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Suzy Prudden- Itty Bitty Books
In this episode, Barbara and Suzy discuss:
- how to use your book as a blueprint for business
- your book is your marketing tool
- how a book can bring you more leads and clients
- that a book establishes you as an authority
Key Takeaways:
” When you give out business cards, most of them wind up in the trash, but nobody ever throws out a book.” — Barbara Hales
“A book is a door opener. It positions you as an expert and gives you more opportunities to get speaking engagements and printed in magazines and newspapers.” – Suzy Prudden
Connect with Suzy Prudden:
suzyprudden@gmail.com
Facebook: facebook.com/SuzyPrudden
https://.www.ittybittypublishing.com
Connect with Barbara Hales:
Twitter: @DrBarbaraHales
Facebook: facebook.com/theMedicalStrategist
Business website:www.TheMedicalStrategist.com
Show website: www.MarketingTipsForDoctors.com
Email: Barbara@TheMedicalStrategist.com
Books:
YouTube: TheMedicalStrategist
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/barbarahales
TRANSCRIPTION (071)
Dr. Barbara Hales: Welcome to another episode of Marketing Tips For Doctors. I’m your host, Dr. Barbara Hales. Today we have with us Susan or Suzy Prudden.
Suzy is a legend, an internationally acclaimed speaker and seminar leader, a New York Times bestselling author (before the internet), fitness expert, body-mind pioneer, hypnotherapist success and empowerment coach, TV host on NBC and Nickelodeon, creator of the Inner Mind certification program, and now book publisher and host on WBAI-FM radio in New York. Suzy Prudden’s current specialty is publishing Itty Bitty Books by experts to give the reader exactly what they want and need on the topic of their choice with no fluff. She then works with the author to use their book as a business builder, not just a business card. Itty Bitty Books are the perfect marketing tool for the entrepreneur and small business owner.
Welcome to the show, Suzy.
Suzy Prudden: Thank you. It’s really, it’s wonderful to be here. Thank you for this opportunity.
Dr. Barbara Hales: Now, in the past, you were a business coach and there were a lot of accolades that I mentioned. Why did you decide to go into publishing?
Suzy Prudden: It was an accident, Barbara. My sister and I were working on a book and we didn’t know what we were doing. This was around 2006, actually. We didn’t know what we were doing and so we wrote a small book. I’ve written a lot of books. I’ve written about 14 books and about big houses.
We were told by one of our coaches that a good marketing tool would be to write a small book. I had a weight loss center in Beverly Hills at that time. I said to my sister, “Well, I’ll write a book, Suzy Prudden’s Itty Bitty Weight Loss Book.” Because my name has been on everything for all the number of years that I’ve been in business, which is over 50. We wrote the book, but we didn’t know what we were doing. We bought 2000 copies because that’s what you had to do then. I think we have 1800 left.
In 2014, I asked her to make the book smaller and change the cover which she did. Then, doing that, she took my name off the cover. Instead of Suzy Prudden’s Itty Bitty Weight Loss Book, it was Your Amazing Itty Bitty Weight Loss Book. I looked at the book and I said, “Are you sure you want to take my name off?” She said, “I don’t care.” As I looked at the book, I said, “Well, that’s actually a million-dollar business and we don’t have to write all the books.” She and I have written probably 30 books between us. We don’t have to write them anymore.
The Book Business Was Born
Three days later, we were in business. Two weeks later, we had our first signed author. Six weeks later, we had our first published book out on the market. We have now over a hundred books. We have 85 bestsellers. We did our 85th bestseller campaign yesterday and we’re having a blast. I just got off the phone with my sister. She has retired since we started with this. She’ll be 82 next month. She’s retired and I’m taking the company and moving it forward. It’s very, very exciting.
Dr. Barbara Hales: Well, you are so right when you say it is a great marketing tool because when you give out business cards, of course, most of them wind up in the circular trash, but nobody ever throws out a book.
Suzy Prudden: That’s true. I tell people, these are more than business cards. Because a business card will sit on a shelf and you can only reach one person at a time with a business card. But with a book, you can read hundreds of people at a time. When you do a seminar and you sell your book in the back of the room, people buy the book. I’ve sold literally 30, 40 books in the back of a room when I’ve given a talk. Those people are potential clients, but that’s 30 or 40 instead of one.
In the book, in Itty Bitty Books, for example, what we do is we teach our authors to use their book as a blueprint for their business so that they can create webinars from it. They can create seminars from it. They can create tips and tools and get people going to the websites so that a book is, as I said, it’s more than a business card and people don’t have to go looking in the book for the name and the phone number, et cetera. It’s right there. An Itty Bitty, we have our authors make sure that they let their readers know where to contact them, where to go for more information. It’s a tool.
Dr. Barbara Hales: Well, that makes so much sense. How many pages is the average book that you call them Itty Bitty?
Suzy Prudden: 30. See Barbara, what we do is we have a template. When someone becomes an Itty Bitty author, we have a template and what we send them is a How to Write an Itty Bitty Book, book. We send them an Itty Bitty book and we send them a template to fill out. We guide them so each book is 30 pages. Each book has 15 chapters. Each chapter is two pages. Page one of each book is written in numbered sentences and paragraphs, page two of each chapter is written in bullet points to send the reader to the website of the author. An Itty Bitty book positions an author as an expert, allowing them to have more opportunity to get speaking gigs and podcasts and articles and newspapers and magazines. A book is a door opener.
Dr. Barbara Hales: Well, and this was really a brilliant view to create because when a person says they’re a published author, especially if they’re a best-selling published author, nobody says, “and how many pages is that book?”
Suzy Prudden: Exactly.
Dr. Barbara Hales: They assume that it’s a substantial book.
Suzy Prudden: Well, the other thing, Barbara, is that we call ourselves the new Dummies. The difference between Itty Bitty and Dummies, Dummies are 350 pages you’d have to read with a yellow highlighter. Itty Bitty books are the yellow highlights. Instead of having to go through a 350-page book, and then remember where the highlights are, you’ve got highlights in 30 pages.
Dr. Barbara Hales: So, who’s the dummy now?
Suzy Prudden: I never thought of that. I never thought of that. It’s interesting because when I talk about Itty Bitty, I just got off the phone earlier with a woman who said, “It’s so intrigued me that your company is called Itty Bitty,” and now she’s going to write a book. She said, “I’ve always wanted to write a book, but it seems so daunting.” Some books really are.
Dr. Barbara Hales: That’s true, but 30 pages, you could hunker down for a weekend and knock it out.
Suzy Prudden: We do have authors who’ve done that, who’ve taken three or four days and gotten us their entire book.
Dr. Barbara Hales: Now, you publish them under your own publishing brand, correct?
Suzy Prudden: Yes, it’s Itty Bitty Publishing. Our company is called S and P Productions, and that’s for Suzy and Piddy, my sister and me. We have three book lines. We have Itty Bitty, which is our flagship, and we have Legacy Press for people who really want a more substantial book. Then, we have Little Dog Press Books, which is for children’s books.
Dr. Barbara Hales: Do you have it in digital form as well as a hardcover?
Book Offering and Location
Suzy Prudden: Oh, yes. All of our books are up on Amazon, Nook, Kindle, Smashwords, Kobo, D2D, iTunes, Barnes and Noble, Bibliotech. We do an Amazon bestseller campaign for all of our authors, as I said earlier, we’ve done 85. We have 85 bestsellers. We did our 85th campaign yesterday and we offer our authors a lot. We offer them weekly calls. It’s like a family. We come together. I have people come and talk about various ways of marketing. This last week, we talked about writing press releases and doing publicity and PR. I’ve also talked about why you need to do events and you need to have a professional AD person there and all the different ways of taking that one little tiny book and making it into a major business.
Dr. Barbara Hales: Do you help them with scheduling various event appearances?
Suzy Prudden: No, I don’t do that. I don’t have the bandwidth to do that. We are a small company. But I tell them where to go and I tell them what to do. For example, the world-dominating fare, I tell all my authors, you need to be on those calls. And when it comes to various networking, I tell my authors, you need to be connecting with these people. Either next week or the week after I’m having Nancy Matthews on for Women’s Prosperity Network to say, well, when you network, you have an opportunity to meet. I mean, that’s how I met you.
Dr. Barbara Hales: Correct. Networking is really of great value.
Suzy Prudden: Well, right now it’s paramount because we’re not going anywhere. When the pandemic occurred, I was supposed to be on the road that week. I was supposed to go from Los Angeles to Santa Cruz, to San Jose, to Las Vegas, and back to L.A. in those seven days. That Monday morning, I’m sitting in my office going, “Okay, I guess I’m not going anywhere, so what am I going to do?”
Dr. Barbara Hales: It’s a lot better to just go from the kitchen, to the living room, to the study, isn’t it?
Suzy Prudden: Yes, and my body says, “Please walk around the block, please walk around the block.” That’s what I’m doing after we finish here. Just walking around the block.
Dr. Barbara Hales: Okay, that’s great. What do you love best about publishing?
Suzy Prudden: Being able to take a person’s idea and getting it out to millions. It’s very exciting. Being able to see what someone can do with what they know and what they have. I think publishing is one of the best marketing tools there is because it’s not just a book. It’s a book, it’s a webinar, it’s a seminar, it’s weekly classes. It can be anything. It’s a blueprint to grow your business.
Dr. Barbara Hales: You said that for it to be an Itty Bitty Book, that the average book is 30 pages with your template, but is there a maximum number.
Suzy Prudden: 30 pages.
Dr. Barbara Hales: 30 pages, minimum of [crosstalk]
Suzy Prudden: 30 pages is the actual book, and then you’ve got the introduction and you’ve got the table of contents and you’ve got a few things in the front and a few things in the back. But the actual content is 30 pages. I have books here, for example, this book which is called Your Amazing Itty Bitty Safety Book. This was written by a gentleman who’s a safety expert for construction. He took the OSHA manuals and put them into 30 pages. This book was translated into Chinese. He was invited to China by the Chinese government to completely redo their safety protocol and to lower pollution in China. That’s what an Itty Book can do.
There’s another one here. This woman wrote about space. She’s a space cadet. She loves the space. She took it to the Boys and Girls Club of America and they’re having her speak to the Boys and Girls Clubs, and they’re buying her book. There are four million kids in the Boys and Girls Club of America. So when you think of an Itty Bitty book, there are people who look at it and go, “I don’t want to be associated with something that’s Itty Bitty.” Itty Bitty is massive. These are little books that make a huge difference.
For marketing, they’re wonderful tools because you can take one little piece. One of our author calls just last week, I mentioned earlier, it was all on PR. The people on the call were able to write a press release and given the information of where to send it so that now they wrote one press release in that hour on the phone, and they can send it to 400 newspapers and TV studios, and magazines across the country.
Dr. Barbara Hales: Well, that is a great way in which you show support for your authors in their business.
Suzy Prudden: Yes, and I’m excited about it. We also will, every once in a while, I’ll do a workshop, Write Your Book in the Weekend. I’ve had my Itty Bitty authors come to that two-day, then, we were in person; now, it would be on zoom, come to that workshop and actually finish their books while with a group of other people who are finishing their books. It’s so funny. It’s like a sewing circle. There were eight of us around a big table, all with our laptops and all writing books.
Whatever I can do to help my authors create their book and then succeed with their book, that’s what I want to do. Yes, you don’t make money selling books, but you’ll have an opportunity to make a lot of money. This gentleman who was a sales coach grew his business from a hundred thousand to $750,000 a year using his book as a marketing tool.
Dr. Barbara Hales: Phenomenal. Could you just hold one of your books up so the audience can see what it looks like? A little bit further, a little further away from the camera look so that they could appreciate it. And maybe just like sideways so they can see the spine.
Suzy Prudden: Oh, size-ways. Look, it’s an Itty Bitty Book. It’s 30 pages. Literally, it’s so outrageous. This is what it looks like on the inside to give you an idea. That’s page one of chapter one. It’s written in a paragraph of numbered sentences, and then that’s page two of chapter one.
Dr. Barbara Hales: Well, it certainly makes reading it so much easier when I can just scan the bullet points. What pica is that? The font size?
Suzy Prudden: I think it’s 11. I’m not sure. It’s small.
Dr. Barbara Hales: That’s okay.
Suzy Prudden: It’s an Itty Bitty Book.
Dr. Barbara Hales: So it is.
Suzy Prudden: This is the Space Book. This is the Safety Book. This woman here, this QuickBooks book, she was at a QuickBooks conference. She was in the elevator and people were just talking, going from place, whatever conference room they were going to. She’s talking to a gentleman about her book. She didn’t have it yet, but she had bookmarked. The gentleman looked at her and said, “Well, what do you need now?” She said, “I need to talk to the program director of QuickBooks because I’d like to speak at the conferences.” He said, “You’re talking to him.” Now, she speaks at QuickBooks congresses.
Dr. Barbara Hales: Oh, how fabulous!
Suzy Prudden: She’s done three books with us. Her third book actually went to bestseller at a QuickBooks conference while she was speaking.
Dr. Barbara Hales: I guess the moral of the story is even if you hang out in an elevator, it is always a marketing opportunity.
Suzy Prudden: Always. I mean, always. She’s done three books with us. She has a trilogy with us and it is, I mean, always with marketing. Always be in that conversation and always carry your book with you. This book here, the Space Book, Pam was in, where was it, Costco, waiting in line talking about her book and someone bought it right then.
Dr. Barbara Hales: Fantastic. What does a book like that go for in terms of the price?
Suzy Prudden: It’s 6.99 on Amazon, 2.99 on the digitals. I tell my office when they’re doing talks to sell it for 10 and autograph it.
Dr. Barbara Hales: Very good. Okay, well, I think one of the great tips that you just mentioned is that one should always be carrying a book with them. Do you have any other tips for our would-be authors and listeners?
Suzy Prudden: When you think of a book, think of the low-hanging fruit. Where is it going to go best? In your business, and I’m speaking you, the listener and the viewer, in your business, where would a book do the most good for you in bringing in people to you and being of interest to the public? It’s not a good idea just to think about what you would like to write about, it’s a good idea to think about what people need and where you can serve them. Because as you serve them, then they want to work with you.
Dr. Barbara Hales: Now, as we round out our talk, I understand that you have something special that you have been good enough to offer the listeners out there. Can you tell them what that is?
Suzy Prudden: Thank you for asking, Barbara. Yes. In one of my previous lives, all the various careers that I’ve had, I’m also a hypnotherapist and I created four hypnosis processes to increase wealth and four hypnosis processes to write a bestseller. I’m offering people the opportunity to download those. When you go to my website, which is ittybittypublishing.com, that’s I-T-T-Y-B-I-T-T-Y publishing.com and fill out, it says, for a free consultation or something, fill that out, and you’ll see when you do that, it’ll say notes, and just put in this show. That way I’ll know that you came from this show and we will send you the link for the downloads and also an opportunity, If you want to have a half-hour conversation with me, to see if you’ve got an Itty Bitty Book a bigger book in you,
Dr. Barbara Hales: Thank you so much for being with us today. I’m sure it is a topic that our listeners can really enjoy. This has been another episode of Marketing Tips for Doctors with your host, Dr. Barbara Hales. Till next time.
