Bo Bennett Launches Self Publishing Pro Platform

HOST: It's good to have you back, Bo. Last time we got into how AI is actually closer to 1995 than a social media trend, and today I want to push on your new angle — weaving AI services into a 15-year-old brand with SelfPublishing.pro. So, the site is still running BookMarketing.pro testimonials with a "predecessor service" tag, when you're walking an existing customer from one brand to the other, what's the pitch — and honestly, what did BookMarketing.pro get wrong that SelfPublishing.pro is trying to fix? GUEST: Well, the the pitch is pretty simple. It's that we could take care of everything that has to do with publishing. So, they could come to us with an idea for a book. They could come to us with the book already written. Maybe they already have the e-book files, the ePub and the PDF, and they just want us to publish it for them. Maybe they already have their book published, and they just want us to market it. Wherever they are in the cycle, we could handle that through selfpublishing.pro. And that's exactly why we abandoned the bookmarketing.pro. domain and brand. Because that really suggests that we're just about book marketing, and we're really so much more. And we've always been so much more. It's just the name was kind of confusing, or really confusing, depending on which way you looked at it. HOST: Got it, so confusing branding was the culprit. You've consolidated everything under one roof, and part of this new house is AuthorPass. It gives members monthly consulting time and benefits that follow them across your whole portfolio automatically. Is this Bo Bennett becoming a long-term publishing partner rather than a transactional vendor — and how does that change your unit economics? GUEST: Author pass is an interesting idea that I I came up with because we have so many different sites and so many services and I wanted to make it really easy for customers and authors to be able to take advantage of these services without having to do a dozen or two dozen different transactions. Um more than that, I wanted to give the authors something that they could have where they could benefit month after month after month without having to constantly do things. So, I put a lot of the monthly services into author pass. So, once you get that pass, you could just kind of set things up and just forget about it. And then all of the services work on selling your book for you month after month. So, that's kind of where I was going with that. Um yes, that does kind of make me a long-term publishing partner and it's not for purely altruistic reasons. Uh for selfish reasons, if our authors make more money, we make more money. That's the way the distribution agreement works. So, hopefully it works out well for everybody. HOST: It sounds like a win-win then. Now, your services menu at SelfPublishing.pro includes AI memoir creation and AI editorial review sitting right next to traditional cover design and copy editing. Does that create an awkward conversation with your existing human service providers — or has your client base actually told you they want the AI version and you're just following the demand? GUEST: Well, both are actually true. Yes, some human vendors that we've been working with were not working with them as much anymore. And I say as much because AI is incredibly good and it does a wonderful job. But as we say on some of our sites like bookcovers.pro, we say that this is good for probably 95% of all the projects you're ever going to deal with. However, there may still be that 5% of the projects or 5% of the client base that really wants that custom touch, something that AI can't provide right now. So they they do need to go to a human service provider. So we still keep that channel open. Uh but in terms of the client base actually telling us what they want, I don't think they said they want AI. I think what they said they want is they want something a lot cheaper. They want something a lot faster, uh because they want to be able to make money selling their book. And AI is the way that we do that by cutting expenses down dramatically. And at the same time, including and increasing quality and the um shortening the time that they have to wait. So it's it's a win all the way around. HOST: Cheaper, faster, better quality — sounds like those hybrid models are working then. Now, by your own standard from our first conversation, that real barrier is publishing a profitable book — your site cites 10,000-plus books published and $5 million paid to authors since 2011. What percentage of those 10,000 authors do you think actually cleared that bar, and does SelfPublishing.pro structurally change those odds? GUEST: That's a good question. I never actually calculated how many authors are actually profitable. Um probably because I don't have all the data to make that judgment. Um I I know how much they may pay us and many of them probably just paid us $45 for distribution, in which case it doesn't take long for them to make $45 selling a book. Uh others may paid may have paid us thousands of dollars with marketing and that payoff might be a little bit longer if their book didn't catch on organically. So, I I don't have the the odds or or the exact numbers and what the odds would be for somebody succeeding as an author. But I can tell you that a lot of the authors that we had back in 2011, we still have to this day. So, that means something that they're still buying services and they're still writing books and publishing with us. So, that's a that's a pretty good thing. Um your question about uh does Self Publishing Pro change those odds? Uh absolutely. That's what we're here for. We're here to change the entire dynamic of the self-publishing industry. Change those odds where most authors typically do not make money. Well, we want to change that by giving them all the services that they would normally pay thousands of dollars for at a fraction of that cost with the help of our AI and our automation and the technology. HOST: Fair enough, the long-term loyalty definitely speaks volumes. Before we go — for listeners who want to follow up on what we covered, where can they find you and the work you're doing? GUEST: They could check out selfpublishing.pro. That's the site we've been talking about. And our main company website is archyboy.com. HOST: Perfect. Thanks, Bo — that was a fascinating look at how to build a business around both human expertise and AI power. And thank you, the listener, for joining us. Let's get you back on soon — there's plenty more to cover. Until next time — that's a wrap.