The Benefits of Thought Leadership and Becoming an Author, with Melanie Johnson

Episode 12: The Benefits Of Thought Leadership And Becoming An Author, With Melanie Johnson

 

Melanie Churella Johnson is a distinguished twelve-time bestselling author and recognized publishing and marketing expert. She is also a single mom of two, a previous Miss Michigan and first runner-up to Miss America.

Before founding Elite Online Publishing, Melanie owned and operated two independent TV stations in Houston and Dallas. She’s also been a News Anchor, Producer, and Financial Strategist and worked in Public Relations, Promotions, TV Ad Sales and Programming Negotiations. Melanie is the mother of two wonderful boys, loves gardening, and of course, reading a good book.

For more information and to find Melanie’s books, visit her page on Amazon.

 

What the podcast will teach you:

• How Melanie initially got started in media through owning television stations, and why she decided to begin Elite Online Publishing
• How Elite Online Publishing has published over 2500 books under their imprint, working with more than 85 authors and holding a 100% track record of Amazon bestsellers
• Why writing a book is a powerful way to market yourself and your business, and how doing it correctly puts Amazon’s tools to work for you
• How Elite Online Publishing helps authors repurpose existing content to make writing a book quicker and easier
• What steps Melanie recommends for anyone who wants to get started in online publishing but isn’t sure how
• Why the Amazon Author Page is an incredible, flexible and underutilized self-marketing tool
• What tips, tricks, and tools Melanie recommends for people who are better at verbal skills than at writing, or for people who think they don’t have time to write a book
• Why putting a call-to-action in both the beginning and end of your book is a smart and effective tactic
• Who can make the best use of ghostwriters, and why it is important to find a ghostwriter who can mirror your unique voice
• Why the right publisher can make the process of writing and publishing a book easy and effective

 

Resources:

• Website: https://eliteonlinepublishing.com
• Melanie Johnson’s Amazon Author Page: https://amzn.to/35AEW9z
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/melaniejohnson-eop/
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/eliteonlinepublishing/

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I’m excited to introduce to you our guest. She is Melanie Johnson, the CEO and one of the original Founders and Owners of Elite Online Publishing. She’s a twelfth-time bestselling author, recognized, published, and marketing expert, which is why we have her on now. Welcome, Melanie. Thank you for joining us.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

It looks like you have quite an experienced background that I’d love for our audience to know more about. Why don’t you share a little bit of it?

In the formal part of my career, I did some things before I was a commercial actress. I worked with Tim Allen in the day. I got into television. I started as a newscaster. I started a TV station from scratch with my former husband. We owned and operated two TV stations, UHF stations for those people who may remember a UHF station over the year with FCC. From that, I learned everything from the ground up, advertising, creating TV shows, selling advertising, buying advertising, soliciting, marketing, and all of that stuff. My background was broadcasting in a nutshell.

When times and life changed a little bit, I got into developing real estate, but I always felt like the future was not in TV. It was on the internet. I could see almost anybody could have their own TV station back in 2008. YouTube hadn’t been up for long, but with YouTube, you could have your own station. I felt like that’s where the future was. I was focusing my education on that.

Part of that process was publishing. I met Jen Foster through that. We decided to do a book writing retreat, like a one-off fun adventure for us one summer. It was successful. People started coming out of the woodwork that wanted to work with us. We incorporated a few months later, and Elite Online Publishing was born.

How long have you guys been doing Elite Online Publishing?

We had our four-year anniversary in 2019. We have published over 2,500 books under Elite Online Publishing. We have worked with over 85 authors and made 100% of them bestselling authors in multiple categories on Amazon.

To start writing a book, you have to choose your market and niche. That's what gets you on the map, on everybody's radar, and sets you apart. Click To Tweet

That’s a wonderful track record. Congratulations on that. If I ever get my act together and write a book, I got to go with you guys because Elite Entrepreneurs and Elite Online Publishing are awesome. Two peas in a pod on that one. I remember UHF. I certainly remember Tim Allen growing up. That was fun to watch him in action. That’s a fun background that you have. You also competed in pageants previous to Miss Michigan and were first runner-up to Miss America. That’s pretty awesome stuff. Good for you.

You’ve been accomplished in many areas of your life. That elite nomenclature is well-suited for you. We get some of your genii, especially from the last several years. You reach all the way back to TV time. Over the last several years that you’ve been on this journey of online publishing, helping authors get published and recognized, many of our readers, if they’re not already or in the works, who are trying to do something like that have always wondered, “Should I write a book?”

People have told them, “You should write a book.” Maybe they don’t know what the landscape is like for doing that these days. I would love to have you share the beginner’s basics of what online publishing is about. If people see themselves as thought leaders or speakers or have something that they would love to share in some form or format, what steps should they be taking? What should they be thinking about?

I got off the phone with one of our authors, and he was saying he had the chance to share a couple of bottles of wine with Jack Canfield. He wrote Chicken Soup for the Soul. He said, “Let me ask you. If you had to start all over again and you didn’t have anything, what would be the first thing you would do?” He said, “Honesty, I would write a book and become a bestseller with it.” Pick your market and niche. That’s what I would do. That’s what gets you on the map, gets you on everybody’s radar, and sets you apart.

From an advertising perspective, during my career growing up in the TV business and seeing all forms of advertising and how advertising has changed online, I’ve never seen an advertising or marketing tool that rivals a book. It’s the oldest thing in the universe that people use to spread the news, talk about themselves, and educate themselves. It still is true today. People say, “Are books dead?” Absolutely not.

There’s still no other thing that lasts beyond you. Think about. If you look at your library or even the books you’re buying now, how many times have you bought a book from a person who’s not even alive anymore? That book outlives you. It’s the strongest marketing tool that you can use in many different ways for your business. There are different ways you can leverage that book. You can use it as a lead magnet.

We tell the story where someone who is trying to get into the CEO. He was trying to sell him his consulting services and couldn’t get connected to the guy. He wrote a book. He sent a book as a package from Amazon. The secretary is not going to open a book from Amazon. He put on there a note on the front of it saying, “I can help your business. I want you to turn to page 75. There’s something that will save you money. I sent you a personal video. Here’s the link to it.”

The guy’s going to open the book. He’s going to see it. He opened that page. He saw the video, and he hired him. Think about that power. I tell people, “It’s the only marketing tool that you’ll have that people will take to bed with them, put on their nightstand, and see you every single day.” They’re not going to take a flyer, a business card, or do that. A book lasts the test of time, and there are many ways that are what we’re good at.

 

When we work with our clients, we take and teach you the different ways to use your book to leverage it for your business. We’ve worked with politicians. They want to get boats. That’s different than somebody who is a consultant. They want to get clients versus someone who has a digital product, which is trying to sell their services.

We aligned that tool of their book of how to use it and leverage it for their business to get big ticket items sold because you’re not going to make thousands of dollars necessarily in book sales. We’ve had authors that have made $20,000 a year in selling their books, but it’s about using that for how to sell your services and get to that next level.

I was thinking that whole time, “How much money do we spend on flyers at trade shows or events if you ever sponsor an event?” You put together your one-pager, and you put it out. That thing goes right into the trash. It never does anything.

There’s no value in it. Here is another one of our strategies. You’re trying to get into that company. Let’s say it has 50 employees there. It’s a mid-sized company with 50 employees. How about you send your book to every single employee and it arrives on the same day. Do you think you’re going to get some attention? Every single person is holding your book and has it on their desk.

All the money is spent on flyers, business cards, and other pieces of paper that get caught, mailers, but the book doesn’t. It’s fascinating. Here in the United States, it’s inside of us that books are special, and we wouldn’t throw away a book.

There’s perceived value in there, and you get your message across. One of the other challenges that people have is, like, “I don’t have time to write a book. I’m busy. That sounds overwhelming.” When you think about it, what we teach our authors are several things. When we work with you, we do a VIP day. It is one of our things to hone that message. We start looking at your assets, saying, “If you already have a blog post or a newsletter, what content do you already have? What’s in your Google Drive that you’ve put together, PDFs?” We start culminating all that stuff. We call it repurposing your content.

Look at this show that we’re doing here. You’ve got all these experts that come on your show. You could put all these interviews together with little editing and create a book out of it. The next thing, you’re the person who’s interviewed all these experts, and you know something about all these topics. You’ve got leverage that way. You can repurpose and interview people. We tell people, “You can do the most frequently asked questions that happen in your business. Answer those questions and give them illustrations of what’s going on in there. There is a multitude of ways that you can get the content of your book out fast.

I want to like drill down on this a little bit more. I’ve even had these thoughts myself. Even if I wanted to write a book, it feels overwhelming. The mountain seems large to go write the book. What are some best practices that you’ve helped people with to take little steps that end up tackling that mountain?

Books are not dead. Books outlive you. Click To Tweet

Even in your business, I’m sure you get the same questions over and over again. We’re going to go back to that frequently asked questions. You’re at a sales meeting. You’re pitching your services. You’re saying the same thing over and over again, and you’re asking the same questions. I would challenge everybody that’s reading, set a timer for ten minutes, write down as many frequently asked questions as you can think of that you get for your product or service, and write down as many should ask questions. A should ask question is, “If they knew what I knew, this is what they would be asking me.” It’s that inside-back question.

For each question, as an outline, you’ll put a sentence as what that answer is, so you know to refer back to it and come up with three illustrations for each of those. It may be a story that you had with a customer, maybe a story of a friend. I use the story of Jack Canfield, not my story. Think of mentors or people you read about that you can use to illustrate that.

Most of us have always been to church at one point in our lives. If you watch a minister, they pick a scripture out of the Bible, and they will give stories that illustrate what that means and how you can relate to what that scripture means. They break it down. The whole sermon is a variety of stories. It may be stories about them in their life and maybe stories about characters in the Bible. It may be stories of other people. In the end, they give a lesson.

What does that mean to you? What should you be doing in your life? It’s the same thing for a book. If you break down that question, what the principle is of the answer, and stories to illustrate it, the organization is as we always say, “Start out with a transformational story at the beginning of the chapter and give the reason, question, and principle that you’re trying to get across. Tell a couple more transformational stories and then bring the point together why it’s important. “

That’s a great practical way of outlining what somebody might do to make this more doable. Thank you for tearing down barriers for people who are reading. A lot of that, you teed this up. You come up with the frequently asked questions, and you’d come up with the ones they ought to be asking. What should I be asking you about this process that I don’t even know how to ask?

A lot of people don’t realize that once you become an author, you’ve now hired Amazon for free to work for you. Amazon is now promoting you. All of a sudden, you’re seeing those emails from Amazon, “I thought you might like this. You look like you’re the person who likes this.” They’ve got all these algorithms. What Amazon gives you is an Amazon Author Page. It’s like a Facebook page for authors. Usually, that page shows up always on the first page of a search for your name, book, or business.

We find that it’s usually number 3 to number 5 on the first page. You can put all this cool stuff on that page. I’m giving away my secrets here. Hopefully, no other publishing house is reading. Most other publishing houses don’t populate it at all. You have a page with no picture on it, or they have a picture, a one-paragraph bio, and nothing else.

What we do is we use all of that real estate. You can get 8 videos and 8 photographs on there. We max out your bio with all of your links, social media links, and places they can go to get your products and services. We can tie in your blog posts, the RSS feed, or your show like this feed would be in there as well. People can follow you there.

 

Every time you upload a new episode, the people who are following you get notified, and everything is there. Your book is there. If you’re interviewing me and you want to know more about me, I can send you the link, which I did. I sent you the link to my Amazon Author Page. All my social media, book, and videos of me speaking are there. Everything you need to know is right there. That’s one thing people don’t know. The ROI on a book can be huge. Don’t get wrapped up in the book sales. Get wrapped up in what that book can do for you, for your credibility in the marketplace, and show you as an expert. It can launch your career or take your career to the next level.

That is fascinating that you’ve figured out how to use a platform that’s already there and built for you, Amazon, and leverage out of that thing to get you all sorts of connections and get your name out there. What’s the fastest time that you’ve helped somebody go from, “Melanie, I want to write a book. Can you help me to book launch and bestseller status has happened?” What’s the timeframe if somebody wants to jump in on this?

It all depends. If someone comes to us with their book finished or almost finished, I use Lauren Golden as an example of that. She came to us in mid-October 2019, and two months later, we had our book launched, and she became a bestseller within 60 days. If someone’s coming to us with an idea, and we’re doing a VIP day, and we’re working with a ghostwriter with them, it takes a little bit longer. We’d like to say six months, but it all depends on the author. Action is everything and implementation. In your business, you can guide somebody to do what they need to do, but if they don’t follow through or life gets in the way, it messes up the timeline.

We tell people, “You can have a book. Finish from start to end and publish in six months if you have nothing written on paper so far. If you already have your book in the editorial phases, it could be 2 to 3 months.” We do not like to waste time. If you come to us, and you’re like, “My book is almost done. I’m working halfway done with it.” We’re like, “Sign with us now because while you’re finishing your book, we’re going to get the book cover done. We’re going to get the marketing all set up. We’re going to start to rebrand you. Do our campaign and get everything set up.”

“When that book is ready, everything comes together at the same time versus you spend all the time finishing the book, and you come to us.” It isn’t a wrong answer, but it’s much more time efficient. We always say, “You can’t start making money until your book is out there. Let your book work for you. The longer you take, the longer it is your book is a resource for you to use and leverage for your company.”

We need to be people of action if we have that little thought, “I need to move on that.” I usually get to this point later on in the interview, but it seems an appropriate place. This isn’t territory that most people can go navigate on their own. They do need some help. You guys are experts at it. If anybody is reading this and saying, “I want some time with Melanie. How to learn more?” What’s the best way for people to start this journey with Elite Online Publishing?

Go to our website, EliteOnlinePublishing.com. You can connect at the submissions form. Fill out a form there. No matter what stage you’re in, we’ll set up an appointment with you.

They do this frequently asked questions thing that you started out with. What do I always get to talk about? What do I always get asked about? What am I always sharing with others? You took it one step further and said, “What are the questions they should be asking because I know as the expert?” You’ve got a basic outline now of things that would be important. You talked about what ministers do at church. They have a story to go along with it and a way to apply it to your life.

The ROI on a book can be huge. You should get wrapped up in what that book can do for you for your credibility to the marketplace and show you as an expert. It can either launch your career or take your career to the next level. Click To Tweet

You mentioned a ghostwriter. How often are you guiding people through the process of writing it themselves? What’s it like to use a ghostwriter? Let’s stay on the non-ghostwriter. I’m writing it myself track. How much time should I be thinking about it? Is there a best practice for every day from this time to this time? I am moving that book project forward. What do people do?

Let me give you an inside tip. Most entrepreneurs are more verbal than they are writing, but either way is fine. This is a secret that we’ve been using that’s been successful with our business people and thought leaders. There’s an app called Otter. It’s like using that net time there. They’re on the treadmill. They’re working out, and they’re thinking about their book. All the thoughts are going through their head, and they’re better talkers. If someone talked with them, they could say it and have a conversation.

Use that net time if you want, and speak it into Otter. Otter records it. You get an audio recording, but it also transcribes it in real-time. It’s easy. You can go in and edit from it, or a ghostwriter can edit from it, which makes it easier. Another great way is to do an interview like this. Set it up with one of your friends or something, and say, “I’m working on this book, and I have my outline done, but I feel like I need to talk it out, but I feel weird doing it in a vacuum, talking to myself. Would you have a conversation with me, and I’m asking you these questions?”

Use that device to record it. Do a Zoom recording even. You have both. You have a Zoom recording and the Otter recording. You have the transcript, and it’s in order. It’s much easier to go back and edit something versus having to write. For me, sometimes I get stuck, and I will rewrite the same paragraph ten times. “Should it be this? Maybe I should change this word. There’s not enough detail.” When you’re talking, it’s much more fluid. That’s a ninja trick for us, authors, to get it out fast. You could do that in a couple of hours. Have that interview and have the talk and conversation for that much.

A lot of people I know, and me included, think, “When I’m writing, it has to be so.” I rewrite it ten times like you said. This speaking about it, even though I fumbled through it like this interview. I’m not the best speaker, but on my topic, there are things that I have to say. If I say them, even if it’s clunky, the transcription is at least going to give me a starting point. I can edit from there or use a ghostwriter.

Once you have all that, you might even need more of a copy editor than a ghostwriter, which is someone who makes sure that it flows well and adds the details there.

Those are great tips. I’m feeling like we are given away the farm here on the tips. I want to go down the ghostwriter path here in a few minutes, but I see some books that are like, “Is it book worthy? Does it have to be a certain number of pages for it to qualify as a book? What are you finding out there that works?

What we say is you have to be at least 135 pages to make sure you have the name on the spine. Otherwise, it’s too skinny. That’s not 8.5×11 when you’re writing on a word document because the book is either going to be 6×9 or 5×8. It’s going to be smaller. I love this. This is my new example. A friend of mine, Tilman Fertitta, is a billionaire. He came out with a book, and it is 5.5×8. It’s the smallest size book, a little bit bigger print, and 165 pages.

 

They can get through that book pretty fast, but you’ve made it big enough with larger type and a number of pages that it’s substantial enough, but it’s got stuff that people want to see, and it’s long enough.

We tell people, “You can have graphs in there. You can have illustrations and photographs there. We want a call to action at the beginning of the book or a call to action at the end. You’re going to have a forwarded intro.” There are other ways to get that beefiness if you feel like your story is not full enough or to reach that page amount. There are other ways to achieve that.

From Elite Online Publishing, we want a quality book. We want quality content from you because it represents you, and it’s going to outlast you. We want it to leave a legacy for you and help change the world, make it a better place, and inspire and educate people. On the other hand, we want you to make sure that you don’t have to make it too laborious for you. Get your message across to them.

I was telling an author, “Sadly, there’s a large percentage of people who buy a book and they never read it. It sits there. We’re all guilty of that. We buy the book with the best intentions. We read the first chapter, and you’re like, “I want to get back to that book. It’s there. Sometimes we even feel better and smarter by buying it and having it in our hands in the first place.

The stacks of books that go and read out there are pretty large. You said something that caught my attention. It was unexpected. That is the call to action piece that you referenced on the front end and the back end. We started out by saying, “This is about getting you out there, getting you in front of more people, and finding new ways that you can get in front of hard-to-reach places with business owners who have the large moat and the keeper of the gate, and you can’t get through. I didn’t think about having a call to action in the front of the book and at the back of the book. Talk to me more about what that’s like.

When we work with you, we want to go through what is the product or service that you’re selling and what are you wanting the call to action to be for your company or for you. As we walk you down that road and consult with you, we want to come up with a strong call to action to capture leads and email addresses. What happens is Amazon doesn’t give you that information for book sales. The idea is for you to grow your list and sell that big ticket item.

When you look on Amazon, they have that preview in the book. A lot of people will bury their call to action. They’ll have it at the end, or maybe they’ll bury it somewhere in the book, but we like to have it in the preview section. Even if they don’t purchase your book, they may have seen your call to action, looked up your URL, and maybe opt-in. We put your call to action at the beginning and the end of your book and also in your Amazon profile.

It makes a ton of sense, especially given what we talked about, where people buy the book, they look at the first part of it, and then it might sit there, unread. You have to lead with that.

Action is everything. You can guide somebody to do what they need to do but if they don't follow through or life gets in the way then it messes up the timeline. Click To Tweet

You said in the beginning, “If you get a chance to work with us, work with us.”

There we are. We’re burying that thing right in the middle of this thing. Call to action. Call Melanie when you need help. People tell me, “You need to write a book.” There’s that little part of me that feels heavy. It feels like I can’t ever get around to that, but you’re giving me encouragement. We may do more together beyond this interview. I’m excited about this book writing thing now.

What about the ghostwriting path? For those of us who are like, “I got some good content.” Even though you gave us some great tips about speaking it, getting interviewed, and all the transcription services that are out there, it may feel overwhelming to put it all together in a way that makes sense and people would enjoy reading. How do you decide if you need a ghostwriter?

Part of it is time if you have time or do not have time. We worked with somebody that we did a VIP day with them, and she is a CFO of a global company. Her time is limited. The idea of us coming in and spending a day with her blocking off the day, having her whole book crafted, outlined, ready to go, and knowing exactly what the content is that’s going to go in there that’s strategic for her. That was a great idea for her. We’re going to take that and layer that with a ghostwriter that will work with her. She has the recordings of the day. She has the outline, and it’s all laid out for her. The ghostwriter will do that.

The thing is, with a ghostwriter, you have to be careful. The ghostwriter needs to be somebody that can reflect your own voice. If a friend of yours that’s only for several years is reading your book, they need to make it feel like, “This sounds like Brett when I’m reading it. I can hear him talking to me and saying this,” versus, “He never talks like that. He would never say that.” You want to make sure you get a sample from the ghostwriter, give him part of your book, and have them do a paragraph, a chapter, or half a chapter, and make sure it has the right feel for you when you’re there.

If you don’t have that time, do the Otter thing. You’re going through it and editing it. Hand it off to somebody else and have them go through it and make sense of it. You can keep layering on there. My two pieces of advice are either interview the ghostwriter. If you feel like you don’t have the time, you need to pass it off to them. Make sure that you get one that has your voice. Otherwise, use the Otter technique, get the manuscript written, and you can still give it to an editor.

As somebody who thinks at some point, “I probably ought to go ahead and write the book.” my concern is that the ghostwriter won’t capture my voice. Only I can do boring and dull. Nobody else can match me in being boring and dull. I’m too particular about the way things need to be said. I feel like they would write it, and I would have to rewrite it anyway. Is that an unnecessary concern?

Most ghostwriters are going to interview you. If you haven’t done the VIP day, a transcript, or zero content, they’re going to do interviews with you. They’re going to have your voice. You have to tell them the field that you want, and you want it to sound like you. You need to do maybe a short thing with them and see if they can be as boring and as dull as you are.

 

It goes without saying that a good ghostwriter is good at matching voices. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be good at what they did. Do you have ghostwriters and copywriters on staff, or do you partner with others? If you have clients who need those services, do you refer out to others?

We have strategic partners that are editors, ghostwriters, individuals, and companies that we recommend. We try and pick 2 or 3 that we think would be a good match for you. You speak with them and get samples from them.

I’m fascinated by this whole process. I had been putting off doing something like this for years. I’m sure many of my readers have as well. What you’ve done is encouraged us to take some steps that don’t have to be that difficult. The other thing, at least for me, is that I see out there are many books, the volume of books. You think, “My book is going to get lost in all the noise of books out there because I’m not Jim Collins or other famous people. My books are not going to make a dent.” What do you say to somebody who has some of those thoughts going on in their head?

If you work with the wrong publisher, your book is not going to make a dent, at least on Amazon. We’ve had authors come to us with that are like, “I have my book out there. I don’t know what to do with it. It’s there. It’s not selling. I don’t know what to do with it.” That’s where we come in hand in hand and make a marketing roadmap for you where we should give you an online and offline strategy of how to use your book. All of our authors become number one bestsellers in multiple categories. Our idea is to shoot authors. We always say, “We’re going to give you a touchdown on the first play. The goal is to keep you within the first ten yards so you can keep scoring.”

We want to push your book up and get as many eyeballs on it as possible when you first launch and get it the most attention as possible when you first launch. Once you get that bestseller status, it’s like being Miss Michigan. I had that title for the rest of my life. I’m a twelve times bestselling author with my title for the rest of my life. Once you get that, you always have that title. You got to have the right publisher and team behind you to make sure your book is a success and that you learn how to use it for your business.

I appreciate everything you’ve shared with us. I didn’t quite know what to expect going into this. I thought, “Elite Online Publishing was impressive.” The person who made the introduction originally is somebody I highly respect. I’m like, “This is going to be a cool interview, but I had no idea how much value I personally would extract from it.” I hope that all of my readers are getting that. They realize how much is here. Thank you so much, Melanie, for what you’ve shared. What else should we be thinking about if we haven’t covered it yet? If we’re contemplating writing a book, what paths should we take? Anything else we should be thinking about if we’re interested in this topic?

I’m going to circle back because you talked about having that time. I would say if you give up binge-watching one Netflix series, you could have written your book.

How true that is for many of us, I’m sure, and an embarrassing state of how life is when we say,
“We can’t find time for things.” That’s not an excuse.

You have to be very careful when hiring a ghost writing because the ghost writer needs to be somebody who can reflect your own voice. Click To Tweet

My son got me wrapped into Peaky Blinders on Netflix. I’m like, “Each episode is an hour. There are 5 seasons and 10 episodes in each season.” Within that timeframe, you could have a book written.

At the time this is posted, we’ll be right before probably the end of the calendar year 2019. If you’re reading this sometime in the future, it doesn’t have to be coming up at the end of the year. For those of us who will be reading this, 2020 is upon us. Now’s our chance. If you ever thought, “I ought to write that book.” Melanie gave us some great tips on how to do that.

From what I’m seeing, it’s still not something you want to go take on by yourself. I highly recommend you reach out to Melanie. Check out Elite Online Publishing, fill out their form, and get their help. They’re clearly experts at what they do. I love that you’re batting 1,000 on the bestseller status on Amazon. That’s amazing. Thank you again for everything you shared. Any last words on how to best reach you and contact you? What steps to take next if they want to write a book?

I want everyone who’s reading to check back with Brett to see if he’s working on his book. Let’s keep bugging, “Brett, you said you were going to do that book you got inspired.” Reach out to me. I’m also on Facebook and Instagram. LinkedIn is a great place to connect with me. I’m Melanie Johnson on LinkedIn for Elite Online Publishing and go to EliteOnlinePublishing.com. All our contact information is there. There’s a submission form there. We’d be happy to look and see if you finished, and we’ve opened up our 2020 calendar. We do a limited amount of authors. We do 50 per year. We’d love to see if you qualify to be one of those 50 and get your book launched in 2020.

It’s been fantastic. I can’t say genuinely how much you took me from thinking this is going to be an interesting interview to being much more knowledgeable. I can’t even say the words. I’m excited about it. I’m way more knowledgeable than I was at the beginning. It’s valuable. For everybody reading, please reach out to Melanie if you have any desires whatsoever to write a book or know somebody who’s trying to get that book published. She can help. Thank you for reading this. Thank you again, Melanie, for joining us.

Thanks. Everyone, to your success, and we hope you become an author.

 

Important Links

• Elite Online Publishing
• Elite Entrepreneurs
• Chicken Soup for the Soul
• Amazon Author Page
• Otter
• Facebook – Melanie Johnson
• Instagram – Melanie Johnson
• LinkedIn – Melanie Johnson
• www.Instagram.com/EliteOnlinePublishing/

 

About Melanie Johnson

Melanie Churella Johnson is a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, & #1 International Bestselling Author, she has owned and operated two TV stations in Houston and Dallas. She has been in front of and behind the camera after she won the title of Miss Michigan and was the first runner up to Miss America. She built and marketed the Houston Mansion and the Walloon Lake House. Melanie is currently the owner and founder of Elite Online Publishing that has made over 100 authors #1 bestsellers and Charity Auction Consignments which has raised almost $600,000 for nonprofits. Melanie is a co-host of the podcast Elite Expert Insider and was a TEDx speaker in 2016 in Sugarland, TX. Melanie graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in communications and was the first girl to receive a varsity letter in a boys sport in the state of Michigan. Melanie is the co-host of Elite Expert Insider Podcast on iTunes and stitcher radio. She is a single Mom raising her two sons, one of which was featured in the NY Times.

 

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