You know, they say everybody's got a book in them. Some people have a bunch of books. Today, I want to talk about that just a little bit. Hi, how are you?
I'm really grateful. My name is Michael Croes. And today we're going to talk, I'm looking for a book on my desk here. I got to clean my desk.
That's it. So this is done. So as I'm done recording, I'm going to clean the desk because I'm looking for a book, a very specific book. It was right here, it's not here now.
I don't know where it is and I'm pissy. Oh well, I'm pissy. Oh, anyway. Yeah, there's books that you can write.
And you don't need to be a 300 page best seller to be successful. And then you also have to define what is success. I have published a bunch of books. I published books on Amazon KDP that were what we call low content.
I published medium content. I'm sitting here looking at a computer screen that has a book that on lawn care that I'm getting ready to publish. I'm just getting some of the editing done now. You know, dummy asked me, pardon me, I hired an editor who has had the book for the better part of almost eight months and has not finished editing the book yet.
I guess that this person has other things going on in their life. I don't know, but I have found out a better way to edit. So I need to just sit my butt down and that's what the whole weekend is going to be dedicated to after I get the desk clean. And that is editing this book.
Now, how long have people been self-publishing books? Well, let me reach over here. Let me grab this. I got it holding in my formerly chloridane stained hands, a book called Natural Gardening, an alternative to poisonous pesticides by Leo Van Meer.
This was published by his wife, Ruth Van Meer, and edited by Mary Van Meer, the daughter. And when was this done? This was done when their telephone number had an 813 area code and that switched over to 727 a million years ago. This is copyright 1984.
And this book was everywhere in Florida. I'm looking at the type setting. The type setting is essentially done with an IBM Selectric typewriter. It has justified right-hand sides, which you could do with an IBM Selectric typewriter, where it would justify the right-hand side.
So it all looked very nice, but you can tell it was done with a typewriter. It has photographs in it, it has drawings in it. How many pages does this thing have? It has all toll with everything, 209 pages.
And it's a nice book. I'm holding it right here in my hands. Not the only one who did local gardening books. There was a couple in Tampa who published tons of different, self-published tons of different gardening books.
They were very, very small books. And Lewis Maxwell was the name of the guy. And when I was teaching horticulture, he used to show up at the school with all of his books. And he would want us to sell them in our little nursery, which we did.
And we sold out all the time with them. I constantly sold out all the time with his little books. And it was fabulous. And he had one called Long and Garden, which was really good.
He had one on snails. He had one on bugs. He had one on vegetable garden. He had a whole series of these books.
And that business is over with because they passed away. And they did a fabulous job with it. I'm doing a book on lawn care. I'm also doing, I've got two books in the works right now.
One is 108 questions, or is it 109? I forget, might be 111. I'll have to pull it up. Questions and answers that I have given on 35 years of doing a home and garden radio show all over the place.
Now, how could you publish a book? And why is it easier now than ever before? Because now, both Mr. Maxwell and Leo Van Mere had to get printers to print these books.
And they had to fill up their garage with these books. I remember talking with Leo's daughter, who, that's who I got the book from, by the way, was her daughter, who has since passed away. And when I was talking to her, she was just, I was talking to her right after AOL became popular. So when was that?
1995, 1996, something like that? 1998? No, before that. AOL came out before that.
And when AOL came out, she said, I am so excited about this AOL thing. I can put my books in front of millions of people on AOL. And she was just, because before, she had to buy ads in local newspapers and do all kinds of things to sell her books. And she had the gardening book, but she had some books on asthma that she had written, and she was real big on asthma.
And so that's what she did. And the other folks, they all had to print these books and they had stacks up in the garage. And I asked her about her at the gardening book, that her dad wrote. I literally walked out into her garage and she reached into a box and they were like 20 of these boxes.
I don't know if they were all this book, but a bunch of her books, which pulled out one and gave it to. And I've got it right there. And I've had it for years since AOL just came out. That's how long I've had that book.
And so grateful I was I am about that. Now it's easier because now we have Kindle Direct Publishing. And what they do with that is you can write your book, you can edit your book. And I guess I should spend some time talking about editing the book.
If I were to write a book right now, which I'm going to spend the weekend putting together both of my books and I'm going to edit, they're all written. They just need to be edited. And guess how I'm going to edit my books? I'm going to use AI to edit my books and I'm just going to have it edit for grammar and punctuation and spelling.
And that's what I'm going to do. And then when that is all done, I've got software here that I bought a long time ago that I will use to lay these books out and get them ready to go to Amazon KDP. And over the weekend, I am going to work on the covers. So that's what I'm not leaving the house this weekend.
My happy ass is going to sit in here after I clean off the desk and we're going to we are going to put all of these things together. The only thing I might not get done by the weekend are the covers, but I think I'm I'm fired up. I'm ready to go. So I think I'm going to do that.
But I will tell you that when you go to self-publish a book, speed beats perfection because when you self-publish with Amazon, you're not getting a garage full of books. They print them on demand. I've seen a video of the printers that they use and Amazon's got one of these in I think over by Orlando. I think it's in Lake Mary.
And when I sell one of my books, it goes to them electronically, the order goes right to them. And this little thing first prints out the color cover, prints out all the pages, binds them, puts the cover on it, seals it, and you're ready to go. The book is done. Let me see.
Let me reach in here and see if I have a book. I'm not doing it here. Looking for a book. Oh, here it is.
Here is a book that was self-published with Amazon and you it looks really nice. This was published about employee retention by a gentleman that I used to know was since passed away. And there's all kinds of books. If I look up on the shelf, I'll find more.
Is that one of my books? Let me grab it. That's the LP. Hang on here.
Don't go away. Don't go away from the microphone. Here's the one that Dave Jackson, the founder of the School of Podcast, Dave Jackson is quite a guy. He's got a self-published book right here that is print on demand.
And when he sells one of these things, they print it that day. And like I say, I saw a video of a machine that does it, it cranks these things out and it's fabulous. I'm sorry for the audio on this because I keep walking away from the microphone to grab these books. But you can do it.
The biggest thing you want to work on is niche. You want a good niche? Where's it niche? I don't know.
I call it niche. Books build credibility for you. Let's say, let's say I were to write a book on Diatomaceous Earth as a natural pesticide. Well, guess what?
I'm one of the foremost experts in the world on using Diatomaceous Earth as a pesticide and as a soil amendment. And you know why I'm that way? Because I said I was. And if you listen, I had, I published a newsletter, the Diatomaceous Earth newsletter, when I worked at the Sun Radio Network and it was a four page newsletter, 11 by 17, fold over, four page.
My name is three and a half pages because the bottom part was the mailing thing. And I said, we will give this away to anyone who sends us two U.S. postage shams. That's all we need is two U.S.
postage shams. And by the way, the address that they had to send it to was not a post office box. The address that they had to send it to was a long complicated address of this street in St. Petersburg that they had to send these things off.
And downstairs was a woman who answered the phone and did all kinds of stuff. And she was given the task of mailing these things out. And the network printed them for me. And the reason that the network printed them for me is because they were putting ads in the things for products that they sold that they put in that thing, little tiny ads, but it was obviously worth their while.
We mailed out more than 35,000 of those things and people paid the postage to do it. Now printing was relatively cheap in those days, but boom, over, I think it was closer to 40,000 of those things that were printed and sent out. And I'll be damn, I can't find one of them here anywhere. I've got it on a floppy drive, a three and a half inch floppy drive.
I have that newsletter, that if I just find something that will read a three and a half inch floppy drive, but I have that and it went out and had my name on it. And I'm telling you, I was known as the foremost expert on using diatomaceous earth. I think that might be a good book, might be my next book. Who knows?
I don't know. There's a lot to know about it. You just, I can't sit here and tell you, just go get some diatomaceous earth because there's good diatomaceous earth and there's bad diatomaceous earth. There's calcinated diatomaceous earth that we use in swimming pools and filtering.
And that's really, really bad for using in your garden because it has crystalline silica. A lot of crystalline silica, I forget what the percentage, but it's very high. It is, you know, spreading that stuff around is more dangerous than smoking three packs of cigarettes in a day. Very bad for you.
But then there's all natural diatomaceous earth, which is not calcinated, which is late bed mind and it is wonderful to use. And of course, you want to cover, you know, you want to wear something, a mask of something or, you know, a scarf over your, your nose when you're applying it as you would with any dust, but it's very, very, very safe and fun to use. I should write a book about that. So my newsletter gave me instant credibility.
If I did a book on it, that would give me instant credibility. And just, you know how grateful you would be for having the opportunity to do that. So unbelievable. I think it is.
So you want to, want to write something, sit down writing is so easy now. You know how else you can write? I write a newsletter on Wednesday, write it every Wednesday. You know how I write the newsletter?
I'm going to tell you in less than 60 seconds because I've got less than 60 seconds to do this. And if I, you know, I'll tell you real quick, I sit here and I talk it into the microphone. I sit there and I write, have my talking points made for me, and I sit there and just dictate. Not dictate, just create.
Then I have it transposed or, you know, transcribed, which you can get done for free on the internet now. I remember when it was $1.25 a minute. Now you can get it done for free. And then off you go.
It's not that hard. Think about it. Maybe we'll do some more on this next week. Bye bye.