Using Your Podcast as a Jumping-Off Point for a Book – PCI 444

Hey, everyone. I'm Todd Cochran, founder of Blueberry Podcasting. And I'm Mackenzie Bennett, Blueberry's marketing specialist. Welcome to Podcast Insider. Today, we're gonna talk about how your podcast could be the foundation for your next big project, AKA a book.

You're listening to Podcast Insider hosted by Mike Dell, Todd Cochran, and Mackenzie Bennett from the Blueberry team, bringing you weekly insights, advice, and insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow, and thrive through podcasting, all with the support of your team here at Blueberry Podcasting. Welcome. Let's dive in. Whether you host interviews, teach a process, or share stories, you might already have the content that you need to become an author. And sometimes you don't.

Yeah. I I remember having started my podcast in October then getting an email in November from a company called Wiley Publish. So, hey. We want you to write a book. And at the time, I didn't have a college degree. I had to start my journey into college and, hence, I had done later. I got my bachelor's degree, but I I sent a reply that was, well, probably not politically correct. Because, you know, when I was in high school, the English teacher had a lot of fun with the red pen.

Yes. But now with Grammarly and ChatGPT and all this other stuff, And just people that tell you how to do it. Yeah. You know? And I spent, you know, four months writing a book. I think things can be turned out. But here's the thing. If your podcast is set around

centers around a theme, a topic, story, or mission. You've already got the foundation for a compelling book, and every episode you record, more stuff, more chapters, more information. You have this wonderful catalog of content that you've already created. And, you know, that doesn't that doesn't matter if you've done three episodes a week or if you do, you know, three every other month. You have something Yeah. To work off of. And and some and some shows are gonna resonate more with

others. So maybe, you know, if you have an episode that as an example, maybe your baseline is 500 and an episode does a thousand plays, maybe that that episode just resonated so well. Maybe that maybe you can pick and choose Yeah. Which episodes. Yeah. For sure. You know, maybe you can turn in those specific episodes into a chapter or something like that. You know, that's that's where you're able to look at the stats

of wherever you host your podcast. They're gonna have that information of which ones do the best. Yeah. And it's really easy to just go off of that. And hit because sometimes what you think

took off really well, like, in your head might not reflect in the numbers. Yeah. And and and the next segment of this is because everyone now or at least you can at Blueberry get transcripts if you want. You know, you have a transcript of every episode, and this gives you the the written data to be able to turn that spoken content into edible text. And, you know, it's it's it's really awesome because if here's the key to a book. A book is not hard to write, but it

what it does, it requires an outline. If you can do an outline, let's say you've got 30 episodes and you've got the titles for those episodes, you might be able to develop that outline from those episode titles and the content to really come up with for me, it took me a month to write an outline. With the tools available today,

you know, I I could foresee get done in an afternoon or a couple of days. Especially if it's something that you've already thought of before Yeah. Where you're like this you know, you've you've structured your podcast in some type of format. Yeah. So maybe there was something that you wanted to do before that just didn't work for an audio podcast or a video podcast and but this is the perfect way to do it instead. Yeah. So you can organize those segments Mhmm.

That you've got from transcripts and those conversations, and you can edit the transcripts. You can get quotes. So you've got quotes from a guest. Now this is probably where it's important to have a release. You know, if you're gonna be doing a book, and maybe it's a good idea to have a re a a a release from that content when you're interviewing people. That's probably something we should cover at some point in the show. I don't think we've ever talked about releases.

Mhmm. But have all that legal available content to be able to use to to have this flow, build a flow and structure. I I That's a really good point. You know, all of your podcast content is already yours. Yeah. So none of this is you know, you're not gonna get in any type trouble for using someone else's type of content, anything like that. But, you know, I just in my head, I'm thinking, you know, if I've titled the episodes correctly

Mhmm. And I have I, you know, I could I could probably use chat g p t to write the outline. And, of course, then you'd have to go in and edit it. But if you get a starting point and, you know, some some organized

thought that is done automatically, I think writing a book today just probably is you can't have ChatGPT write the book. No. And no one wants to read a book by ChatGPT either. And and, you know, there's copyright issues with that. But you can use it to organize your thoughts and your segments and then go in and use the transcripts which are legally yours and take quotes and and information and and and turn that into a,

again, an organized flow. And and doing that with AI asking for or, like, buying a template from someone's website or, you know, from some publisher or something like that, all of that can really help people because majority of the time, they have the content down. It's the organizing. It's the structuring. It's the making it into a book Yeah. That is difficult for a lot of people. Yeah. And, you

know, and that is the key. And to be honest with you, that was the biggest part of once it come to writing

Mhmm. The writing went easy. I was just because I had this flow. That's the part people like. You know, chapter one, a b c d e f g, chapter two, and b and, you know, I just all I did is sit there and clack clack clack clack. Yeah. And so because it's all in your head, and you have all this reference material. Oh my god. Unbelievable. So, you know, again, you can group episodes by topic or theme. You can remove repeated content. Tighten Actually, please do that.

And tighten up the tighten up the message. Mhmm. I I think that's fantastic, but, you know, it is not that difficult. And it's always cool that, if you're if you're gonna write a book, at least get one printed for you, you know, that you can have in a hard copy that's not digital. Yeah. You know, maybe hire someone to do cover art for it. You know, there's always a few little things that you have to do. Yeah. And also, you want that for yourself.

Yeah. You know? If I wrote a book, I would wanna see it on on my own shelf. Yeah. You know, and I was pretty lucky and and it was a different publishing method because I signed the contract. They own the copyright, you know, and I just basic and I but then it came with a team. Right. And I had a editor and, boy, the editor. My god. Did did she had fun? You know, she was like my English teacher on steroids. But, you know, there was no Grammarly or nothing.

It was just word check then. You know, I would have saved her a huge amount of time had I been able to use a tool like Grammarly then, you know, twenty years ago. But, again, you can decide how you're gonna publish this. And, again, you can put it out as an audiobook or a, premium podcast. There's all kinds of ways to do it. Yeah. I mean, the the audiobook I've really gotten into audiobooks recently. Print is always gonna be around regardless of what people say.

Digital is great. Probably, it's it's a little in the middle there. Yeah. It's great to have kinda with the accompanying audiobook sometimes or a podcast. You know, when I way to do that. I think now when I'm buying books, if it's a biography or, you know, like, if it's, like, a Steve Jobs biography or, you know, somebody famous, I'll buy the book. Right. And but I'll actually never crack it because I'll buy the digital version. But I want that, you know, that physical copy on my bookshelf.

Yeah. And at least, you know I don't know. Maybe it doesn't make me look smart, but at least you No. No. No. It does. I I I like the physical book as well, but I you know? And what I found books are $30 a pop. Yeah. You're reading reading a book a week. I'm not doing that. Yeah. And what my what my kids were always doing is once they got a little older and they were coming in looking at my because I had a couple of bookshelves in my office, and they're coming in and

what's this about? And I'm like, oh, that's about such and such that happens certain certain time and off it goes, and they come back a couple of weeks later. So I think there's always this opportunity with the with the printed, but at the same time, I just read everything on a on a tablet now. And and sometimes I can jump between books. It's easier. I don't have to carry a

whole book back now. I think Bill Gates, he has constantly I think I saw something in his biography where he has 10 to 12 books consistently that he's reading, all the time. Going through. Yeah. So I I don't know how he gets through that many, but he must be a speed reader. But, again, starting with an ebook or downloadable guide, you know, explore using your podcast as an audiobook companion to, you know, make it a premium.

Mhmm. And, again, with the advantage here at Blueberry, you you have full ownership of your RSS and your content, and you can repurpose episodes without platform restrictions or licensing hurdles. When you put stuff up on Amazon, then, you know, you still own control of the copyright, but you have to enforce copyright, and you have to, you know, whatever the split is with Amazon and other folks, you know, you wanted to get out to a lot of people. You know, the goal

is and I was lucky. I had, again, I had a publisher. So we sold 45,000 copies. I made a New York Times bestsell list. I made something that new with because Amazon was pretty new at the time for a tech book. Amazon, you know, there was no I didn't make the New York Times top 10 fiction. You know? I made the New York Times top 10 technical, which probably wasn't too hard to break into. Still. You know, but it was Who cares? It was it was bragging rights at the time. Yeah. And and I I got a free

dinner out of Amazon out of it. So they Yeah. There you go. Yeah. So that was good. But, again, how was my book successful? In this, there's a whole story. I won't get into too much details, but I said to my aunt, I got this big secret I'm gonna reveal on, I think it was episode 76 or something like that. Mhmm. And, of course, there's a whole other story backstory about how we were first how I got the

first podcasting book. But and when I told my audience and let them know I had gotten paid to write a book, I lost half my audience because at the time, everyone was like, you sold out. You took money. You didn't do it for the love of the industry. And I'm like, what is this? So I lost half the audience, and it it really set me up later when the sponsor come on because all the naysayers that didn't want me to make money were gone. You know? Right. All the people that were already angry were

Yeah. Were already gone. Yeah. So, you know, imagine someone being mad because you're making money on a book. I can't believe it. Yeah. It was, yeah, a different time for sure. Well, that does lead us into the next part, which is you have this book. You've, you know, decided on a publisher. It exists. Now you have to promote it.

So that's exactly what you were saying. You're like, hey. I technically got on the New York Times list for top 10. That is part of promotion. That really is. So a good way to do this is tease the intro and the outro, you know, how you're gonna hook them in and what they're gonna learn at the end or enjoy or whatever it is, what content. A giveaway is a really easy one. Your podcast, like your book that you did, Todd, was about podcasting. Yeah. So that was really easy

to promote. That was incredibly easy, you know, to promote to your listeners saying, hey, if this is something that you wanna do, especially back then when you put the book out and podcasting was so new. Yep. That was That's why it was so successful, and that's why it was important to be first. So Yeah. Yeah. There was you know, that was an advantage. And to that extent, it really was because we sold, like, 45,000 copies of that. So I will say, I did find your book at the Columbus

library. At the library? Yeah. It was available in Franklin County. That's funny. There was there was one, and it was checked out. So You know what also happens is later when books aren't sold and you have a physical book and they went out to all the distribution places, people return those and then you get your because I was getting a very small amount of what do they call it? Anyway, it's it's basically Royalties. Royalty check. Well, then you go into negative.

Yeah. Then your your royalty report for ten years shows minus $892, minus a thousand of the return books. So yeah. So you there's that side of it too. But and there's nothing cooler than having a box of 10 of your own books where you or a hundred, and you can go to an event and hand out. And that's another thing. It's a big calling card. Make it a Yeah. For sure. Make it a prize for your audience or something to that effect, you know. Give it away. Do a do a launch.

Depending on the content. Maybe you could even be one of those authors that's in a bookstore. Yeah. You know, I've gone to plenty of those in my lifetime. And, you know, again, the book can be a lead magnet. And for me, for many years, it led to speaking engagements, paid speaking engagements. Yeah. And, obviously, I I had pictures of myself in the book. You know, I had hair then.

So, you know, and I I you know, it was very amateurish taking pictures of me walking around my community with a with ear pod you know, with earphones and listening on, you know, a little handheld recorder before the iPad was so super popular. It's just, you know, funny, but, you know, it it it is comical.

It does work. But getting kids of readers to subscribe your podcast for deeper insights and in the podcast is is the ultimate promotional vehicle for your for your book and actually can lead to book too because then people wanna be on and talk to you because you're a published author now. And Especially because, you know, podcast listeners are loyal. Yeah. That's that's been that way since they, you know, came to fruition,

and it's still relevant today. And your podcast site can really serve as a central hub for cross promotion. And the beauty thing of it too is if you've got friends that are podcasters,

giving them a book, and they cross promote it on their website. It really you know, it's it's them it's that seven degrees of separation. It really helps a lot. Well, and that cross promotion is part of what we're trying to help with Guestmatch Pro that we're released later this year is, you know, if you're already a creator, you could sign up to be a guest as well, and that's perfect to promote anything. But, specifically, promoting a book on a podcast is very

popular. So, hopefully, that'll that'll help some people out. Yeah. When Wiley came back and asked me to write the second book and they wanted to to cover the topics they wanted me to cover, I basically couldn't. And it was because at the time, we were doing things that I did not want to be publicly known. I didn't wanna write this tell all, here's the corporate secrets.

So the reason I didn't have a at the time, didn't have a book to, which they wanted, was largely because I would have really had to have sold all the secrets company, and I just wasn't going to do that. So Yeah. Your situation may be different in your content, and maybe it's not tied to something that's that's confidential. But one thing's for sure is your book can be a natural extension of your podcast, and fans stay connected across both mediums. And sometimes people will buy it and never

read it. They just wanna buy it to support you. Yeah. For sure. Or, you know, they'll they'll listen to the audiobook just like you and still buy it by the physical. Right. Yeah. There's there's a lot of different ways to do this. But one thing is stay consistent with the brand and the voice and make sure that if you're trying to relate this to your podcast, to keep that level across the board.

There might be something that you wanna feature in the book that you can't really do the way that you want in the podcast, but there's only so much leeway that you have before people are like, Why are these so different? Oh, yeah. So the tone. I got it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think the tone and the point of view, whenever you start to change that, people are like, Oh, well, this is not exactly what I was expecting. I was expecting an expansion

of what the podcast already is. So if you're gonna change, I think that's, in my opinion, that's kind of a go big or go home situation. Yeah. And I and I, you know, and I even unbeknownst to the publisher, I had a Easter egg in my book. And, again, it was typically directed to a group of listeners in my show. And, you know, a few of them got it

over over time. But, yeah, if you have those insider jokes that your audience will recognize, they'll appreciate that because you'll feel like you're talking to them. Mhmm. And, yeah, there was a a time when there was listeners of my show that said that they they called my destruction of the English language, Tadaisms. And so the Tadaisms and I think you were familiar with the Tadaisms in my writing

at some point. But the Tadaisms made it into the book and not as a it was just kind of a fun thing to put it in there reference to. Yeah. You can be successful and and not necessarily always be the best speaker. So Totally. Yeah. But, again, I think that you've got the ability with, you know, having if if you have your own website and it's branded and the book follows the brand,

you have this consistency and control from podcast to print. I think that's a kind of a cool term. We should we should we should make sure we use that more often. But Yeah. It's you have a website. It's probably gonna have your podcast on it. It might have blog posts. It might have other, you know, these are the services that we provide. This is what

you can pay me for. That type of stuff, instead of a podcast website, and then a book website, and then a whatever website of some type of content that you do. I prefer to all just be on one. I'd rather have, like, a loaded up website than have to go to three different ones. You know, I truly believe there's a book in everyone, and it may not be a book that would be for consumption of thousands. You know, I did a biography.

I did, like, a mini book for my grandparents in the history after like 20 some in hours of interviews about how they met, how they, you know, all these things that really would be lost over time. And I put that into it's not long. It's like twenty five pages, but it's basically more of a biography historical type thing. And we never published it, but it's available for the family. Yeah. It's a family book. Yeah. So everyone has a book in them. Mhmm. And I think every podcaster

probably has two books in them. And there's there's lots of companies out there actually helping podcasters. My friend had a company send me an email the other day that said, hey, here's the first chapter of your book. And it was all chat GPT generated and I kind of giggled And I, you know, I kinda linked to my original book. I said, thank you, but no thank you. I don't need a robot writing my book or my biography. But, you know, I think they're again, everyone has

a book in them. Just, you know, don't be don't be shy to try. It's the same as starting a podcast. Yeah. People are like the they say the podcast industry is oversaturated. You could say the same thing about books and writing. Yeah. And neither of them are. But it's awful nice to have that that printed paper and that smell, that fresh ink. There's just something about see your name on print? Yeah. It's fantastic. Yeah. You know? I've got a copy of it behind me. You can't see it,

of course. But and I still have eight or nine, you know, original copies in a box. Everyone's thinking, what is that box? I open, oh, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, and, you know, who knows? Just a little piece of history. Yeah. Just a little. But get your book out there. Write a book. Alright. I think that wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening, everyone. Yeah. And if you've been podcasting a while, take a look at your content. You may be closer to writing a book than you think.

And please don't forget to follow or subscribe to Podcast Insider for more ways to grow your show and repurpose your content with Blueberry. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for joining us. Come back next week. And in the meantime, head to podcastinsider.com for more information. To subscribe, share, and read our show notes, check out the latest suite of services, and learn how Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast, visit blueberry.com.

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