How Short Books Build Big Credibility in B2B Sales (and How AI Can Help) with Julie Trelstad

[00:00:00] Julie: I've been working with a number of business book authors just in the last few months, and the strategy that we are devising is actually. A very fast 30 to 60 page book that's print on Demand, an ebook that is self-published that allows you to get a book out right away and start building your audience and that influence, and then do a bigger book with a publisher or hybrid publisher.
[00:00:25] Mike: My name's Mike Lander and you are listening to Higgle, the B2B Sales Club podcast. Where we bring you actionable insights about sales, RFPs, negotiations, and difficult procurement discussions from sales leaders, ground leaders, and procurement leaders, please subscribe to get updates when new episodes are released.
Julie, thanks ever so much for joining me on Higgle the B2B sales for podcast. Great to have you.
[00:00:53] Julie: I'm so happy to be here. Thank you.
[00:00:55] Mike: Thanks for joining us. For people listening, this is a slightly more unusual topic. It's all to do with how do you build relationships with, obviously your prospects and customers, but from a very different perspective.
This is about building authority and building your position as a thought leader. And Judy's gonna talk to us about how you do that through the lens of publishing, which will be fascinating. So without further ado, Julie, who are you? What do you do, and what's your favorite song and why?
[00:01:25] Julie: Okay. I am Julie Trelstad.
I am a book publishing expert, and I have had a 36 year career in book publishing starting before there were eBooks and before there was Amazon. So I've had this amazing opportunity to watch the whole industry shift and change. For the first 15 years of my career, I was an acquiring editor for large publishers like Readers Digest, the Totten Press, and John Wiley and Sons, where I did architecture books primarily for professionals.
And then after that, for the last almost 20 years, I've been working directly with authors and with literary agents and people who have to help authors build their careers. It's been fun.
[00:02:07] Mike: Fascinating. And your favorite song and why.
[00:02:09] Julie: Okay. I'm gonna say it's Aha. Oh, take me on. Wow. 'cause I can always drop into that and remember my disco youth and you know, dance around like a maniac for a little while and then get back to business.
[00:02:23] Mike: Brilliant. And they were obviously happy years, which is good. Yeah. So, opening topic, how can B2B sales leaders and entrepreneurs and CEOs. Use a book to build a differentiated point of view thought leadership brand. And that's from defining a unique point of view, right through to smart publishing commercialization strategies.
And if you can weave into that where AI helps and where it hurts. So this is all about building thought leadership and about using a book to build thought leadership.
[00:02:56] Julie: Exactly. Well, a book has always been a source of credibility, and you use that word authority in the beginning and the root of authority is author.
So when you write a book and you write a book as a business owner, you are sort of creating a category of one. And what I would say, if you're thinking about writing a book, and this is something I used as an acquiring editor, I was always looking for that author who could write a book like last year's bestseller.
But uniquely different. Where is that intersection between what everyone else is doing? But your particular take on that idea and a book does not have to be an opus. Really like something focused and practical that helps people get from why they should do something to how they should do something. Like in a period of 35 to 60,000 words, which is, you know, not as many as you might think.
[00:03:50] Mike: Mm-hmm. How many pages. Is 35,000 words.
[00:03:55] Julie: 35,000 words would be a pretty short book of be like 120 pages or so. And like in publishing we talk about the idea of thud factor. Like a bigger book is like one that falls down and goes boom. And in the past, that book was seen as more valuable, but since people are reading eBooks, fi doesn't matter as much anymore.
It just needs to be smart and easily digestible.
[00:04:20] Mike: There's lots of topics here. Obviously in the past I've thought about writing a book and I never have. Maybe I will one day, who knows? But what's always kind of put me off was a couple of things. Having a point of view that's different in today's world with, I dunno, how many books have been published in the world.
Goodness knows, hundreds of millions is difficult. And then secondly, I always think there's a danger of writing a book for yourself rather than for the audience. How do you advise business people to go about the process
[00:04:53] Julie: in terms of worrying about redundancy? They're what? Thousands of books on sales, but people who are interested in the topic tend to like buy lots of the books.
They'll have shelves full of sales books, so there's always room for one more. In terms of finding your unique experience, I think this is where AI can come in really well, and especially like for a podcaster like you. Where you can actually ask AI to analyze your published material, yes. And point out to you what's different and to brainstorm what's different from what you've done.
I think podcasters in particular are in a great position to write a book right now because you've really been thinking through everything that's been going on. And finally, it's not just about you because you have clients, you work with people, you have conversations. So if you hold that reader in your mind.
As you're writing it and even like maybe you write your first draft as a letter. Dear Reader, this is one I want you to know.
[00:05:52] Mike: Ah, that's a good idea.
[00:05:53] Julie: Yeah. Dear Reader. And just sort of like keep that in mind and even maybe put a picture of your reader on your desk and say this is what they care about. And then of course, you can always work with a talented editor.
There are editors who specialize in writing business books or books that have a point of view, and I can't underestimate how valuable that is. To work with somebody who has deep experience and can help you through the process.
[00:06:18] Mike: So this leads on to self-publishing versus using publishing houses, using professional editors, ghost writers.
There's quite a mix now out there, or indeed at the extreme, which horrifies me. But just telling AI to write something for you and then publishing, which sounds like the worst thing you could possibly do.
[00:06:39] Julie: Indeed.
[00:06:40] Mike: Just, just talk through that whole range of topics about in your many years of experience, what have you found that works and still works today?
[00:06:50] Julie: I think what really works, this is what I was saying before, is have a book that meets the reader where they are. The reader honestly doesn't care where the book came from, but they need to know about it. They need to know to discover it, to find it, to buy it. And platforms like Amazon allow anybody to put a book.
Big publishers are mixed with self-publishers on Amazon. Sort of the whole spectrum of publishing in my career, self-publishing has really emerged. When I started publishing in the 1990s, if you wanted to self-publish a book that would cost you probably multi six figures because you would be hiring a printer and a whole team and you would be putting things in a garage.
But I would say over the last. 20 years, actually just last year, by the way, the amount of revenue in the industry, self-published books versus traditionally published books, self-published books actually account for more revenue in the economy than traditionally published. Ah, a note about that however, is that there are nearly a hundred times more self publish books.
I was just say, the volume
[00:07:54] Mike: must be very different. The volume
[00:07:55] Julie: is much bigger. The revenue is much smaller for a self-published book. So the real difference is I think like self-publishing, it's fast. You can get your ideas out really quickly. You can go to market. And then on the other hand, traditional publishing, you have to think of more like a business partnership.
So you need to find a book publisher that is looking for the same audience that you write for. And usually these are broad mass market books. You know, books about vampires, romantic. High concept business books that appeal across the board. So they have to really have a very large audience to appeal to a traditional publisher.
That process also takes almost two years to complete. Wow.
[00:08:39] Mike: Still.
[00:08:40] Julie: Yeah. Absolutely. And then there's a piece in the middle that I think is emerging and that is particularly useful for business book authors, and that is hybrid publishing. Hybrid publishing means you go to an organization that has the same staff as a traditional publisher.
That is professional editors, professional marketers. They have bookstore distribution that they'll print your book in bulk for you. The big difference is you have to pay for that. However, they're very selective as well, so they will not take on your book if they do not think it will sell. At least a good hybrid publisher will not take your book unless they think it'll sell.
A recent study just came out showing business books. He said the average profit for hybrid book publishers is close to $11,000, and it's a lot more than a self-published author because self-published authors, although you can get it out fast, most of them don't have the bandwidth to do the marketing.
That's essential and so on.
[00:09:36] Mike: It's the distribution, isn't it? The problem is if you have a physical book and you self publish. So that's one of the things I wanted to talk to you about was if you've self-published and you've got a physical book, it'd be pretty rare. I mean, you might have a big emailing list and therefore you might get a hundred thousand people on your email list.
[00:09:56] Julie: That'd be great. You would sell a bunch of books then. Then
[00:09:58] Mike: you'd sell maybe a thousand books, but then you've got package them and post them, manage the logistics and returns.
[00:10:06] Julie: Actually, it's easier than that. We have a miracle called print on demand. Right?
[00:10:11] Mike: Yeah.
[00:10:12] Julie: So you merely have to upload your book to Amazon or to another supplier like Ingram Spark or Book Vault in the uk.
And they just keep that digital file on hand. And whenever somebody orders that book from Amazon, or either from you, it'll just print it and ship it to that person. The economics of this aren't great and the profitability. Yeah, I was gonna say it's not great, but the key is to keep the book short and the price high because the margins aren't there.
I've been working with a number of business book authors just in the last few months, and the strategy that we are devising is actually a very fast. 30 to 60 page book that's print on demand, an ebook that is self-published that allows you to get a book out right away and start building your audience and that influence and then do a bigger book with a publisher or hybrid publisher.
[00:11:06] Mike: This is where I've gone mentally. What I thought was, I always think it's good talk through stories because the stories then will bring to life the lessons learned. I thought about publishing eBooks, a 30 page ebook, and I've got about four or five topics in my head. Great idea and lots of content through my podcast and through all the training materials that I run.
I've got all sorts of material and I have several points of view that are a bit different. So I was thinking, I know I'll publish an ebook and then when I just even peeled back one layer of the onion I went, I could do that. Or an audiobook, that's fine, but. It'll never get bought. 'cause no one on Amazon will ever see it.
So how do you go from, I've published an ebook or I've published a audiobook. How do you then go into, and now I'm selling 500, a thousand copies. How do you bridge that gap? Let's assume the book is half credible.
[00:12:04] Julie: Don't rely on Amazon. That's what I would say. What's interesting is that Amazon. People love to buy books on Amazon.
It's easy, it's frictionless. It's either a Kindle or they get the overnight shipping that it's very, very easy. So people love to buy it. Amazon is not a discovery platform. People will not randomly find your book on Amazon unless you're offering some kind of how-to book. That is rare and no one else has published a book on it.
[00:12:30] Mike: So actually very good point. When was the last time I went on to Amazon and just started to discover around topics never. I'd use chat, GPT or another LLM to discover books in my domain of interest. And then I'd go and buy it on Amazon, but I wouldn't go on and discover on Amazon.
[00:12:50] Julie: Yeah.
[00:12:51] Mike: So Amazon's a brilliant distribution platform.
[00:12:53] Julie: Yeah. So like you discussed, newsletter. Newsletter is the best way to sell books. And what I've seen with my clients is typically if they had a a mailing list of a hundred thousand, they would sell 30,000 eBooks. It's like very highly responsive because people like that format a lot. And if they trust you as a writer and they're following you, I mean simple things like if you have a large email list, do an email blast, and then after the initial blast, always include it at the bottom of your emails.
But you know, just like a kind little link to always persistently buy your book, put it on your website, put it in your own email signature for every email you send, you know, get my book. Price it reasonably, make it five bucks. It's no brainer, you know, to like buy this book. That's gonna have a huge amount of value.
Put it in social media at that level. Advertising isn't really good, in my opinion, unless you are selling something that's more than $30. If it is a business book and you're selling it for 30, $35. At that point, you can also start paying for like Facebook advertising or Amazon advertising. But you couldn't do it for a $5 book.
[00:13:57] Mike: No. You'll absolutely, definitely lose money
[00:14:00] Julie: without a doubt. But if you have a high value product or you have a series of books, like if you had, you know, three books series and you were charging $30 worth, then you could start doing that and you would build that as a list building kind of activity.
There's also a service called Book Funnel. That allows you to sell your eBooks and audiobooks directly to consumers, and you can hook this up to Shopify or any online shopping cart so that you can deliver Kindle books without having to go through Amazon, so you don't have to give Amazon half your profits or 30% or whatever they take.
[00:14:35] Mike: Interesting. I think where we've got to is if you have a idea for a book in you, but writing 35,000 words feels a bit daunting. And you haven't got any previous history, writing an ebook, first off is probably a much better route. A 30 page ebook.
[00:14:53] Julie: Yeah, and you can use simple tools like Atticus or other formatting Scrivener book writing tools have formatting built-ins, so you can finish writing and produce your own ebook.
It's very accessible, but you can also hire these services on Fiverr for not a lot of money, so you can keep your cost pretty low. To do like a mini book.
[00:15:16] Mike: If you're doing a mini book again, on the grounds that you want to give it to your clients and your prospects, and you want to get some awareness of this book and you want it to be read for an ebook, are you best doing it alone or are you best looking at doing it with an editor of some form?
[00:15:34] Julie: I always recommend using an editor always, you know, it's a good idea. And again, there's a marketplace called Rey, which is two E'S R-E-E-D-S-Y that allows you to hire professional editors, but you can find them online and on LinkedIn. And at a minimum, I would get a professional proofread at the end just to make sure that the typos are gone.
And the hint for that, just reading your book out loud and like what I generally do working with authors. Is we just turn on Speechify or read out loud because your eye skips over missing words and typos, but you can hear it.
[00:16:11] Mike: Interesting. What do you think it would cost then, if someone's thinking, oh, an ebook sounds like a good idea.
How much should they be paying for someone, let's say, an editor rather than just a proofreader to work with on this 30 page, 50 page ebook? What do you think that might cost them? I
[00:16:28] Julie: mean, it could be anywhere from a couple hundred to a couple thousand dollars. I would say have your budget in mind and you can go out to marketplaces and find editors who do a different level of services.
So the most expensive editor is gonna be someone called a developmental editor, and that's the person who like does the big concepts and puts things in the right order. Underneath that is what someone called a line editor who will rewrite your sentences to make you sound awesome.
[00:16:55] Mike: Okay,
[00:16:56] Julie: a copy editor. A little less expensive is somebody who will just fix all your typos and mistakes, but keep your sentences and your own words intact.
And finally, a proofreader is just looking for errors. Well, the copy editor will also say like, this doesn't make sense. Can you rewrite that proofreader? Just errors? So there's different levels. And also you can use tools like Grammarly and Pro Writing Aid, which are AI editors that are pretty darn good.
So if you wanted to just do this on your own, you can use those tools to get very clean copy.
[00:17:31] Mike: So that takes us nicely into the road of How about using chat GPT as, what's the first editor that you said?
[00:17:38] Julie: A developmental editor.
[00:17:40] Mike: So could you use chat, GPT as a developmental editor interactively to write an ebook?
Um, what are the pros and cons of that? Do you think? It could be any of the LLMs, I don't care if it's Chatsy, bt or whatever, Gemini or whatever.
[00:17:55] Julie: Claude or Gemini A, I would not have them write the book, but I would say what I would do is like my favorite way and I'm working on a little business book myself, and this is how I'm doing it.
I go out for a walk, I have an outline, and I just talk that chapter in. Then I toss that into the AI and I say, clean it up for me. And it's using my words. I say, do not change my language, recognize my speech pattern, so on, and clean it up for me. And then I'm like, okay, do you have suggestions? How could this be clearer?
You can give it an instruction like you are my ideal reader, and explain who your ideal reader is and what your ideal reader's problems are and have it check it against that. So I would definitely use and chat GPT. You can talk right into it, but you can use any voice recorder and pop it in. That's how I would do it.
There is a company that I know of that I work with sometimes, and I think they're amazing, called chapters.com that combines voice recordings with real developmental editors that helps you get your book done. So they're using AI in a smart way. But the key is that by using your spoken voice and you as a podcaster, you have all these recordings.
You can just like dump it in and say, clean this up and make this back and forth. But I would say don't just say, write me a book. A lot of back and forth, giving it samples of your voice, your writing, so that it doesn't make things up or sound too much like an ai. They're getting better and better all the time.
[00:19:26] Mike: So just to summarize, what would be the A, b, C of writing A 30 page ebook? Just give our listeners really simple, a few step by steps.
[00:19:37] Julie: Yeah, the first thing would be nailing that concept. Like what is a book about and why is it different from other things? Like what is the narrow focus? And then the second step I would take would be creating an outline of that book and deciding all the chapters or the parts.
That's a right. Planning B would be writing. I like the speak to text, or you can take all the material you've already written, like pull it all together and match it to the thesis of the book. The third one would be create a draft based on that. One thing you can do is even if you have it cleaned up, you can say, okay, chat G, PT, or Claude, or Gemini, give me a point by point writing plan for finishing this up.
What other pieces do I need to write? So you're writing the manuscript, and then C would be the editing, and that's where, number one, this is what I would do first. Finish that draft, put it away. Just forget about it. Before you hire an editor, let a few weeks set, pull it out, and then listen to it or read it again, or have somebody else read it to you, and then if you're happy with it after that, and hopefully it shouldn't be a cringey experience, then hire your editor and then finish it up.
[00:20:50] Mike: Brilliant. Perfect, Julie. Now let's move on to the second topic, which is, in an AI driven world, how will digital rights management and platforms like alet change the economics for authors and experts? And I guess here what we're talking about is turning AI slop into a licensed premium content ecosystem where smaller, highly engaged audiences can be monetized.
And this is a really important macro topic right now. How do creators evolve and thrive in an environment where all content appears to have been T trawled by the LLMs used for training? I was just using chat, GPT 5.2. It's super smart. There's no getting away from, and it's a huge benefit. It's super smart.
So in that kind of world, how are we going to stand out as creators with a point of view?
[00:21:44] Julie: I would say something a little controversial to start with, to say that you put your finger on it. These models are smart, specifically because they have scraped all the books and all the thinkers. Apparently in the world of AI development, the ai, the LLMs were not working well until they actually brought in literature.
And so to that end, these developers are totally reliant on human created, unique and thoughtful content in order to make their models. So they need us, like the machines need the humans. You said something about DRM, so I wanna like throw some initials at you. I wanna say DRM. Versus TDM, and these are two words.
DRM is digital rights management, and that's been around since the nineties, since eBooks started, and that prevents readers from copying their eBooks. In theory, it doesn't really, it's never worked very well,
[00:22:43] Mike: but at least it's an attempt to protect the author and their copyrighted content,
[00:22:47] Julie: right? It encrypts the work, but you know, there's nothing to stop somebody from photocopying a book either or scanning it.
Nothing's really prevents that. So that's D-R-M-D-R-M has been around since the nineties. And then TDM, which I define as text and data mining rights, which is kind of like the old Bitcoin you're mining for this information. So text and data mining is the permission that authors and publishers give to AI companies to use their works in either training.
Or in output models. There are a number of different things that these companies do. Like for instance, like a specialty AI company may only put medical textbooks in there. They don't wanna scrape WebMD. They want high quality content, and these are very closed digital models. And I think that's the future, not these giant LLMs.
Your content, like the recent Claude agreement was like a $1.2 billion settlement to pay authors for the work that got scraped. That's roughly $3,000 per work that got ingested into the system in the United States. The judges have pretty clearly ruled that AI companies can totally use. Any published material to train their models and publish.
Also like author as an authority, publish means literally to make public. So when you publish something, you have actually told the public they can use it, but you have limited it to the fact that they can't resell it or pass it off as their own work. And there are a lot of laws around how they can use it, but in the US they can use it.
In Europe, it's a little different. In Europe, text and data mining is by law. Data companies are required to pay authors. So it's a little different situation, but in the United States, they can do it. But the Anthropic case goes to prove these companies will pay good dollars for acquiring the content they require to build their models.
That's where Alet comes in. It allows books to be machine readable. In a way that any AI company can use our open API our connector to determine whether the rights for a particular book are available and if they are who they need to pay. And they can be paid either like a one-time fee for training rights for just being ingested or an ongoing fee like Spotify for like every time a little piece of that book is used and regurgitated in a chat or a chat bot.
[00:25:30] Mike: Interesting.
[00:25:31] Julie: This is like a really interesting new source of revenue. So you're gonna sell audiobook rights, hardcover rights, braille rights, and text and data mining rights. It's just a new way to sell your book, and I think that we're gonna see devices in the future and a lot going on that use AI to read books and to recommend books.
And to take apart a book and deliver it just the way the reader wants it. So I don't think this is gonna be unusual in the future. And authors who get on board now are gonna be the first ones to be realizing these new revenue streams.
[00:26:07] Mike: Does the same thing apply to podcasts?
[00:26:10] Julie: You can do audio, books, podcasts, blogs, illustrations, alet.
You can register any bit of content. Absolutely.
[00:26:19] Mike: Because I wonder if in the future. Podcasting is here to stay. People like the format, they like listening to audio. As long as that continues, then obviously that content's valuable. Like a book is valuable. It's just a different way of consuming that content.
The problem currently is, is that all podcasters basically publish and there's no monetization apart from advertising, which a lot of people don't like, but there's valuable content in there. So I wonder if at some point it will go behind some kind of encryption wall whereby you may not have to pay to listen.
But if you want to use it for training purposes as an ai, LLM, then you would have to pay.
[00:26:58] Julie: Yeah, and that's really interesting too. You are granting platforms like Spotify and Apple, I assume, non-exclusive. Right, and it's, they are. Selling their database or the content in it, or allowing LMS to listen to it.
They should be paying you.
[00:27:17] Mike: They
[00:27:17] Julie: should.
[00:27:17] Mike: Micro revenue.
[00:27:19] Julie: Micro revenue, absolutely. It should be just like the listening.
[00:27:22] Mike: A bit like with songs, I guess with artists, the same thing occurs,
[00:27:26] Julie: right? I think music is ahead of us, but there's so many other forms of human created content that are super valuable and will continue to be so.
[00:27:37] Mike: Exactly. So if you wanna kind of pull it all together, someone listening, thinking about writing a book, what would you recommend as a B2B thought leader? Obviously consultants or CEOs or people that have a point of view around something going on in the industry. What are your kind of top two or three tips for doing that?
[00:27:56] Julie: Yeah, I think don't shy away from writing a book 'cause you think it's a daunting product or project. You probably have already written it If you've been creating content for years, if you've been blogging, podcasting, that you absolutely can use AI to put it together. But I wouldn't let AI write it unless you train it very well in your words.
And then I would think about out of the box, I would think about a publishing approach that is both self-publishing. Traditional publishing, and if you wanna be in bookstores, you're gonna need to be traditionally published. But self-publishing is great for direct to consumer and for reaching your audience and for selling something to your loyal audience who can't get enough of you already.
And then the bigger publishing things are gonna help you get publicity. They're gonna help you get a larger platform in bigger stages. But getting there is gonna be a three year project, honestly. And you can publish your own book in a month or 90 days, I would say.
[00:28:52] Mike: So the key message for me also here is start with an ebook.
Start with something simple, 30 to 50 pages. Get that down, get it published online. Start to promote it yourself through your own list. As you say, don't rely upon Amazon. And then when you've got that, and if you are fortunate enough to sell a thousand ebook, you've probably got something, then maybe it's time to look at the bigger book.
[00:29:16] Julie: Exactly. Don't think that Amazon's gonna sell them for you.
[00:29:20] Mike: Julie, it's been brilliant. Thank you ever so much for coming on the show. Where can people find out more about you?
[00:29:25] Julie: Yeah, you can go to my website@paperbacksandpixels.com. I know it's a long one. Or if you wanna learn more about Alet, we're at alet.ai and that's Hamlet rhyming with Hamlet.
[00:29:38] Mike: So Hamlet without the h.
[00:29:40] Julie: Exactly.
[00:29:41] Mike: Julie, it's been a pleasure. Thank you ever so much.
[00:29:44] Julie: Thank you.
[00:29:44] Mike: Thanks for listening to Higgle, the B2B Sales Club podcast series with your host Mike Lambda. Please subscribe so that you'll catch all the next episodes.