How to publish a book on Amazon with Dr. Toyin Alli

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In this episode of GradBlogger, we interview Dr. Toyin Alli about the steps involved in publishing a book on Amazon. We also discuss why you should consider publishing through Amazon, how a traditional book can present different advantages than an ebook, and how to prepare a manuscript for publication on the Amazon platform.

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Disclosure: Some of the links in the podcast show notes and transcripts are affiliate links (indicated with [Affiliate] in front). If you choose to make a purchase through these links, GradBlogger will earn a commission from that purchase at no extra cost to you.

Introduction

Chris Cloney: 00:08
Welcome to Episode #25 of GradBlogger, where we’re helping academics build online businesses through blogging, podcasting, and video so they can affect change in the world. I’m your host, Dr. Chris Cloney. In today’s episode, we’re talking about how to publish a book on Amazon, and to do that, we have a very special guest, Dr. Toyin Alli from theacademicsociety.com. So, Toyin, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Toyin Alli: 00:36
Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited.

Chris Cloney: 00:45
In this episode, we’re going to be talking about Amazon: how to publish a book and why you should consider publishing on Amazon. Toyin recently published her second book on Amazon: she’ll get into what the first one was.

The second one is [Affiliate] GRADBOSS: a Grad School Survival Guide. As the tagline indicates, it is all about helping grad students who have figured out how to balance grad school and real life. As I mentioned, Toyin is the person behind theacademicsociety.com. We’ll get into that: what it looks like, how it got started, and an overview of the business. So, Toyin, maybe a great place to start is with The Academic Society. What is that website and who is it for?

What is The Academic Society and Who Is It For?

Toyin Alli: 01:32
Yeah, so I started The Academic Society about two and a half years ago. It’s a platform for graduate students. Through The Academic Society, I help graduate students with time management and productivity and make sure they remember to self-care. I also share advice about how to apply for jobs in academia. It’s basically all things related to grad school survival.

Chris Cloney: 01:54
Awesome. How long have you been running that blog and website?

Toyin Alli: 01:58
Yeah, so for the blog, it’s been about two and a half years. Then, about a year and a half ago, I went full force with the YouTube channel as well.

Chris Cloney: 02:08
Okay. We’ll include the links to the website and YouTube channel in the show notes at gradblogger.com/25. So, take me back. How did you get started with the academic side?

Toyin Alli: 02:22
Towards the end of my grad school experience, I was being interviewed for something. They asked me what my hobbies were and I didn’t have an answer other than grad school. I thought, “Wow, I had hobbies before. I enjoyed so many things that I’m not enjoying anymore while I’m in grad school.”

I got on Pinterest and discovered blogging. I thought, “Oh, I’m going to do this. I’m going to blog about my grad school experience.” I mostly shared my outfits: what I wore to teach. I also showed how I meal prepped and things like that. I decided that once I graduated, I would take the blogging thing seriously. I took a course about how to start a fashion blog because I was very interested in fashion and sharing my outfits.

Toyin Alli: 03:10
I learned that fashion is very saturated and you have to have a different hook, maybe by combining it with something else. So I decided to combine it with finance: fashion and finance for newly minted professionals, like me, who had never taken a finance course before and were wanting to learn about taxes, credit, what HR does, etc.

But, as it turned out, finance isn’t my passion. It felt very draining to do that. I wanted to find a way to blog about something I was passionate about, so I took a course by Mariah Coz about how to create a course. I was going to create a course about finance, but then she said something that resonated with me.

She said, “The people that you are most likely to serve and serve well are typically where you were six months to two years ago.” For me, that was in grad school. That’s when I realized that I had a good experience in grad school, whereas other grad students do not. So that is how The Academic Society was born.

Chris Cloney: 04:23
Awesome. Thanks for the background. I noted a couple things there. So you started in the world of fashion blogging and found that it’s a crowded space. Then you moved into finance and found that it wasn’t your passion.

Those are two things I want to emphasize for the listener. When you’re getting started, you want to pick something that’s not crowded. I talk about going as niche as you can. Your Ph.D. research is in one very, very niche field. Yours is in mathematics. I don’t know how many math bloggers are out there. If you’ve missed the mark on your blog topic, then you may find yourself reconsidering a bit and pivoting later on.

That’s some good background on The Academic Society. How’s that gone? What’s happened in that space over the last couple of years?

Toyin Alli: 05:11
As a mathematician, I initially thought that I would only be equipped to help graduate students who were in math or science. I thought, “Okay, I can help grad students in STEM. I went through a program like that.”

As I started reaching out to grad students and getting to know them, I started a Facebook community called The Academic Society for Grad Students. As I was listening to them and helping them, I realized that the things that I was helping them with were not discipline-specific at all. I was mostly helping with time management and productivity.

I thought, “I can help more grad students than only those with math and science backgrounds.” So I started marketing that way. This is grad school survival. I want to help you find that intersection between adulting and grad school and show you how to enjoy your life while you’re in grad school. This goal has been my focus with The Academic Society.

Tell Us About Your Journey And How You Started To Make Money From The Academic Society Platform?

Chris Cloney: 06:13
What ways have you used to monetize that business and grow it into the online space?

Toyin Alli: 06:26
It started with a failed idea.

Chris Cloney: 06:33
All good things do.

Toyin Alli: 06:33
Yeah. As I mentioned, I was trying to create a course. The first course that I created was a course on Trello, an organizational tool that helps you be productive and manage your schedule. It was called The Grad School Toolkit and it helped grad students use Trello to manage their days and their weeks.

I tried to sell it, but I think my audience was just too small. I think if I tried to sell it now it would be fine, but at the time it was a fail. I thought, “You know what? People still need this. This’ll just be a freebie.”

It was a quick little course that mostly consisted of tutorials. I was very discouraged that no one wanted to buy, but I thought, “I’m not going to sell to grad students. Grad students don’t make money.”

Toyin Alli: 07:23
I decided to offer everything for free during my first year and a half in business. I would create mini-courses: little tutorials and masterclasses for grad students. I had a free course on the process of applying for a job in academia. I did a CV masterclass on how to create or update your CV, things like that.

It wasn’t until last January that I decided, “Okay, Toyin, you can do this. I’m doing a disservice to graduate students if I’m holding back things that could be helpful to them.” So, I decided to create a program that grad students needed and would be willing to pay for.

Toyin Alli: 08:16
I created the Productivity Accelerator, which is my accountability program for grad students. It’s marketed more as a productivity asset, but it’s also a program where I pair grad students up to be accountability partners. We do coworking sessions together so they have that accountability. We’re doing work together online using the Pomodoro method. It’s helped me to be the most productive I’ve ever been in my life, and the grad students who have gone through that program have loved it.

So that was the beginning of me creating products and services for grad students and being successful at it.

Chris Cloney: 08:56
I love it. I was going to mention that we were introduced by Dr. Emily Roberts from Personal Finance for PhDs. We got on a call a number of months ago and found that we like a lot of the same productivity tools, such as the Pomodoro method, Trello boards, and staying organized. So that was fun.

Then we started talking about your business and the fact that you’re going to publish a book on Amazon, which is the topic that we’ll get into here today.

I did want to ask about the Trello course that didn’t work out. What do you think is different about this accountability program? Why is it working when things that you had done before either didn’t get finished or didn’t work out?

Toyin Alli: 09:50
I think I figured out the true struggle that grad students have. So yeah, they struggle with time management and productivity. That’s what they say. But really, they also feel isolated. None of their friends are also in grad school. Maybe it’s hard to make friends in grad school. Some programs are very competitive and maybe they feel like they don’t belong. I’m getting emotional about it! They are seeking that connection and I just knew that it was something that they would want.

Chris Cloney: 10:26
It’s great to see that emotion because it shows that it’s a topic near and dear to your heart.

I wanted to talk about how you tried a couple of things but they don’t work. So what makes something work? I’ve identified four pillars for building out a business. I call it creating a mission. They are:

Identify what you want to do
Become an authority
Build a profitable business
Change the world

Most people whom I’ve talked to failed because they missed one of those steps. In your case, it might’ve been around building authority in that space, getting more connections and what I call getting insights from your customers.

Chris Cloney: 11:07
So instead of just building a Trello course that you think they’ll like and giving it to them, identify their true struggle. Do they need to organize things on a Trello board or are they feeling isolated during grad school? You were able to identify the latter because you focused on some of those other pillars of building an online business.

What else have you done since then with the Productivity Accelerators and has there been anything else going on in the academic side that people should go check out?

What Else Have You Done That People Should Check Out?

Toyin Alli: 11:40
During the summer, I ran another model for the Productivity Accelerator because I was planning to write a book. I knew that people are doing a lot of writing for their thesis or dissertation, so I thought, “Oh, maybe we can write together.”

So I did a special session of the Productivity Accelerator just for writing. It was only a week long instead of the usual two weeks and it worked well. It was probably the best Productivity Accelerator I’d had so far and I got so much writing done. The students connected with each other, and it was great. I also launched a program called Side Hustle Summer School for grad students as well as academics who are interested in starting their own side hustle.

Toyin Alli: 12:34
I launched it with a mini-course on how to make money in academia. It answered questions like:

What are the starting steps?
How do you figure out what you want to do?
What’s your why?
Who do you want to help?

I’ve met a lot of academics during that mini-course in my Facebook group who are just excited about trying something and putting themselves out there with a side hustle. So that is also going on. I mostly work on that when school is not in session because it’s a lot of work to build a side hustle.

Chris Cloney: 13:14
Yeah. I forgot to mention that Dr. Alli’s a professor in this area. She’s got her full-time job and doing all this on the side or throughout the summer semesters when she’s supposed to be prepping for her courses. No, I’m just kidding!

Toyin Alli: 13:27
That’s how I do prep. I mostly teach the same things over and over again.

Chris Cloney: 13:31
No, I like it. The point I want to hit there was that in the beginning, a lot of people struggle with letting themselves go down that path and launch something that they will sell to others. They have real business struggles. What I like is that you’ve gotten over these struggles and are teaching others about developing the mindset to start a side hustle.

Let’s say that I’m an academic who wants to diversify what I’m doing or have more options or have some side income. I think they’re all important things. Do you find that this mindset is a roadblock for a lot of people? Do they have trouble giving themselves permission to do this sort of stuff?

Toyin Alli: 14:18
Oh, yeah. First of all, mindset is an issue in grad school as well. Grad school is difficult. You do have to try hard to prioritize yourself. But in the business world and side hustling, there are a lot of mindset issues people have about money as well as their own confidence. It affects their self-worth if no one buys from them. So there are a lot of roadblocks to overcome. Who you are as a person determines which roadblocks you’re going to hit.

Chris Cloney: 14:56
Yeah, I agree. Let’s turn it around now to what is this book about and why you thought about creating it and getting published on Amazon.

How Did You Decide To Publish A Book On Amazon?

Toyin Alli: 15:07
Yeah. Back when I was trying to decide how to get grad students to purchase from me, I also wanted to figure out a way to meet them where they were. I follow a lot of them on Instagram and they’re always reading. They’re always doing these book challenges. “I’m reading 100 books this year” -things like that.

I thought, “Oh, they love to read, they have to read. What if I wrote a book?”

Aside from my blog, I’m not a writer at all. I’m a mathematician, so I mostly write in equations and figures and graphs. My dissertation was mostly equations and figures and graphs. I didn’t know if I could write a book, but I thought, “Let’s see what happens.”

Toyin Alli: 15:56
I reached out to my Facebook group of grad students and said, “You guys, I think I may want to write a book about grad school. Would you be interested in something like that? If you are, what should be in it?”

They gave me all of these great ideas- enough to fill more than one book. I thought, “Wow, they are interested in this. Let me create the thing that they want.”

They wanted a grad school survival guide. They wanted worksheets, they wanted actionable steps. So that’s exactly what I’ve put into my book.

Chris Cloney: 16:29
I love it. I purchased my copy. It hasn’t arrived yet so I haven’t had a chance to read it. I almost thought about delaying this interview until I had, but maybe once I get through it, we’ll have you back on for a recap.

Toyin Alli: 16:42
Part two.

Chris Cloney: 16:44
You mentioned a couple of key things already. One is reaching out to your existing audience and seeing what they need. You also mentioned that there were too many ideas and you needed to cut back. What are some other steps in the ideation process for this book? You mentioned the Grad School Survival Guide. How did that come about as being the number one thing that people needed help with?

Toyin Alli: 17:09
Yeah. I knew what I wanted to call it before I even wrote anything down because I had coined this term: #gradboss. A grad boss is a grad student who has a handle on their life in grad school. They’re well-balanced, they make friends, and they also help others, so I knew I wanted to give my book the same name.

I thought, “How could that topic help someone? Why would anyone want to be a grad boss?” Well, grad bosses survive grad school and may thrive in grad school. As I wrote the book, I came up with the subtitle of “A Grad School Survival Guide” because I realized that’s what it was. I don’t think I knew exactly what it was until I started the writing process.

Are There Any Tips In The Writing Process That You Want To Share?

Chris Cloney: 17:54
What tips in the writing process would you share with somebody looking to go down this track?

Toyin Alli: 17:59
After I reached out to my group and figured out what they wanted, I wrote down some things and tried to create an outline with chapter topics. I went back to the group and said, “All right, I’m doing the book. Here are the chapter topics. What do you think? Did I miss anything?”

Apparently, I had missed some things, so they gave me more ideas, and I got more chapter topics from them. Then I put it all together in an outline with bullet points for all of the things I wanted to talk about: past blog posts, YouTube videos, the past worksheets I’ve created. I had this big working Google doc.

Toyin Alli: 18:54
I decided to do an introduction first. I wrote that out first and then I just went chapter by chapter. I also wrote over half of the book during my Productivity Accelerator for writing, so I had a lot of accountability as I was writing.

I also invited my friend to edit me. Dr. Caitlyn Perry– shout out to her. She’s a professor as well. She read through my book and gave me feedback. After I finished and she finished, I went back through, made some final edits, and then the book was done.

Why A Physical Book Instead Of An Ebook?

Chris Cloney: 19:47
There you go. So this is a real physical book. What made you want to do that? Because I have had people reach out to me, saying that they’re creating an ebook and they want some ideas. My first question is generally, “Why don’t you make it a regular book?”

I have some thoughts around why somebody might do that, but how did you decide to publish a physical book instead of an ebook?

Toyin Alli: 20:12
I think it was always a physical book. Previously, I had a planner for grad students. It was a PDF download because it was free, and I thought, “I wish I could get it printed for them.”

That’s when I stumbled upon Amazon KDP, where you can self-publish paperback books. So I knew that was an option before I got started. Also, when the grad students that I follow on Instagram talk about their book challenges, they’re always holding up physical books. I know they probably also read ebooks, but whenever they talk about books, they’re holding up physical copies.

I also wanted to have worksheets in there: something with actionable steps that people could write in. So that also influenced my decision.

Chris Cloney: 21:06
I love it. You mentioned a couple of big things there.

People can’t hold up your ebook and take an Instagram post of themselves reading it, so that’s a big thing. I also think it establishes a little more authority, which is what I usually say to those who want to do the ebook route. Again, it comes down to mindset. They don’t feel like they’re a person who could have a real physical book in the world yet. So I say, “Okay, well, you can. You’re the only thing that’s holding you back from doing that.”

The worksheets: I love that. I was going to ask you if you put anything in there for people to use.

Chris Cloney: 21:48
So, a lot of great tips there. Anything else that you learned? You mentioned Amazon KDP: that’s the Kindle Direct Publishing platform, which allows people to order print copies of your books as well.

Toyin Alli: 22:02
Yes.

Chris Cloney: 22:03
I’m going to do that with my thesis, probably in the next couple of months. I was supposed to do it directly after finishing, but it’s been over a year now. I’m just going to put my thesis on Kindle Direct so people can print a physical copy. I have one on my bookshelf written by another person in my field. It’s neat to order your thesis and get a nice covered copy of it.

Toyin Alli: 22:21
Exactly. I think that ties in with the first book that I’ve printed on Amazon KDP. As I mentioned before, I have a YouTube channel directed at academic society, and uploading videos is quite a process. It takes a lot of steps, especially with all the options that YouTube has. For example:

What are you going to title it?
What are your tags?
What keywords are you going to use?
What links are you going to put in it?
Are you going to have an end card?
Are you going to do info cards: the little videos that pop up throughout the video?

Toyin Alli: 22:55
Once, I was trying to get ahead and filmed a video weeks before I uploaded it. By that time, I had forgotten what was in the video and what I was supposed to link, so I had to rewatch the video and take all these notes. I thought, “This is a lot of work. What if I just created my own little workflow thing?”

So I created a work page, which is a worksheet to keep track of the timestamps for everything that I talk about.

I thought, “This would make a great YouTube workbook.” So I created one. It’s called [Affiliate] Upload: A Content Planning Notebook for Video Creators, and it’s basically a video upload notebook. I use it every day. That was the first thing I published on Amazon.

Chris Cloney: 23:40
Nice. Yeah, I like the name: Upload. That’s a great name for a workbook on uploading to YouTube.

Toyin Alli: 23:46
Thank you. It’s completely unrelated to The Academic Society, but it helped me so much that I decided to just put it out here for the world in case others want it too.

Chris Cloney: 23:54
Well, that’s a little bit of a test, right? You learned some of the more technical parts of getting something up on Amazon. What other steps are involved? You’ve written this thing and you probably have it in Word or PDF. What do you need to do to get it on Amazon?

What Steps Are Required To Get A Book On Amazon?

Toyin Alli: 24:16
The first thing you want to do is download an Amazon template. You can publish books in all different sizes. They’re called trim sizes. You choose the size that you want and download the Amazon template for it. Within the templates, you can see how much bleed your book has based on how long it is.

That was something I didn’t get right the first time I tried to upload my planner to Amazon KDP. I had text and graphics far too close to the edge of the page, and it would have been covered by the seams. Getting that stuff right takes a little bit of work.

Toyin Alli: 25:10
I downloaded the template for the size of book I wanted. I did 5.5” by 8.5”. Amazon has these awesome templates that have chapter headings, acknowledgement sections, and table of contents already in there.

I just went through chapter by chapter, and copying and pasting my book into the template. That was very easy to do. Then you save it as a PDF and prepare your cover. If you decide to design your own cover, they have some options. They’re not the best cover options, but you can design it yourself. They even have templates that you can edit in Photoshop.

Toyin Alli: 26:02
Those are basically the main two things that you have to do. Make sure the formatting for the inside of your book is good. Then check the formatting for your cover. After that, it’s very simple. You enter your book title and description, upload the manuscript, and then upload your cover. Then you have a live preview before Amazon lets you go to the next step.

In the live preview, they show you where you have errors. They show you if you’re outside of the margins. If that’s the case, you’ll have to reformat your book. Some smaller errors, they fix for you. After you look at your preview and there are no errors, you can go through the next step of pricing your book.

Chris Cloney: 26:49
Awesome. I guess that’s the logical next thing to talk about. How did you go about pricing your book?

How Do You Price Your Book?

Toyin Alli: 26:56

We have the tendency to undercharge when it’s your own work. I don’t know why we don’t value our own work as much as other people do.

The first thing I did was look up how much other people were charging for grad school survival guides. First of all, there aren’t any other grad school survival guides … I mean, maybe there are a couple, but they’re very discipline-specific. I found one for psychology and I found one for education, but nothing for grad students in general.

They were pretty pricey because they were very niche topics. I think the more niche you are, the more you can charge because it is valuable information. Where else are people going to get it from? I also asked my friend and she chose the price for me. You can purchase that book for $19.99 on Amazon if you do the paperback option. The Kindle option is $15.99, if I’m not mistaken.

Chris Cloney: 28:00
Yeah, I got it here because we’re going to include it in the show notes.

So you’ve got to create the manuscript and have it in the right format. A lot of people get mixed up on that one. They think, “Oh I’m going to upload it to Amazon” and then it’s in the wrong format. There are templates and specific style guides that you need to follow. You can create cover art in Canva or Photoshop or get it created for you. We also talked about the upload process and pricing.

What promotion have you been doing for the book since it’s been out, and how are you getting it out there into the world, into more hands?

How Are You Promoting The Book?

Toyin Alli: 28:35
The promotion began before the book was even started. When I mentioned to my audience that I wanted to write a book, it started to build the anticipation. I took them along with me every step of the process. I would say, “Oh, my goodness, you guys, I wrote this awesome chapter. Let me tell you a little bit about it.” I’d say, “I wrote five chapters. I have five more to go.” I would say, “I’m editing now,” and people would just get so excited.

They would always say, “Let me know when it’s out. I want to buy it. I can’t wait until it’s out. When is it going to be out?” So I built the hype before the book was finished. I even showed them a screenshot of the Amazon page when I had uploaded it. I said, “Oh, my gosh, you guys, it’s almost here.”

Toyin Alli: 29:23
So people knew about the book and were excited about it before it came out. Then, after it was out, I shared it with all my networks. I shared it on my social media and shared it with my friends and family. They shared it with people as well, which is awesome.

I have a few freebies. Every semester, I create a new free planner for grad students, and you have to sign up with your email to get it. That puts you in a welcome sequence that I’ve created at my end.

I’ve targeted that welcome sequence to promote my book. I’ll share an excerpt or some takeaways from the book. In every email, I’ll say, “Have you gotten the book yet? You can get it here.” So I do a little email marketing.

I’m currently running a back-to-grad school challenge. It’s August now, and people are just starting a new semester of grad school. I do this challenge, and at the end, I’ll promote my book. When people sign up for the challenge, they jump into my welcome sequence.

So I guess that’s phase two of the marketing and promotion. Then, in phase three, I will get into Facebook ads, Instagram ads. I haven’t started that process yet, but that’s next in my plan.

Chris Cloney: 30:40
You’ve mentioned that there are downloadable worksheets as part of the book. Do people come back to your website to get those or how does that work?

Toyin Alli: 30:47
Yeah, I’ve put the link throughout the whole book. You can go to my website: theacademicsociety.com/gradbossplanner. All of the worksheets I mentioned in the book are also in the planner that I create every semester. Everyone who buys a book gets free access to that planner.

Chris Cloney: 31:06
Are people signing up to your email list as well too? To get that material?

Toyin Alli: 31:10
Yes. Oh, my goodness. This is the biggest growth in my email list I’ve ever seen. This summer, I got to 500 email subscribers and now I have over 800 and I got like over 200 in the past two weeks.

Chris Cloney: 31:26
Oh, that’s awesome. Pat Flynn’s book [Affiliate] Will It Fly? had a companion course that went through the topics in more detail and included videos. I think he said that he was converting something like 25% of people who bought the book. I don’t know the numbers but I’m thinking that book has probably sold tens of thousands of copies by now.

Chris Cloney: 32:15
I’m going through his book [Affiliate] Superfans, and it also offers a companion course. So that’s a tip. If you’re releasing a book, use it to increase engagement. People will find you. I’ve hired mentors, I’ve signed up for courses after reading somebody’s book and thinking, “Oh, this is what this person’s about. That resonates with me.”

How do we move forward or even be more direct and have them be able to sign up for your email list to continue that engagement?

Toyin Alli: 32:40
I’ll add that it’s difficult to track who’s bought your book on Amazon. It’s not my own website, so I don’t know who’s purchasing my book. However, this is a way to find out who’s doing it or at least to get to know them a little more and get them on my email list. So I liked having that option.

Chris Cloney: 33:00
Yeah, and you can divide the number of people that signed up through that avenue. If you make that avenue different than all your other avenues, it helps sometimes. Then you know how many books you’ve sold and you can figure out how many people are coming through.

Chris Cloney: 33:12
That’s it for how to publish a book on Amazon. There’s some great material there. You could reach out to Dr. Alli directly if you have any more specific questions. We’ll definitely include links to The Academic Society and all of her books in the show notes, and I would encourage you to go check those out.

If an academic, graduate student, or professor wants to start building an online business, what should they do first, do you think? What’s your recommendation for people looking to get started?

What Advice Would You Share With An Academic Wanting To Start Building A Business Online?

Toyin Alli: 33:49
Yeah, I think it starts with figuring out a way to help people. Think of something you’re passionate about or you’re really good at helping people with and do a little research first. It’s very easy to say (like I did with that Trello course), “I have an idea, I think this will help people.” I created it and no one bought it.

Instead, do the research and figure out exactly who it’s for. Then contact those people and say, “Hi, can I chat with you about this thing that I’m interested in creating?” See exactly what they want and what questions they have so that your product or service can provide exactly what that person needs. I think going about it that way is wonderful. It consists of multiple steps, but I think that’s where you should get started.

Chris Cloney: 34:37
Yeah, I talked to a lot of folks who have an idea for a course that they want to put out into the world. They’re going to spend a long time creating it and they just need to figure out which platform to put it on. Then they’re going to be off to the races.

We need to slow down a bit because at some point you have to sell this thing. That’s the hard part. Use J.J. Abraham’s definition: a customer’s someone who buys something from you, but a client is somebody who puts their trust in you. Find some clients who resonate with you and then ask them what they need and then provide that because it’s probably going to be totally different than the thing that you came up with in the first place.

Chris Cloney: 35:26
We’ve learned a ton of lessons during this episode: from building a business to how to go about publishing a book on Amazon. Any final thoughts you want to leave the listeners with, Toyin?

Toyin Alli: 35:39
I think it’s important to have a life that you enjoy, especially for academics. So work on building that, whether it’s building a side hustle and for yourself or a full-time business for yourself or just doing hobbies that you enjoy. Having a life outside of academia is necessary to be fulfilled.

Chris Cloney: 35:59
That’s so important, and I didn’t do that through a lot of my grad school, but for the last couple of years, I have invested a lot more in life outside of the T & C office, if you will.

This is a good place to leave off. I want to say thank you again and like I said, once I get through [Affiliate] GRADBOSS: a Grad School Survival Guide, I look forward to getting you back on to talk through it some more.

Toyin Alli: 36:21
Awesome. Thanks so much for having me.

Chris Cloney: 36:23
Awesome. Thanks, Toyin.

Chris Cloney: 36:23
So you’ve been listening to myself, Dr. Chris Cloney and Dr. Toyin Alli from theacademicsociety.com. We’ve been talking about how to publish a book on Amazon. We shared a ton of her story: how she got started, some of the challenges that she’s faced, things she launched that didn’t go the way that she thought they would, and then what the path to success looked like for her and what it might look like for you.

We talked a lot about publishing books why you should consider a physical book instead of an ebook and how the Amazon platform is not that scary. We also talked about the things that you need to do to make that happen.

Chris Cloney: 37:00
So I appreciate Dr. Alli coming on and talking us through this process. As always, you can get the show notes at gradblogger.com/25. We’ll have Toyin’s contact information and you can also find her at theacademicsociety.com.

If you’re reading the book, definitely use the hashtags #gradboss, B-O-S-S on Twitter and Instagram and go find her on there too. I didn’t catch her handle before she left, but you’ll be able to find her if you look up The Academic Society or Toyin Alli. So, thank you as always for listening to GradBlogger. I hope you have a great week ahead and I’m looking forward to bringing you the next episode next week.