How to Become an Author with Jeremy Brown

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What do I put this is George G. And the time is right. Welcome. Today’s guest strong, powerful Jeremy Brown. Jeremy, are you ready to do this?

Jeremy Brown 0:20
George, I’m glad to be here. I love the podcast. I think you’ve been doing it for a long time. You’re one of the veterans in the industry. And I’m glad to be here. Thank you for having me on. Let’s do it. excited to have you on. Jimmy is the founder of Throne publishing. They’re a company that has published over 400 books, and he’s personally published 13 books. Jeremy, tell us a little about your personal life’s more about your work and why you do what you do.

Well, George, I mean, that’s a that’s a loaded question right there. But you know, why we do what we do and thrown in, like our mission statement for our business. I really simplified it because really is our mission is our people. And I had tried to come up with like creative fun mission statements. And end to last year, I was just like, You know what, listen, this is the deal. Like we’re in this business, because we love the people we serve, both in our employees, our contractor base, which we have contractors, writers, editors, designers, almost in every state in the United States, they’re all over the country, our staff spans across, I think three time zones. And, and our authors are all over the place in different parts of the world right now. So when we when our authors when when our employees when that is why my wife and I have stayed in this business now for 10 years, I’ve been in the industry for 15. And in book publishing, and it really is that simple. I think we’re not called to do something as much as we are called to a people. And according to what the people need determines what we do. And I think it’s a really big difference maker with us and what gives us the energy to keep going with all the changes and everything that happens. But personally, my wife and I have four boys that span from 18 years old to 12 months old. So we’ve got almost one year old, a two year old, a four year old, an 18 year old and we have a big 90 pound Rhodesian Ridgeback that travels with us in our Sprinter van as we travel around the country. We’re just gearing up to take a trip down to Dallas for almost a week, next week. And so we work on the road, we have a command center. That’s the Sprinter van. It’s our it’s our mobile office, our mobile HQ, we go all over the place with it. We’ve been last year I think we hit like 10 or 11 states. This year, we’re hoping to do almost the same maybe maybe more. Hopefully, we’ve got a couple of new destinations on the the goal list for the year. But that’s what we do. George is we’re a book publishing company who works for almost exclusively with people in ministry and entrepreneurs who want to write a book, but don’t have the time and we just make it easy for them. Nice.

george grombacher 2:52
Well, that sounds like an adventure right there traveling the country for boys aged 18 to one you and your wife and a 90 pound Rhodesian Ridgeback. What’s What’s the dog’s name? Zara, Zara.

Jeremy Brown 3:04
He’s seven years old and human years. So she is getting up there. She’s in her 50s She’s the oldest one in the house.

george grombacher 3:12
Nice, right. Um, so what was it that got you into book publishing?

Jeremy Brown 3:18
Great question, George. I simply I was going to write my my first book. So I’m in my early 20s. And I’m thinking what a lot of early 20 year olds probably think maybe I certainly did, which is you know what I really owe it to the world to write a book. I’ve got a lot of experiences and wisdom built up in me, I should really write something down and after buying my knowledge, and I joke, but I was gonna write a book. And I had a consulting business at the time, and I wanted to grow that business. And I knew publishing a book would grow that business. So I went to a coffee shop, I sat down to write and I realized I can’t write. There was a short between the keyboard and the chair. And that was me. And so when I saw his I said, you know, I hate writing, but I can communicate this stuff. I do it all day. And so I just made a little structure for myself where I outline the book. And then I outlined an interview for myself for the book. And I arranged the questions in such a way that as I answered the questions, my answers became the book in a really free flowing way. And that’s how I wrote the book in about a weekend I published it. And a year later, I was doing business in almost 20 countries. And that happened because of the book. And people started asking me like, Hey, how did you do that? And when a lot of entrepreneurs, they create a solution. And people go, Well, how did you do that? I thought, well, this is probably the way everybody does books, because man, it would be miserable to write the whole thing. But I started to explain to people, this is what I did. And I started to realize that this wasn’t a normal way to do a book. And I was okay with that. So I just started to say to people listen, if you want me to do it for you, I’ll do it for you. And that’s how the business was born. And Early on George, I just thought, you know, this would be a great business for my 20s. I couldn’t go to school. Because I was broke, I was a single dad at the time, I had less than no money. And so I thought, I’m going to be able to interview successful entrepreneurs. And I’ll write a book for them. But I’m going to get to hear all of their secrets too. At the same time, it’s a great business for my 20s. And I just fell in love with it. And now, you know, I’m 15 years deep into the industry, 10 years in this business thrown. And we’re still doing the same basic core model, which is, we convert a spoken word to a written word really high quality way, and help people use it to grow their business, or their ministry, or whatever it is they’re wanting to do. So I started because I was just solving my own problem I didn’t, I wasn’t even trying to create a solution.

george grombacher 5:46
Not everybody can write, but everybody can talk.

Jeremy Brown 5:51
Fortunately, and unfortunately, that is true.

george grombacher 5:55
So that is, I mean, it sounds so simple, when when when you put it like that, but I suppose that everybody feels like to be an author, I need to be this writer person who’s gonna sit down in front of a typewriter and type away and, you know, rip rip, rip the pages out and crumple them up and throw them in the garbage. But that’s, that’s, that’s not your experience.

Jeremy Brown 6:19
Yeah, and I don’t think it can be, you know, the books that we publish are, you know, one of our core convictions for our company. Values are what’s important to you. convictions are what you sacrifice for. So one of our convictions is truth. And that means to us partly partially experienced based content, I want to find people who are out doing it, who are practitioners, who have all the stories, all the content, but don’t have the time to write, so they never would get it done. I like to find those people, because they create the best books. And it’s a it’s a combination to George, that when you have the right process, you create a process, you put the right people around it, it creates a great product. And so that’s what we set out to do here in publishing is, let’s make this a process that’s repeatable. That’s duplicatable, that can take an average writer and make them a great writer with this. And let’s do that plug people into this. And because of that, we can take writers who, you know, there’s ghost writers out there that that will charge people what we charge somebody to do an entire book. But it’s because there’s not a process in place. It’s not as efficient as it could be. So we can get people published a book in their hand. And as little as four months from when they start, I’ve done it as little as three weeks, which was totally crazy. But we can do it really fast, really efficient. And do it at high quality. Because of I think this is the formula for all entrepreneurs. And I first heard this from Marcus Lemonis of the Prophet. If you have a right process, you put the right people around it, you’re going to create great products from that.

george grombacher 7:52
Well, that certainly makes sense. So you mentioned that that you made the decision to write your book and that it opened up all these stores you were doing business all over the world? Is do you still think that that experience is true today? What is what is the benefit of writing a book for these people that you’re describing?

Jeremy Brown 8:14
Yeah, I think it’s even more especially in this COVID environment we’re in I think people desire real authentic human connection more than ever before, which I think is a excellent side effect to a really bad situation. So we’re finding handwritten notes, physical books, physical things are more impactful than ever right now. And that’s really what we do GA is we teach people you know, you’re going to get a book done, it’s going to be awesome, it’s going to be an asset you can use, you’re going to get an ROI on it today. But you’re going to build it if you do it, right. Your kids, his kids, his kids are going to read this thing and be impacted by it. So it’s a it’s an ROI today. But it’s also a generational ROI. When you think about it from that perspective, too. And we’re finding these old school things, you know it for decades and decades, ever since I’ve been in the industry, it’s been well, the books are declining, they’re going to go away soon, technology is going to replace them and I just don’t see evidence of that in the market. And I don’t think they’re going to go away anytime soon. Because people value those more than ever before. It certainly it might go away someday, but it certainly won’t be in my lifetime or my kids is lifetime. Nice.

george grombacher 9:25
I appreciate that. All right. Well, I think that that’s that’s that’s a the wise and cool way to think and look about look at it that you’re going to get a return on your investment today. But also, you know, your kids and your grandkids and so on and so forth. They’re going to be able to, to read and get your thoughts and your perspective in a way that that probably would never be able to do so I think that that’s cool.

Jeremy Brown 9:51
Well, and it’s really a great way to live to George like that’s one of our attitudes in our company in our life is like we we want to live how We want to be remembered. So if I’m in a situation, that’s a tough situation, which we consistently find ourselves in, right? When we’re pushing forward, and we’re doing things in life, you’re going to have friction. And it’s a natural side effect. It’s part of the game. And so when I’m in a tough situation, I just asked myself, okay, this is this is, I’m telling a story right now, my life is a story it always is. And how do I want to tell this story of how I handled this situation, 20 years from now. And how I want to share this story needs to be how I behave today in this thing. And it’s not easy. And it’s not convenient. And it’s usually not efficient, either. But it is, it does really work.

george grombacher 10:44
So let’s talk about that, that the upfront investment? Obviously, it’s going to take some time, you mentioned four months, but walk me through a typical engagement. How does it work?

Jeremy Brown 10:57
Yeah, well, I mean, when somebody comes in to publish a book, George, the first thing we do is we have what we call an awakened workshop. And that’s where I sit down with them one on one, I hear their entire story. And we walk through all of their ideas. And this is called the burn process for us. So the burn process works this way, George is, is the idea is, if you throw a bunch of materials into a fire, only the things of lasting value withstand the flames, you’re gonna have diamonds, gold, and steel, for example. And so when somebody comes to us, and typically, here’s all of my ideas, here’s all my stories, here’s all the directions, here’s all the pieces of content, here’s all the things I want to teach, they got a lot of ideas. And we want to burn those down so that we can find the concepts, the stories of lasting value. And we say that we find the diamonds that display beauty through testimony, the steel that gives strength and the gold that provides value to other people. And that’s what we’re looking for with a book, that’s always the first step. It’s easy to write a 400 page book, it’s really difficult, comparatively, to write a 100 page book. And that’s always our goal. We want to be closer to 104 100. A lot of us have read books where it’s like, Listen, this thing could have been over by the second chapter, for sure I’m and I’m, and I’m wondering why I’m reading this, and I’m in chapter 10. And so that’s the first step of the process. And we create a whole blueprint for the book. And it’s similar. It’s the concept is the same, but we’ve evolved it over 15 years now, where it’s a, it’s a very structured blueprint of a book, just like if you’re going to build a building, you need a blueprint. And a book is the same way, you got to have a blueprint. And that’s I think, part of the secret of how we make those is what makes it efficient and possible. And then the author sits down, it’s the author, we pair him up with an interviewer to interview them and pull the content out of them. It’s a trained, professional interviewer. And then there’s a writer in the room and the writers capturing the conversation and putting it in the form of a book. And that’s after that point, we bring the book to market and we do it in a way that’s designed to promote the business or the ministry the authors working with. So that in a nutshell, is it. And really we try to keep it to about three days total work for the author, man. Yeah, on average, it takes about 100 hours to just write it. And that’s just to get it out a rough draft. So that’s where our authors say, Okay, if I can pay you X, and it saves me 100 to 200 hours. And I calculate the value of my time and that it’s a it’s a kind of a no brainer in just terms of time saving alone.

george grombacher 13:46
Yeah, that certainly makes sense. Amazing. All right. So you mentioned you’re going to bring the book to the market in a way that I think you said promotes the author and the business. Tell me a little bit about that.

Jeremy Brown 13:57
Yeah, I think every author who’s wanting to write a book needs to keep in mind what is their long their their short term and long term objectives? What’s their goal around the book, most authors, George myshop, miss opportunities, because they’re only looking at one thing, book sales, I want to sell a bunch of books. And that’s fine. And you should do that. The where they miss opportunities is all the PR, the marketing, the speaking engagements, the repurposed opportunities of the book should be almost a year of content marketing already created. It should be a video script out to be a podcast script. It could be an audio book, it could be email marketing campaigns, it could inform the website, and there’s so many derivatives somebody gets where like our Blueprints we create for people, they can use them for years for marketing. I just had an author reach out just yesterday, award winning lawyer, lawyer and attorney. Huge, huge practice growing all over the country. She published a book with us, I think four years ago now. And they call in they’re like, Hey, do you still have that blueprint? We want to use that because we’re gonna Make a course and we want to use that blueprint. And absolutely, that blueprint could be repurposed to create course and the outlines already done. So there’s just so much extra value. And that’s what people need to look at and pay attention to, because why go battle for just a $20 transaction for a book, when if you’re a consultant, or if you’re an attorney, you can have a $20,000 transaction with a new customer. And if the lifetime value of that customer is high, it’s beyond that. So that’s how we think about it is it’s a business development initiative. And if somebody is wanting to get their message out, we just look at how many ways can this book get that message out while supporting the author at the same time, with book sales being one of the many ways you can monetize a book?

george grombacher 15:42
Makes sense? I love it. So this process, how much does it cost?

Jeremy Brown 15:51
It depends, like largely on the scope of the book, but it could be anywhere from $2,500. George all the way up to $70,000. It depends on the scope of the work and the quality of the team that we put in the process with an author. That is funding for authors is pretty big range. I think any author who’s wanting to make a quality book should probably be ready to come to the table within at least $10,000. Whether there, that’s anything, whether you’re working with us or any publisher, if you want to get a high quality book done, you’re going to want to invest the most amount of money with an editor and with a designer, because people don’t judge a book by the by its cover. They judge the book, the author, the author’s business, the author’s family, the author’s kids, they judge everything by the cover. And if the cover doesn’t land, they’re not even going to open it up. And if the editing isn’t good after that point, they’re not even going to want to read it. So I really think whether you’re working with thrown or any any publisher out there, if they’re pitching you on, like you can get a book done for $2,000 total 1500 500, it’s just not a real, it’s not a real opportunity. You want to probably come with, you know, we can do them for less than that. But I usually tell authors like we’re all carding services for them. At that point, I say you want to have about 10 grand. And if you don’t have it, I’d encourage them to just go save up for it, go sell something, go do something. And that way, when the book is out, after all the time, all the money, all the risk they’re putting out, they’re really putting themselves out there in the world, they’re gonna have confidence of, I know, this thing doesn’t have a bunch of errors in it. I know that my voice remains true throughout. And I know it’s gonna look really good. That’s what you want to feel like when you’re launching a book. I love it

george grombacher 17:41
makes sense. You know, they say, Jeremy. Cost is what you pay in value is what you get.

Jeremy Brown 17:49
As right and I heard I’ve also heard him say if you if you peanuts, you get monkeys. Right, so you wanna you want to have great talent on your project, I just really believe it. There’s ways to do it cheaper, you can go to Amazon and get it done for free. In some some people listening to this, George, that might be the the route for them. Sure, get their first one or two books done, just get a product out there. You want to get in the game. So you want to just get in the game, your first book, if it’s your first book, it’s just gonna get you in the game, you’re gonna look back on it, no matter how good it is. Now, you’re gonna look back on in five years and go, Oh, boy. I would have said a lot of things differently there. My first book 15 years ago or so I look at it and go, Wow, I keep it around for a joke. You know, there’s there’s two copies in existence right now. One is on my bookshelf in my office for me to make fun of myself. The other one is in my dad’s bathroom. I don’t even know if it’s there anymore. I should probably check. But that was the last time I saw it in the wild. And I thought, Wow, thanks, dad. That’s great. But that’s the extent of it. And you can mitigate those risks by having a good team. But no matter what, don’t make your first book, like the end all be all. That’s not it. You’re going to you’re going to do more when you get the first one done. We have a year long program for authors. We just had somebody go through it. She did her first two books in a year. Both of them became bestsellers. And they look great. She self published them on our own and we helped her do it. It’s awesome. But you want to you want to do a good job at it in and you want to get get in the game. Get your first book out there, get in the game. I love

george grombacher 19:21
it. Well, that was a solid one. Jeremy, the people are ready for your difference making tip. What do you have for them?

Jeremy Brown 19:28
I would say you need to know your story. So we know in leadership, self awareness is one of the key ingredients of being a good leader. And the question I’m always asking people is if I don’t know my own story, how do I know who I am? Like, how do I know what I’m working with the assets I have inside of me the experiences I have that I can draw on. So I really think for anybody who hasn’t ever sat with somebody else, to bear witness to them as they share their story. There’s a level of being heard and being seen that happens there that is very healing and very clarifying for the individual sharing their story. And I think if you’ve never done that, you got to find somebody who will be willing to sit down with you, whether you pay him or whether they’re a good friend. And it’s either, you know, four to eight hours, and you just say, this is what I’ve been through, here’s my story. And they’ve got to be interested enough to ask you questions to keep, keep, keep you talking. But when you know your story, you can know who you are, you know, what you’re dealing with, you know, your, your weaknesses and your strengths. And you’re much more equipped to be able to go out into the world, with the confidence in the awareness to know this is where I uniquely add value. This is what I can bring to the table from all of my life experiences, because nothing is wasted, no matter how horrible of a decision maker, you may have been, like me, none of those decisions, none of those experiences are wasted, you got a lot of wisdom from them. And it’s valuable, but you got to know how to use it. And you got to know what’s there. So that’s my difference making tip George’s take some time to go through your story to know your story, burning all the way through, so you can find the things that you have of less in value that you can share with other people.

george grombacher 21:13
Well, I think that that is great stuff that definitely gets come up. Jeremy, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you and how can they engage with you?

Jeremy Brown 21:23
You know, I’m sure you’ll have some some links here. I think if anybody just goes to Google or if you go to Facebook, we’re thrown Publishing Group we’re in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, our website is thrown pg.com just thrown thrown just like a king sits on a throne and p is in publishing G is in group.com. You can find us on Google on LinkedIn and Facebook, all the things and I invite you if you have questions about your publishing your writing process, reach out to us we’re always more than willing to sit down with people and help them out. Love it.

george grombacher 21:53
Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did, sure, Jimmy your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to throne pg.com th r o n e pg.com and connect and finally get that idea for your book or figure out if you’ve got an idea for a book out into the world. Thanks good Jeremy.

Jeremy Brown 22:15
George, thanks for having me. It’s been an honor.

george grombacher 22:17
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai