Book Marketing is a Long Game: Passion, Positioning, and Podcasting with Susan Friedman – The Writing Coach Ep. 231

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Today on the show, I’m welcoming back book marketing strategist and veteran podcaster Susan Friedman, 10 years after her first appearance on this podcast.

Susan has hosted over 500 episodes of Book Marketing Mentors and has spent decades helping nonfiction authors turn their books into authority, speaking opportunities, and real business results.

In this conversation, we talk about why book marketing is a long game, how fiction and nonfiction are “two different animals” when it comes to promotion, and why so many authors would rather hide behind social media than have real, high-impact conversations. We also dig into the importance of niching down, embracing your expertise, and choosing marketing methods you actually enjoy so you’ll stick with them.

If you’ve ever wondered whether it’s worth marketing a low-profit book when you could be selling higher-ticket offers—or how long you really need to keep marketing your book, this episode is for you.

Check it out now:

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The Writing Coach Episode #231 Show Notes

Listen to Susan’s Podcast: Book Marketing Mentors

Schedule a free book marketing brainstorm session with Susan.

Kevin’s Book Marketing Course: Signal Boost – An 11-module book marketing system that shows you how to get your book in front of the right readers without becoming a full-time marketer.

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Grab your FREE copy of The Busy Author Method here.

The Writing Coach Episode #231 Transcript

Today on the podcast I have Susan Friedman. Susan, welcome back to the show.

Oh, Kevin, it’s always a pleasure to be with you.

Do you recall when you were last on the show? If you had to guess?

I don’t. I don’t. Is that a mark against me to start?

Not in the least. It speaks to how long you and I have been doing this because I went and looked up your last episode. It was 10 years ago. A decade ago, you were a guest on this podcast, and we were talking all things book marketing. And here we are, 10 years later, and you and I are both still podcasting and still working with authors and helping them succeed.

Oh my goodness, that’s unbelievable! Well, kudos to you for doing that. And, you know, I have to say, kudos to me too, because 10 years of podcasting… yeah. As you know, I think the average is about six months for people to keep a podcast going. So 10 years is pretty awesome.

Well, and you have more than twice as many episodes as me. I’m in the early 220s, and you’re over 500 episodes.

Yes. In fact, this week will be episode 533.

Amazing. So, looking back over more than 500 episodes of talking to people about book marketing, this is a two-part question. First, what are your biggest takeaways? What have you learned about book marketing from all those conversations? And second, what have you learned about podcasting from interviewing more than 500 people and releasing all those episodes?

Yeah. So, what I’ve learned about book marketing, Kevin, is that there’s not just one way to do it. As you know, and this is something we both advocate, there are many different ways to get the result you want.

What I’ve found is that if authors don’t want to do something, or they’re fearful of it, they shouldn’t force themselves to do it—at least not in the beginning. There’s just something about marketing that makes people say, “Oh, I don’t want to market my book. Can you do it for me?”

No.

And neither will their publisher these days.

Exactly.

No. Nobody’s going to do it the way the author will. I mean, you’ve published multiple books. I’ve published multiple books. These are our babies, and we’ve got to nurture them. The more we do, the better off they’re going to be in the marketplace. Nobody is going to feel the same emotional pull toward your book that you do.

I’ve got a question for you about book marketing from the perspective of a small business owner. You primarily advise and work with nonfiction authors, so a lot of the time they’re using their book to build their platform, establish their expertise, or share their knowledge.

I’m in a position right now where I’m launching a fiction book tomorrow, and I’m marketing it and doing what I can. But every time I sit down to market it, I think, I could be marketing a $2,000 coaching program right now instead of a book I make maybe a $2 profit on.

So what would your advice be to someone like me who says, “I have these much higher-profit products I could be marketing. What’s the value of putting my time and effort into marketing a low-profit product like a book?”

That’s an excellent question, and it comes up almost every time with authors.

The first question is: What do you want your book to do for you? You have to give your book a role. What role does it play? Is it center stage?

If it’s center stage, then obviously you’re putting all your energy into it for very little financial return. However, with a nonfiction book in particular—and marketing fiction is very different from marketing nonfiction; they really are two different animals—you have to ask what you want the book to accomplish.

If you want it to build your authority and expertise, as you mentioned earlier, then you’ve got to think about the best way to do that. You’re not really in the business of selling books. As you said, “Am I selling a book for two bucks, or could I be selling a $2,000 coaching program?”

If your goal is to sell the $2,000 coaching program, then that’s where your focus should be. The book comes along for the ride. It gives you credibility. It says, “Hey, Kevin Johns is an expert in this area.” It’s almost like a passport to credibility.

That’s especially important for nonfiction authors. So many of my clients want to get speaking engagements, and these days there’s an expectation that if you’re standing on a stage sharing your expertise, you’ve written a book. People think, “Oh, you literally wrote the book on this.”

You know, I have nonfiction authors come to me sometimes with 50 ideas and 300 pages that they call a book, but there’s no clear throughline. There’s not really one strong hook or central message. So I work with them to find that.

But I’m guessing not everyone comes to me before they come to you. So what do you say when someone has so many ideas and so much expertise but doesn’t yet have a clear hook or angle?

That happens a lot, as you know.

It’s really about getting that focus and going back to, What do you want the book to do for you? And Who is your target market?

Because if you say, “Well, my book is for everyone,” then you can’t market it to anyone. Even the biggest companies in the world—Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, Nike—they’re not selling to everyone. They have divisions, and they know exactly who they’re marketing each product or service to.

The same applies to us. That’s marketing.

You have to know what you want the book to accomplish. What’s the end result? Once you know that, you can chart a path to get there. Otherwise, every shiny object pulls you away. “Oh, let’s try this. Oh, here’s another platform. Here’s another strategy.” And there seems to be a new shiny object almost every day.

People think, “This is the silver bullet.” But it isn’t.

The only thing that gets you there is having a real goal and staying the course. Do you want to impact 1,000 people? Ten thousand? A million? If that’s your goal, then you reverse-engineer the path to get there.

Marketing is a long game, Kevin. As you know, this isn’t, “I’m going to run one ad and suddenly sell hundreds of thousands of books.” You might sell some, but you’re not really in the business of selling books.

I launched my first book marketing program this year. It’s something I was always nervous about because I really feel my area of expertise is writing, coaching, and editing.

But I’ve also built a pretty decent business over the last decade, and I think I know a thing or two about selling products online.

What I find so interesting—and I’m curious about your take on this—is that people would often rather spend eight hours creating and scheduling Facebook posts that barely anyone is going to see than spend 30 minutes picking up the phone and calling 10 people who might actually move the needle.

Why do we think social media is the cure-all? And why are we so afraid of talking to real people about our books?

I think it goes back to the fact that people don’t want to feel like they’re being pushy salespeople.

Picking up the phone or sending a follow-up email feels scary. There’s a real fear of rejection.

Facebook, on the other hand, creates a bit of distance. You don’t know who’s going to see the post or respond to it, so it feels safer. You’re hiding behind that platform, thinking, “It’ll do the work for me.”

But it won’t.

Facebook doesn’t care about you. Amazon doesn’t care about you. They’re 800-pound gorillas, and they’re not interested in your particular book or your particular ad.

It’s really up to the author to do the work—to raise this baby the way they want to and watch it grow into something strong.

It’s just like parenting. You want the best for your kids, but getting them there often means doing things that are uncomfortable.

Which is interesting because I think people assume all the mindset work happens during the writing phase.

“My book isn’t good enough.” “I’m not good enough.” “I’ll never finish.”

Then they finish the book and think, “Okay, now it’s just tactics and execution.”

But it sounds like book marketing is every bit as psychological as writing the book.

Oh my goodness, yes.

If imposter syndrome existed when you started writing the book, it only gets stronger once the book comes out because now you’ve actually got something out in the world.

You’re fearful of criticism. You’re fearful of judgment. You’re fearful of being that so-called salesperson.

That’s why you’ve got to do what you enjoy.

You and I enjoy podcasting. That’s one way—not the only way—but one way to get our names out there.

I enjoy writing articles. I’m very big on Substack at the moment. Before that it was Medium. Before that, LinkedIn. They’re all just platforms.

Is Substack the be-all and end-all? No. It’s another tool, just like AI is another tool, and it’s up to us to use it appropriately.

That’s something I learned teaching marketing for the first time.

People assume they’re supposed to do everything exactly the way the instructor does it.

Podcasting happens to be my favorite way to spread the word about my services and my books, so I naturally use it as an example. I’ll say, “You want to send an outreach email so you can get on that podcast.”

And people ask, “Does it have to be a podcast?”

“No!”

I’m just using that as an example. Maybe you love writing articles. Maybe you enjoy attending live events. Maybe you prefer YouTube.

Whatever resonates with you. Because, as you said at the beginning, if you don’t like doing it, you’re not going to do it.

Exactly. You’re not going to do it. You’ll go kicking and screaming, and you’re not bringing the right energy to it.

You’ve got to do what you love.

I love interviewing people. I love this environment. I actually don’t do video at all. I know you do, and many others do, but I like my NPR style. That’s how I like to do it.

The important thing is that you’re getting useful information to your audience.

You and I are going to have another interview in a few days, and what I want is for listeners to take away at least one thing they can put into practice. If they do that, I feel the episode has been successful.

Absolutely.

I also find that the people I work with—both on the writing and marketing side—usually aren’t hearing these ideas for the first time. They know the techniques. They know the terminology.

The question is whether they’re actually implementing them.

Sometimes just hearing someone say, “Focus on the platforms you enjoy,” reminds them of something they already knew but hadn’t been acting on.

That’s where I think podcasts are so valuable. Even when we’re talking about first principles, it’s never redundant. Every time I revisit them, I take something new away.

Every time I teach something, I think, Oh yeah… I should be doing more of that myself.

Here’s the next section with the same light-touch approach.

Well, marketing is a very inexact science, which is tough for anybody who’s analytical. You know, A plus B will not always equal C. It might equal C one day, D the next, and E the next. There are so many factors that get drawn into marketing—the day of the week, the time of year, what else is happening in the world. It all affects marketing in different ways.

We can’t always stay on top of everything, but we can have a clear path. Try one thing and keep going with it.

I mean, podcasting—it’s taken me several years, and I’m sure you too, to get any kind of recognition for the podcast and to build the audience and listenership that we both have. That didn’t happen overnight. It took time. It took perseverance. Were there some tougher times? Absolutely.

But at the end of the day, I just love this medium. I just love it. And I know you do too. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be doing it.

I mean, sometimes it feels like the podcast is an excuse to get to meet and talk to cool people. You’re busy, I’m busy. We like each other, but it’s not like we’d be sitting down and talking for half an hour if we didn’t have the podcast.

And so, as much as—I mean, I think it’s kind of like art, where I try to create books that I would like. For the podcast, I try to talk to people who I would like, and ideally listeners get something out of it.

But I think I’m almost more me-focused than listener-focused, where I believe that if you and I resonate and have good energy and go deep on a topic, I’m confident they’ll like it because I like it.

Yeah. Well, it’s your passion that’s contagious, and that’s the same with your book. If you are passionate about your book and the way you talk about it, and you’ve got that passion, that’s going to get people excited and make them say, “Huh, tell me more. Where can I get a copy?”

But that comes from you. The book’s not going to do it. The book is a static object. It’s not going to do anything unless you help it.

Well, you mentioned earlier that if you’re doing things to market that you don’t like, you’re going to bring the wrong energy to it. And it sounds like you’ve kind of defined that energy now as passion. Is that what you mean?

Oh, totally. Totally.

Many times, my first interaction with an author is over the phone, and I hear from the get-go how they feel about that book. If they’re a little down and they’re just talking to me like this, I’m thinking, Oh my goodness, they just did this as an exercise.

It’s lacking heart. It’s lacking passion. We’ve got to infuse that, and then we’re going to get people excited.

Obviously, there’s an approach to it. But the fact is, you’ve got to feel excited about the book because if you don’t, why should anybody else?

I used to play a lot of men’s league hockey, and I was a goalie, so every goal that went in was like a knife to my chest. I felt every one.

We had this one game where we just got destroyed. We lost nine-nothing or something. I was ready to jump off a cliff.

We go into the locker room afterward, and I sit down next to my teammate and go, “That might have been the worst game we’ve ever played.”

And he looks at me and goes, “Yeah, I think you’re right. I was pretty good, though.”

I was just like, If I had the littlest amount of his level of confidence, I would be doing so great.

But I always think about that. This guy could lose nine-nothing and go, “Well, at least I had a good game. I felt like I was moving well out there on the ice.”

And I think that’s the energy we need to bring to our books and our book marketing.

Yeah. I mean, are you going to strike gold every single time? No. You’ll get some people who are interested and others who aren’t.

You know that I sold 500,000 copies of my first book to one company. That started with a conversation. It probably took about two years before that actually came to fruition.

We were talking about different ideas for the book and what would work for what they wanted to do with it. I didn’t even go into it with any kind of figure in mind. I just wanted them to have this book for their clients and customers.

When they ordered, they did 250,000 copies once, and then another 250,000 because it was so successful. They translated it into five languages.

But they had a specific role for the book. They used it as a lead magnet. Back in the olden days, when they sent out postcards for lead magnets, you’d fill in the postcard and send it back.

Then a distributor would get that lead, and when they came and visited the prospect, they would give them a copy of the book. So it was like, “Hey, I’ve got this gift for you, and now let me show you the product.”

So I always say that they sold the hardware and I sold the software.

Let’s really nerd out here now on some marketing stuff. Obviously, what you’re talking about there is direct-response marketing. You know, the old days—sending out a piece of paper, a sales letter, that sort of thing—to catch people’s attention.

Whereas these days, you hear a lot about influencer marketing and social media marketing.

Where do you kind of land between all of that? Because I know your approach isn’t necessarily, “Go become a star on Instagram,” but obviously you’re probably not mailing out postcards these days.

So, in a world where influencer marketing is one end and direct response is the other, where do you land in your preferred approach?

Well, that’s an interesting question.

I would love to be further along toward the influencer side. Even though I’m not going to be going on TikTok or Instagram, I am putting out information—hopefully helpful information—and ways that people can do things differently.

That’s why I like Substack so much too. I write an article, I write one that’s free, and then there’s a paid version as well, so you can become a subscriber.

I think it’s just constant. You’ve got to stay in the public eye with your target audience.

Now, I may be known in the nonfiction arena, and even a smaller area of that nonfiction arena, and that’s fine. I don’t care if somebody outside that arena doesn’t know me.

It was the same when I was in the trade show industry, which I was in for 25 years, and that’s where I wrote many of my books. I was considered a quasi-celebrity in that environment. Anybody outside that environment didn’t know me, but people inside that environment did, and that was important to me because those were my clients, my customers, and people who could be interested in what I did.

So narrow that focus.

We talked at the beginning about how so many authors think their book is for everyone, and you can’t do that. Look at how you can niche it down. How can you find a group of people you can get your arms around?

I have people who say, “Well, my book is for women.”

“Okay. Professional women?”

“Okay, between 30 and 60.”

And I say, “Well, you know what? A woman of 30 and a woman of 60 have very different interests.”

One may just be starting out, thinking about having a family, or starting her professional life, whereas the 60-year-old may be an empty nester and thinking about retirement.

So you really want to look at who specifically your book is for.

More often than not, it’s somebody very similar to you, because you’re sharing your expertise, your experience, and your background.

People say, “Well, what kind of niche?”

I had this colleague many years ago who was an RN. She was burned out, and she left the healthcare environment. She said, “I want to become a humorist, but I don’t know who to be a humorist for.”

And I said, “How about other burned-out, or ready-to-burn-out, nurses?”

She said, “I don’t want to go back into that environment.”

I said, “But they know you. You’ve got credibility. You’re one of them. You’re not doing the work you used to be doing. You’re now giving them a way to avoid burnout and get on with their lives and feel good about it.”

And then all of a sudden, it was like, ding, ding. Yes. It looks attractive if you’re coming in wearing a different costume, playing a different role for them.

That’s often the case. It isn’t 100 percent, but it’s really about knowing who’s going to buy your book, who’s going to hire you, and what for.

Do you want to do training? Do you want to do keynote speaking? What do you want to be doing?

Getting that clarity is so important.

Taking it back to that micro-celebrity idea, it’s funny. I had a client who was a successful radio and podcast host focused on women’s music. So she had a big list of people who were into female artists.

Then she stopped doing that, worked with me, and wrote a book. The book came out, and she tried reaching out to that list to see if people would jump over, and not much happened because they were interested in women’s music, not in a novel she’d written.

So obviously, I’m familiar with this experience.

And yet, just this week, Kimberly Gravis—you know Kimberly, she’s a Canadian book marketer and a friend of mine—I was complaining to her about how my pre-orders were going.

And she was like—it was so funny because she put it in all capitals—“Kevin, you’re A PRETTY BIG DEAL as a writing coach, but no one knows you for your authorship. Why would you expect your pre-order numbers to be bonkers when you never promote your books?”

And I’m like, Of course. I know this. I know this.

But it’s interesting that you really can be a celebrity in your little area and be very successful doing that.

Absolutely.

But you also need to remember that doesn’t translate over to other things.

Just because someone might know me as a writing coach, or have had success working with me as a writing coach, doesn’t mean they want to read my fiction.

It was a great reminder from Kimberly to be like, “Kevin, you’re a pretty big deal in some spaces, but not in the one you’re currently marketing. So don’t be surprised by the results you’re getting.”

I was like, “Thank you.”

Sometimes we need someone else to point out the obvious for us.

Yes, we do. We do. Yes. The blinding… what is it? The blinding something of the obvious.

When you see people marketing their books, are there major mistakes that are always being repeated, or are people constantly finding new ways to make mistakes?

I think they often get wrapped up in that same scenario.

For the most part, people are constantly looking—and I’ve fallen into this trap too—for how they can do it quicker.

Ah.

Yeah. That’s where the shiny-object syndrome comes in. You see somebody being so successful in an area and think, “Oh, I want to be like them. Let me buy this product because if I buy this product, then I’m going to be like that.”

And again, it doesn’t happen.

It doesn’t happen because you don’t know the backstory of how long it took for that person to become successful.

I had a mentor once who said it takes 15 years to become an overnight success.

Yeah.

Ask any actor about their journey and there are uphills, roadblocks. It’s not hunky-dory. It’s not that they walked in one day and were offered this incredible role in a movie or a show.

It just doesn’t happen that way.

Or if it does, that success might be a one-hit wonder.

Yeah.

And then you sort of go backward.

More often, it just takes time. That’s why I say marketing is a long game.

I had one author say to me, “How long do I have to keep marketing my book?”

And I was like, “How long do you want to keep selling it?”

Exactly.

If you stop marketing, nobody hears about it.

You’ve got to stay front and center with your target audience all the time, whether it’s podcasts—as a host or a guest—writing articles, being on social media.

There’s not one platform where you can say, “Oh, if I only do this, then it’s going to happen.”

Exactly.

I call it the dripping faucet.

You’ve got this tap that’s dripping all the time, and if it keeps dripping, the bathtub is going to fill up.

Yes.

And those drips are an article, a podcast interview—you know, as long as you’re doing something all the time.

Jenny Blake—she’s the author of Pivot and some other books you might be familiar with—said something to me once: when she writes a nonfiction book, she’s ready to talk about that topic for the next five years.

That’s the window she gives it.

She says, “I put out a nonfiction book, and then I teach, speak, and do interviews around that topic for five years.”

So when I’m working with nonfiction people, I’m saying, “If you’re not ready to talk about this topic for the next five years, you shouldn’t be writing a book on it.”

Absolutely. I love that.

Yeah. And with fiction authors, I think the cycle is shorter, especially given traditional publishing. They’re looking for maybe a book a year, right?

But even there, I say to my clients, “You’re not going to do a launch-week push and then move on.”

As a novelist, you want to be promoting that book for at least a year before you move on to the next thing.

And what’s lovely about fiction is that if people like you, they’re going to buy more of you.

You don’t have that quite in the same way with nonfiction because, as you said, you’ve got this subject matter that’s huge, and you can talk about it for five years.

A fiction book is a story. Is this a genre I’m interested in? Is this something I enjoy?

I love murder mysteries. Anthony Horowitz is a brilliant writer. I listen to one book and I’m like, “OMG,” and I start looking for more.

Now I’ve got a library of half a dozen or more of his books because I liked him. I love his writing and I like the narration, and I just want more of that.

That’s the difference for fiction authors.

Right.

Which is wonderful, but you’ve got to get people who love what you write about.

And you also have to write multiple books. You can’t put a single novel out and think you’re going to build a career around it.

Absolutely. I think there’s that famous story—Gone Girl. I think that was her third or fourth book.

Yeah. Same with Suzanne Collins and The Hunger Games. She’d written an entire other series long before The Hunger Games came along.

Yeah. So it’s not necessarily the first time. You just have to keep going.

I think there’s more dedication as a fiction writer because you’ve got to keep writing. This is your profession: writing and coming up with novel ideas for stories.

That’s a little different, again, from nonfiction, because many of my authors are looking at corporate audiences, for instance.

Yeah.

They want corporations to buy their book and use it in a training program.

Now, are there new ways of doing a method? Can they improve on something? Yes. But you’re often selling a system or a method you’ve created that works.

Again, the whole concept is very different. That’s why I say marketing fiction and marketing nonfiction are two different animals.

Indeed. But at the same time, at the end of the day, whether you’re selling a car, selling a novel to a reader, or selling a book to a corporation, a lot of those fundamentals and principles—the long-term things that you and I teach—do cross over, right?

Oh yes. There’s definitely an element that crosses over.

I think the marketing is slightly different in terms of how you approach it. Fiction does lend itself more to social media, maybe talking about the characters and getting people excited.

I had a young lady who wrote a fiction book so that she could get into university.

Interesting.

And she got into the best school, and that’s exactly what she wanted.

I just interviewed her on my podcast, and she, in her own way, has become an influencer because of how she’s gone about marketing her book. She brought people in right from the beginning.

Is she the one who’s also working in film?

Yes.

That recent episode. Yes, I listened to that one. See, I’m not just an interviewer.

Well, okay, let’s go back to this idea, then, that nonfiction and fiction are quite different in the marketing.

What can fiction authors learn from nonfiction authors in their marketing? And the other way around: what can nonfiction authors learn from the success of fiction authors?

That’s a great question.

The first thing that comes to mind is nonfiction learning from fiction, and that’s the concept of story.

Fiction authors are brilliant at story because their whole book is about story. That’s often missing for nonfiction.

I know for myself, one of the hardest things I’ve faced is the challenge of telling stories.

I’m very good at the five tips to do this and the ten ways to do that. Brilliant. But now it’s all about story.

You want the story about your company, the story about the book, the story about your case studies.

I think that’s where nonfiction authors can learn from fiction authors.

The other way around—nonfiction authors helping fiction authors—is really in looking at the marketing.

How can they market their book? How can they get over the fear? And instead of standing behind the book, how can they stand in front of the book and be willing to talk about it in different ways?

I think that could be one thing, but I’d have to look at that more deeply.

Well, something I would love my fiction authors to pick up from nonfiction authors is—and of course, everyone has imposter syndrome, as you said—but I think in the nonfiction space there’s more of a willingness to embrace your expertise.

You’ve written a cookbook on small pizzas? Yeah, you’re kind of an expert on small pizzas, right?

But I’ll have a client who has written three murder mysteries and says, “I’m not really an expert.”

You’ve written three of them. Yes, you are.

So that’s something I’d like to see: that confidence that comes from saying, “Hey, I know this topic better than most people.”

It’s not bragging to say that. It’s just a fact. You’ve written a book on it.

Oh, I’m in awe of fiction authors being able to come up with a story. I just think it’s such an incredible talent, and I know that’s something I would love to be able to do better.

Well, and I’m sure they would all love to be able to market the way you do. So there we go. There’s the crossover.

There you go. There you go. We’ve answered the question.

Great.

Susan, obviously, folks have more than 500 episodes of the podcast they can go and listen to to learn all about you.

Absolutely. Book Marketing Mentors, bookmarketingmentors.com.

And what else can folks do to connect with you or reach out to you?

Well, if they like what they’ve heard, Kevin, and they want to talk to me, I love to do what I call a discovery session—or a brainstorming session.

If they go to bookmarketingbrainstorm.com, they can sign up on my calendar and get a 20-minute complimentary session where we talk about their book.

And, you know, it has to be nonfiction.

That’s what I was about to say.

We just talked about the importance of target market. So who’s the right person? Just nonfiction, or what’s the best kind of person you’re going to be able to help?

It would be a nonfiction author who has a book that appeals primarily to corporate audiences—where there’s an interest within a corporate environment.

That’s a good one. It doesn’t mean that’s the only way, but that’s one.

Great.

Well, let’s bring things back again to podcasting, where you and I connect here.

For me, one of the biggest influences was when I decided I wanted to start a podcast. I read this article about what equipment to buy. It was like, “Here’s the mixing board you need. Here’s the microphone to buy. Here are the headphones.”

It tried out all these different options. It was a long article.

And at the end it said, “Here’s a $15 headset. Go buy this and do 50 episodes. And if you still like it after 50 episodes, then go buy the nice equipment.”

Nice. Good.

I really appreciate that mentality of someone who’s in it for the long haul.

You’ve done 500 episodes, and you’re like, “Let’s do 500 more.”

I say this to clients sometimes. It doesn’t create the best urgency from a marketing perspective, but people will say, “Can I circle back with you next year?”

And I’m like, “I’m not going anywhere. This is my life’s work. I’ll be doing this podcast. I’ll be coaching clients.”

So I just always admire you.

I’m on your mailing list. I do listen to the show. And just seeing the tenacity with which you show up on a weekly basis, year after year, is marvelous.

So congratulations on the work you’ve done and the work you continue to do.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

And given how busy you are doing all of that, thank you so much for carving out some time to come back to the podcast and join me here.

I love it. Let’s not leave it another 10 years.

You don’t want to wait until 2036 for the next episode?

No, no. I’m not sure where I’m going to be in 2036.

Who knows where any of us will be? But for now, thank you for a great conversation, Susan.

My pleasure, Kevin. Anytime. And I’m excited to interview you.

I’m looking forward to it.

It’s like when Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel would cross over. We’re going to do a Writing Coach/Book Marketing Mentors crossover here.

I love it. It’ll be excellent.

So thank you again, and thank you to your listeners. And if they want to get in touch with me, bookmarketingbrainstorm.com.

I’ll put it on the screen here. I’ll have it showing up with flashing lights right down here for folks.

And of course, we’ll have it in the show notes for the episode.

Excellent. Thank you. Take care.

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