Interview with Stephanie Chandler | Sound Authors Radio

November 29, 2008

Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors. My next guest on the show is Stephanie Chandler. She’s got a book that’s all about being an author and building an online platform. It’s called The Authors Guide to Building an Online Platform: Leveraging the Internet to Sell More Books. Welcome to the show.

Stephanie Chandler: Thank you so much.

Dr. Kent: Tell me about what your mission is. Of course you’ve got a website devoted to writers and things like that. Give me a sound bite about what you do.

Stephanie Chandler: Well I wrote the book on how to build an online platform because that’s exactly the process that I used when I ventured into publishing back in 2003. I had wanted to write a business start up guide and I was getting doors closed in my face left and right. A wonderful agent called me and said he loved my work, that I needed to be reaching tens of thousands of people. And I said isn’t that kind of putting the cart before the horse? Once I publish a book I’ll be invited to speak and he said, well its kind of your problem to solve. You got to figure out how to build your platform.

I didn’t want to travel extensively and I thought what’s the quickest way I can do that and I launched a website targeted towards my audience, which was entrepreneurs. That was businessinfoguide.com and I started working on building traffic and driving people to the site. I was publishing a monthly newsletter. The first one incidentally went out to eight people and after several years I have thousands of subscribers. I self published my first book The Business Start up Checklist and Planning Guide and it started selling a full two months before it was in print. I thought, okay I get it; this is why they want you to have a platform - so that you have an audience for your book.

Dr. Kent: What’s the big secret? How do you create? Of course you certainly have connections already and to a certain extent because you had founded several websites, is that correct?

Stephanie Chandler: Well I did that because I wanted to build a platform. So what I did was I thought about who’s my target audience for my book? And I wanted to write business and marketing books. So the first site businessinfoguide.com in an effort to bring in an audience. So what happened after I self published the first book, I had built a high traffic website.

So when I wanted to publish my second book, I sent out a whopping two proposals to two different publishers and I had a contract in 30 days with John Wiley and Sons for my second book, which was From Entrepreneur to Intrapreneur. And I would argue that they took me because I came to the table with a platform and it was a beautiful thing.

Dr. Kent: I’ve heard a lot of people tell that the easiest way to get published these days is to prove that your book is already selling self published and then publishers will pick you up.

Stephanie Chandler: Definitely and there’s so many opportunities with the internet and for authors to excel. You’re doing this with your radio show, blogs are just so hot. They are a wonderful opportunity to build an audience and so what happens is you want to go get published with a major publisher and you can say, hey I have tens of thousands of people visiting my blog every month or receiving my newsletter or listening to my radio show and that is probably the quickest way to get publishing success.

Dr. Kent: Tell me a little about the book itself; The Authors Guide to Building an Online Platform. How many secrets do you actually reveal?

Stephanie Chandler: I reveal it all, I have nothing to hide. I’m all about sharing what I know and in addition to that I interviewed several successful authors who have used the internet as well to build their platform and that was really helpful. There’s some really great people in there like Dan Kennedy who’s really well known in the business world and great stories in there about how they used the internet to really build a platform to sell more books and really build a career around your book. There’s other ways you can do that like selling e-books and information products and those types of things.

Dr. Kent: It’s a complicated thing I guess for most authors is they might not be as savvy as you seem to be with businessinfoguide.com for example. It looks pretty complicated for your average author.

Stephanie Chandler: It looks complicated but I built that site on a $20 template I got on the internet. I taught myself how to use Microsoft FrontPage and I built that site from the ground up just with useful content. My goal is to share as much information as I can and really am a big believer of giving away free information. That’s how you build an audience, that’s how you build a fan base. So I share everything I know as much as I can and that’s what brings people back and inspires them to sign up for my newsletter and my programs that I offer.

Dr. Kent: Were you in business before all of this started?

Stephanie Chandler: No I was in the Silicon Valley for 11 years. I got an ulcer and decided to leave that behind and I moved to Sacramento and I wanted to write novels quite frankly. I opened a bookstore in Sacramento and in that process I really fell in love with small business marketing and wanted to help other people do what I did, realize there was life after corporate America. So I put a staff in my store and instead of writing novels I started writing for business magazines. I started writing my own book and like I said building content for business info guide. So I really just learned through trial and error, studying how other people do it. I’m an avid reader and my goal is always to share with other people what I’ve learned.

Dr. Kent: When’s your first novel going to be coming out?

Stephanie Chandler: You know what? I’m not even touching novels and it was an accidental discovery of a passion I didn’t know I had and really educating small business owners is wonderfully rewarding and I think I’d be a very frustrated novelist. I’m grateful I figured it out.

Dr. Kent: Do you get on the road with John Wiley & Sons or with Quill Driver Press? Did they put you out there?

Stephanie Chandler: I have to say they really don’t, most publishers aren’t going to a lot of the marketing. They certainly have booked me some radio gigs and things like that. I definitely take the initiative myself to market my book and I’m speaking at writer’s conferences and things like that. But I think that’s true no matter what your situation; whether you’re self published or you have a major publisher backing you. It’s really up to you to be successful and if you want a long term career as an author, you have to take the initiative to promote yourself. And that’s what I also talk about in the book, ways to do that. Through the internet from the comfort of your home or office.

Dr. Kent: There’s something like 300,000 to 400,000 books a year in this country. There are many aspects to publishing but how do people make themselves stand out? Is it going into another market or finding their target market or making sure their cover is nice? What’s the first step for an author?

Stephanie Chandler: I think its finding your market and I think it’s with a website. Any author who doesn’t have a website is really missing an opportunity and like I said the blogs are really wonderful right now. If you’ve got something to say, get on there and have fun with your blog. We’re writers; we should have no problem coming up with content. A blog doesn’t need to be a big deal. You write one to three paragraphs several times a week and you can schedule those out so you can sit down on Sunday night and write your three posts for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of that week and you’re done. And you really start to build an audience, but to me the number one key is to build your web presence. That’s the quickest way.

Having owned a bookstore, which I eventually sold, I met authors every day who were out pounding the pavement looking to do book signing events. That’s all great but the average author sells eight copies of a book at a book signing event. So you’ve got to do a lot of book signing events to really make that pay off. If you get on the internet, you can do things like virtual book tours, you can do internet radio shows; you start getting seen and heard everywhere and you’re going to have no problem selling your books and getting the attention of the publishers.

Dr. Kent: So what is your next big project?

Stephanie Chandler: I am working on my fourth book which is all about small business growth and my goal in my new book is to write the books I want to read. So for several years I’ve been looking for a book on how to take my business to the next level and it doesn’t exist, the books that I want to read. So that’s what I’m working on and I’m really excited about it. I’ve been working with my agent, I have an agent now and hopefully we’ll see that in 2009. We’re working with several publishers to see who’s going to invest with it.

Dr. Kent: It’s been a real honor speaking with you Stephanie Chandler, the author of The Authors Guide to Building an Online Platform: Leveraging the Internet to Sell More Books and clearly she’s done a great job herself of leveraging the internet.

Stephanie Chandler: Thank you it’s an honor to be here today.

Dr. Kent: Thanks, it’s been fun being with you. My next guest on the show is Yolanda Renee, author of Murder, Madness and Love. Come on back for that, it will be fun to talk with her.

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