Podcast Episode 11: Crowdfunding Your Own Book

• Emily grew up in California and began running retreats in Costa Rica offering a collection of activities to return a woman to her core essence. After realising this was her happiest place, she set an intention to live there someday. She now calls Costa Rica home, and lives with her life partner and children in their beautiful home on three acres of untouched jungle land, where they are also building their Sunrise Retreat and Wellness Centre.
• Because Emily dramatically changed her own love story she now feels called to help other women change theirs as well, through coaching and retreats.
• ‘The Quest’ is the first of three books – it is about the beginning of Emily’s own change journey and begins with a ‘good old-fashioned breakdown that became a breakthrough’.
• It is a highly entertaining self-help book written as a memoir. Despite an outwardly successful life in Los Angeles, Emily never felt it was enough. Her own quest for true abundance includes time deep in the Amazon jungle with tribal people, participating in their lives.
• With help, Emily set an intention to unlock her own innate creativity and realised she is a writer, and she found the writing process the most effortless part of the whole publishing process.
• Allow yourself to have a beginner’s mind because that then allows your creativity to blossom.
• We are all story tellers, and writing ‘The Quest’ allowed Emily to write a new story of her own life.
• The business of her book has been anything but effortless for Emily. She spent three years writing her book, then seven years unsuccessfully dealing with traditional book agents and publishers. Then in July 2019 Emily decided to use the book crowd-funding platform, Publishizer, to take control of the process, launching her campaign there one month later.
• She raised a healthy amount of money through Publishizer, and signed a book deal via the platform in February this year (2020). It will be released in November 2020, all going well.
• During her campaign Emily found that people were quite interested in buying books plus coaching services, programs or retreats at a discounted rate, rather than just the book itself.
• To be successful on Publishizer (or in general) Emily suggests creating and including higher ticket items with your book. It is also beneficial to have a good number of followers already.
• Publishizer has three levels of success, measured by book orders during the campaign. In the highest level Publishizer may help authors secure a publishing contract, while the lowest level means that authors can access the funds they raised and self-publish using publishing service providers. The middle level is access to hybrid services.
• Publishizer works well with their authors to help them set up a professional campaign and promote it to a wide audience.

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