Super, super interesting. I love that. I love that. So I know you've got a lot going on. You're very ambitious. You got a lot of goals, but if you had to choose one word to represent your goals for this year, what would it be and why? I ask all of my guests this.

[00:27:56] Um, I would actually, so it's, it's kind of like a weird one. It's, I would just say love. So like I, for my goals of like everything that we do, whatever success that we have, like, I want to love what we're doing. Like it isn't enough to just have thousands of authors or, you know, millions of dollars made. Like I, like there is a underlying passion for everything, but I truly love what we're doing and what we're doing. So I want like the love of what

[00:28:23] we're doing and the, the love that I have for the authors to just like grow. Like I want to really, I guess, like entrench myself with them as we have success. And I think if just like the love of books, the love of authors is the centerpiece to like our, our goals, like to fall deeper in love with what we're doing. I think that's where we're going to have success. Cause that's why I think we came up with that. Why I even came up with this with my co-founder. It was like, we have such a deep love for books that rather than thinking like how much money can we make or how much

[00:28:53] how many books can we sell? I was like, how can I help these people that I love already? Or how can I find more books that I love? So if we, at the end, if I, at the end of this year, I'm even more in love with books. I know that we are going to have, and more in love with authors and the platform. I know that we're going to have so much success. And that's just by default. If I start hating it, then, you know, if we had a million users and I hated the app now, I would say, I don't know that we're headed in the right direction, but I just feel like my love for this whole platform and authors is just getting deeper and deeper. So I just want to, I just want

[00:29:23] to fall more in love with the whole process and the platform. And I love that answer. I like that. I love that so much. I love that. So last but not least with AI direct to reader sales and platforms like focus on words, where do you see the future of book publishing heading?

[00:29:47] So I think, I think that books have this incredible ability to like curate worlds for communities, whether it's personal development, children's, you know, fiction, you know, romance novels and things like that. And I think that like people have tried to treat books like another e-commerce product. And it's just not, it's not like selling cups. Like every book individually is its own world

[00:30:12] curated by someone who connects with a very specific group of people in a way that no one else could or with anyone more than anyone else could. And so I see the possibility for authors to rather than being boxed into like, Hey, here's how we market books, like the ability for authors to actually connect in just such a deeper way with all of their readers, because it's now sort of decentralized, right? TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Gumroads, Substack, there's all these ways

[00:30:40] for me to connect with you beyond the book. And then the book then becomes like the secondary piece. So I see like this world where we still have bookstores, we still have all of these things. But there's a way for authors and the readers to actually connect in a deeper, like path than ever. Like I could, like I could only imagine a world where like when C.S. Lewis, Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe was just like the most banging book ever, if C.S. Lewis could have been connecting with people. The ability for authors to actually be able to connect with readers and grow allows for

[00:31:06] us to even create deeper worlds and even better books because now we're even more connected. Like I'm finding this path as I'm writing my second book that I keep connecting with people and talking to people who have read my first book that are giving me perspectives I've never had before. And I'm like, at what point do I stop pulling information in for the second book? Because like if I had, if I had finished it a week ago, I wouldn't have had this perspective that has like opened my eyes to another part of the book that I want to write. So I see like this world with AI and

[00:31:33] all these other things that more books can become available and like more people can write books faster. But also there's like this crowdsourcing of information and crowdsourcing of books where people can just discover so many diverse books, authors, people. And it's just going to be, I just think it's going to be so beautiful how we'll be able to connect in that way. Because there's no more like traditional gatekeepers where it's like, okay, well, if you can't get a publisher or if you don't know someone who has a printing press, you can't get your book done.

[00:32:02] I love that. I agree. I wholeheartedly agree. And, you know, I was looking at statistics. It is very, very difficult, especially for like authors of color to even break into that typical. I mean, again, numbers nerd. So looking at the statistics, it's even more like disappointing, frustrating, but like you've got this self-publishing option and it's just beautiful. So I love that so much. I love it.

[00:32:33] A stat, something I tell people all the time, like if you have a marketing background and you try to talk about the book industry in the same way you talk about others, there is no other industry where the first product that was ever invented when the product sort of started still is the number one selling product. So like when the Model T is the first product that was ever created for cars, when Elon created the Model S, he's not actually still competing with the Model T. That's done.

[00:32:59] We don't drive those books. Those cars are now out of production. You're not competing with them. In books, the number one bestselling book year over year is still the Bible. And that was the first book ever created. You think about it, like I'm competing against Shakespeare, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, people who are not even alive. You can buy those books in droves also at discounts that are ridiculous and overnight shipped from Amazon. So I'm in competition with 20 plus million books all the

[00:33:27] time and anyone could buy any book. It's also completely available. It's not like there's a price barrier between my book in the Bible or my book and Shakespeare's books. So you're in this weird world of like technically infinite competition, but also infinite demand. Because technically, if I can create a world that's beautiful enough, I could sell a million books because it's not like a car where there's only one and a half in a household and you're like, we're not buying another car now that we bought a car. Anyone could buy your book if you give a good enough reason for them to

[00:33:53] buy it. So like books are in this really weird space where like your curve of demand can be zero and your curve could become a million tomorrow. And there's the ability to ramp up production to any amount. So that's where I try to tell people like, it's really about us finding where those people are, giving them a reason to buy the book because there isn't really technically that same barrier that you have everywhere else. But in a weird way, you're like strangely in competition with every book that's ever existed. It's like the, it's a thing that boggles my mind all the time when I think about it,

[00:34:22] like the concept of books and that they're infinitely available. So it's like, it's just, I think about it all the time. Like when I'm talking to authors and they're like, oh, you know, God, you know, this book is so much better than mine or whatever. It's like, is it? Who says you wrote it? I mean, who, there's someone out there who's probably just like you. That's like, if only I had this book, you just got to find them. That's so true. Jango, I feel like I can talk to you all day,

[00:34:48] mainly because of the nerdy aspect of, I'm like itching about the analytics part. So I mean, the whole concept in general, but I feel like I could talk to you all day, but I know that I have benefited from our conversation and the audience has as well. In the event that folks want to connect with you, how can they go about doing so? So you can email me at Jango at focusonwords.com, which I'll give you, that'll be in like the description, but also we had the name change, but my personal website is

[00:35:17] wroteby.me forward slash Jango. So that's where all my links are. That's where my books are. And I'll add that. And again, it always updates. So the podcast will be here. Everything will be there. So feel free to reach out to me. I'm more than accessible. I try to meet with every author that I can and try to just be as supportive as I can for everybody's journey. Well, Jango, I have thoroughly, thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. And I really appreciate you coming onto the show and opening up

[00:35:43] a lot of opportunities for authors that they might not have had. So I, you know, me personally speaking, thank you. And then, you know, I know our audience is going to benefit from all the gyms that you've shared. So thanks once again. Thank you so much for having me. I genuinely enjoyed this. I feel like I could talk to you forever as well. Yeah.

[00:36:08] Thanks so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoy listening to Hustle and Faith and would like to support the show, please consider sharing it with your friends, rate or leave a review, donate or make a purchase at our shop starring you crew. Remember, if you're everything to everyone, you risk being no one. You never know who you will inspire. See you in the next episode.