Important Note:

I would like to start by reminding that the podcast is sponsored by the http://www.authormarketinginstitute.com (Author Marketing Institute). AMI wanted me to let you know that their next event for authors is coming up at the end of Jan. It's called Author Marketing Live and it's a virtual conference. That means you can attend from your home or office and see all the presentations via your computer or tablet. Grab a seat today to learn from best sellers like Steve Scott, Joel Comm, Lewis Howes and Peter Shankman, and more. You can grab a ticket to the event for only $99 if you use the coupon code "ani" during checkout. That's $49 off the regular ticket price. Just visit http://www.authormarketinglive.com/ (www.authormarketinglive.com) to register.

And now let's get to my guest!

Heather Hart is an internationally best-selling and award winning author, book lover, author coach at http://www.TrainingAuthors.com (TrainingAuthors.com) and owner of http://www.BooklyBooks.com (BooklyBooks.com). Her desire is to help other authors successfully publish and market their books while continuing to author, contribute to, and market multiple book marketing and faith-based books herself - and to have fun doing it!

Below are the main highlights from the interview:

The biggest struggle newbie writers have is knowing what to do with their writing.

You can upload in Kindle and become published author in less than 24 hours with zero money down. But once it's on there it's not easy to sell. It is more than about just writing.

Things that absolutely have to be done before uploading to Amazon:


have the book edited

formatting is important

get professional book design


You have to get into marketing mindset to sell your book. Big part of that is learning who your audience is and what will convince them that your book is worth reading.

[spp-tweet "Readers don't need to hear "buy my book". They want you to convince them why they need your book"]

The most important thing is to take your time to connect to your readers. Let them know you're real person and you really care.

If you want to sell to readers continuously you have to build relationship with them. Building those relationships builds friends and fans - not just readers.

Just be yourself cause that's what readers wanna know anyway.

No matter where you're at you can always grow and improve. It's never finished. It's a journey. It's a lifestyle.

Being an author is part of who you are and it's part of what you do.