On publishing success and vegan marketing for authors

In this episode of the Spiritual Solopreneur Podcast, I’m thrilled to have on the podcast today the lovely Sandra Nomoto, a passionate book whisperer, ghostwriter, and editor for impact-driven authors.

Sandra shares how she helps entrepreneurs publish and market their books while staying true to their voice. She also talks about vegan marketing, spiritual alignment in editing, and why writing a book is a powerful tool for credibility.

If you’ve been sitting on a book idea, this episode will inspire you to start now. Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more soulful content for solopreneurs!

You can reach Sandra and find out more at sandranomoto.com or booksbysandra.com.

Bev Young: Hello and welcome to the Spiritual Solopreneur Podcast. If this content resonates, please like and subscribe today. My guest is Sandra Nomoto. Sandra is a book whisperer for authors with impact. She previously ran a company called Conscious Public Relations, which was the fourth public relations agency in Canada to earn B Corporation certification. Sandra is the author of two books, including Vegan Marketing Success Stories, the world’s first vegan marketing book. She also co-hosts VEG Networking Canada, Canada’s only vegan networking group. Welcome Sandra.

Sandra Nomoto: Thanks, Beth. It’s a pleasure to be here.

BY: Thank you for being here. So your passions are—there’s quite an array you have your writing, coaching, helping other people to write. The vegan experience, plant-based healing, I think, as well and nutrition. How did you come to have the particular array of interests?

SN: Yeah, and just to clarify, those are, I would say, are all interests, not necessarily what I do for business. But yeah, I mean, I’ve just sort of followed, I suppose, my interests in terms of what I’m good at, which, as you said, has been writing for most of my life. I got my degree in English Literature. That kind of stepped me into a career in public relations, and then that led me into marketing, copywriting, book publishing.

But in terms of, I suppose, my essence as a human, I’ve always just wanted to be a good person. My, you know, my parents raised my siblings and I as Catholics. I don’t really follow that religion anymore, but that really instilled in me the sense of, I would say a soul, right? Like there’s more to us than just this skin, muscle and bones. You know, we have souls. And I really do think that we’re all here for a purpose, and we’re all kind of made of that same divine spark that created the universe. And so, yeah, I’ve always just wanted to be a good person, and I always cared about the environment for since I was a child, and I’d heard of the term vegan when I was a child, but never really knew how to act on it.

I suppose it wasn’t until I saw a documentary called Earthlings at the end of 2007 and that was when I decided, okay, I someday, I think I want to be vegan, and I really didn’t put a timestamp on it. I was just, I just started the journey low and slow. It took me 11 years. I don’t think it needs to take anybody that long, but that was just my journey. And what’s funny is the my vegan journey of sort of coincided with that first business journey, my PR agency. So the same year that I closed that was when I went vegan.

And then 2020 is when I started a new company, essentially copywriting for vegan companies. That’s how it started. It’s definitely evolved over the years. But yeah, that’s sort of the intersection of, I suppose, what I’m good at, and the person I want to be, and my interests, that’s, yeah.

BY: Awesome. So you grew up in a pretty good forward thinking household, then to instill that idea of soul, and that we don’t die, and all those kinds of things, that there’s something other than what we see in and feel out there in the universe. Because not that many people grow up that way that I’ve talked to on this show, most of them had some sort of an epiphany. But it’s nice that you grew up with something with—in an environment like that.

SN: Yeah, I don’t know if I would call my household forward thinking.

BY: Okay.

SN: I call my—I think my parents would describe themselves as pretty traditional Filipino Catholics, but it is—that was a foundation. Like my mom, even before I actively remember going to church, my mom had taught my siblings and I the prayers. The Our Father, the Hail Mary, and again, and then we went to Catholic school for 13 years. And some people would call that indoctrination or brainwashing, and then that causes them to leave the church. But for me, it was, I just held that sense of faith. And again, it’s not the same as the Catholic faith. Yeah, it’s just my own, my own sense of spirituality.

BY: Yeah, awesome. So you help people—you’re a book whisperer, I guess an author whisperer as well. You help people get ideas for books? Or are you looking more to folks who have an idea for a book, they have an outline, something like that, but just are procrastinating on getting it done?

SN: Yeah, I don’t call myself a writing coach, so book whisperer is really just a catch all title for ghostwriter, editor, formatter, and then marketer. I can’t fit that all on a business card, right? So yeah. And then I just tell people I help authors publish their books and market them. Really, that’s the essence of it.

So usually it’s folks who already have a book idea, maybe they’ve already started writing it, and unless they need more of like an accountability sort of coach, I don’t really help with the writing process unless they want me to work with them as their ghostwriter. So that’s really the only time that I would really interfere, I suppose, with the writing process. But once that manuscript’s done I can go and edit it. And that’s what, aside from ghostwriting, that’s one of my absolute favorite things to do, is just to rework those words and make them as effective as they can be.

BY: I get that. I love editing too. To me, it’s more important than the writing. But we won’t tell the authors that.

SN: Yeah. Let’s not scare them off yet in terms of what that process might be. But yeah, when I’m editing, I always try and keep that essence of the message. You know, you don’t want to critique too much on style and then make the book sound like it’s not their voice anymore. And so, yeah, it is just more critiquing and querying and clarifying. I think, yeah, that’s the best way to describe book editing.

BY: Yeah. Do you use any of your spiritual beliefs in that practice? Do you use a lot of intuition to get that editing done, or I don’t know, call on ancestors or something like that, to give you ideas for the editing?

SN: Not really, because I almost feel like it is such an intuitive and almost spiritual practice, like I can sit for three hours. No more than that, like three hours, I think, is the cap. But it’s really that thing, that—flow state, I think, is what people call it, is when you’re doing something and, like, time stops, you know, like the whole room disappears, and you’re just in the zone. And that’s what I feel like when I’m working on a manuscript for somebody. It’s like I almost feel like I’m getting downloads of how to help this piece of work become better. And again, I don’t have an intentional practice of sitting and meditating or praying before I start this. That’s what happens, and that’s why I love that work so much.

BY: Yeah, gotcha. Yeah. It’s almost like you’re channeling.

SN: Channeling, yeah, that’s such a good way to put it.

BY: Yeah, awesome. So what kind of books do you do? Fiction, nonfiction, ghost stories?

SN: All but one of my clients have been nonfiction, and I always when I started marketing myself. You know, the first year I decided to do this, initially, I thought I wanted to specialize in spiritual and vegan memoirs. I was very particular about that, just because you got to start somewhere, right? You can’t say everyone’s my client. I just don’t read a lot of fiction. And so naturally I don’t think a lot of folks are going to gravitate toward me as an editor anyway.

BY: You probably wouldn’t get the channeling as well when you’re with a nonfiction book, because you’re more used to the—sorry, with the fiction book, you’re more used to the nonfiction, and you enjoy reading that more.

SN: Yeah. It makes sense. Whatever you read, whatever you sort of specialize in, that’s what you want to do. But yeah, since I’ve started, like, all sorts of nonfiction authors have been coming to me. And so I don’t pigeonhole myself anymore to those two genres. I’m really open in terms of who I want to work with. Like I did have one youth fiction vegan author come to me. And I thought to myself, can I do youth fiction? And I started reading it, and I’m like, yeah, I can do this. So, yeah. I’m pretty open. That’s why my tagline is sort of like book whisper for authors with impact, because so long as the author intends to have a positive impact with their book, that’s really the criteria of who I’m looking to work with.

BY: Right. As long as they’re passionate about what they’re writing about.

SN: Exactly. Yeah.

BY: Awesome. This is a total non sequitur, but just on the vegan subject. You know, it used to be people got diseases, like, I don’t know, polio and whatever, right? I mean, there’s reasons why we don’t get that anymore. But lately, people are getting immune issues. Immune system issues. Can a vegan diet help boost your immune system?

SN: Yeah, so I’m not speaking as a doctor or nutritionist or anyone like that, but yes. And I think that’s because the nutrients that you get with, you know, all sorts of plant-based foods, fruits, veggies, grains, what have you they’ve got, you know, these other nutrients, especially the fiber. Because in the media everyone’s obsessed with protein right now. People are creating all sorts of protein products, protein drinks. It’s in everything. And yes, protein is important. We need that.

But what most people neglect is fiber. And our gut needs that fiber, and again, all sorts of nutrients that are in the plant world. And I think what people find and why doctors usually prescribe, whenever somebody comes to them and they’re diagnosed with diabetes or heart disease or something like that, they prescribe a plant forward diet, because those that those are the kinds of foods that are going to clear your arteries, Because cholesterol, a lot of cholesterol comes from animal foods, particularly meat.

So, yeah, when you’re thinking about how can we protect our bodies from disease, in a general sense, eating more plants is a great way to do that. We saw a lot of people, you know, moving more toward plant based eating during COVID, because people were scared of getting COVID. And so people jumped on that bandwagon. Now we’ve of course, sort of swung the opposite way, where people are, “I’m vaccinated, don’t really care anymore. Let’s starting eating meat again.” But yeah, I think as much as you can include plants in your diet, and minimal to no amount of animal foods is really going to help in the long term for you.

BY: I think so. By animal foods, do you mean, like, butter, milk, things like that, dairy?

SN: Yeah, I mean meat, and certainly red meat, processed meat, dairy, seafood doesn’t have sort of that stigma. But, I mean, just think of all of the stuff that we put in oceans. Fish are eating that. So seafood, and then, you know, there’s your byproducts. So again, dairy, eggs. Eggs are almost marketed as a health food, but they’ve got cholesterol too, right? So, yeah, I would say more so the meat, especially the red meat, isn’t great. Dairy isn’t great. But yeah, they’ve got varying levels of harm.

BY: What is the publishing industry like today? Is it difficult to get a book published? I used to always hear how difficult it was to get books published, but now we have Amazon. We have people doing PDFs and publishing their own stuff. And so I guess my question is, how difficult is it to get a book? It should be easier, in my view, but I don’t know.

SN: Yeah, it’s so interesting right now, because there’s a lot of changes happening. So I would say 15, 20, years ago, it was hard, because the only way that you could be published is through a traditional book publisher, right? You had to get a book deal. And if you want, currently, if you want to get signed by one of the top five publishers globally, you actually need a literary agent. That may change someday. I think they’re starting to be more flexible in terms of how they take in submissions, or at least thinking about it, but yeah, currently you need a literary agent to land you a deal with a top five publisher.

There are smaller publishers, where you don’t necessarily need an agent, but it still takes a lot of time to send out those proposals. That’s why you’ll hear a lot of rejections. And yeah, it can get pretty competitive, but now we have not only self publishing, where you can, yeah, absolutely take 100% creative control over your entire book. So not only will you write the book, but you can hire whoever you want to as your editor, your designer, you know, your marketing team.

And then there’s also hybrid publishing. So hybrid is like, technically self publishing. You own your own rights. You’re not signing them away to a publisher, but you’re hiring a company to help you get all of those things done. So instead of you having to hire your editor and so on, you’re hiring the publisher who has people on staff that will do all those things for you.

Yeah, the only difference is access. So with publishers, they are doing all of that for you with the promise that, you know, hopefully this book will sell and cover all of our costs, whereas with hybrid and self publishing, you are the one spending up front to publish your book.

And so, yeah, we certainly have a lot more tools now. I think the access has gotten higher and there’s so many things that are changing month to month, like AI narration. For example, for audiobooks, I mean, audiobooks is even just one thing we can talk an hour about that as a format. It’s certainly not surpassing ebooks, and, you know, hard covers and paperbacks yet, but it’s definitely growing. And so when you think about, you know, converting your book to audiobook, yeah, you can sit and narrate it yourself, but now we have AI tools that can make that a whole lot easier.

And before the platforms were not so gung ho on AI narration, but that is changing. And it’s literally month to month like these things are changing. Like, just this month Audible released its AI translation tool. So if you wanted to convert your book from English to, I think there’s only Spanish and German right now, but they are going to release other languages. That’s something you can do. And that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. You might want to hire a real translator to actually go through it and make sure that it’s correct on the other end, but things like that are changing month to month.

BY: Yeah, that’s so cool. Do most people write their book and publish it in print first and do audio, or just go straight to audio?

SN: Great question. I don’t know anybody personally who has just done audio, but yeah, I think it’s more normal for folks to release the hard versions and the ebook first, and then followed by audio. And I think that came from Amazon, because it’s just a rule with Audible that your book already has to be up on Amazon in some format in order for them to release the audiobook. I don’t know if that’s the case now or if that’s going to change, but it’s sort of that rule that they came up with, and so, you know, the rest of us have to follow. But yeah, that’s really interesting, especially for authors who want to write a book for the sole purpose of speaking. Releasing the audiobook first, or seeing how that does before they then convert to the other formats, could be really interesting.

BY: Right. That makes sense. Do you help people get their books on Amazon?

SN: I can, that’s one of the things I can do. So Amazon’s definitely not the only platform out there, but it is one of the most popular and where most people buy their books. So yeah, if folks don’t want to handle their own Amazon account, I can go in and and help them with that. Or help them make the decision on which platforms to use, because there’s so many now to choose from.

BY: What’s a couple more?

SN: So I would say Amazon’s top competitor is IngramSpark. Ingram, I don’t know if it’s been around as long, but it’s popular because it has that connection to bookstores. And it allows bookstores to order your book wholesale, which is not the case with Amazon. They don’t have that although they are starting to distribute to some retailers in the US and the UK, so I think they’re trying to compete. But IngramSpark has that capability, and then it can also distribute your book wherever people buy books online. So it will do Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, all those other places. So it’s kind of your one stop shop if you want, if you want it done that way.

But yeah, there’s, there’s so many other platforms, Draft2Digital is another one. Publish Drive, Kobo Writing Life, Google Play. And not all of these have both print and ebook capability. Some are only ebook and audiobook, but, yeah, there’s just so many now to choose from. So, yeah, very cool. You don’t want to do Amazon then, yeah, plenty of other platforms that you can use to distribute. Yeah.

BY: Do you work with entrepreneurs?

SN: Some, yeah.

BY: I was just wondering if having a book—you go to an entrepreneur’s website quite often. There’s a, especially if they’re a coach or something like that, there’s a, they’ve written a book. Is that always used to be a big calling card. That person must be really professional. They’ve got a book out. Is it, does it still have that kind of impact in marketing?

SN: Yeah, I would say so it’s the reason I put out my second book, because I can’t when I thought about, you know, is there a book out there already on vegan marketing? And I found out, not only wasn’t there one, there was only one book about the vegan industry in terms of a business industry. And I thought, wow, what an underserved market. And so that was kind of the sign that I needed to do this. And, you know, maybe it’ll help me get more clients. That was the hope, right?

And then when I went on other podcasts to start promoting it, you know, people just start calling you the vegan marketing expert. The vegan marketing queen. These are titles I never gave myself. It’s just that thing that happens a book gives you that credibility, and people think that you know what you’re talking about because you’ve written a book. And so yeah, I absolutely call it like an expensive business card, because it’s that thing that you put out that shows, yeah, you know what you’re talking about. You’re trustworthy.

And I was just telling somebody the other day at a conference that if you know, somebody wants to work with you, but they can’t afford to yet, you know, direct them to your book. Because they can at least learn the process, and then maybe when they’re ready to hire you, then you’re going to be the person that they go to.

BY: Yeah, I’ve done that so many times. Because lot of coaches will have their book on their website for eight bucks or something, you know. But I’m not ready to buy the coaching, but I’ve definitely downloaded a lot of those books. So yeah, that’s awesome. So vegan marketing, so companies who sell vegan products?

SN: That’s right, yeah. Vegan products or their service providers and so they happen to be vegan. So yeah, those are all of the types of companies that you’ll find in my book.

BY: Yeah, so cool to have someone like you available to help people navigate all the process of getting the book written, published, all that kind of thing. It can be very daunting, I’m sure, for somebody that doesn’t know anything about it.

SN: Yeah, and this all came because I started as an editor and formatter. And then I expanded into coaching and doing platform administration, because all of my authors were telling me, how do I do this, how do I do that? And they were willing to hire me to do it for them. So my suite of services has expanded.

And actually, just a couple of weeks ago, I launched a course called How to Publish Your Bestselling Book, because I did a talk back in September where I shared for about was supposed to be 30 minutes plus Q and A. I ended up talking for an hour because people had so many questions about the whole process more than I had, you know, presented.

So I thought to myself, I can keep giving these talks, which is going to be really exhausting, or I can just put it all into a course so people can learn themselves, and then when they have more questions, they can come to me. So that’s sort of freshly produced. And you can find that course either on my website or through Thinkific.

BY: Awesome, that is an awesome idea. What is your favorite part of what you do? What’s lights you up the most when something happens?

SN: Yeah, as I spoke about before, the editing or the ghostwriting process is one of them. That’s the top way, I think, so far, that I feel like I get into flow state. And then I suppose the other is when I’m either working on the marketing side for an author, or maybe they’re doing it on their own, and then I see them either, you know, land number one bestseller status on Amazon, or appear on another podcast, and talking about their book. That just really lights me up, because anybody can actually publish a book, but if nobody knows that it’s there, then then you’re not going to have any readers. And so I just love seeing my author clients. Just knowing that it’s getting into people’s hands and that they’re fulfilling their initial intention that they had by publishing a book.

BY: Yeah. Do you have a couple of quick ways or hints for people who have written? Maybe they have a PDF on their website or whatever. What are the best ways to promote that for themselves?

SN: Yeah, I definitely cover that in my course. I also have a video on my YouTube channel that talks about the six parts of a marketing strategy. And so again, this is not all you can do, but I think starting with your three types of content. So social media, blogs and emails, that’s a good place to start. A lot of people, especially if you run a business, you’re probably already doing that.

And then the other parts would be publicity, outreach to media and podcasts. So that’s a great way to spread the word about your book, and then having some sort of event. So it doesn’t necessarily need to be an in person event. It can be at a bookstore. You can have a virtual launch so that anyone around the world can learn about your book and and meet you.

And then I sort of put everything else in sort of an “other” category. So that could be partnering up with other authors and doing collaborations, like guest blogging on each other’s websites, or promoting each other’s books and newsletters. Yeah, and just getting the word out, you know, appearing at events and that sort of thing. Yeah, there’s just so many other things that you can do to market your book, and it depends on who your audience is as well. But I think those six things, are great places to start. That’s where I tell what I tell authors.

BY: Yeah, that’s awesome. What message do you have for people who are maybe procrastinating or have really have an idea for a book but haven’t got they haven’t got it down yet on paper?

SN: Yeah, I think it’s a good idea to—you’re probably already an avid reader, so that’s a good thing, you know, getting inspiration. So I have a Google folder, where I keep some links to TEDx talks and things like that from other authors who would talk about their writing process. I think, just seek out resources. So whether that’s writers groups in your area or online, maybe a writing coach, if that’s somebody that you need.

But yeah, I think just starting is really important. And start with an outline too. You don’t necessarily need to stare at a blank Google Doc. Having an outline is a really great idea, so you have an idea of the journey that you want your reader to take, and then you just sort of fill in those gaps and find some sort of consistency in terms of time management. So whenever I tell people you need 30,000 words to complete a book, they think, “Oh, that’s a lot.” But if you write about just over two pages a day and in a month, you might have 30,000 words already. So it’s more about consistency and or just finding like again, carving out that time to write.

And then the other option is speaking, so you can speak into a voice recorder and use an AI app to transcribe that so you don’t need to type or hire a ghostwriter or co-author. So there’s tons of options out there in terms of getting started. The most important thing is getting started.

BY: Sit down and take a pen and just start.

SN: Yeah, I mean, even pen to paper. I had an author client who said, “I’ve got my book. But it’s pen to paper. How do I get this over to you?” And I said, “Well, if you can scan the pages and send them to me, I’ll transcribe it as part of my editing process.” So that’s what we did.

BY: Perfect. Do you have a transcriber that you don’t have to actually type out the words, do you?

SN: You know what, I don’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s something like that. I think there is gotta be by now, with all of the AI apps that we have now. So yeah, that’s probably possible. Hopefully you have good handwriting.

BY: Yeah, exactly. So how do people get in touch with you, Sandra?

SN: Yeah, with my name, SandraNomoto.com, that’s where you’ll find me in most places. Or if you want to go straight to my author’s page, I have a link BooksbySandra.com is the easy one.

BY: Okay, sounds awesome. We’ll get that information in the description box, and I want to thank you so much for being here. This was an awesome talk.

SN: Thanks so much. Beth, yeah, had a really good time.

BY: Me too. All right, and we will talk to you again soon. Okay?

SN: All right.

BY: Awesome. And my name is Bev Young, and I am a web designer and digital marketing specialist helping spiritually minded and heart centered entrepreneurs get maximum credibility and visibility online with websites they love and that work. See you next time.