Crypto Talks

In this episodes we discuss: Importance of the storytelling in marketing What kind of stories could you tell The importance of transparency How to find your differentiator what is a fractional CMO The future of work

In this episode we talk about Importance of the online communities How Appics managed to build such a loyal community Influencer marketing Authenticity online Importance of he cooperation with other partners Future trends of the social media platforms

In this episode we spoke about: Personalisation in marketing Community building How to choose your niche The personality behind tech brands How to get leads from LinkedIn Being real on social media Building and showcasing expertise online

In this episode we spoke about: The importance of the marketing involvement from the start The need for the tech and marketing departments to work closely together The role of the ego of the tech founders How do reach out to potential early adopters in a right way Non linear career paths The value of (real) diversity and tech recruitment Tech startup branding and the importance of building founder personal brand

My today's guest is Andy Foote. Andy is LinkedIn content and brand coach, founder of LinkedInsights.com and creator of FOOTE-NOTES podcast. In this episode we discuss: how much has LinkedIn changed over the years "overnight" success what to do when you're invisible on LinkedIn LinkedIn engagement pods LinkedIn algorithm how to succeed on the LinkedIn platform

In this episode we speak about The value of experience The experience economy Brand and commodities Becoming the story everyone is sharing Experience in marketing

In this episode we speak about - data driven marketing and human stories - importance of personalising content - how one chooses target audience - advertising and promotion - how to find unique angle

In this episode we discuss: Online content creation Personal branding and positioning The 7 Vs framework LinkedIn and its algorithms How to choose the right platform Monetizing your content

In this episode we speak about:   How to build audiences of buyers from scratch  Virtual events  How to adjust your marketing during the COVID 19  How to create a content that builds an audience  Cold emails and their impact on your brand  How do you choose a the right business mentor?  Predictions for post coronavirus period 

Today I spoke with Chris Walker. Chris is the founder and CEO of Refine Labs. Their Revenue Engine Optimization formula helps B2B companies grow revenue, increase pipeline velocity, and lower customer acquisition costs. In this interview talk about - how to start and grow your business - short term focused companies and the power of word of mouth - cold messaging on social and personalization - should you market during the coronavirus crisis - how to re-evaluate and adjust your business for these challenging times

Today I talk with Marc Mawhinney. Marc is "The Coach for Coaches", host of the podcast "Natural Born Coaches", and passionate about helping coaches achieve success. In this interview we discuss about: how Marc grew his audience and business how to pick a niche how much content you should give out for free how ti differentiate from others who offer similar services how to grow engaged Facebook group how did Marc create his brand podcasting and what it can bring to your business If you enjoy the podcast, please help it grow by subscribing and leaving a review!

Today I want to talk to you about something that you may not like to hear. Many people prefer not to tell you this. Many people prefer to pretend this is not the case. But I need to tell you this anyway. So you are able to look at things realistically. So you avoid being disappointed because you had unrealistic expectations. Here is the truth   Building an engaged and loyal audience takes time and loads of content creation. Of course all those who advertise the attractive “have quick results” model pretend that it’s not the case. You get “write a book in a day”, create an online course in a week, grow your brand in a month type of messages all the time. And of course that’s much more exciting than what I said. It sounds so much better than my “it takes time and work and you have to be persistent and patient” story. I get that. I totally understand. But nevertheless, I prefer to tell you the bitter truth than the sugar coated lie. I was walking in the city the other day and went to Covent Garden. Usually there are many different street performances out there - from music to magic tricks and stuff. And since I love watching people I took some time and stuck around for a while. So I ended up seeing how one of the performers, who had the largest crowd gathered around him finished for the day. He said good bye, gathered his last portion of applauses, bowed, packed his stuff and left. Obviously the crowd too, melted out and after few minutes there was no one around. Few minutes later, a slim guy with long hair came and started setting up his mic and took out his guitar. Now it was his turn to start performing. So there was this guy all alone with his guitar and mic standing there. I realized that probably that’s exactly how we look when we are just starting. We have no audience, we have the tools, we have not created anything yet and we get those uncomfortable fear of failure, self doubt and vulnerability of being judged. And the people - in our case the audience, pass by going to watch someone else performing because he already has a big crowd gathered around him therefore he must be good, right? So what happens next. Yup… the guy starts playing his guitar and singing his song. Did everyone run and gathered around him immediately? Nope… It took quite a while. For at least 2 full songs the guy was standing there, singing to no one. All by himself, creating his magic. He was not noticed yet, he did not have anyone to perform for yet… but he kept playing. That’s what happens to us too… we write blog posts, record podcast episodes, do videos, lifestream… and for weeks nothing happens. We feel like we are talking to ourselves. We feel invisible, unknown, unappreciated. At some point we are like “why the hell am I doing this, no one cares anyway”, right? So what happened to the guy? Well after a while few people came and stood to listen, then some more… after the songs they started clapping, few others paid attention and joined. After a while he got traction and gathered a pretty decent audience. Do you see the parallel? The guy showed up, took the courage to put himself out there, created his music, persisted even though no one paid attention for a while, kept going on and only after all that things started moving. What would have happened if he gave up after song 1. Yup, nothing… It’s the same with us. We have to realize that there are others who do similar things out there already, that no one is going to notice us from day 1, that we need to create awesome content consistently until people start gathering around us and that we need to stick around and do our best not to give up even when we think no one care… Because honestly... [No one will care in the beginning. But that’s ok. That’s how things are. Even the person who eventually fell in love with you did not care about you at your first encounter. Building and maintaining good quality relationships take time and effort. And that’s what you ultimately need to have - a good quality relationship with your audience. So don’t get distracted with all the shiny objects that promise you many subscribers, readers and listeners in a week. Think long term and think quality instead. As I said building an engaged and loyal audience takes time and loads of content production. So accept that fact and do your best. 

Today I am talking to a good friend Jon Nastor. Jon is not only a proud dad, husband but he is also an online entrepreneur who loves creating, marketing and selling cool things online. His Hack The Entrepreneur podcast is a show which reveals the fears, habits, and inner-battles behind big name entrepreneurs and those on the path to success. The podcast was launched with the initial plan of having 30 cool conversations but later became on of the most popular business podcasts which has already been downloaded over 2.4 million times (now Brand Architect feels really small compared to this...) In this interview we talk about: how launching a podcast helped Jon establish his personal brand how switching the attention from himself to his audience became a turning point for the podcast success how Jon makes money with his podcast how to get amazing guests for your podcast (special tip explained in details from Jon) how to get funding for your business (special tip from Gary V) being everywhere vs being really good at 1 thing Food for Thought Podcasting is very intimate. No one's gonna pick you up and push you and get you started, but when you're already in motion everybody wants to grab your hand and pull you along. [spp-tweet tweet="Nobody is going to care about your product or podcast more than you do!"] [spp-tweet tweet="If you try and be all things to all people you're gonna be nothing to no one."]   Useful Links 7 Day Podcast Challenge Hack the Entrepreneur Show List Rainmaker What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How successful people become even more successful (the book)

Today I’d like to talk to you about something that comes up quite often. These days I am being approached by people who, just like me few years ago are starting from scratch. No one knows them yet, they have not produced anything yet and they want to start but don’t know from where and how. And I can totally understand why they are confused. These days there is so much information on the internet. There are already many courses, podcasts, books, videos, tutorials and new ones are emerging with each day. So many choices, so many “gurus”. Who is the best? Which information is really valuable? Newbies get an overdose. Many end up consuming almost everything out there. I am sure some of you have bought online courses you never actually used, bought books you never read and downloaded a podcast episode, which you did not listen to. And with the ones you did… did you take action and apply the knowledge? Probably not… What confuses people even more is that there are many opinions and advice that contradict each other. One expert tells you the best proven method to do something and the other expert tells you the exact opposite. So what should you do? Well, maybe it would be best to start with the idea that there is no one magic button, no one solution fits all, no copy and paste template to follow. Many tend to market their courses by saying “I have made xxxx dollars in a month, let me show how exactly did I do that”. That might be true… or not, but that’s not the point. What is more important is that one has to realize that even if you copy the same strategy you may not get the same results. There are so many additional and not so obvious variables that play a role in the success… and some are impossible to duplicate… for example the personality factor, the fact that the guy might have already had strong network and connections in his niche and many others. Ok Ani, now you confused me even more you may think. Now where do I start anyway? The funny thing is that here too we have 2 completely contradicting options. And both sides claim that those worked perfectly well for them. Many say that when you are starting from scratch, before doing anything else you should choose your niche and come up with your ideal audience avatar. By knowing what your audience needs you end up providing content, service, product for them which resonates with you and your stuff, which leads to engagement, loyalty and success… On the other hand many others claim that you should decide what your passion is, what’s your main message and what you want to do and just do it. Be yourself and those who resonate with you will come and gather around you. So basically the short version of it is the expression - your vibe attracts your tribe. I have seen both methods to work. And in that respect you have a choice. It’s up to you which route you wanna take. But there is one thing in common: no matter which option you choose you will need to create content. Creating content is something I truly believe in and I think that most of the different successful strategies do have digital content creation as their core part. And what usually happens? As I said in the beginning, many end up being trapped in consuming content. They consume everything, accumulate knowledge, get contradicting advice and end up in a never ending circle of content consumption. And that itself results into never starting producing content. Many people only think about writing a book, starting a blog, recording a podcast. They wait till the ideal moment comes. They wait till they are ready. Until they learn everything they need to know about the subject. But guess what? There is no ideal moment!  You will never be ready and there will always be things which you won’t be able to learn until you actually start doing things. Also… You will keep staying an invisible consumer, because until you actually produce your own stuff and put it out there. People won’t know that you even exist. So I guess my short answer to all those who ask me where to start is… Start by producing your very first original piece of content online. Simple as that. A small blog post, a short recorded episode, just few paragraphs of a story, a short video… anything you prefer. Simply do it. Don’t consume media - become one yourself! Hope this will make you look at things from another perspective and will encourage you to finally start acting. If you have not done anything yet then this is the perfect time. Go and produce something today! - but before that if you have a minute, please subscribe to the Brand Architect podcast on iTunes and leave me a review. Have a productive day and I’ll come to you with more in the next episode!

My guest is Joel Hughes and today we talk about websites. In this interview we cover: how to make sure that your website differentiates from other websites elements that demonstrate your brand what makes a good website website design elements that help with conversion how to use your website to connect to your audience how to make a good web developer brief what is an ideal website

Mark W. Schaefer is a globally-recognized speaker, educator, business consultant, and author who blogs at {grow} — one of the top marketing blogs of the world. Mark has worked in global sales, PR, and marketing positions for 30 years and now provides consulting services as Executive Director of U.S.-based Schaefer Marketing Solutions. In this interview we talk about rebranding vs branding from scratch the importance of being known what to do in order to become known what does being yourself mean audience engagement I am sure you will also enjoy The Marketing Companion podcast Mark is co-hosting, so make sure to check it out.

  As you have probably noticed I have missed my schedule. That has happened only few times over the last 2 years… and in fact that’s exactly what I want to talk to you about in today’s solo episode. So why did I drift away from my schedule and skipped last week? Probably you expect a serious excuse but I am not sure there is any. The thing is… I have been going through lots of internal debate and spend a lot of time thinking about things and as a result I have partly lost my motivation, inspiration and drive. Did anything special happen to trigger this? Well, not really. I simply went through yet another paradigm shift. I came across the term paradigm shift ages ago back at the university. We had amazing communications professor, with who we went through Stephen Covey’s bestselling book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. The paradigm shift was described there by a powerful example. I will read it for you and those who don’t know what it is will immediate understand what I mean. So here we go… I remember a mini-paradigm shift I experienced one morning on a subway in New York. People were sitting quietly - some reading newspapers, some lost in thought, some resting with their eyes closed. It was a calm, peaceful scene. Then suddenly, a man and his children entered the subway.  The children were so loud and rambunctious that instantly the whole climate changed. The man sat down next to me and closed his eyes, apparently oblivious to the situation. The children were yelling back and forth, throwing things, even grabbing people's papers. It was very disturbing. And yet, the man sitting next to me did nothing. It was difficult not to feel irritated. I could not believe that he could be so insensitive as to let his children run wild like that and do nothing about it, taking no responsibility at all. It was easy to see that everyone else on the subway felt irritated, too. So finally, with what I felt was unusual patience and restraint, I turned to him and said, "Sir, your children are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn't control them a little more?"  The man lifted his gaze as if to come to a consciousness of the situation for the first time and said softly, "Oh, you're right. I guess I should do something about it. We just came from the hospital where their mother died about an hour ago. I don't know what to think, and I guess they don't know how to handle it either." Can you imagine what I felt at that moment? My paradigm shifted. Suddenly I saw things differently, and because I saw differently, I thought differently, I felt differently, I behaved differently. My irritation vanished. I didn't have to worry about controlling my attitude or my behavior; my heart was filled with the man's pain. Feelings sympathy and compassion flowed freely. "Your wife just died? Oh, I'm so sorry! Can you tell me about it? What can I do to help?" Everything changed in an instant. Powerful example, isn’t it? I guess the short version of explaining paradigm shift is the quote from Dr Wayne Dyer: “When we change the way we look at things…..the things we look at change.” Ok so, now that we all know what I meant, here are the things I started looking differently at in the past few weeks. I tried different new things recently and I guess had several so called failures… things that did not work out… the results I hoped for that did not happen… and of course I felt frustrated and upset. Of course this was not the first time… those happen with entrepreneurs often and what we usually do is get back up and try something else… push harder, do more and not give up until finally one of our experiments succeeds… But this time, instead of immediately getting up and starting something else I decided to take a pause and reflect. Get some rest and give myself a break. I wanted to go back to my initial why and understand how did I end up where I was…. Why do most of the entrepreneurs choose that path? Why do they leave the so called secure corporate career? In most cases it is because they want freedom. They want to be free to do projects which inspire them and they are passionate about… they want to be free to have more time with their families… to be free to work online from anywhere they want… to be free not to follow the crowd and be free to enjoy their life… And what happens? Well… we end up working more than we did in corporate. But hey, that’s fine because now we do it for ourselves, right? We end up consuming too much content about how things are done, about the right strategies, about the people who are making full time income with their passion, about hustle and that you are supposed to hustle till your nose bleeds, your eyes have black circles from lack of sleep and you stress out completely. You get bombarded by marketers, who will teach you how to write a book in 90 seconds, make 10k in 2 days, grow engaged audience overnight and make lots of money in 5 simple steps… So now instead of the corporate rat race you end up joining the entrepreneurial race. You still end up following a crowd. Simply a different one… This crowd is smaller and is perceived to be “cooler”. The corporate people were the losers, and these are the ones who had the courage to make the leap of faith and leave. But it’s still the same damn thing - you still follow a crowd which tells you what you are supposed to do and how… All those “I’ve made this and I will show you how exactly you can make the same” type of messages. All those instructions of what you are supposed to do … “build sales funnel”, “do livetsreams”, “provide value”, “build a list”, “do webinars”, “use facebook ads”… Too much noise, too much content, too many “gurus”…  They even tell you who you are supposed to be… “be authentic”, “be approachable”, “be confident”, “be… be… be…” And now, after all that noise, after so many years of trying things and after so many conversations and reflections I wonder… Shouldn’t I forget everything that is out there? Shouldn’t I ignore all those messages?  Should I do it my way? I think the answer is yes. The only thing left is figuring out what my way is… :) Well, I guess that is all I wanted to share with you today. This one ended up being quite different. I simply wanted you to stop and reflect too… And while you are doing that I am leaving you with your thoughts and going to get a beer!

Today me and Peter Ross are talking about producing honest content, not having a niche, and how he engages with his audience. Peter blogged for years without getting any traction, until one day few months ago one of his posts on Medium called Lifestyle Design? Please, Shut the Fuck Up blew up. It went viral and many people (including me) discovered Peter and his content. So basically, Peter got into a position where the audience found him. Join the Brand Architect Club here!

Today me and Kevin Field will be talking about podcasting, a topic we both are passionate about. Kevin helps develop your podcast and get, keep and grow your audience.  He has been doing it for years in radio and now passes on his skills to podcasters. His experience has taken him on incredible journeys from recording at Buckingham Palace to creating content in prisons. In this interview we talk about how to choose the topics that your podcast audience will be interested in creating your ideal podcast listener avatar the 4 pillars of content (passion, money, health and transformation) the importance of audience engagement the importance of being yourself using the language of the audience you broadcast to Food for thought The same but different every episode! You have  to close the circle with the listener - you + (your guest) + your listener Want to Launch a podcast? I will have a half-day live workshop in London on July 30.  I will share everything that worked for me to launch a top New & Noteworthy podcast, grow the audience from scratch to 15k listeners and interview my favorite international influencers.

My Guest Today I am interviewing Katya Varbanova (Livestream Katya). Katya is livestream strategist and the founder of the Peri 10k. Peri 10k is an exclusive mastermind of livestreamers. In this interview we talk about how did Katya start her community how to start livestreaming if you don't feel comfortable about it the difference between video and livestreaming which livestreaming platform is the best if you want to build your audience from scratch personality type vs livestreaming success how to use livestreaming as part of the holistic content strategy how often do you have to livestream in order to get traction Want to Launch a podcast? I will have a half-day live workshop in London on July 30.  I will share everything that worked for me to launch a top New & Noteworthy podcast, grow the audience from scratch to 15k listeners and interview my favorite international influencers. Powered by Eventbrite    

Today I speak to Brian G. Johnson, I'm a serial entrepreneur, #1 bestselling author, engaging speaker, product developer, poodle wrangler and an all around good guy. The one quote that stood out for me and that I truly loved was: Different is superpower! In this interview we talk about what role does one's personality play in branding and the content one creates how to stand out from the crowd how to make people come back to your content why Youtube videos will never become old  

I hope that you and your audience are doing well and the week has been productive and positive so far. Mine is not as productive as I wanted it to be, but on other hand we all deserve a break once in a while, right? In the previous episode I promised to share with you my thoughts and experiences provoked by the New Media Europe. For those who don’t know - and probably many of you don’t since it is not in the US - New Media Europe is a conference for people focused on growth. This is the conference for entrepreneurs, freelancers, business owners, content creators (including podcasters, bloggers, vloggers) and startups in all stages of growth. And I had the privilege of being one of the speakers at that event. I was a speaker for the first time but hope not the last because I sort of enjoyed being on stage. As one of my speaker friends puts it “it’s like being a rockstar”. And I have been a rock soul since my teenage years… Hoops it seems I drifted away… that is not what I wanted to talk to you about. During the intense week end I had several thoughts that I wanted to share with you, because they are related to what we do. So let’s start… 1. It is very important to be among like-minded people We usually spend most of our days working online and that can make us feel a bit lonely. Most probably there are not many people among our relatives and friends who are from the same field. That means that they do not understand what does it feel to be in our shoes - they don’t imagine our struggles, challenges and success stories… When I land a guest post on a big website, when I am invited to speak, when I get a good review for my book or a podcast many don’t really realize that it is a big deal. And self-motivating ourselves non stop is not an easy thing to do. That is why events where like minded people gather are very important. That is where we realize that we are not the crazy weirdos who have chosen to go against the traditionally accepted career path. So events like this are great place to finally feel like a fish in a water. And you end up meeting new awesome people, which is always an amazing bonus! 2. Be yourself We talk a lot about personal branding and branding your business. There are various elements and tactics and strategies, which we definitely will be covering in the Brand Architect podcast. We also hear a lot about being authentic and genuine and how important that is. Being authentic has become one of those fancy new expression everyone is using these days. Well at New Media Europe I vividly saw why being true to yourself in your online branding is very important. The conference lasted two days + we had a gala dinner and award ceremony. This is a pretty long time. This means that if in your online branding you had positioned yourself anything else but who you really are - pretending for 2 whole days + the evening would be very hard. You’d rather spend time having fun and not stressing out about how you are perceived. And that can happen only if that’s how you and your brand is online. This personal meeting should only reinforce the image you had created and not confuse people. You don’t want people realize that you are not at all who they thought you were. 3. Online vs offline These days we have so many different means to connect with people from all over the world. Few months ago, when I was still living in Armenia I was relying on purely online communication. And I had never met anyone from my network. We have video calls, live streaming platforms and the communication online is as close to the real thing as it could possibly be. It could probably replace the real thing altogether, right? - wrong! I can’t really explain and put into words what it is exactly, but there is a certain something that you feel and experience only when you meet the person in real life. It is a completely different quality of communication and I don’t believe it can be replaced with anything that online options have to offer at this point. 4. What do you do? On events like that when many people meet each other for the first time there is one popular question that everyone asks the other. “So what do you do?” is something we hear over and over again. And that’s during a coffee or lunch break, which means you can’t go ahead and tell the long version of your life story. That is why putting your brand and what you do in one short and crystal clear sentence is very important. You have to be very precise about who you are what you do. Since the question will be inevitable and you will be getting it all the time, make sure you have the best answer to give. 5. Stay in touch I truly believe that the biggest value you can get from conferences and events are the people you meet and the connections you create and the relationships that you build. That is why the worst thing you can do is go away from the event and never be in touch with the people you met there. Follow up, stay in touch and continue networking online. Yes it can’t replace a personal meeting, but in case that can’t be done online is still much better than nothing. Ok, since I am finishing this episode with stay in touch. Hey feel free to connect with me. You can email me by clicking the link here. And don'r forget to join the Brand Architect Club here. If you are introvert and don’t feel like connecting then you can still help me grow the podcast by subscribing to it and leaving a review on iTunes.

Today my guest is Laura Roeder. Laura Roeder is the founder of Edgar, a new social media automation tool designed to prevent updates from going to waste. Since 2009, she's been teaching entrepreneurs how to harness the power of social media marketing and create their own fame at LKR Social Media. Laura was named one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under 35 in 2011, 2013 and 2014 and spoke at the White Houseabout the value of entrepreneurship. Laura has spoken at numerous influential industry conferences including, BlogWorld, The South by Southwest Interactive Conference, Real Estate Connect, The Social Communications Summit and Blogher, discussing online marketing, social media, and personal branding. Laura has been seen on Fox News, Forbes.com, CNET, The Los Angeles Times, Fast Company, Mashable, Yahoo Finance and many more influential publications and media channels In this interview we talk about How did Laura started her entrepreneurial journey marketing (and the fact that we can't avoid it) how to get noticed on social media the social media engagement factor repurposing content automation with keeping the personal touch the Meet Edgar!  

Hey everyone! How do you like the new podcast name?  As you see the changes I am making are becoming real now. But there are things that do not change and it’s still me - Ani Alexander :) Those of you who have missed the news can check out episode 156 where I spoke to you about the evolution of the Write to be Read podcast and why it will be turning into something else - hopefully something as exciting as what we had or even better. If you need more details, please check out episode 156.  ok so - welcome to the Brand Architect - the podcast that will show you how to stand out, get noticed and be heard. And it will also help you establish your brand and grow your online audience. What I also realized was that we do need a community where  you will get all the emotional and practical support, knowledge, accountability and relationships that you need … all in one place. The Write to be Read was an amazing experience, but I’d love to engage better with my audience and dedicate more time and attention to our relationship. That is why I am building the Brand Architect Club - the exclusive community for my podcast listeners. Since it is just born I have a limited time offer for lifetime membership for you, so make sure you check it out. We already have more than 30 members there and I’d love to see you there too! Now that I covered all the updated for you let’s finally get to our today’s interview. Today I talk to Janet Murray. Janet helps people get press coverage in newspapers, magazines and on radio and TV. She has 15 years’ experience writing and editing for national newspapers and magazines.  You can find her PR blog here. You will find out how to pitch media and get media coverage that will help you grow your audience and business.

Please check out the new online community I created few days ago and join the awesome members and me.   Today my guest is Kim Somers Egelsee. She helps men and women find their passion and purpose, develop and design it, forget the fear and move forward with positive communication, action, confidence and success. She does this through coaching, speaking, mentoring and consulting. Kim is the #1 best selling author of “Getting Your Life to a Ten +”  

This episode is gonna be very different from what you’re used to. In fact I have to be honest and say that this particular episode was the hardest to record… well maybe apart from the very first episode of course… I aired the very first episode of the write to be read podcast on July 1 2014 - almost two years ago. And it has been very exciting, bumpy and rewarding journey since then. For me launching a podcast was an experiment. Apart from the fact that I really wanted to help writers, I was also driven by the curiosity of whether I could actually do it or not. I had no big plans connected with the podcast and I had not even decided for myself for how long I will be doing it. If back then one would say that I would end up sticking to it for almost 2 years and that I would have tens of thousands regular listeners I would probably not believe it. But things turned out the way they did and I am extremely happy with where I am now. I also appreciate every single one of you who’s listening … because you are the ones who made it happen. If you were not listening, if you were not providing feedback, writing podcast reviews and connecting with me I would most probably not have enough motivation and determination to carry on. So thank you! Since I got into the exciting world of podcasting and my podcast grew apart from the listeners, writers - people from the self-publishing industry started to know me… Then other podcasters got connected too… then I networked with coaches and speakers, other creatives, online entrepreneurs… obviously with over the 120 guests who were interviewed up to now and after our move to the UK I met many new people here too… Some of you also know that I have been  one of the early adopters of the live streaming platform Blab and have recorded some of my podcasts there… so the Blab community became the one I interact often with too… So it has been a long journey from people thinking “who the hell is this?” to “oh, I think I’ve heard about her somewhere”. Now, why did I say that recording this podcast episode was the hardest you may think… Well because this one is a bit personal and I am still not very comfortably getting up close and personal publicly and also because it includes a news which I can’t predict your reaction to. So all this is kind of scary… but I’m gonna do it anyway. As you might have already noticed I love changes and not only embrace them when they come, but also initiate them very often. I have never been from those who resist the change and love things stay the way they are. I am not from those people - I don’t think there has been a hairstyle out there that I have not tried… and those were the smallest scale changes I’ve made. Since the launch of this podcast things evolved. My audience did not only grew in numbers but it just grew… and that is amazing. What I mean is, the podcast was initially created for newbie writers who were trying to write a book, who were trying to figure out how self-publishing works and who wanted to become authors. I am super proud that many of the listeners actually did write their first books, some even published them already and few have several books out there already. That means that Write to be Read has accomplished its main mission. Few weeks ago I sent an e mail to my list and offered an hour Skype call to the first 6 people who replied. From the feedback I’ve got from them I realized that the podcast has already covered most of things newbie writers need to know when they start and much more… Parallel to that I had been thinking a lot about how things were evolving and noticed a trend. The first thing was - people who approach me are not only writers anymore. They are creative individuals, who do something online - authors, speakers, coaches, online entrepreneurs, podcasters… Some need emotional support, some come for advise about podcasting and most of them are trying to figure out how to establish their personal brands and grow their audiences online. So although “officially” I’ve been working with writers and all my content was tailored to self-published authors I’ve spent some time behind the scenes working with people who have nothing to do with writing and publishing. I’ve even been actually doing some coaching for them I never spoke about before… So the change seeking bug started visiting me since months… I periodically had this desire to go ahead and change everything… and if I was my eccentric 20 year old self, that’s exactly what I would have done, with no plan, no fear and no expectations… But I was 20 ages ago… and I want to do it the right way. So this time I put a lot of thought into this. So I thought - hey if things are evolving who said the podcast should stay the same? If you are a change addict like me probably you’d welcome some change too, right? We have all the archives of the podcast and there are more than 150 episodes dedicated to becoming authors that can always be gone back and listen to. Why don’t we move forward and get to the next level? I want this podcast to become a place not only for writers but also for all content creators, personal brands and online entrepreneurs. You may be surprised, but you and them have very similar challenges. So just like Write to be Read was encouraging and inspiring writers become successful authors - this new version of the podcast will help you and all those people establishing their brands and growing their audiences online. Because let’s face it - without an audience you can’t do anything. So eventually it will be a newer, upgraded version of the podcast we have but with slightly different angle and broader audience. I say broader and not different, because I truly believe that authors too need to grow their audiences and writers and authors too are personal brands. And I am counting on you to join and support me in this new journey. In fact this time, I don’t want to do it all alone, I want us to do it together. So why was this podcast episode so difficult to record? Because my biggest fear is that I may lose you because of this change that I am initiating and that’s the last thing I want to happen. I have done things already about this and have the plan in place. I have even started implementing part of it already, but there are still things I have not done yet. I was thinking about re-naming the podcast but could not come up with a new name as good as the Write to be Read, so I decided that we could have some fun about it… why not? Who are more creative with words than writers - right? So let’s have a contest. Email me your versions of the new podcast name and slogan to ani(at)anialexander.com. The 5 people who will come up with the most creative and catchy podcast name and slogan proposals will get a free lifetime membership to a community that I’ve set up literally few hours ago. You can get all the details about it here  I launched this awesome online community (which does not yet have a name cause I plan using the same name as for the podcast), because I think that we need to have a place, which is more interactive and you may need more support and deeper knowledge than what you are getting from the podcast. Since it’s new we will be building it together so I will need founding members. That is why instead of the monthly fee which I will be charging later, my audience gets a limited time offer of one time small payment only. So once again you can check all the details at here  and I would LOVE to see you inside. So today we are May 11th and you have 1 week to come up with something creative for our podcast name and slogan and send me an e mail to ani(at)anialexander.com. I can’t wait to see what you come up with. Since I’ve been thinking about this for quite a while and there has been strong resistance inside… I am glad I finally did it. So I am pushing the publish button and there is no turning back. Thanks for listening and hope that you will be with me even after the changes. Would love to see you as members of the community. Meanwhile, take care and have a great day!

Today I interview Mark Messick. Mark is 16years-old. He is a bestselling author. He has written and publisheddozens of books, sold tens of thousands of copies, and make $4,000a month from my royalties. You can check out his course the Book Sales Doctorhere.

 Andrew Lowe is an author and book editor from the North of England. His writing has been published in several magazines and newspapers, including The Guardian, The Sunday Times and Men’s Health, and he’s worked in creative and digital roles with GQ, Vogue, Wired and Total Film. He writes psychological thrillers – novels and short stories. His latest novel, The Ghost, is the story of a troubled film critic who finds himself menaced by the victim of a childhood prank. When he’s not working on his own words, he’s fiction editor who specialises in copy editing but also offers developmental/structural work and copywriting. In this interview we talk about the importance of the relationship between the author and editor.

The past few days I spent at the London Book Fair. I was there for the first time and had no idea what to expect. Overall it was a really nice experience and I finally met few people I had interviewed before, so it was super cool. It was nice to meet in person Mark Dawson, Joanna Penn, Ricardo Fayet from Reedsy and Dan Wood from Draft2Digital. And of course I met new people and as a result you will be having new interviews with very interesting guests coming up, so if you haven’t done so already please make sure you subscribe to my podcast on iTunes or Stitcher not to miss any of the upcoming cool content. I wanted to make today’s episode about the London Book Fair and share my impressions, observations and takeaways from the time spent there. So this will be a bunch of different thoughts in not so structured format, but hopefully you’ll like it nevertheless. What is the London book Fair? The London Book Fair this year celebrated its 45th anniversary. It is the world’s leading publishing event: the global marketplace for rights negotiation and the sale and distribution of content across print, audio, TV, film and digital channels. It had 25,000 publishing professionals from over 124 countries. Impression Number 1 - Self publishing’s place The London Book Fair was held at Olympia, which was built at 1886. The stunning buildings have unique atmospheres and create unforgettable settings for events, exhibitions and conferences. The place was huge - so huge that you may get overwhelmed and have no clue where to go. I even lost the cloak room at the end of the day and I was risking going back home without my coat. It took me about 25 minutes to finally find the place and get it. The funny thing - well it was a minute away from the place I started the search. Anyway I think you’ll be more interested in self-publishing than in my coat. So on the fair I realized how self publishing was perceived in the industry. As I said that place was huge, but vast majority of exhibitors were from the traditional publishing industry. So all self-publishing related boots (when I say all I mean only 3 - Amazon, Kobo and Draft2Digital) were put in the furthest possible corner - at the very end of the floor - completely isolated from the main hall. That fact itself illustrated that self publishing was still not considered as serious player in the publishing industry and is completely ignored by the traditional publishers. In fact the whole place was centered on printed books and the digital solutions were not highlighted at all. Besides that by walking through few boots and asking few questions I realized that the traditional publishers have been ignoring the existence of the self publishing solutions so much that they did not even have basic knowledge about those. But I’d love to see what will be the situation at the same London Book Fair in 5 or 10 years. Impression Number 2 - Books Being a book lover it was amazing seeing so many different books at one place. Colorful, different shapes and genres, good quality books everywhere. You can only imagine how disappointed I was to find out that all those books were only there to be looked at… oh and you could touch them too of course. But no one was giving away any books and you could not buy any one of them. So my initial plan of bringing home new reads did not work and the next day I went back with a much smaller bag… Impression Number 3 - the Author HQ Amazon had a space within that far away self-publishing corner I mentioned, where it had its Author Headquarter. There it organized different panels and discussions, where Amazon’s successful independent authors were featured. The authors staid after their session to interact with the audience and answer their questions. That place was very dynamic and always full. People were even sitting on the floor because there was not enough space. That made a big contrast compared to the half-empty and boring boots in the main hall. Even the people were different at the Author Headquarter. The dress code was more casual, there were indie writers with beards, tattoos and crazy shoes. The atmosphere was not official and people were relaxed. This whole difference was very similar to corporate life and entrepreneurship. The “normal” people who thought they were more legit and reputable in the main hall and more prestigious space and the cool people who were more fun, independent and creative. I think you can guess where I spent most of the time at the fair, right? Impression Number 4 - Writing is part of the author When I spoke to the authors and listened to their sessions it became obvious that writing was integrated part of their life and their personality. It was their passion, it was their lifestyle, it was their business and part of who they are. They had the writing in their daily routine. You could not imagine those people not writing or not reading. They were trapped in what they had chosen… in a good way, of course. Impression Number 5 - Writing Success When I was listening to the successful independent writers such as Joanna Penn, Mark Dawson and Rachel Abbott I found one similarity there. All three of them had corporate pasts and used their business mindset in marketing their books and putting their author brands out there. None of them wrote and waited to be discovered. All of them treated writing and their books as business, all of them made a plan and worked hard to make things happen. As opposed to many fiction writers who consider their writing being art and shy away from marketing the successful authors balanced well their creative processes and the promotional efforts. Impression Number 6 - Don’t Give Up Rachel Abbot has sold over 2mln books already. And she is completely independent self-published from the very start. Guess what was her initial target? One thousand copies. Mark Dawson confessed that when he put his first book on Amazon in the first month he sold 1 or 2 copies only. And this is the same person, who made almost half a million dollars last year from his book sales. What did they do besides creating the business plan I mentioned before? Well, they did not give up. I am sure the road was not very smooth and they must have felt like giving up at least once… but they haven’t. And that made all the difference… (wow the last part sounded like Robert Frost poem The Road Less Travelled)

Today I talk to Sommer Nectarhoff. Sommer is a twenty-four year old writer from Chicago. He’s the author of nineteen books and counting, and though he’s written everything from poetry to literary fiction he’s currently couched in the swords and shields of fantasy. You can get more details about Sommer following the links below: His website His Twitter His Instagram

Today I decided to go to the other side and get reader’s perspective on things we writers are curious about. And who else could be a better person to talk to than a professional writer who partly makes money by reading books, right? Well it happened so that I knew someone like that and I’m happy to share with you our talk. Jeff Brown is my guest today. He is a podcaster, mentor and speaker. His goal is to help people bridge the gap between intentionality and implementation. He does this by sharing my professional insights, and the insights of successful people all over the world, on leadership, personal development, productivity, entrepreneurship and more through my blog, my podcast, and through personal consulting and speaking. His podcast Read to Lead is one of the top podcasts out there and before beginning Read to Lead, Jeff spent 26-years in radio, which obviously makes him way better podcaster   than me :) In this interview we talk about reading and writing and it seems that we have more laughs than usual. Hope you'll enjoy it! And the last thing: Do you wish you could just write books and avoid all the intimidating and frustrating details of book publishing? If yes then I’ve created the best solution for you! Simply go to Publish to be Read send over your draft manuscript and get your professionally published book in only 3 weeks!  

Andrew O’Brien is the founder of Patefactus which is focused on helping Entrepreneurs gain more media exposure and learn how to leverage that exposure to create a strong brand and build a larger and more interactive audience. He has been featured on over 70 media channels, many to include national/international media outlets such as MTV, USA Today, MSNBC, BBC, NHK World, Al Jazeera and many others. Along with his media exposure, he has become the most requested speaker in his industry, traveling around the world speaking to some of the world’s top government agencies and private organizations. It is because of Andrews’ success in the media that he was able to become the top in his industry and triple his fee’ in less than 1 year. Andrew’s goal is to help 500 Entrepreneurs triple their income through media exposure by the end of 2016.

Today my guest is Tim Knox. He is a sought-after corporate speaker and comedian, published author, talk radio host, syndicated business columnist, and self-professed Mama's Boy, Tim's unique perspective is enjoyed by thousands who listen to his radio show, read his books and columns, and hear him speak every year. You should check out his show Interviewing Writers too. In this interview we talk about the difference between traditional publishing and self-publishing how to markets your books the business aspect of being a writer building author brand Food for Thought If passion was money every poet would be rich. If the great writers in history had to market their own work chances are we never would have heard of any of them. The hardest thing to do in a crowd is to get noticed. If you are  are a writer - write! Be happy that you have the ability to write. If you'd like to share your thought with me and other Write to be Read listeners, make sure you join our Facebook group.

In the previous days I have come across the same topic several times. Then I thought that maybe you have not heard of it yet so decided to let you know about this. What I am talking is Amazon Giveaways. Amazon let’s you create and promote a giveaway of items that are sold there. The interesting part of this for us is that we can now create kindle ebook giveaways.  What many authors did before was organizing book giveaways - mainly on Goodreads. Unfortunately you could give aways only paperbacks. I tried a giveaway of my first novel Highfall on Goodreads and although it did bring visibility to my book it did not impact the sales figure. So why is Amazon giveaway different you may think. Well before I dive into this, I have to make a disclaimer. It seems like the Amazon giveaway can organize only the US residents, so if you have amazon.com account but no US address linked to your account then you won’t be able to make it… Hopefully they will roll over to the other markets soon too. The good news though is that you don’t have to be in KDP Select to be able to organize giveaways and of course giving away ebooks is more affordable and there are no shipping charges involved obviously. Ok now let’s see why would you as an author possibly want to make an Amazon giveaway. The first obvious reason, of course is get your book front of more people. And since those who have already purchased your book are not eligible for your giveaway you will end up will be reaching new potential readers. The second good thing is that all the participants, who have not won the giveaway get the free sample of your book. Which means that the potential new readers will probably get the taste of your writing style. Another good thing is that when you organize your book’s Amazon giveaway you can choose chose an option where in order to participate people have to follow you on your Amazon’s author page. This means that whenever you have a new book out all who follow will be notified. It is not as good as having them on your e mail list of course, but it is most probably the closest thing you can get with Amazon. To wrap this topic up I’ll just need to say that your giveaways can last up to 30 days, ebooks purchased for the giveaway are non-refundable and you can check there is a Twitter hashtag #AmazonGiveaways you can follow. And maybe the best part of it all is that those who have tried the Amazon giveaways tell that it impacts book’s sales ranking. Ok, that was it about the Amazon. Now I will share my ideas about giveaways in general. I personally feel uncomfortable, when things are not under my control. That is why strategies, which rely on specific social media channel, or only one platform, or an audience, which is not mine are not my favorite. I mean what if something happens to Facebook one day? Where do I find all those people who liked my page… You see what I mean right? That is why I prefer to put time and effort bringing my audience to my place, that is my website and my e mail list. Are you already there btw? If no check out www.anialexander.com Having that said I prefer to use KingSumo’s giveaway plugin for Wordpress. The giveaway is done so that it increases participant’s chances to win when they share your contest like crazy and therefore it easily goes viral. But that is just the bonus. The best thing is that you are getting the list of all participant’s emails, which you can later use. I have used this only twice for now, but have seen great results with both giveaways. The things is… if you are unknown writer like me, most probably people will not be interesting in your book’s giveaway, because they have not read you yet and they have not heard your name either, right? Yup… But what you can do is - choose several bestseller’s in your genre or around your book’s topic and have a bundle of those books with yours inside as a giveaway. Like that you will gain a list of people, who are interested in your genre or topic and are your potential readers. And even if they don’t read your book (although part of them will check it out I think) you will still have their names and email address.

Today I am talking to Ricardo Fayet. Ricardo is co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Reedsy, a marketplace connecting authors with the best publishing professionals (think editors, proofreaders, designers, marketers). An avid reader and technology enthusiast, he likes to imagine how little players will build the future of publishing, further empowering authors and allowing them to publish to the same standards as the biggest publishing companies. In this interview I try to understand what Reedsy is, how it works and how writers can benefit from it. Make sure you check out their book editor tool - it's great.

Today I am talking to Tim Gillette. Tim is the Creator of the “Rock ‘n’ Roll Keys to Business Success – Using Music, Motorcycles and Mentorship to Teach Entrepreneurs to Become Leaders in Their Industry.” In his presentations, Tim uses lessons learned from his love for Rock ‘n’ Roll music, traveling an average of 30,000 miles annually on his Harley Davidson motorcycle, coaching clients, and speaking to audiences. I met him on Blab and we had several interesting conversations there, so I thought that it would be nice to have him over at the podcast too. Today we spoke about blogging, branding and many other things.

Ray Edwards is a Communications Strategist, Copywriter, Author, Speaker, and host of one the top iTunes Business Podcast. He has worked with Fortune 500 companies, and with some of the most powerful voices in leadership and business. His clients include New York Times best-selling authors Michael Hyatt (author of Platform and co-author of Living Forward), Tony Robbins (author of Unleash the Giant Within and Money: Master the Game), Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen (co-authors of Chicken Soup For the Soul), Jeff Walker (author of Launch), and many more. Ray’s copy and marketing expertise has helped sell an estimated $200 Million or more in products and services. Ray covered the most important points from his book in our interview, but I do recommend getting the book especially now when he is giving away a physical copy of the book for free (until March 1st). Click to Claim Your Book Now Food for Thought Copywriting is simply writing that persuades people to buy into idea or a product or a service or a believe. Nobody is going to sell your writing with the passion and the care and the intimate knowledge of the writing better than you. We are more effected by stories than we are by facts. What you are actually selling is the transformation that your product or service brings about. Selling is essentially a transfer of feelings. - Zig Zigler You have to have feelings about the product or service you're selling. About the Book Ray Edwards's  book provides a step-by-step, fill-in-the-blanks system for writing persuasive copy for websites, sales and promotions. Ray’s sales copy is amazingly effective – having sold an estimated $200 million in products and services over the last 5 years. Now he shows you how, step-by-step, you can use the same methods he does. It’s all spelled out in the new book How to Write Copy That Sells.

I already had more than 100 guests, who shared their expertise, knowledge and stories at the Write 2B Read podcast. Some of those interviews have been very successful and some of the guests were more impressive than the rest. One of the names out there, about getting whom I've been asked most was Pat Flynn. It seems like being able to talk to him for my podcast back when Write 2B Read was relatively new and unknown was a big achievement in other people's eyes (I am not telling that it was not). So now I have Pat back with a new interview and new book. For those of you who don't know Pat yet below is his short bio. Pat Flynn makes a living on the internet and considers himself the luckiest person on the earth. Through his very popular blog Smart Passive Income and his Smart Passive Income Podcast  he shares his experience and helps his readers reach their goals. I think it is also important to mention that Pat was also from the very few people, who encouraged me to start the Write 2B Read podcast. This time we speak about Pat's second book Will It Fly? How to Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don't Waste Your Time and Money, which launched just few days ago. In this interview Pat explains: what the book is about and how he came up with the idea to write it the struggles Pat had writing his second book and how he got over them when did Pat mostly write the book how did Pat Flynn get his first draft up what was the initial title of the book and how did Pat found the title that he uses now how to validate your non-fiction book idea before starting to write it I guess that was it for today. As I mentioned in this episode I am working on a coaching offer for my podcast listeners and other writers and/or entrepreneurs, who are looking to establish their personal brand online. In case you're interested and prefer not to wait until everything is set up please get in touch and we can start making things happen straightaway! If you enjoyed the interview, please subscribe to it below and you will not miss any upcoming episode. [text-blocks id="podcast-subscription-links" plain=1]

Stefano L Tresca was employee #8 at Wind, a telecom startup company sold for $12.1 billion. Before joining this venture, he was a teacher of Italian for Koreans, a web designer, and an ice cream maker, just to name a few. Bestselling author and passionate about travelling, he worked in over 20 countries, until he quit the corporate life in 2011. Today Stefano enjoys mentoring startup companies, writing and occasionally consults for corporations on innovation and investments. Many years ago, he felt in love with the city of London, and that's where he lives now when he's not traveling.  In this interview we talk about how he wrote his book Future Cities that became a bestseller what did the Amazon bestselling rank actually brought the 50-50 rule the hidden secret superpower the mistakes he made with his very first book Useful links: Stefano's book - Future Cities: 42 Insights and Interviews with Influencers, Startups, Investors Kindle Edition Lanyrd - the social conference directory

Today I am talking to Dan Wood from Draft 2 Digital. This episode is the short official version of the Blab we did few weeks ago, back in 2015. We spoke about how to go wide as an author and make sure that your book is available in most of the possible platforms out there. The Full Blab Interview Wanna grow your audience and business with Blab? Check this out! [text-blocks id="podcast-subscription-links" plain=1]

I hope you had nice holidays and amazing New Year celebration. And with this recording I’d like to share my wishes to you for 2016. I wish that we all read more and learn new things. Although we don’t talk about it often, I am sure that writers have not only to write but also read every day. I also wish that we travel and get out in nature a lot. Travels will bring new experiences and topics to include in your writing as well as help you become open-minded. I wish that we all toss away the self-doubt and start believing in ourselves, because no one will believe in us until we do. From now on I wish we don’t wait for the right moment and start right away. Don’t waste time waiting. Don’t make your life one long stay in a waiting room. Do what you always wanted to do in 2016. Believe me there will be no better time. I wish that instead of complaining and blaming others we practice gratitude and thank for everything we have. I wish that we all stop resisting the change and embrace it instead in the upcoming year. Changes will help you grow and bring in new opportunities you can’t get otherwise. Instead of worrying about the past I wish we get new experiences, meet like-minded people and celebrate our small victories in 2016. Let go and leave things in the past and move on. You’ve got another chance for a  new start. Make this your year. Let’s not make excuses. Let’s keep going and pursue our dreams without giving up. You are responsible for making your dreams come true. So make things happen in 2016. Let’s get inspired and inspire others. Let’s motivate and be motivated. Do it with your writings, with your talks, with your speeches, Facebook statuses, Tweets… anything will work. I wish you to set goals for 2016. Don’t expect immediate results in order not to be disappointed, but set positive mindset and fight back your fear of failure. One step at a time you’ll get closer to your goals, simply make sure you do make the first step. I hope that in 2016 you will be bold enough to be different. Don’t depend on peoples’ opinion and don’t follow the crowd. I wish all those who are not in love yet to fall in love in 2016. And those who are in love will keep working on your relationship. I wish you also take some time to spend it with yourself. Make a date with yourself and think, reflect and listen to your inner voice. Focus on your feelings, find your passion and make decisions. Believe me, no one knows you better than yourself. I hope that in 2016 you will be fair to yourself and to others. Don’t lie. It’s not productive. When you reach the point at some stage in 2016 when the stress is high and you are tired, take a vacation and relax. Take a break and get back your balance. And please don’t forget to daydream and smile on daily basis. And never get discouraged… but if at some point you do - tune in to the Write to be read podcast and I’ll do my best to inspire and encourage you, so you continue moving forward! Take care and wish you an awesome year ahead!

Today my guest is Jay Alan Samit. Jay is a dynamic entrepreneur who is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on disruption and innovation. He launches billion dollar businesses, transforms entire industries, revamps government institutions, and for over three decades continues to be at the forefront of global trends. His bestselling book Disrupt You! is a go-to book for starting entrepreneurs. It will help you achieve success that you deserve! Food for Thought Obstacles are really just opportunities in disguise. Failing is learning what doesn't work. Failure is throwing in the towel and giving up. If you think you can or you think you can't you're right. If you want get something done give it to busy person. A dream with a deadline suddenly becomes a plan. You can have everything you want out of life - you just can't get it all in once. The writing is the small piece of the puzzle. Too many people listen to everybody that gave up on their dreams to convince themselves to give up on theirs. Motivation is like shower - you need it daily. You don't get to live forever but what you create can - so why not focus on making what you create matter? Being a writer means that you believe that you have something that is worthy of other people's time. Building a global business has never been easier. The harder I work the luckier I get. There's always a way to connect your thoughts with the world. Jay has been throwing value bombs during the whole interview so I strongly encourage you to listen :)

In this episode Adam Bailey from Goodriter.com will explain how and why did they come up with the idea to launch Goodriter and why it will become one of the most valuable resources for all writers. I wanted you to know about the special limited time offer they have for us and make sure that you don't miss that valuable free bundle. In this bundle of 50+ resources the most respected names in self-publishing share their best content for free. The bundle contains 30+ Free ebooks, 9+ Free eCourses and 5+ Free audiobooks. click this link and get your Christmas gift from Gootriter now!  I am proud to be part of that initiative and I am sure you have heard my interviews with most of those, who contributed to this (you can check the list of the interviews below). The special offer expired on December 20th, so make sure you go and grab it now. I assure you it's extremely valuable and you will learn a lot! Just click this link and get your Christmas gift from Gootriter now!  Check out Write to be Read podcast episodes with those, whose resources are presented in the bundle How to Organize a Successful Kindle Book Launch with Chandler Bolt How to Be An Author Entrepreneur with Joanna Penn How to Make Full-Time Income with Kindle Books with Steve Scott How You Should Market to Sell More Books with Jim Kukral Grabbing Attention with Derek Doepker Sell More Books with Bryan Cohen All You Need to Know About Book Covers with Derek Murphy How to Promote Your Book with Matt Stone How to Know if Your Book Will Sell or Not with Alex Newton How to Become a Kindlepreneur with Dave Chesson How To Be Insanely Creative with Sean Platt Self-publishing and Writing Live with Johnny B Truant Horror is Like Pizza with James Thorn How to Start Writing Your First Non-Fiction Book with Cathy Presland Publishing and Collaboration with Tom Morkes How to Gain and Grow Audience with Podcasting with Meron Bareket Ok, so now hearing them on a podcast you know that what they provide is useful and good. So before it's gone on December 20th, 2015 make sure you get the free bundle here! Write 2B Read Closed Facebook Group Don't miss the opportunity to join me and other Write 2B Read podcast listeners at our Facebook group.

Alex Newton (aka Niehues) is CEO and Founder of K-lytics.com, the leading Kindle market research service on the net. Alex brings more than 20 years of experience in publishing, data analytics and management consulting to the table. Today, we talk about his company K-lytics, publishing trends, and how he made the transition from a "traditional career" to online entrepreneurship. We also discuss how one can predict if the book will sell or not before even starting writing it.

Today I am interviewing Dave Chesson, who like many, is an Amazon Best Selling author, however, using advanced online marketing techniques, he creates books and platforms that keep all of his books at the #1 best seller mark for years.  Dave is a marketing nut and the creator of Kindepreneur.com, a free website devoted to teaching people the marketing side of being an author. In this interview we talk about the awesome free tools Dave has created for self-published authors, about publishing and of course, book marketing.

Today my guest is Jonny Andrews. My first interview with him about Embracing The Darkside Of Self Publishing Success is still one of the most popular episode of the podcast. This time we did a Blab together and spoke about how to build an author platform. Food for Thought Books are a commodity at this point. You have to create daily ritual around creation of the thing that needs to be sold. Figure out what you wanna write first. Running giveaways are the fastest road to get bigger results. Give away your first book for free. You give it away so people can sample you. Don't target giveaway sites. The first book always takes the longest. You're not gonna make living on one book usually. Come up with more stuff more often. Being an author has become about generating leads. The Full Blab Interview

As most of you – especially the fiction writers know – November is the National Novel Writing Month and around 300k people are writing their novels right now. Their challenge is to complete 50k words in 30 days, which may sound hard but I think it sounds much harder than it is in reality. Many of you were reaching out to me asking if I am doing NaNoWriMo this year or not so I decided to make a separate episode letting you know and providing explanations and thoughts about the subject too. I wrote both of my novels Highfall and DreamDown participating in NaNoWriMo and it was a great experience. There are few elements to it that I think are very important for newbie writer. Most of us struggle to finish writing our novel – especially if it’s our first novel. NaNoWriMo adds motivation and encouragement to your writing process. First of all you have a deadline and target wordcount + a challenge. And second, the forums with writers like you who have the same struggles and are as excited as you are adds to the emotional support that you will definitely need while writing your book. So that is why I participated in NaNoWriMo 2 years in a row and as a result wrote and self published my 2 novels. This was the good part. Now let me continue by saying that this year I am not doing NaNoWriMo and am doing something different instead. Before you think that I am contradicting to what I just said let me explain why. NaNoWriMo is good at making sure that you finish writing your first draft. And as all of us know the first drafts are very bad. After that you will need to work on it. The first draft is definitely not what you’d like your readers to see. I guess what I want to say is that NaNoWriMo is good in making sure that you put out those words and that you complete your first draft. It is also very good in developing your habit of writing every day and if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while you know how important that is. But NaNoWriMo has absolutely no impact on the quality of your writing. And that’s what differentiates the good book from the bad one. So what I did this year instead of NaNoWriMo was enroll in writer’s bootcamp, where I will hopefully learn how to write well. And as a non-English speaker the challenge for me is bigger than for most of you out there. This is the second month I’m learning at the bootcamp and I’d like to give a big shoutout to Randall Andrews, who is putting up with my complicated character and unpolished writing. The first side effect that I got from being able to differentiate good quality text from the bad one was realizing that what I had written up to now is not written well. It’s one thing when you know it as an abstract fact and it’s completely another thing when you have proofs for that. And believe me, that realization was not a very pleasant one and at some point it even made me think of not writing anymore. But then I understood that by learning how to write well I will be able to correct what was not written well up to now, instead of deciding not to write at all. So why I am doing re-writes and concentrate on the quality of the writing is because if I did my 3rd NaNoWriMo I would most probably write my 3rd novel in the same manner I did the previous 2 ones and end up with the same results in terms of quality. So what I am doing now is going through my first novel Highfall and applying what I have learnt so far to what I had written back then. Like that I will learn on my mistakes, make sure I am aware of the most common ones and make it easier not to repeat them again in the future. So I guess this whole episode gets down to one conclusion – NaNoWriMo is good but it is not enough. It’s the first step of the process and there is a lot to come after. Those of you who have not taken that first step – I encourage you to do so. And don’t worry that NaNoWriMo has already started – set your own timeline and make your own challenge. It will still work. And those who already have the first manuscript – work on the text and make sure that you’ve done your best and you’ve worked on the quality. And if you have – then our self-publishing services can help you with all the rest that needs to be done, like editing, book cover, formatting, etc. Simply visit www.publishmybook.today let us work on your book and save your time, so you spend it on writing. I guess that was all I had for you today. Don’t give up and keep writing!

Today I am talking to Morgan Gist MacDonald from the Paper Raven Books. She helps people in their writing journey. Morgan truly believe that writers can change the world. In this episode we talk about reasons why people don't write although they want to writer's block writer's doubts what to do when you lose inspiration writing discipline how to come up with new writing ideas writing productivity tips Food for Thought [spp-tweet tweet="You write first and then only clarify the idea."] The energy that you bring into writing is as important as what you write. You can get Morgan's free ebook called 12 STEPS TO WRITE AN E-BOOK here The Full Blab Interview Wanna grow your audience and business with Blab? Check this out!  

Today I am talking to Dr. Tom Curran. He helps people to discover the unique gift that each of them is and to discover how they can be that gift in the world. He also helps speakers be able to be able to present their message more effectively and helps. organizations lead their organizations more effectively. The most important is that Tom is one of the best storytellers that I have met so far. In this interview we talk about the power of the storytelling and Tom shares his knowledge and opinions around the topic. It was originally done on Blab and you can see the full recording of it below (including the Q&A and extra talks). The podcast is the edited shorter version of what we had covered. Food for thought Stories become a bridge between truth and meaning and between the presenter and their audience. You don't just make a presentation - you ARE the presentation. Don't wait for perfection before you start writing. Recognize that before you ever write you are already an author. Meaning that there's a message that is already in you and it's already coming out of you whether you recognize it or not. You're already authoring a message with your life. Full Blab interview Find out the limited offer for the Blab Traction Course Here