CONFERENCE TALK · NOVEMBER 1, 2024 · 55 MIN
How I Bootstrapped a Book Tour: A Practical System for Authors
At the INKpreneurs Summit, I unpacked the system I used to become a full-time touring children’s author—and translated it into a practical framework writers in any category can adapt.
My book tours became viable when I stopped treating them as a string of hopeful signings and started treating them as a system: the right audience, the right gatekeeper, a presentation worth attending, and a sales process that begins before I arrive.
I built that system by testing it in elementary schools. I began by investing my savings in 750 copies of Billy the Dragon, then learned how to reach schools, turn author visits into memorable events, and average roughly $500 in book sales per school. On my strongest pre-pandemic tour, forty Arkansas school visits generated about $20,000 in sales.
My examples come from children’s publishing, but the strategic questions apply much more broadly: Where do your ideal readers already gather? Who can introduce you to them at scale? What can you teach or perform from your book? What must happen before the event for sales to become predictable?
In this presentation, you’ll learn:
- why book marketing should begin while the book is still being written;
- how to locate groups made up of your ideal readers;
- how I used librarians, principals, and literacy-event organizers to reach schools at scale;
- why authors sell more effectively through presentations than passive signings;
- how a hype video and take-home flyer helped me make sales before I arrived; and
- why every author needs a logical higher-value offer beyond the book.
Start Marketing Before the Book Is Finished
I reject the familiar sequence in which an author makes a book and only then begins thinking about an audience. When I gave this talk, I was already using my unfinished manuscript—Bootstrap Your Book Tour—to test ideas, refine the presentation, and recruit beta readers.
“You start marketing your book as soon as you decide that you’re going to start making a book.”
To me, early marketing is not merely promotion. It gives me repeated opportunities to learn which problems, stories, and promises resonate before the final book is locked.
Find a Concentrated Reader Audience
My friend James gave me the entrepreneurial question that unlocked the tour: you have a physical product, so where is the audience for it?
For me as a children’s author, the answer was unusually clear. Elementary schools already gather hundreds of children in the age range my books served. Rather than trying to manufacture attention one reader at a time, I could bring my books to places where the right audience was already assembled.
That is the first transferable question for any author: What organization, event, classroom, conference, association, company, or community already gathers the people most likely to need this book?
Reach the Gatekeeper—and the Gatekeeper’s Gatekeeper
A concentrated audience is useful only if you understand who controls access to it. I initially knocked on school doors and learned that the librarian or media specialist was often the person who could approve a visit for the whole school. In other schools, the principal held that authority.
Then I looked one level higher. Literacy-event coordinators had relationships with many principals and media specialists at once. My relationship with Jean Trewick, then a leader in the Arkansas literacy community, helped me book forty schools across the state.
“Now I’ve identified the gatekeeper of my gatekeepers.”
The lesson is not to chase a large contact list indiscriminately. Identify the people whose trust can open the right rooms, then invest in genuinely useful relationships with them.
Present the Book Instead of Waiting at a Signing
Unless an author is already famous, a signing alone gives strangers little reason to stop. A presentation gives them a reason to care.
“People don’t buy books from book signers. They buy books from speakers.”
I use two broadly useful formats. You can perform from your book by reading a compelling section with enough context to make the audience curious, or teach from your book by turning its ideas and experience into something immediately useful.
Children’s authors can do both. I perform stories using changes in volume, facial expression, movement, audience participation, and deliberate energy management. I also teach from the process behind the work. Authors in other categories can adapt the same distinction to their material.
Make Promotion Part of the Visit
The largest shift in my school-tour sales came from making two promotional actions part of the event agreement: every student watched a short hype video, and every student received a take-home flyer before the visit.
The video introduced me, previewed something children would enjoy, explained how to order the book, and told students what to do with the flyer. Calendar reminders and follow-up messages helped the school complete those steps on schedule.
For organizers who could not pay my normal speaking fee, I sometimes offered the visit in exchange for completing that promotional process. The agreement aligned the school’s limited budget with my need to reach families before the event.
Incentivize the Action You Need
One principle runs through my entire system: when you need someone to take an action, give that person a clear reason to do it.
On my school flyer, the upper section explained the books for sale. The lower section gave every child—whether or not a parent purchased—an opportunity to return the form for a chance to appear in a YouTube video. The prize encouraged the behavior my system depended on: take the flyer home, involve a parent, and bring it back.
“Any outcome that you want, you should incentivize.”
The same principle can shape follow-up, preorders, event registration, testimonials, referrals, or an audience’s next step after a presentation.
Build a Higher-Value Next Step
I can see one major missed opportunity in my earliest tours: the book was the only thing available to buy. A low-priced book limits what even a successful event can produce.
The solution is not an unrelated upsell. It is the next logical outcome for the most engaged reader. For me, that might be a storytelling workshop, an illustration course, or a program that helps a child become an author. For another writer, it could be a cohort, advisory engagement, curriculum, event, or premium resource connected directly to the book’s promise.
A small percentage of highly interested buyers choosing that next step can transform the economics of the entire tour.
The Bootstrap Book Tour Plan
- Define the reader. Be specific about who the book is for.
- Find where those readers gather. Look for existing groups rather than trying to assemble every audience from scratch.
- Identify the gatekeeper. Learn who can approve access to that group.
- Identify the super-connector. Find the person or organization trusted by many gatekeepers.
- Design a presentation. Perform compelling material, teach from the book, or combine both.
- Agree on pre-event promotion. Give the organizer simple, scheduled actions that introduce the author and the offer.
- Incentivize follow-through. Reward the behavior that makes the event work.
- Create the next logical offer. Give the most committed readers a way to go deeper.
My results did not come from a publisher constructing the tour for me. They came from treating the tour itself as a product—one that I could test, systematize, and improve.
Original Presentation and Resources
Read the complete presentation transcript55-minute timestamped transcript
COMPLETE VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Bootstrap Your Book Tour
This timestamped transcript was generated from the original INKpreneurs Summit presentation and lightly edited to correct names, titles, and obvious transcription errors. Audience responses may not transcribe perfectly; use the video above to experience the talk in its original form.
From Children’s Author to Touring Author
0:00what you're about to watch is a talk that I gave to a room full of professional authors and aspiring professional authors about how to tour and travel full-time on Book Sales based on a book I'm writing about my experience doing exactly that this book bootstrap your book tour if you want to know what it's like to be a full-time author watch this talk or click the pinned comment if you'd like to get a copy of this book before anyone else I made a a full-time living preo touring and selling books this is how I did it and I'm not special this is how anyone can do it this is bootstrap your book Tour all right are we clear all right this is clear as Muddy Waters right oh
0:45that's Crystal Clear that's great thank you all right well this this is it we're ready everybody ready for our last session for the day right all right bootstrap your PO tour let's hear from Mr Timmy bow [Applause] all right I supposed to put this thing down yes and it is the green button that has the arrow on it it is excellent guys I'm so excited that you all are still here thank you for staying all the way till the end it's not the end actually sorry thank you for staying all the way till the last presentation um oh my goodness okay uh I tend to talk really fast when I'm nervous nous or I'm like oh shoot I
1:30don't know how much time I really gave did I give myself the right amount of time on these slides so what I'm probably going to do is try to go a little bit faster than I think I need to go uh and that way if you have questions we can have Q&A um I also have some notes here that I want to make sure that I don't forget to say um oh just one thing that I want to point out it's going to be part of this presentation that whole idea of like okay we want people to be networking so what are we going to do we're going to create scavenger hunt to create a little bit of like incentive to get people to do this that's a big part of what I'm about to talk about uh there's this principle that I believe in and has served me very well which is any outcome that you want you should incentivize any outcome that
2:15you want you should incentiv box and all along this presentation I'm going to talk about different things that you're going to try to get other people to do just anytime you're like here's the thing I want someone to do the next question to ask ask is what is an incentive that I can give them to do that um and so that's really really good um great okay well uh my name is Timmy Bauer and I will tell you about me as I go through this but here's just some quick stuff I am a kids book author I started as a kids book author uh I started writing my first children's book for my little brother Tristan in 2007 I think I was 17 years old and he was 4 years old if I got got the timeline
3:00right and then I went on to become a performer at Disney uh I played Peter Pan uh and I'm not really supposed to say that actually like they tell you when you get hired like you are not Peter Pan you are friends with if anyone asks you're friends with Peter Pan so uh I was friends with Peter Pan very very close friends with Peter Pan um after so basically I wrote you know I I my story is I started writing my first children's book for my little brother Tristan I'll talk about that more a second um I uh I then I kind of just shelved it who here has ever either had an idea for a children's book or they they they currently have an idea and they're like I think I want to write a children's
3:45book show of hands anybody CH the cool thing about children's books is it's one of those things that almost everybody you meet is has it's kind of like on their bucket list or just in the background or if not today wait till you have children and then you're going to be like oh shoot you're start reading enough children's books and you're like I do I can write one of these things um so that and by the way that's going to be I'm going to talk a lot about that tomorrow so just like writing children's books and illustration and the publishing Pathways of children's books but anyways I pushed the whole thing to the side and I I was very overwhelmed by the idea of like well how do you actually become a children's book author I knew I wanted to be and it I had this big Grand Vision of being a children's
4:30book author and being interviewed on talk shows and all this kind of stuff but I was like I have no idea how to make that happen and I was kind of just filled with imposture Sy syndrome and fear so I buried all of that I um one of my first jobs was working for Disney um as a performer and while I was a Disney as a performer on my breaks I would always work on uh my children's book and a bunch of performer friends of mine were like hey you should uh you should they saw my artwork and they were like hey you should actually get this thing published and I will talk about this some more tomorrow also publishing Pathways the thought of beating my head for the next four years against like I'm going to query I'm going to try to get an agent I'm going to go back and forth
5:15with a publisher all to get rejected a thousand times that sounded very intimidating to me and for whatever reason what sounded less intimidating to me was just taking all the money that I had in my bank account at the time and pour it on a print run and uh and having printed copies of my book uh so it was like $4,000 and it was all the money that I had and it got me 750 copies of my first book Billy the Dragon and um and then I just had this book and I was like what am I what am I going to do um so that answering that question what am I going to do is a big part of what this presentation is all about and um you're going to hear in my tone and just the way that I talk I tend to uh have very
6:00strong opinions about stuff and I'm like it's like this y'all um just know just try to take some of that with a grain of salt like there's some budget for like not every opinion that I have is right but I tend to talk that way um uh I forget why I was saying that um oh oh oh you're going to hear that I very much think that self-publishing is the way to go I am a huge self-publishing advocate I'm very poo pooy on traditional publishing I will talk about I will try to be fair when I talk about it tomorrow um the the title of the book that I'm working on is called bootstrap your book tour lessons from a children's book
6:45author that any author can apply so the other thing that you're going to hear from this is a lot of my advice is coming from the perspective of a children's book author uh and you might think well okay this only applies to being a children's book author auth my goal is to try to translate as much of this advice as possible to any type of author and I I do believe that the advice translates I'm trying to practice what I preach right now so like one of the things that I've been hearing is that you make a book and then you Market the book I do not agree I think that is wrong I think you start marketing your book as soon as you decide that you're going to start making a book and so I'm practicing what I preach right now this book is not out um this book is in fact BL
7:30um but uh but this book is currently being written and it's what inspired this talk and uh and I will continually revise this as I give this talk in places and as I uh get feedback from people and part of my my hidden agenda here is I want beta readers uh so like you know yeah uh I I do not believe that making a book is step one and marketing the book is step two marketing the book is the step that you take as soon as you decide that you're writing a book um so we're going to talk about book tours because um it's the most successful it's the most success that I've had I think as an author so a little bit of uh background on me in 2014 is when I really it's when I first
8:15got that shipment of books and when I really decided like okay I am going to try to sell these books I got 750 books I got to at least try to make the money back that I paid for it um and so that's what got me started on figuring out how am I going to do this and it took me a while it wasn't until 2018 when I well so actually the in year one I was able to make back all the money that I had put into the prr but it wasn't until 2018 when I was able to quit all my jobs and be like I am a full-time touring children's book author um and so 2018 and 2019 were very good years for me as a touring the children book author 2019 especially I had my best Tour Ever I did uh five weeks in Arkansas I did the entire state of
9:00Arkansas I I had similar types of success leading up to it that's what led me to quit my job but I'm just telling you the culmination right now um I uh did five weeks of touring in Arkansas I did uh about $20,000 in Book Sales and then um I was like this is it this is all I need to do I literally I couldn't even believe that kind of money could come for Book Sales so I was like okay this is it I'm just going to be in schools all time presenting my book and selling it and I took almost all the profit that I made from that tour and dumped it into the next tour uh so put almost all of it into a print run um and uh and then I don't know if you're
9:45tracking the years year the next year was 2020 um I was all geared up I had I had dates booked for for North Carolina and um and I did my first I think two schools and then all the schools that I booked were like hey there's this thing called Co we don't know what it is uh but we're not allowed to have any more visitors so everything cancelled everything cancelled I I sold a few books but I had to pack it all up and go home now I had no job um uh and I don't know if you know this but you can't uh you can't eat books you can't and you can't pay your bills with books um so yeah that was tough and I I can tell that story later oh I remember one more thing I wanted to share um
The Three-Part Book Tour Framework
10:30because I'm I'm rambling and speeding um if you think of a question would you please actually take the time to like write it down um the best time to to write your question or to ask your question is when you first think of it um so just write your question down when you think of it that way when it comes time to Q&A there's questions to ask I feel like I'll have better content to deliver for you guys when I'm contextually answering a question anyways but um so this presentation is going to be broken up into uh three parts and um uh these are the parts so part one is we're going to build a book tour uh so part one is like how do you actually build a book tour like how do you how do you as an author and I would say as even a non not yet published
11:15author you don't even have a published book yet I would argue how can you build a book tour um and then how can you uh engage well on that book tour and then like probably the most important part uh at least strategic wise how do you actually sell a bunch of books um my average was I was doing about $500 uh in sales per school that I would visit and when I was in my like Heyday of touring I would do two schools a day so so like and how did I do that is what one of the things I'm going to talk about in this presentation um the slide right before this one said you don't need a publisher you just need a plan that just kind of reveals my bias a little bit uh yes I believe that you don't need a publisher you just need to plan when I was holding
Why the Work Matters
12:00copies of Billy the Dragon which there's a copy in author's alley um so uh when I was holding my like one of my copies I sat down with my best friend James and he he go he was so I I was at church and I was just talking about what I was trying to do and they were like if you're trying to do anything entrepreneurial you need to talk to James so I had lunch with James I'm sitting down with him and I'm showing him the book and he's like bro you have a product cuz like he's think like an entrepreneur right he's like you have a physical product all you need to do is find where is the audience for this product and go bring it to them and when you think about it being an author so I like to separate the business of being a writer from the business of being an author or maybe it's better to say the
12:45job function of being a writer is not the same job function as being an author okay you can be an incredibly talented writer and a terrible and terrible at the job of being an author and you will be a broke writer um and alternatively you can be incredibly talented are you looking at me like are I can't tell you're agreeing with me or disagree with there okays um like I said I I say things very emphatically um and then alternatively you can be great at and here's the thing you can be great and this is where I feel like my imposture syndrome is going to kick in a little bit because I I think this is the thing that I'm great at uh you can you can be great at the job of being an author so much so that
13:30it makes up for how bad of a writer um I think that's true okay so anyways um I'm going to try to do my best to share real stories and real results from this process of building engaging and selling your bootstrapped book tour don't need a publisher honestly I I don't know that Publishers are even that good at helping people book tour do book tours anyways um let's see if uh people disagree no offense so um because I'm going to go very very like strategy on this and and when I when I took the strength finders test all my top like four of my top five strengths were all in the strategy Department um so that's going to come
14:15through in a lot a lot in the way that I talk but I do want to share that there is an actual emotional why here for me um cuz like when you talk strategy a lot people tend to lose like they don't they're like wait so you're just in it for the money and like I just want to tell the story so uh Billy the Dragon is my first children's book I always knew ever since I was a kid that I wanted to grow up and become a what I call a story artist which is just anybody that makes art that's designed to tell a story and you can do that job a ton of different ways um I thought maybe I would work in movies like as a story board for like movies and stuff um and uh but but I I didn't know exactly what what that was going to look like but ever since I was
15:00a kid that's what I wanted to do and then fast forward my parents had kids in two batches so they had a batch of four and then there was 10 years oh surprise well we don't want him to grow up alone and then another one so a batch of four and then a batch of two and um so I'm in the I'm the second oldest of the batch of four and my brother Tristan is the surprise of the batch of two and um so there's this big age gap between us and when I was 17 like you know my teen years basically I I have I I have changed hundreds and hundreds of diapers I have wiped so many butts um I'm about to be a dad so I'm really excited but like um but like people are like are you ready for all the diapers that you're going to change and all the what you're going white and I'm like I've actually
15:45done it already um cuz cu the nice thing my parents would say about having kids in batches is like the second batch you've got all these built-in like babysitters for that second batch so anyways I spent a lot of time babysitting my little brother Tristan who is now in his 20s and he's awesome um but uh I had just finished reading Yertle the Turtle by Dr Seuss has anybody read Yertle the Turtle by Dr Seuss so I just finished reading him Yertle the Turtle and by the way side note this isn't part of my presentation did you know that was about Hitler yeah um it is um anyways uh so I just finished reading your little turtle to my little brother Tristan and um and then I had that thing that I hope that you guys have had that thought which is
16:30like wait a second I think I could make one of these um and I will say and please come to the tomorrow thing because I want to talk more about this tomorrow um I I was sharing a little bit about this I agree with you you can make one of these things one thing to note when you make a children's book you when someone buys your children's book okay two customers are buying your book at the exact same time and those two customers are not aligned in the reasons that they would want a children's book okay and that those customers are the parent and the child and they have completely different desires okay they're not even they're not even connected to each other okay like Mom and Dad want something totally different about that children's book than the child wants and you if you want to be a
17:15good children's book author you got to try to serve both of those customers at the same time and that's difficult um and I want to talk more about this tomor anyways um so I had that thought I think I could make one of these and I started writing Billy the Dragon just as a way to connect with my little brother I wanted to I wanted to make him laugh scare him gross him out entertain him uh every night I'd be like Tristan I wrote some more of Billy the Dragon and he would get really excited and for like a couple of years um I would just write some and share it with him and write some and share it with him and that formed a lot of my opinions about what writing like what good children's book writing is when you're focused on that uh I don't know first or second customer whichever way you want to slice it the
Find Where Your Readers Gather
18:00child um but one of the cool things that came about from this is one I connected very deeply with my little brother we have a great relationship now which is awesome that's one of the awesome powerful things about a children's book is it can connect uh two completely different generations of people and there's so much power in that um and so I got to experience that with my little brother Tristan and then the other thing that it did is it clarified for me I was like this is what I want to do like as far as like what kind of story artist I want to be this is the kind of story artist that I want to be so that's just my story of writing my first book but of course then I've got that problem of okay I have made the book I have some $4,000 into it I have a physical product
18:45my friend James is going you just got to go to where the audience is and I would say same thing for you as an author you got to be thinking the same way you have a product you got to go okay where is the audience for this product I need to go to them and I need to show them that I have written a book for them and how in the world do I do all that in a way that compels them to want to read my stuff and like it and buy it and keep buying it and all that kind of stuff um my first attempt at solving this problem was to go knocking physically on Elementary School doors so uh so I had some accountability with my friend James I'd be like I am going to go knock on school doors and uh you know we had set like how many schools I was going to
19:30knock on oh because quickly the first thing that we identified was as a children's book author the the butts and seats that I can go have access to are at elementary schools like that's where my audience is and that's another thing that I want you to be thinking about as an author is like where could you go where you have guaranteed butts and seats and they all make up your ideal reader audience like that's you want to when it comes to book touring you want to really focus on that like okay can I can I like typify that can that be like what what type of place is that and then like how can I reach those types of places at scale um for me it was awesome that it was so simple it's elementary
20:15schools so I start knocking on elementary schools and I I knock on the door the glass door and then the assistant like the the front desk person would let me in and I I'd be like hey I'm and I'm hold my book and I'd be like I'm children's book author Timmy Bauer um and this is my book Billy the Dragon and I'd love to read it for the kids at this school and um about half the time what are you saying over there like there's a strange guy yes yes so about half the time uh they'd be like who is this strange man that wants to read to our children and then and then the other half of the time they would say oh you need to talk to our school librarian and among that group that half
Identify the Gatekeeper
21:00of the time about 10% of the time they would actually introduce me to the school library and I want I learned very quickly as long as I can get face to face with the school I was like the school librarian is the gatekeeper they are the person that makes the decision and they make the decision for the entire school so this school has 300 people 300 guaranteed butts and seats of my ideal readership and all I have to do is get this one person to say yes to me um and it's and that's the school librarian and I learned very quickly that um if I could get face to face time with that school librarian uh they they' see my
21:45book they'd see my personality and everything and' be like okay yeah you know what let's have you come visit our school and I could get a book A book date on the calendar so that was very very cool um I uh I I did eventually graduate from uh that approach of knocking on glass doors a totally different approach now um but uh but that idea of like identifying the the the super connector or the gatekeeper the person that has access at scale to your readership that is so huge so like I'll just give um so here there is and I know I'm walking away from my camera here but um so there's actually two people right so if it's kids classrooms
22:30and honestly this should have just gone into one spot because this is this is who I'm after I'm after those classrooms with the 300 kids right um uh these are the two decision makers it's either the school principal or the media specialist kind of depending on just the culture of that school so some some of the schools it's like every decision is made by the principal and some of the schools it's more like distributed down and the media specialist gets to make the decision but um another realization that I had was oh there's actually somebody ahead of that person and that is literacy event coordinators so literacy event if I if I got to know and impress a literacy event coordinator I could come speak at A
23:15literacy event and the at the literacy event the only people that go for the most part are principles and media Specialists so now I've identified the gatekeeper of my Gatekeepers so I could go all right I just need to focus on this relationship the literacy event coordinator and if I can uh have get their help they can actually introduce me to All The Gatekeepers of audience in my state and so that was a gigantic realization for me that's what resulted in so I've actually used this strategy a lot I'm using this example because it's my biggest example but th this strategy actually came to me a lot earlier when I was touring in Miami but this this example of Arkansas is just my biggest example and it it was um so Jean trewick
24:00is she's the past president of the literacy Association in Arkansas they have an annual conference every year all the media Specialists and principles of Arkansas for the most part go to this conference and if you're an author and you do a presentation there they're all going to be like oh my gosh you should come to my school and present to my kids and so off just that one relationship I was able to book 40 schools in Arkansas and remember my average sale is 500 so that's where the 20,000 comes from um so uh anyways uh so just from one connection um and here's some pictures from my tour in Arkansas it was a blast so this was my 2019 tour in archetype you tell them a little overweight um but
24:45uh it was amazing it was incredible I learned so much um and it really formed the way that I think about touring um the the the thing is I have I have an activity that I want you to do but I I'm not 100% sure that I'm on that slide so um I will talk about this really quickly so remember I said that I changed my Approach I don't knock on glass doors anymore um this is one of the big approaches that works really well for me which is just uh so I have several different campaigns when I'm touring when I'm actively touring I have several different things that I'll be running at the same time I'll be using a strategy called content based networking to reach my Gatekeepers my Gatekeepers which are the literacy event uh organizers and
Build Relationships With Super-Connectors
25:30then I will just use plain old social media networking uh to get anybody that comments on my videos to introduce me to somebody who's a media specialist at their school and then I do this um email drip Campaign which is uh do you need a volunteer reader every school needs volunteer readers I just don't tell them yet that I'm also a kids book author but I'm like hey do you need a volunteer reader at your school and and then when they respond to me I'm like oh and by the way I'm also a children's book author so I'd love to read whatever You' like me to read I'd also love to read what I wrote if you're interested um and that's a way to kind of weasle your way into uh getting to do that okay here we go uh so here is the
26:15the question that I have for you guys and I want to just take a second for you to think about this okay and you don't have to think about this from the perspective of being a kids book author you can you can go all right I know that this is a kid book that I would like to do um or you probably have a different book in you that you're thinking about but this is the question that I want you to think about which is okay so there's a book that I want to write where are where is that readership for that book like where are they like what did they go to or what are they a part of in math okay and then the next question to think about is if I wanted to go do a presentation of my work and I'm going to talk about that a second if I want to do a presentation of my work
27:00who are five really strong like connector type people that could help me do a presentation of my work so there's two ways that you can think about this activity you can either think about it from the perspective of okay I I actually want to Niche down and be like all right who are the super connectors of my ideal readership but if you're like I'm not that far along I would say one of the things that you want to do early on as an author is just get some media of you presenting your work somewhere okay so if you can't go here at least come over here and ask yourself who are five people that I know that um that can help put me somewhere where I
27:45could be presenting my work even if it's a school or a high school or college or whatever so I want you to take a minute and like either with a pen or with a phone at your tables ask yourself that question and try to write down five Super connectors that you know that are in your network so do that so the question is who can open doors for you who's somebody in your network that can open doors for you and I'm telling you every time I ask myself this question more people that are in my network jump to my mind I'm like oh SHO yeah I know so and so and they're the
28:30president of such and such and I can't believe I've never asked them so like that's the person that you want to write down or you could literally be like well my next door neighbor that's always bothering me to borrow butter um she's whatever you know or or even just she her kid is at such and such school and I'd like to present there so that's what I want you to be thinking about or if you want to go a step further and be a little bit more advanced on this um I think it would be cool to try to think through who is the like who so I'll give you an example that's not me so I have a client his name is Kermit farmer and he has a product where um it's a the the
29:15type of people that he so he wrote a book and he has a product that is for uh care like um it's what do they call onc oncologists the people that for the people that are cancer doctors and involved in that world okay so um so his ideal readership is on oncologist and so he's asking himself because he wrote a book that's for them so he's asking himself like where like where where should I be presenting my work and it's like well you should be presenting your work at cancer universities or like places where people study to be oncologists and so then the next question to ask is who is the person that's the gatekeeper that decides who gets to come and speak at those places now you want to focus all your marketing
30:00effort on that relationship on having relationships with those kinds of people okay so uh when you have that kind of relationship that person can start opening doors for you and you literally have to ask them you have to be like hey I am working on this book or I have published this book and I would like to present it and you you can it just to get some media of you presenting your book you can offer to do it for free and there's no upsell there's no nothing um but I'm going to talk now about just doing those actual kinds of presentations um so here's a common misconception that comes up a lot which
30:45is um and I get this with my clients like we'll produce a book for them and they're like okay where can I go do a book signing and it's like nobody goes to book sigs I'm sorry like unless you're already famous no nobody goes to book signings yeah um so like that's just like it's like one of those ideas that people have of like you know sitting at Barnes & Noble with a table and a long line of people that want to meet them adoring fans that are holding their book and it's like that's just not reality nobody goes to book signings people don't buy books uh for book signers they buy books from speakers that is just the truth so like unless you're famous uh and probably even if you are famous this is where people buy books when you speak
Speak Instead of Waiting for a Signing
31:30and that's tough because remember I said the job of writer versus the job of author the job of writer is very good for introverts the job of author is not very good for introverts okay because this is where people will buy your book this is where people will get to know you think about this right like so we heard Misty present don't we want to buy her book now like it's like we heard her talk about character development well now we want to see it in action be like okay I want to see what that looks like we're more interested in buying from her now because we've heard her talk so yeah people buy from speakers there are two ways that you can engage audiences uh as an author and it's pretty easy but you either perform your book or teach from your book and
32:15I've done both um and and if you're um and and I'm going to argue this okay because I feel like um in the children's book space you mostly see this and in every other space you mostly see this and I want to say that both authors should be doing both okay I I believe that even if you're not a children's book author you can perform your book and by that I mean you just literally go hey guys as part of my presentation one of the things that I want to do is I want to read a small I want to I want to read there's a part of my book that I was like really not sure if I should even put in there because it's so whatever um I want to read it from for
33:00you guys and then I'd love to get some feedback and kind of talk through my decision- making on why I did XYZ that I did and you open it and you start reading and the way that I framed it makes you interested to hear like what what is he even talking about so uh so and that gives you a chance also to kind of showcase your style to that audience of like how do you write um so you don't have to be a children's book author to do the personal which is perform your book um but definitely uh teaching from your book I feel like it comes more naturally for people that uh especially non-fiction like that's so obvious of course you teach from your book um but everybody can teach from their book um and I believe that everybody can teach from their book at every level so like even in the very beginning for me I had written uh Billy the Dragon for my little brother
33:45Tristan like I don't really have that much expertise to go off of but one thing I do have is hey I know how to write in such a way that a four-year-old is begging me to write more that's something that I could teach and I you know I'm I don't have any business teaching but I have that so um so I I believe at every level there is something that you could be teaching from your book um so high energy gets kids attention um so if you are thinking like maybe you'd want to be a children's book author I do another talk that I call the uh habits of good storytelling and specifically I should call this more like the habits of good dramatic reading um uh and let me check the time actually
34:30cuz I don't want to go I don't want to go crazy started about what 10 minutes late yeah how much time do I have about 10 minutes I have 10 minutes okay I'll just Blitz through this then um but this is so important especially if you're ever going to be a children's book author like this is so important okay cuz this is what makes kids say like I want this author to come back to my school just just by applying these things I have teachers that are still even though I'm not actively touring right now they're still dming me and saying hey would you come back to our school the kids are asking about you and it's it's because of this stuff so the first one is just manage energy um I I'll I'll go through this really quickly
Perform and Teach From Your Book
35:15because I really think this is valuable if you ever want to present your book at a at an elementary school okay so specifically manage energy I do this with adults too um but uh but it's really important with kids it's literally just give yourself a device that you can use to control the room I took a class in college called um uh shoot I forgot what it's called but it it was all about it was all about classroom management that's what it's called classroom management and the teacher said um you are the master manipulator of your room and if you're not the master manipulator of your room then you're not the teacher so I took that to heart um she taught us all these different ways of manipulating the energy of the room um and one of so right off the bat one of the things that you want to do is give yourself a tool that you can use to manipulate the energy in the room because you're going
36:00to be a crazy performer of your book um and so one of them that I like to use is this I just tell the kids I'm like what's up everybody are you guys excited uh you know to to to read my book or that I'm about to perform my book for you and try to get the kids to like yeah and then I'll be like okay well before I get started uh the first thing I want to do is if you ever hear me say the word room room I want you guys to say back to me yes it yes can we practice that ready room room yes yes awesome now you have to be careful and you have to be listening because you never know when I might room room yes it yes now you have something that you can use when the room gets away from you you know so that's that's the first one is manage the energy next one is bury your voice and I
36:45will say this regardless of if you ever decide to be a children's book author when you are reading a children's book to Children this makes a huge difference vary your voice and you can your voice in two ways you can change the volume of your voice you can talk really emphatically and loud and then you can get really quiet notice when I start talking quiet that's really powerful with kids um uh the third one I call face do What story do uh I originally it was written as uh varry your facial expressions but I like this better face do What story do okay when you're reading the book If the characters are scared the face Le do what the story do make your face
37:30scared um don't read in a seated position this is a just a PO that I have don't read in a seated position uh you should stand up because there's so many things that you can do when you're standing and reading to children like one of the things that nobody does but everybody should do it when they're reading to Children if you got a bunch of children in a room when you're reading especially if you get to one of the scarier Parts in the book you should actually stand over the kids like this right you can't do that at you're sitting but it the kidss are like oh my goodness um so that's that's a b one uh stand and move Tower kneel walk gestures and then Engage The Audience pause to ask questions uh I don't feel like I'm doing a very good job of that in this presentation but in other presentations the speakers were doing a very good job
38:15of being like have you ever felt that way have you ever thought about that before those are great questions to ask in the middle of your performing of book um and then another thing that I like to do is I'll ask kids to to be a character in the book certain books allow for that really well and certain books don't when I do Harper hers no what Harper hers know is my bestselling book on tour every parent wants to buy it um and uh it's it was written for like kindergarteners but I'll read it with fifth graders and I'll have fifth graders come up and pretend to be you know the mom the the the narrator and the grandma and kids love I always choose a like a fifth grade boy to play the grandma and I I like like I like tell him what the grandma voice is and he'll do the grandma voice and kids
39:00just love it okay uh we're not going to do this group activity because we don't have time part three maximizing Book Sales I feel like this is like the more crucial part of all of this I had figured out how to do this was the game changer for me because I had figured out how I could repeatedly get myself in front of these audiences but I was like how do I make money because the first way that I did it was like I would uh just perform my books and then just hope that people bought them like online uh that didn't work very well um the second thing that I started doing is I would perform my books and then I'd come back to the school at their book fair this did well I would come back to the school at their book fair and all these kids are like
Build a Pre-Visit Sales System
39:45Mommy Mommy it's the author and if a if a child takes a takes their parent by the hand and they take them to an author who's selling children's books those children's books are getting blocked because parents just their kids reading books and so they're like well if I buy this and they came to the book fair so they're going to buy a book and they're like if I buy this book I know my kid's going to read it so that was huge um but the but the what I want to teach here is the thing that really worked um and I have a story here about my first $1,400 check that I don't have time to tell but this was part of my old strategy the same month I think that I made this $1,400 this is my first like big check as a kids book author um and uh it was a school decided that they were going to buy a book a copy for every second grader in the school which is so cool so
40:30cool this was when I had no strategy for sales um that same month I was a real estate I was doing real estate to help like pay the bills and stuff and I I negotiated a contract where I made $133,000 okay that $133,000 check is not that that's not uh framed anywhere that was the same month I made this this is frame in my office I'm so much more proud of this and that was like a big real realization moment I was like I need to stop doing real estate and I going to go full focus into this because I don't care about this money I care about this money but anyways um uh the the method that I use now is a method that works so well and I just everybody should be doing this um and and what it
41:15does is it lets you it lets you it took me forever to figure this out but it lets you predictively like make a good chunk of sales before you even arrive at the school this works really well for schools at the school that you're going to be performing your book and that is to do a combo of a hype video and a flyer and it is so difficult to get these schools to do these two things that so much of what I plan to talk about that I don't have time to talk about is all about just how to get them to do it because it is the difference between you walking to a school and selling a few books and being completely unknown for versus you walking into the school and you are a flipping celebrity
42:00to these children they all know your name they're screaming and crying when they see your face and they have already brought you a stack of Flyers that's this tall filled with book order forms um that is the difference between you just getting the whole school to play the hype video and send home the flyer um and here's an example of what my flyer looks like today um it's gone through so many different iterations this this iteration works so thinking well for so many reasons that I don't have time to get into but I'll just say the top section of it is all like just what are you buying from me the bottom section is I don't care if you buy anything from me do this and if you do this I have a big old prize that I want to give you when I come to the school and the prize is your name's going to
42:45get randomly pulled and if your name gets pulled and you filled out the bottom section of the flyer regardless of if you bought anything I'm going to do a YouTube video with you and that that's part of my whole like anything that you any outcome that you want incentivize I wanted to incentivize kids to take the flyer home show it to their parents fill it out with their parents and bring it back to the school and I did not care if they bought the book because I knew if they all did that a good chunk of them were buying my book um and that I mean my sales dramatically jumped when I added this bottom section to the flyer so just incentivize the outcome that you want that worked really well um so uh the previsit uh is uh this led to packed events the pr previsit video it's a hypee video I have an example of it that I'd love to show you
43:30um it can be so so simple but the goal here you're trying to do two things in a hype video you are trying to actually get the kids excited about your visit so pick something that you know they're going to enjoy to tease so that you can get them excited about your visit and then the other thing you're trying to do in the hype video is tell them how they can get a copy of your book and incentivize it so I would say I'm going to give you a flyer in fact your teacher is printing it right now and if she isn't her mean look right now uh and on that flyer is something that you need to fill out if you want to buy a copy of my book awesome but fill out the bottom section because if you do I'm going to pull six children randomly and they are going to get to be in a YouTube video with me but not if you forget to bring the flyer back so take it home show it to your parents fill it out bring it back um and that it works so
44:15well um I I wanted to talk more about on the spot sales and post sales strategy but I want to leave room for questions I will just say um this this works really well um just have a have a system for like if you want on the spot sales be thinking like okay I've got people that are curiously coming up to me because I've got books to sell like what could I do to incentivize them to like close the deal um and this one thing that I this works so well as a children's book author I'm trying to Rack my brain to think about how this could translate but I would just like especially at Book Fairs like mom and dad com or if mom and child are come to my table I'd be like so Sarah did you like the the when I
45:00read the book at the school oh yeah which character is your favorite oh it's so and so if your mom buys a copy right now I'm going to draw a picture of so and so in the book and then it's like I never I never didn't make a sale doing that so incentivize the thing that you want um group activity I don't have time for group activity I don't have time for my biggest mistake I have to share this okay my biggest mistake biggest mistake I mean my goodness like if I can go back in time um you got to sell something expensive you sell a $15 product or a $30 product right you got to sell something more expensive than that um you're you're just I would have doubled my profit if I would have just also had
45:45on that same flyer something expensive um and I there's so many things that it could be but uh one of the activities that we don't have time for is I wanted to get you thinking like okay I'm such and such an author what is my expensive upsell that I could put as like a checkbox item on a flyer or like with my book I'm trying to sell and for me like I I eventually finally did start doing an expensive upsell oh I guess I don't have a picture of it um but uh uh it could be it could be teach teaching a storytelling Workshop it could be teaching uh hey you know I've got an eight video course on how to be an illustrator that's designed for children um and it ends with such and such and it's only $300 like and you just add
Create a Higher-Value Next Step
46:30that as a thing that they could just check check mark uh if if one in 50 of the parents that decided to buy my book also bought the upsell I would have doubled my profit or something like that I'm not good at numbers but it's something like that um so it's just crazy crazy that I didn't do that so for goodness sake every offer every author figure out what your expensive thing is it's it should be the the next logical thing for a super fan or the like okay well if the book is this then the this is this um and that's the way that you need to be thinking about what your expensive thing is okay questions SC was good
47:15yes who do am I out of time oh yes yeah yeah I just had an idea um so one of the upsells you could do was like uh customize books for you know the children that are buying them that might be an idea when you say customized do you mean like um like put them in the book oh I see okay that is a that like oh like in a future book like their name will appear in a future book oh that's a good idea yeah yeah just we do that in fiction a lot for Charities it's called a tuation put you in the book and and uh some we'll put sometime sometimes we
48:00don't put your name in if you don't want it we'll just describe you in the book and something like but yeah makes great money for charity I don't know about I don't know if anybody's ever done it for just a picture I feel like it could work well for kids books like because like that's a really special thing like your child could appear in one of my future books I don't love the I that would have to be pretty dang expensive I think for me to like I I like the idea of selling like the thing about expensive stuff is often thepoke but um but I like the idea of doing like a like a course or a cohort or like um yeah for me it would probably like the next logical thing would just be like would you like your kid to learn how to become a kids book author because if so that's only $299 and um I feel like I feel like if I
48:45would have added that into my tours I would have sold it a lot and it's great Community growth and audience growth it's got so many benefits but one of them is it would have doubled my profit where do you do you I'm here oh hey what do you print your children's books like are you using printer in the US or are you doing it overseas I am going to talk more about this tomorrow and I'm so glad you asked the question because um this is something that people get really fancy about and one of my povs tomorrow is I've never met a fancy person that makes money uh it's not fancy people that make money so um the people that get really romantic about like oh it needs to be designed in such and such a way and illustrations need to be such and such and the build quality of the book needs to be such and such I've never met anyone like that that
Audience Questions and Applications
49:30makes money um yeah and all the people that I've met that make money they're way scrappier than that so if you had to mature your content and your pitch up to say High School yes late middle school or even early college still in the phase where they're not using their own money to purchase products but they still have a little bit more of a sophisticated brain how would your um strategy pitch and everything change yeah so in my case um it's actually like it's really cool because I've been doing I've been a touring kids book author so my pitch has been and will be especially like I
50:15didn't have a book to go with it I was just doing it for fun like when I would go do presentations at middle schools and high schools I was just doing it for fun now I actually have like a product to go with it um but it's like hey would you like to learn from a professional author how to be a professional author and that would be my pitch and so then to the to the gate Keepers and be like hey I'd love to come on like career day or something and teach your kids about this very interesting career would you like that all you have to do is and like in Li of doing uh in lie of paying me a speaker fee all you have to do is play my hype video to all the students and send home my flyer a week before the exam came mon what would you employ to make the kids want buy your book that's the thing so I I I I I would love to
51:00show you what the hype video looks like but if you go like on my YouTube channel if you type in atin on YouTube I have a hype video that's like am I coming to your school and it's the it's what's required I I I I have a whole system for making the school do this thing because this is the money maker um they must I will not show up to their school if every child has not watched my hi video and every child has not gone home my applier um and I'm I'm very kind about it I have a followup that's built into my Google Calendar so like when I'm having the discussion with the teacher I'm like yeah I'd love to come to your school and then they always say like well how much do you charge and I say you know what my speaker fee is such and such but if you'd like to not pay me a speaker fee all you have to agree to do
51:45is XYZ would you be able to agree to that and then they say oh yeah totally okay awesome I'm going to put two calendar events in both of our calendars one is the actual event day and one is week before the event date just reminding you of what you agreed to do so that you can have that forcing function of like oh I got a print fly I got to print 300 copies of this fly and I got to make sure every student has watched this video and then on event day it's just it's just like the the schedule of what we're going to do and then what what I I've got it built in so that like they get they get a an email that's like hey I just want to confirm that every student has watched the video and every student has gone home with the flyer and if they don't respond to that email I'll say followup I said another followup and then I say hey it looks like we're going to have to reschedule
52:30um and that's fine what would be a better date and then they freak out and then they go no I am printing 300 fers right now every student is watching this video you put the link the chat on the the link for the hyp video yeah sure absolutely I would love I I'm a very forgetful person I would loveing function somebody could just like is there a way to tag people in the app yeah okay could someone tag me and ask for that that would be super helpful yeah I guess one more quick question does your hype video change across age groups because you know like what the 13 to 16 that's the UN too cool for yeah totally so when I'm talking to high schoolers now I haven't like I said I've
53:15only done this for fun with high school and middle school but when I start touring with this book aside from events like this which is awesome but like when I start like going to schools with this book it's probably going to be something like what's up high schoolers you have probably have no idea who I am I just want to introduce myself really quickly my name is Timmy Bauer and for the last such and such years I've been a full-time professional author and that's just I when you look up on Google like dream jobs for people that's always in the top five list so I know that somebody who's watching this video is probably dreaming of one day being a professional writer or professional author well I would love to talk about that with you and give you really practical helpful tips on how you can actually make money as a full-time
54:00professional author and writer and so that's what this book bootstrap your book tour is all about um I'm going to be signing copies for anybody when I come to the school I'm going to be signing copies for anybody that wants one if you want a signed copy your teacher is printing out a flyer right now everybody give her a meme look if she's not awesome okay she's printing out a flyer and then and then I got to think about what's my uh what's my incentive it might still be in a YouTube video with me CU I feel like that would still be cool to them um but yeah the key is you got to make like you got to make a hype video and a flyer and just those two things go together and if anybody wants you to come speak for a large group of people and they don't
54:45want to pay you make that your speaker fee yeah all right awesome awesome thank all right let's hear it again for Timmy B