Everything is Teachable Podcast: Mark Dawson, Self Publishing Formula

Where to find Mark

Learn more at selfpublishingformula.com.

Read the full transcript below.

Mark Dawson: One of the great things about the Internet is that you can find your tribe. It doesn’t really matter how weird and esoteric your tribe is, or your interest might be. You can find people, and often, lots of people who like it.

Melissa Guller: That’s Mark Dawson bestselling author of the John Milton series after quickly realizing that traditional book publishing didn’t work for him, Mark started self-publishing kindle books on Amazon in 2012 and for anyone who thinks you can’t earn a living selling fiction these days, Mark is here with us today to share how he was able to use digital marketing tactics to earn quite a bit of money through his kindle books and how he turned that knowledge into the top online courses available for authors around self publishing and advertising. All this and more on today’s episode of Everything is Teachable.

Announcer: Welcome to Everything is Teachable, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes to learn how everyday creators have transformed their skills and passions into online courses and businesses. To introduce this week’s episode, here’s your host, Melissa Gueler.

Melissa Guller: Hey everyone. I’m Melissa from Team Teachable. This week. I’m here with Mark Dawson, an award-nominated USA Today bestseller with more than 20 books published and over 2 million books downloaded in multiple countries and languages as well as writing. Mark also teaches other authors how to self publish through his podcast, online courses and community at Self Publishing Formula and he speaks regularly at writing conferences all around the world.

Melissa Guller: All right, well Mark, I’m so excited to welcome you to the show.

Mark Dawson: Hi, how are you?

Melissa Guller: I’m great. I know that we have a lot to cover, so let’s just dive right in. I’m curious to know, did you always plan to be a writer?

Mark Dawson: I think it was something that was on the horizon for some time. I was a big reader when I was a child and I first, I think I was kind of writing comic books and things whilst I was a child. And then when I got to my teenage years I, one of the memories I have is of staying behind at school with the maths teacher and my English teacher and they, they let me go into the technology lab where they had some very primitive computers cause this was about 35 years ago probably now. And I would sit down and with my English teacher on one side, I’d, I’d, I write, I wrote a short story, say 25,000 words, Nevada really and finished it. It wasn’t very good obviously cause I was, I didn’t know why on earth I was doing, but it was, it was the first taste I had of actually writing something with narrative and story and pace and all that kind of stuff and off and on. Um, I was writing until I was 28, 29 had, I had a couple of traditionally published books at the time of the century and they didn’t do very well and I stopped writing for a while and it was only when the kindle came around and I realized what was possible with um, effectively cutting out all the middlemen that I got back into again. And I haven’t really looked back since

Melissa Guller: And I know you mentioned cutting out the middlemen. So you initially did try to go the traditional publishing route, right?

Mark Dawson: I didn’t just try it and I did. I had a couple of those published. The first one was called the art of folding apart and it was published in 99, I think. And the second one, I was a lawyer at the time. I was trained as a lawyer and practice for awhile. The second one was called Subpoena Colada, which was kind of a, a satire on being a lawyer in London at the time. That was published a year or two after that. And it was weird. It was, it was a funny experience. Mostly it was fun. Um, I got an Asian very easily. I got, uh, as she then sold the book to a big publisher here again, very easily. And I was expecting both of those things to be hard. The book came out, the, the process of publishing was fun. I met lots of fun people.

Mark Dawson: The posters were great, but it was only really when the book came out that I realized that that was, that was the high point. And they didn’t really do any promotion. I could see they didn’t do any marketing. And I, I remember going into a bookstore in London near where I worked and a lunch break and saw my books were on the shelves, but their problem was they were on the shelves down by the floor where no one would see them. So I, um, I didn’t know in those days that shelf space and positioning and it was all good. You buy that posters by that kind of real estate to make sure that, that their books get seen. My publisher hadn’t done that. So I didn’t gently moved those books up, rearrange the shelves, move my books up to eye level. And then when I came back the next day they’d been moved back down to the floor again. And that was, that kind of summed it up. They didn’t sell very well. My agent dropped me. Um, my publisher dropped me. I couldn’t get anywhere after that cause both, you know, I had two strikes on my record and I have none of those books did very well and it was only really when I got back into it and did it myself, that things changed around for me.

Melissa Guller: Well, that’s interesting, because I think at least kind of the folklore I’ve heard is that the hardest part is just getting somebody to want your book.

Mark Dawson: Yeah. It was kind of what I was expecting. I think I sent it out to three agents and two of them wanted to represent it. And then, um, the agent I chose got a, a deal very quickly. Um, and a, you know, a good deal. I didn’t know I was pre 50,000 pounds, so $75,000, probably for two books, which is, that’s not chicken feed. Um, and I kind of thought, you know, they’d invested some money in meters, an amount that wasn’t trivial. And so I thought that was that this had to be the style of this amazing new career as a writer that I had always wanted. And uh, that was, you know, the, the, the kind of the, the come down from that was, was, uh, was questioned because, you know, I didn’t, it didn’t, it didn’t happen that way. I didn’t win any awards. I didn’t sell any books. I didn’t see anyone buying my books. I didn’t see them leading them on the subway, nothing like that. It was only, as I say, when I took everything under my own control that things changed around.

Melissa Guller: Yeah. So let’s talk about the good stuff. So a bit later, you mentioned you did move into the world of publishing with kindle. So how did that feel different from the traditional publishing route?

Mark Dawson: Oh, everything’s different really. You mean? I remember I was, I moved from the law to another job. I was working in Soho in London, a fairly trendy media job. And I’m at a colleague, actually a colleague and a friend independently of each other, mentioned to me within the space of six months or so that they had published on the kindle. Um, I didn’t even really know what the kindle was in in those days. I think when I did find out, I, I thought that list will never catch on and I want to, I want to read, I want to hold a book in my hand. I don’t want to read our own device. So these guys were doing well and so I, I investigated what they were doing and what that meant for them. And, and they, they were, they said that we actually getting paid, we’re getting some money, no huge amount from Amazon, some money coming from ads into them rather than going out from them said to Jeff, which is was the usual route when I was thinking about my relationship with Amazon in those days.

Mark Dawson: And I’m very experience was positive. They felt that they, a, they enjoyed the control that they had. They enjoyed being able to commission a cover and deciding how they wanted to advertise, how they wanted to edit the book. All of that kind of stuff was something that I could see that they found liberating. And so I got back into writing again and I took a story that I’d been thinking of for awhile about I, I’d say we look at, I realized, see what color he was operating an active in London during the blitz. So in the, you know, in 40, 41. Um, and so I was searched that I, you know, spent a lot of time writing there, but a couple of years, um, and then I think about 2012, 2013 had that book, which was called the black mile was published. And that was the first one that I did myself and I didn’t pull up any trees.

Mark Dawson: Um, but at the same time I could see, you know, with the data that Amazon provided, even back in those days, you could see that books were being downloaded. And now as I started to get reviews and, and then readers would email me and say that they enjoyed the book and I’d never had any contact with readers like that. So those kinds of things. And also of course I was getting paid. So I think my first check from Amazon was about $12 for the first month that the black mile came out. I sold $12 worth of books, which is probably about six copies. So all the very seeds were planted at around about the same time. And I doubled down. Um, I started to investigate how to do better, um, what’s, he needed to write more books, but then I, I learnt how to promote myself better online. Um, I looked at other industries that have been selling things online longer than authors have. And I started to take the lessons that I learned in those industries and adapted them to work when it came to selling books. Um, because you know, there’ve been trailblazers who’ve been going at this longer than we have and I think I can, my view is always I can short circuit my learning by taking their best practice, improving it and making it more suitable for, for book selling and pushing off from there. And it’s gone pretty well.

Melissa Guller: I think that’s smart to see what other people have been doing and say, you know, how does this apply to me? So I’m curious, are there any specific trailblazers as you called them or examples of what you saw other people doing that you started to pick up on? There were a few authors

Mark Dawson: when there’s a, when I started, there was a bulletin board. Those were kind of dating myself. They’re both a forum called keyboards used to go kindle boards and that was, it’s pretty rubbish now. But when in those as it was where all the, all the authors hung out, it was the place where ideas were exchanged that there was a right good. Hugh Howey who wrote the book wool and he knew he did very well. He was one of the first breakout stars. Lots of romance authors, people like Barbara Freethy, Marie force, romance writers tend to be, you know, they tend to learn things and adapt them fastest. So I’ve always learned loads from romance writers. So I started to pick up what they were doing and then I’d go beyond that. So I would start to listen to podcasts outside of the publishing space. And I’d look at courses, I’d read blogs, I’m trying to think of some, some examples now, but people like David Simon Garland, perhaps, um, Pat Flynn, and it was a, is connected with Teachable.

Mark Dawson: Uh, I’ve, I’ve, you know, spoken to Pat a few times and I learned some things from him, his podcasts, places where digital marketing tactics were discussed. I knew that there was a, it could be a good source of strategy for me. So I dug in and learned from people who had gone before. And then ultimately, how did you start maybe getting some steam going, picking up more readers or reviews or sales that would be advertising. So, I mean, I was doing pretty well, um, until kind of like 2013, 2014 I got to January, 2014 and my wife was on maternity leave and I was still working in London. And in January I was selling enough books to match my salary working in London. So maybe, you know, three or 4,000 pounds a month, something like that. And I remember saying to my wife, if I can sustain this for maybe 12 months, then I’ll think about quitting and going full time as a writer.

Mark Dawson: And she was, she was actually more bullish than I was. She said, you should do it now or I’m a bit more conservative. So I wanted to make sure that this was something that I could sustain. But at the same time, I started to advertise. So I was one of the first authors to use Facebook advertising. I can’t think of many anyone else actually, he was doing it to the level I did before me. So I told myself I had to do it, made lots of mistakes, spend lots of money. How I’m going to say wasted lots of money. That wouldn’t be true. I, my philosophy is it’s okay to make mistakes as long as you learn from them. Don’t make them twice. I’m sure I made lots of mistakes with Facebook ads and I honed my strategy, I learned the platform better and kind of January, February, I remember and things are a little different now is more competition by, remember in those days I was spending this, I was spending $100 a day and making 400 and I remember speaking to my accountant and saying, cause math is not my strong point.

Mark Dawson: I wanted to just double check that my numbers weren’t holding up. And he was like, this is like a big ATM. You should, you should probably put more into this. So there were days I was spending 500, $1,000 and making four or 5,000 back. It was, it was really reMarkable. And that pushed on throughout that year. 2014 was a really good year. Um, and got to 20th. November, 2014 was the day that I quit. And I think I was making something like $25,000 a month that month. And um, by and large, that’s kind of, uh, that graph has continued to take out. Um, and you know, I tend to make six figures a month now from just from sending books, which is something that if you said to me, um, 10 years ago or 15 years ago when I started writing that that was possible, I would have said you, you were crazy. But it is possible. And I, I’m, I’m probably an outline, but there are plenty of others who are doing better than me. Um, and more importantly, there are hundreds, thousands even, um, who are making what you would, you know, life changing money. So either kind of leaving the job money or paying bills, money, filling up the car with gas money, going out for dinner with their wife, their husband, that kind of amount of thousands and thousands of authors who have changed their lives in big ways and small ways through the options that Amazon has, has pioneered.

Melissa Guller: Well, it’s interesting to hear you talk about, because it’s not just you doing this, it’s becoming something that is very possible, but I know at least maybe a myth I grew up hearing is that it wasn’t possible or it was very unlikely to make money as a fiction writer or all kinds of artists. But seems like you and many others have found a way.

Mark Dawson: Yeah, I mean it’s, I mean, now we’ve, one of the things, the other thing that I do now is I teach people how to do, I’ve done, so the cell function formula has a number of courses with sham. Of course they’re hosted on Teachable and one of them is called one oh one which is a foundational course which takes authors from the moment they finish their books to everything they need to do to get them up on to Amazon and the other retailers, and not just to get them onto the, onto those platforms, but to do it in a way that maximizes their chances of success. As we kind of look at that as a launch pad is making sure that everything is in place, cover design, formatting, metadata blurbs, symbol advertising, mailing lists, all that kind of stuff. But you know, it’s important. Can’t skip any of that.

Mark Dawson: And then the other course we have is called, I’m ads for authors, which is fairly obvious from its title is about advertising, digital advertising for authors. And that that’s what we see as well. Rocket fuel. So you need to get your foundation right and then you need to um, get rocket fuel. And the combination of the two can be very powerful. So we have, we had how many students that we had and now we must have had over 10,000 students now. And of that number, a lot of them, a significant amount of them are doing well and also in weird niches, some of them, you know, one of the great things about the Internet is that you can, you can find your tribe. It doesn’t really matter how weird and esoteric your tribe is, or your interest might be. You can find people and often lots of people, who like it.

Mark Dawson: So one of my favorite examples of students that we’ve had is a rice called Octavia Randolph who writes, I always get this wrong, but it’s something like, um, Scandinavian historical romance. So two or 300 ago, um, fet, you’d think they be fairly niche, but the last we spoke to how she was making like $50,000 a month, um, from what you would consider probably to be a fairly select group of readers. Of course in reality, um, you know, with tools like Facebook, using Amazon properly, I’m seeing Amazon as a search engine rather than just just a store. By adapting your thinking, you can find your readers and you can find them in a big enough number that they can actually buy enough of your books to make a very significant positive difference on your life. Um, so you know, there’s, there’s lots and lots of, um, writers like Octavia who now who are doing really well after learning how to put things into place properly.

Melissa Guller: Well as I hear you explain it, it makes sense that digital marketing would be a nice fit for authors because even though you’re sad books were on the bottom bookshelf, only so many people are in walking or travel distance of that bookstore. But with the Internet, I’m sure there are ways where you can really find your tribe or the right people in a much more efficient way.

Mark Dawson: Yeah. And we’ll see. I mean the, the benefit of the Internet and digital products just in general, it doesn’t have to be books. It could be anything. Now, music, films, courses, anything at all that you can, you can be a purchase or click away from a purchase. So I can, with an Amazon ad, I can serve you an ad and it can be very, very targeted. So I can make sure that my, my books are targeted to people who like books like mine or by authors like me. Um, and those readers can buy my books. They see the ad, they click it. Once they go to the product page, they, if they like it, they can buy in two clicks. And also I can, you know, the, the industry that I’m in has very low capital requirements. I, there’s no product to make really, there’s no warehousing, the delivery, nothing like that.

Mark Dawson: So I can afford to price within what you’d consider an impulse bracket. So most of my books will be three 90949295929 and that, that’s, that’s a pretty, it’s a pretty sweet spot. Amazon gives you 70% of that. Sorry, every time I saw one at five minutes and I’m getting about four, four 34 four 40 something like that when everything is taken into account. So that, that’s cool. And then with Facebook, Facebook is just obviously is a vast platform, you know, millions and millions of, or billions of people on Facebook and Facebook’s targeting me. The actual ad platform itself is very, very well developed. Targeting is insane. I’ve seen Scott face into hot water over the last couple of years, but just how much data they have. But they do allow advertisers access to that data. And if you know how to use it properly, you can send very targeted ads to people who are looking for exactly the kind of thing that you’re selling in this case a book. So I can make sure that if I can find an author like me, I can, I can serve ads to that authors, fans on Facebook. And again, the intention there is to get them off Facebook onto Amazon or another retailer where they then can, you know, again, buy it within a couple of clicks. It’s all, it’s, it’s a really nice combination of um, price elasticity, discovery of targeting and convenience. Everything coming together makes a really powerful and compelling package both for the author and also for the reader.

Melissa Guller: Well, that’s what I was thinking too, is it’s not just beneficial for you, but for the reader. If you’ve managed to find me and offer me a book that you think that I’ll like that similar to other authors that I know and you’ve made it so easy for me to purchase, it kind of seems like it would be a no brainer that we would both benefit. I’ll find a great new book and you’ll earn a sale.

Mark Dawson: Yeah. That’s the key thing. And we can talk about marketing and the tactics and the strategies that we use with the, the key thing for me is writing great books that the appropriate readers will enjoy because you can be an absolute Ninja and digital marketing. But, um, you know, I, I’m, I’m pretty good at it. I can sell I think most things once. Um, but if I sell you my book and you don’t enjoy, it doesn’t matter how good Amazon Marks or you will never buy another book by me again. So the, the main thing is always to provide an experience that’s enjoyable. And of course it’s not just, you know, we can say it’s four 99 or five 99 which is true, which is not much. It’s now a couple of Starbucks coffees, maybe even one Starbucks cup of coffee depending on where you buy your coffee from.

Mark Dawson: But it’s an investment in time as well. So yeah, a decent novels is going to take 10 hours of someone’s life to read. So I want to make sure they are they going to invest that time in me, that they leave feeling that that’s time that has been well spent, you know. And um, it was something that they enjoyed doing when they could have been watching game of Thrones. They could have been looking on Netflix. I’m playing video games, whatever it is. I want to make sure that they enjoy the experience of entering my fictional world for however long it takes them to read it.

Melissa Guller: I think that’s great advice for any listener. Really. Anyone who creates anything, whether it’s a book or art or music or something that other people enjoy. Like of course you need an audience. Of course you need somebody to listen to or to enjoy what you’ve been working on, but ultimately that should bring them some kind of joy or emotion and it should be great content before you just go out and Market kind of a blank cover.

Mark Dawson: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean this thing that we, we, that that is something that I feel very strongly and you’ll see that in our courses as well. So the actual, I don’t necessarily just want to teach, I mean obviously that’s the main thing. I want people to go away with something that is valuable and can be presented that can make them a lot of money. Um, but at the same time I want them to enjoy the experience as well. So the other, the guys I work with on the teaching side are they had a video production company. Um, and between what th then knowledge and experience and the fact that I’m quite a hard task masculine with a very high standards, um, between all of those things coming together, the, the content that we put out, we are pretty confident is the best in the business.

Mark Dawson: Um, to the extent that if we’re doing testimonial videos, James and John, who I worked with will fly around the world to meet the students and then film them in their houses. So they’ve just, they’ve just come back from, I think watches. So they went to, James has been in Barcelona, we’re going up to Scotland soon, our Las Vegas later in the year. So we actually go to people’s houses and record and the production values are pretty high. Um, we’ve got a podcast and it goes on Fridays. It’s a video podcast, so it’s a self publishing show. Um, and again, we spend quite a lot of money to make sure that can compete with anything else that listeners might choose to listen to. Not, not just in our space, but in any space. So, um, you know, we have a, we, we commissioned animation for the Intro we’ve got, now you’re American [inaudible] who this this is, but there’s a guy called, uh, Huey Morgan.

Mark Dawson: He was in a band called the fun loving criminals from the 90s he’s from Brooklyn, but no one in Brooklyn knows him. He’s quite big in the u in the UK. You’ve got a very distinctive Brooklyn drawl. So we got him to do the voiceover. It’s professionally edited. Everything is as good as we can make it. And, and that’s something that we need, you know, that’s free. We, you know, the podcast is not charged. It’s obviously it’s a free podcast, but that ethos of wanting to provide an experience that in this case students can enjoy is something that runs through everything that we do. And I’m on both sides of my businesses.

Melissa Guller: Yeah. I think anyone, any listener who checks out Self Publishing Formula or your podcast, it’s very clear to me that you guys really care deeply about the quality and the presentation of your work. So I do hope that people will check it out and we’ll put links to everything in our show notes. But what I’m curious about too is was it always this way, I know you mentioned that you’ve spent quite a bit of money on this production value, but what did your very first course look like? Was it this heavily produced already?

Mark Dawson: No, probably not. We, we are. We, we bootstrapped it to start with. Um, so I was doing pretty well. So, um, I think just how we probably spent 10,000 pounds or something, $15,000, something like that until she get things started. Met me. Most of that was advertising. And so we use Facebook ads to, to find our tribe, uh, of, of writers. But uh, in those days we did everything was in house. So John is quite good at design. So he put together some, some PowerPoint slides. I bought, um, a decent each microphone and we use screenflow. Say it’s all pretty simple. Now most of that is still the same. So the, I still have the same microphone is a road. Um, and to USB, which is why I’m speaking to you now on hold. I’ve got three of them all around. Uh, the various offices I work in now and we still use screenflow.

Mark Dawson: I’m still a great piece of screen capture software, but the A, the design now we have a designer say John doesn’t do that anymore. We actually got a design x where branding expert who couple of years ago did a rebrand for us, which was quite expensive, but at the same time it was him and we think it was important. So we’ve got something that is consistent across the website on the course, the podcast, the youtube channel, our emails, everything is branded. It looks the same. So people know when there’s, when there’s an email from us, they know exactly what they should expect. But that’s, that’s kind of gravy. We don’t, you’ll need to start that way. Um, you can, I think our first launch actually on, on teach, we did something at $220,000 in two weeks in a closed launch. And that was with those fairly basic me.

Mark Dawson: I’m just kind of talking into the microphone with some PowerPoint slides and then doing some kind of over the shoulder screen-grabs and screenflows when I was on the Facebook platform, actually setting ads up and, and explaining how things worked. So yeah, you don’t need to, you don’t need to spend a fortune to get started. In fact, I would recommend the listeners who are thinking about doing a course start in a way that is not going to risk them losing their shirt. Hopefully they’ll make a bit of money and then the, the best advice is to reinvest that money in back into the business. I’m making your product better. Perhaps, you know, finding more potential students through better advertising. And then just you just read Winston repeat and that, that’s, that’s what we’ve done.

Melissa Guller: [inaudible] so what maybe have you learned over time? What are some things that surprised you as you were developing your online course business? Things that maybe aren’t intuitive for people just getting into it. [inaudible]

Mark Dawson: um, hmm. I can’t think of anything to be honest. I mean, um, it’s been pretty easy. Um, I don’t know why that is. I mean, I think in some ways there’s, it’s a digital product, so I’m quite seasoned when it comes to selling digital products. The only difference, the main difference really is that the course is a lot more expensive than a book as you’d expect. You know, there’s, you know, it’s, it’s a lot more money to, to buy a course, but then on the other hand, it’s this 40 hours of, of education. And the intention at the end of it is that you make that money back very quickly and most, you know, if not most than a good percentage of people who follow the course properly and then put it into practice, we’ll find that they, they make their money back and hopefully that’s the staff, their career as indie authors.

Mark Dawson: But, um, I don’t think I made two new 2 million mistakes with this particular business. I think that’s just because I made lots of mistakes when I was learning how to sell things online. Originally we’ve had some staffing issues. Um, we had one virtual assistant who screwed us over. Um, so that was very, very disappointing. And again, this is not, this is kind of like a first world problem. Most people are not going to be having staff when they start, start out. We do have, there’s probably about 10 people around the world. He worked for us now and, and you know that eventually you’re gonna run into a bad egg. And um, she and Fuji was, was a very bad egg and we actually had, when we looked at legal action, you know, it was messy, but that’s when those things, you want a business, you’re going to run into that kind of stuff. Say, you know, there’s water off a duck’s back at the end of the day. But yeah, I don’t think I’ve, I can’t think of any kind of serious areas that we could have avoided that. That kind of thing is just par for the course. You’re gonna run into that now and again.

Melissa Guller: Yeah, you made a great point too that you had already worked out some kinks with figuring out the Facebook advertising and the marketing as an author yourself. So you had really grown that skillset of how do I find people in the right way for what I’m selling? Probably a natural fit. Then moving into signing online courses. So, I mean, it may have been easy for you. This happens to be a skill that you had been honing over time. So if it doesn’t feel easy to some people, I would say, you know, don’t feel discouraged as just something you’ve spent now years getting into and now teaching other people how to do. So. What I do love about what you teach is that it’s very formulaic. Like once you really start to get into digital marketing, there’s a lot of it that is strategy and not gambling. And then it becomes, I think, less daunting once you know how all the tools work.

Mark Dawson: Yeah, absolutely. We didn’t, you were, I, I did. I mean things like what a landing pages are. I knew that from, from selling books. Um, you know, it’s what a squeeze page. I know what that is too. And um, and Facebook ads. So I mean, I ran our Facebook ads when we started SPF inc everything’s are I did, um, I did all of that side of things. I did all the ads and you know, you’re sending a book or sending a course. There’s not that much difference in it when it comes to finding people. So a good tactic. One thing that I’ve always done is what we, we call lead magnets would be what you already described in a general sense, but for, for books, you have a reader magnet. So you have, usually you want it to get people on your mailing list. There’s always going to be the most important thing as a digital Marketer, doesn’t matter what you’re selling.

Mark Dawson: A main list will always be better than a Facebook ad or anything else. It’s going to be your most important asset. And the days of gone. Now, unfortunately, where you could say, join my mailing list and I’ll tell you when I’ve got something to sell, because people don’t do that anymore. No one likes to get spammed and that that feels like an uneven bargain. So what we do now is we give away some things that could be a novella, it could be a novel, it could be something shorter, could be anything. It’s already, but it’s gotta be relevant to, to your reader, into what you’re offering them. So you give them that they gave onto your mailing list. And then when you’ve got something new to sell, I’m sorry, I had a preorder go up yesterday. I sent an email out to my list and I’ve sold two and a half thousand books in 12 hours, something like that.

Mark Dawson: So, and that’s just what the mailing list. Now the principals are just the same for courses. If your selling, if you’ve got a course on yoga, um, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to get enough people to join your list. If you just say, I’ve got a course coming out on yoga, would you like to join the list? So I can tell you when it’s, when it’s ready. There’s lots of competition in yoga courses. People don’t like giving out their email addresses for anything or for nothing really. So you’re going to have to sweeten in that little bit. So you’ve got to think outside the box. What could you offer someone that’s cheap for you to put together, maybe even free for you to put together, but carries a lot of value for people who are interested in Yoga. So you advertise that with Facebook.

Mark Dawson: You perhaps write a short book. Just put that up on Amazon and at the end of the book as an offer to get something else if they sign up for your mailing list. So it’s always about building that list. And then when you have a book to sell or you have a course that’s ready to sell, then you have a natural Market to make that offer. T the alternative is with books, at least this put a book on Hammond up on Amazon, 7 million books on the kindle store now and you just basically kind of crossing your fingers then enough people will find it and, and you know, split it all out. That doesn’t work anymore. And similar for, for for courses. Uh, in some ways even worse for courses cause you don’t have a platform like Amazon, which can algorithmically a, a book comedy do that for courses in a marshal. I love Teachable. You haven’t, you haven’t cornered that particular part of the Market. Yeah. So you’ve got to be more proactive and find your tribe and getting people on your main list will be the best thing that you can do to, to get that done.

Melissa Guller: Yeah. That’s great advice. And I think what’s harder about digital marketing is that you don’t get to see the real people and the faces behind those email subscribers. But when you give something away for free, it’s kind of a way of building trust with them and saying, here, try this out. This is something that I think you will value. And then in time they’ll know and like you because of those free things and eventually hopefully they will want to buy from you.

Mark Dawson: Yeah, exactly. Even knowing to poke us is great for that. I mean one of the reasons we, you know, we spend our podcast production values are pretty high. We probably spend 50 grand a year on, on the podcast and the reason we go to the expense and also time, it takes a lot of time for us to put it together every week is because we know we survey our readers our, I’m sorry, our, our students all the time and we know that the great majority in terms of if we ask the question, um, when did you decide to buy one of the SPF courses? The majority of our respondents came back and said it was, it was the podcast, because I feel I listened to James and Mark every week. We’re putting, you know, we’re relaxed. It’s not formal. I’ll take the piss out of James, he’ll take the piss out of me.

Mark Dawson: We, you know, we were good friends and we want people to feel that they know us. Um, and you know, we’ll then you say, um, we won’t know them behind their email addresses. That’s true to an extent, but you can immediately rate that a little bit by, by being a normal person. Um, if you’re writing emails, don’t be formal. Um, most of the emails that we write are always, once I write, always very, I’m friendly. I try to imagine them having a conversation with a friend and people can get that. They, they can tell when someone is trying too hard. Um, and they can tell when someone is relaxed, feels natural and, and that’s, you know, that’s, that’s kind of one of my main ethos is to make sure that people feel that I’m approachable, both in terms of, you know, the writing side of things and the course side of things as well. Cause those principles apply equally.

Melissa Guller: I think people like to hear from other humans. I mean, in this digital age, it’s easy to forget when you’re just reading online. I think mediums like podcasting and online courses, you really get to hear voices and faces and it does feel much more personal.

Mark Dawson: Yeah, absolutely. The, the kind of callery to that is I’m also to be professional as well. So, um, you’ve got to strike that balance because what we don’t want to do, and I’ve, I’ve, I won’t say who this was, but one of the people we’ve had a little bit of legal trouble with, they kind of copied one of our courses, um, and then tried to sell themselves. And we obviously we keep an eye on these things. We bought the course just to have a look at it. Um, and, uh, this particular teacher would kind of, the doorbell rang and she would, she left the screen recording, running, went to answer the door, came back after about five minutes and just carried on. Um, so that’s not really an optimal experience for someone who’s paid a bit of money to, to take a course. Um, so that, I suppose that that’s taken in formality to the nth degree. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a careful mixture for us, uh, of, of producing a really professional product, but at the same time a product that people feel comfortable where that they can enjoy and obviously that they can learn from as well.

Melissa Guller: That’s a great point. I can’t imagine, did you guys sit and watch and wait all five minutes for the teacher to come back?

Mark Dawson: Oh yeah. Yeah. No, we, we watch every cause thinking cause he’d basically ripped us off. Um, and when we were thinking about how are we going to do nearby that. So, yeah, we, we, we watched everything and there were a few. I’ve, there were a few other incidents that I won’t, I, this is a family podcast so I won’t get into some of them, but that was one of the more egregious ones.

Melissa Guller: Right. And I will just wrap that by saying you probably were more incentivized to continue watching, but if I was a normal student and I just thought I was consuming this content, I probably would have said, you know what, I’m going to leave too.

Mark Dawson: Yeah, exactly. You, you’d been getting any money back.

Melissa Guller: Yeah. So you’d want to teach the way that you would want to be taught or treat people the way that you would want to be treated. And so it sounds, especially for you guys, I know you put all this production value and time and care into what you produce and I’m sure that your students can feel that effort and that, uh, time and attention that you’re putting in.

Mark Dawson: Yeah, absolutely. Cause at the end of the day, they’re spending a significant amount of money. These forces are not cheap and we know that. I mean, I’m very, very aware that the, their investments often in some seat people will drop the money for a course and it’s nothing and that’s fine. But we get emails all the time from people saying, look, we just closed a launch of our month ago and we had it. I always say, if you want to ask me a question about whether the course is suitable for you, you will get an honest answer. And I’m very well known within the community for actually telling people not to buy the course because either I don’t think it will work for them for a number of reasons. Maybe I don’t think that books are good enough. I might not say that, but I’ll say that this is probably not going to work all because I’m uncomfortable with people saying, you know, I am, I’m a pensioner, I’m on a fixed income.

Mark Dawson: Um, and if I buy this course, I’ll have to think carefully about my groceries. I do not want that. That person’s money. I as too much seem not too much responsibility cause I think if they, if they follow the course, they can get good results, just the same as anybody else can, but that, that puts a bit too much pressure on them. Um, and uh, I will always recommend they, they don’t do that. And for those people who can’t afford the courses, we have a foundation every year where we, we give away six or seven courses and we also give them two and a half, $3,000 each for advertising as something that we, we feel that’s quite important because not everyone can afford this, didn’t have to spend 600100100 dollars on a course. So we want to make sure that for those people, especially if we think they’ve got books that will sell and they’re just held back by financial reasons and we want to give them as much of a leg up as we can.

Melissa Guller: Well, I love that you’re making some things accessible through the foundation you mentioned. But I also think it’s smart to know who isn’t your customer because like you said, if they’re just trying to scrape by grocery money, it’s probably not the right time for an investment in a program like this unless they find another way. And certainly if they joined they would probably feel disappointed or stressed or there are so many negative emotions that could come for both you and that prospective student. So I respect the fact that you’re honest when people do ask you

Mark Dawson: I’m English and that kind of comes with the territory. I’d feel I did guilt very well as well, so I’d feel terrible for people. He were fun. So I was in a hard position because they, they bought, of course I couldn’t really afford. So I know we, we always try and make sure that um, they get the best advice that, that we can give them.

Melissa Guller: I did want to circle back to one thing you mentioned earlier, which is that the value and the price of online courses is often significantly higher than books. And for anybody interested in sharing their knowledge, maybe even wondering is a nonfiction book versus an online course a different or better choice? It is something that we talk about a lot with creators, that people do place a very high value in online courses. And it is often because like Self Publishing Formula, you’re really helping them earn money. You’re providing a transformative skill. And so those courses, although they do take more time to create their worth quite a bit too many people no matter the topic.

Mark Dawson: Yeah. The way I look at it is, um, if people don’t have a problem with dropping $500 and going to a two day conference, okay, so you could go, there’s any number of conferences in both the digital space and, and book setting as well. Now, more and more these days of online, I’ve comms this for authors as well. And you know, say if maybe you’re going to get 10 hours worth of content there, um, it’s not tailored to you. It’s really quite general. Some of those hours won’t be relevant. So maybe you’re going to get three or four hours worth of useful note-taking time with the courses that we do. The cell phones with formulas, um, ads for authors is, I don’t know, about 40 hours where, so we, it’s kind of, it’s like, it’s more like a college course that that’s the way we look at it is it’s very significant.

Mark Dawson: Is it detailed dive into doing what I do? So, you know, it’s the only, well there were a few courses, but I don’t think any, this is a bit arrogant, but I don’t think anyone comes close to what we do. It’s the only course were written by a bestselling author sending in significant numbers, um, for other authors who wanted to do that too. And also we update it as well. So I don’t think that we do, it’s lifetime access. We don’t say you’ve got it for a year and then you have to buy it again. You get lifetime access access. And one of the things we have a platform like Facebook is they changed the platform a lot. Um, so, um, anyone that who’s advertising on Facebook will know this. And the fact that they changed the platform yesterday, which is very helpful. So one of the things that we promise is that I will read, we call it all of those screenflows to make sure that what they see on their screen is the same when they logged in to the ads manager is exactly the same as I’ll see on Teachable when they are following the course.

Mark Dawson: Now that is, that’s a significant promise for me because that might mean I’ve got to do a week’s worth of work, which I could spend writing. I probably make more money writing than I do selling courses, but that feels to me like it’s the least I can do if someone has spent money on the core. So number one, don’t want them to be logged out after a year because that just feels dishonest. And I also don’t want them to be struggling with trying to put outdated advice into practice because the, the, you know, the interface has changed. So as much as we’re able to, everything is kept fresh. Um, and again, this is a digital product, so there’s no printing that needs to be done. We can just go and see, you will swap one video out for another one. And uh, the students sometimes they don’t even know that that change has been made, but when they go back and check everything is exactly what the, what they expect to find.

Melissa Guller: It’s funny, I’m sure you’re right that some of them don’t even notice the change, but that probably speaks to that tiny attention to detail and how thoughtful you guys are. I know a lot of creators might not go that extra mile to really over-deliver on the student experience, but that’s probably why Self Publishing Formula continues to be so successful and the leader in what you do. Because I think because people don’t take that extra time, it really sets you apart. And maybe even creators getting started, anybody of any skill level can overdeliver and it’ll really help get people, you know, we talked about being very personal earlier. The more you can overdeliver and give a great experience, the more people will come back.

Mark Dawson: Yeah. And also, I mean it was the most, the most effective form of advertising that you can manufacturer. And that’s the question on the front of mouth. Word of mouth. Exactly. So it’s always that. So that’s everything. Everything that I work towards, both for books and and for courses has that as as an end goal. I want people to go to their friends and say, I just read this book. Alright, it was great. Or perhaps more relevantly, I just went this book, I enjoyed it. I emailed the author and I can’t believe it. He emailed me back. I always emailed them, I read his back and I get, you know, sometimes 10 or 20 emails a day from readers. Now I always tried to email about myself and that is something that is equally applicable to courses. I want them to go to their friends and say, well, an example of why.

Mark Dawson: So when we did the course, originally it was called Facebook ads for authors. So I’ve kind of cornered the Market in descriptive course titles, but that was all it was. It was about a 10 hour course on using Facebook ads as an author. Since then, it’s now called ads for authors because I’m, we’ve added Amazon ads, bookbub ads. We’ve got copywriting module, there’s one on image design, there’s Pinterest, youtube, tons and tons of more content. And everyone who picked up that course four years ago for less money than it’s than it’s for now has got everything else for free. Um, so we could, we could very easily say that we, this course is not really the same course anymore. If you want the new stuff, you’re gonna have to pay again for it. But we haven’t done that. So you could say on the one hand, perhaps we, what we’ve probably missed, it options you to make more money.

Mark Dawson: But I think if we could work out the benefit of just over-delivering, I suspect we’ve probably made more from authors saying to their friends that if you’re thinking about Mark’s course, you don’t need to because they deliver this amazing value. You know, there’s a guarantee, which we never, we quibble over 30 they guarantee if anyone has any problems at all, don’t have to say what it is that you would just give them their money back. We try and help them in the Facebook community that we’ve got. I will answer those questions as much as I’m able to. So it’s just kind of constantly delivering value. And I suspect that that has been one that’s probably the main reason why we’ve done really well since we set the company up is just because people learn, they put the stuff into practice and they make money and they have a great time and you know, and they feel listened to and respected, um, by bias when they went, when they involve themselves in the courses.

Melissa Guller: [inaudible] I mean, importantly, it’s probably not that they feel listened to, but that they are actually listened to. It’s not just a front that you guys are putting on [inaudible]

Mark Dawson: no, it is not fun. No, we definitely, we take it really seriously. We, and we survey them, um, fairly vaguely to, you know, what are we getting right? What are we getting wrong? We ask them what they’d like to see included what isn’t relevant anymore as far as possible. We will, we’ll try to respond to that. And you know, as, as digital course creators, we can be quite nimble. We can get new content out quite quickly. Um, and I think people notice that and it’s something that, that is a little bit of effort on our end, but I think the, the benefits far outweigh the time and the small expense that costs are to get that stuff done.

Melissa Guller: Well said. Well, before we go, I’m curious, what’s next for you? What are you thinking about for the upcoming months or even into the next couple of years?

Mark Dawson: So, well, on the nonfiction side, we, we’ve got two kind of main words, w what we call flagship courses. One Oh one ads for authors. We’re adding some new stuff now we’ve got a cover design course, which is very, very popular. Um, with my designer. He’s, he’s done covers for f Stephen King, John McCarry, Tolkien and me, which is a bit odd. Um, but Stuart’s done a really great course on a simple cover design using Photoshop and Canva and tools like that. So that’s done very well. We’ve got a craft course coming up soon called, um, I don’t, don’t think we’ve decided what we’re going to call it yet, but that I’ve, I very well known bestselling author has put a craft course together and how to effectively reverse engineer a bestseller. So what you need to think about in terms of marketing almost before you write the book, what you need to thinking about to maximize the chances of writing something that might hit the zeitgeists that’s coming out soon.

Mark Dawson: Um, we’ve got a, what else we doing? We’ve got a course on editing. Um, so we’ve basically, the bottom line is we’re adding content all the time. So we’ve got something on business coming up that we, you know, kind of taxation, tax advice, business advice, you’re setting yourself up, treating it professionally. Um, um, for us and UK authors say we’re constantly looking to add stuff. And I mean, apart from that we’re always looking to build our audience. So, you know, we were running the Facebook ads, we’re doing the podcast, we’re thinking about doing a live event next year. That’s, that’s quite vogue at the moment. But no one’s really doing it over here. Um, so we’re thinking about doing that. So, you know, it’s, it’s really busy cause at the same time, I’ve, I’ve written two novels this year and I want to get another two done. So there’s, you know, there’s aren’t really enough hours in the right now for everything I wanna do, but kind of, it’s a crazy time to be, to be doing this. I feel privileged every day to be able to gout and go to a job that I love cause I, for a long time I was getting, I’m going to a job that I hated. So, um, this feels

Melissa Guller: pretty cool. It does feel pretty cool. Well on that note, any final maybe words of wisdom or advice for any listeners who are thinking about getting into the world of creating online [inaudible]

Mark Dawson: I would say, I think I’ve kind of covered it, but I’ll reiterate it cause it’s important. Um, think about your main list immediately. Um, you might not have anything yet. You might not even really know what you’re going to be teaching or selling. So think about how you will get potential customers onto your mailing list and start, you know, maybe researching MailChimp or ConvertKit or whatever it is that you think you’re going to use. And the other thing is, is to be professional. So it’s two, three things I say mainly list be professional. So treat it as a business and also to treat it with the expectation that you’ll be successful. Cause you can make some early decisions with regards to incorporation and taxation and things like that. There’ll be much easier and cheaper to get done right at the start of your career rather than later. Cause I’ve made some mistakes when it comes to that. And the other thing is, uh, again I’ve, I’ve mentioned this a few times is just to be a nice guy or nice person. Answer your emails. Don’t be a um, I won’t swear by, you know, don’t, don’t be that, that kind of person that you don’t want. You see people arguing comments on Facebook ads. Don’t be that person. It won’t do any good. Always tried to, um, deliver an experience that people enjoy and want to come back for more from you in the future.

Melissa Guller: Be a nice person. I love that advice. I wish that more people would talk. It won’t work. It’s been such a pleasure having you and we’ll make sure we include links to everything that you’ve mentioned today in the show notes when people come and visit after they listen, so thank you again.

Mark Dawson: Thanks, Melissa. Been a pleasure to be on

Melissa Guller: Thanks again for joining us this week. You can see an episode summary as well as links to Mark’s website and the Self Publishing Formula courses in the show notes at teachable.com/eit3. Now, before you go, make sure you subscribe to our podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they’re released and if you’re enjoying the show, we hope you’ll leave us a five star review in Apple Podcasts. We really appreciate your feedback, especially since great reviews help us reach an even larger audience of great listeners like you. So thank you. On behalf of Team Teachable, we hope you enjoyed this episode about self publishing with Mark Dawson. We’ll see you in the next episode of Everything is Teachable.

Ep. 3: Self publishing for authors (with Mark Dawson of Self Publishing Formula)

Today’s guest: Mark Dawson (of Self Publishing Formula)

“One of the great things about the Internet is that you can find your tribe. It doesn’t really matter how weird or esoteric your tribe is, or your interest might be. You can find people.”

Where to find Mark

Read the full transcript below.