Book Marketing: The 1 Strategy That Works

book marketing is kind of a weird subject how do you take this thing that you've put your heart and your soul into and then you put it out into the world and start trying to convince them to actually buy it and read it I'm facing down this issue right now my next book the is coming out September 19th and I've started this process of book marketing this very strange and terrible process of book marketing now there's all kinds of advice out there about book marketing and I am uniquely positioned to actually talk about this now normally this is where I say I'm the CEO of story grid where we help writers build the skills write a book and leave a legacy and that is what we do here at story grid but something you probably don't know about me is I am one of the top book marketers in the world I've been a book marketing consultant for over 14 years I've launched dozens of books to the New York Times Wall Street Journal USA Today and other bestseller list at one point I had five clients on the New York Times bestseller list at the same time I'm the author of The Perennial best-selling book about book marketing titled your first 1,000 copies and I'm still a very highly sought after consultant and my feed to run a book launch starts at $60,000 so this is what I do this is what I'm very good at very well known for and so when we talk about book marketing it's a subject that I have some experience on now in this video I'm going to share with you the one strategy that is the overarching Strate strategy that every author should take when it comes to their book marketing so whether you're a firsttime author with no platform at all or you're a top bestselling author this is the same strategy you have to have for your book the second thing I'm going to tell you is the mindset you have to have in order to have a successful book launch and book marketing campaign that if you don't have this mindset you're dead in the water nothing's going to work it's going to Doom your book for to failure from the very beginning now the first thing you need to know is that most books that sell for a really long time start out small they do not come out with a bang in fact one of the things I hate the most about the book industry and book Marketing in general is the New York Times bestseller list and all of the other bestseller list because they focused on a single week of sales there are so many books that are New York Times bestelling books and other bestselling books and they maybe sold 10,000 copies 15,000 copies when they first came out and then they literally never sold another thousand copies for the rest of the life of the book I also know books that have sold literally millions of copies and they've never hit any of the bestseller list because they didn't sell a ton of copies in a single week and so these bestseller lists are very very skewed towards books that happen to sell a lot in one week but may not necessarily ever sell for a long period of time and a lot of these books that you see come out with a bang and have like a huge first week they fall off a cliff and they never actually sell a lot of copies of the book and I love working on books and I aspire to write books that don't just sell the first week that they come out because I convinced a bunch of people to buy a copy but continue to sell year after year after year in fact quick story here about this uh I once was behind the scenes on a book launch where the author actually hired people on Craigslist in cities all over the country to go in and buy every copy of his book off the shelf in all of the Barnes & Noble and other bookstores that it was in and sure enough that helped put him on the New York Times bestseller list for the first week and I went back and checked a year after the book had come out and it literally had not sold another 500 copies after that first week it was out it's so easy to gain the system that first week especially if you're rich and have a lot of money or happen to be a somewhat famous person but when you think about a book that's actually successful books tend to take a long time to find an audience there is a long lag time for many many popular books in fact many bestseller books that have lasted decades and decades and decades they took a long time to find an audience the book The War of art the first year that it came out only sold about 9,000 copies but then the year after that it sold more copies then the year after that it sold more copies and then now here we are decades in the future and the book still sells and sells and sells so books tend to have a long lag time as far as finding an audience and they're also just harder to consume so I can watch a movie in 2 hours I can listen to a new album for my favorite musician in about an hour but books take a long time to consume and so because of that they just often take a long time to find Their audience and start selling and so what I tell people is when your book comes out you shouldn't worry so much about the first week or even the first month the real launch window is the first two years and so when you're coming out with a book don't worry about whether or not the book does amazing when it first comes out we're focused on we're going to be promoting this book for two years I'm going to get in to how what that looks in just a minute the other thing you have to understand is that books are very quietly selling lots and lots of copies so there are thousands of books that are selling thousands of copies a month and you've never heard of them this is what's amazing about books what people don't understand about the book industry and how they move through our culture is that lots and lots of people buy lots and lots of books that you've never heard of and so don't worry about your book becoming some International bestseller to make it successful you can quietly find your own audience over a long period of time and often that's the best way to do it okay so let's get into this one overarching strategy I promised to share that every author should apply to their book if they want it to be successful so I was talking to an author this week and her book came out last year and we were just kind of riffing we we were having a call about something else and just of course started talking about our books being out and she was telling me about how her first book was traditionally published and it went pretty well but because her audience wasn't huge she couldn't find a good traditional publisher for her new book so she ended up just self-publishing it and she said to me a big part of why she decided just to go ahead and self publish the book instead of keep banging on the doors of traditional publishing is she wanted to just focus on finding people that she knew would love her book and then share it with them first now there are a ton of tactics that can go into book marketing if you go on Google right now and just start searching around for book marketing tactics and book marketing ideas you'll find lists of like literally a 100 different things you can do now most of the tactics out there are just kind of a few of them are pretty good I know this because I've been doing this for so long but the guiding principle for all good book marketing is you finding the person that you think will like your book and then just trying to get them to read it and give it a shot now inside of story grid we have this idea of Sam the single audience member the person you're writing this book for and this is a really important part of writing your book is making sure you have one person you're writing the book for it makes everything about writing your book so so much easier I talk a lot about this in other videos on this channel so I'm not going to go deep into that right now but this idea of you're writing the book for one person so when it comes time to Market your book you should be looking for that one person who are those people that you know will love your book those are the people you're trying to share your story with your book with so with my book the I'm literally going back through everybody I've met all the contacts I've had all the friends I have everybody I know in my life and I'm going through and I'm reaching out to them and I'm asking them if they'd like to read a copy of my new book and I'm making sure that I'm asking people that I know will love my book the deeper that you get into this whole book publishing book marketing world you realize pretty quickly it's often easier to get somebody to buy a copy of your book than actually read it like just think about it yourself let's say that you hate fantasy and you have no interest in Reading fantasy books and then I bring a 450 page fantasy novel to you and I say you have two choices you can either buy this book for me for $30 or you can read it for free and if you don't like fantasy books you'll say I'll give you the $30 so I don't have to read it and so getting somebody to actually commit the time and effort and attention to read your book is often harder than getting them to buy a copy of the book and again understand books take a long time to find an audience the only way you can truly sell a million copies of a book there are no direct marketing ways to do that it all comes down to Word of Mouth it comes down to people actually reading your book and then telling other people to buy a copy so the one strategy that encapsulates all the good book marketing advice and tactics that you're ever going to hear is you're trying to find people that you know will love your book and then trying to get them to read a copy I promise you if they read a copy and they tell other people you'll start selling lots and lots of copies of your book this is what I've seen work over and over and over and so this is what I'm doing for my book the I'm trying to identify people that I think will like the book and that I'm trying to get them to read the book now again this encapsulates all good book marketing tactics whether you have a huge email list of fans that you know love your writing well you already know they love your writing so you're just trying to get them to get a copy of your book and read it so this applies to getting interviewed on podcast or buying advertising or speaking at conferences or social media all you're trying to do is find people that you think will like your book and try to get them to give your book a try and the thing I want you to see especially if you're starting out and you haven't done a lot of this is just do it one person at a time even me somebody that's been doing this for a very long time does have an email list I'm starting by just getting some people that I know one at a time that I think will love my book and I'm just sending them a copy so they'll give it a rate so that's the one strategy that encapsulates all book marketing advice you'll hear that actually works is you're just trying to find people that you think will actually like your book and try to convince them to give it a try now I also promised there was a mindset that you had to have and this came from a time when I was speaking at a workshop and i' had been doing book marketing for a long time at this point and whenever I did workshops or talks or anything people would ask me questions and it had been years since somebody had asked me a question that actually stumped me because I've been doing it for so long and I was an expert but in this particular talk somebody raised their hand and they asked me the question they said looking back over all of the authors you've worked with all the books you've worked with all the campaigns you've run is there one through line one thread through all of them that all of the successful authors they did this one thing and it had the biggest impact towards their success now this stumped me in real time I actually had to say you know what I can't think of anything and had to move on but it stuck with me it stuck in my head for weeks I was thinking like what is it what's that one thing right I've worked with authors that didn't have big email list or didn't have big social media followings or didn't have big influencer connections to help promote their book and yet their book found success so what is the through line and then it hit me and it was something I wasn't expecting to to think of all of the authors that found success whether they were firsttime authors or well-established authors or Indie authors or traditionally published authors none of that mattered what it came down to is the author actually belied it was a good thing for somebody to spend their time and money on their book and read it that the reader would be better off after having done that than before you have to actually believe that your book is good and that people should read it otherwise no tactics no strategy nothing is actually going to help you because when it comes time to asking people to read your book and then tell you what they think and leave a review and all of those things you'll pull back and you won't actually do it so I tell people whether your thing is meditation or prayer or journaling or whatever it takes you've got to get to the point with your book that you actually believe it's great and that people should read it and their life would be better off if they did read it in fact a couple months ago I was talking to a guy and we were he's been around story grid for a long time and been following us for a long time and we were on a zoom call and he looked at me and he kind of paused he goes Tim is the shitthe head good and I looked at him and I was like yeah it's really good and he's like okay man I can't wait to read it so now when I'm in this space where I'm actually reaching out to people old friends old contacts current friends and current contacts and I'm asking them if if I send them a copy of my book will they read it I know that it's good for them to read it I'm reaching out to people that I really truly think will like my book and I actually believe their life will be better they will be a better person at the end of reading my book than at the beginning if you don't believe this about your book you might as well not even publish it your book's going to be dead in the water before it even comes out if you are not sure that people should read your book you got to rethink this you got to figure out why you're doing what you're doing why you're publishing the book in the first place if you don't think it's ready for people to actually read it so those are the two big things the big strategy is find people that you think will love your book and invite them to read a copy and the big mindset is actually believing that if people read your book it is good for them and you it's easy for you to ask them to read a copy of your book now if you're not sure about that with your book that's why we're here with story grid is to help you write a book you can truly be proud of and the first place you have to start is by writing great scenes and so I've got a great gift for you if you go to story grid.com checklist I'm going to give you our 13o checklist on how to write crate scenes this is what we use in all of our workshops and all our training to make sure that our students are leveling up their scene writing so I want to give you that right now go to story grid.com checklist also if this video was helpful to you at all make sure you subscribe to the channel click like to make sure you don't miss any future videos that we come out with also go to story grid.com Che check out all the free resources we have there make sure you sign up for the newsletter so you don't miss anything that we're doing in the story grid universe but as always thanks for being a writer thanks for being a part of our community here at story grid and I'll see you next time

Channel: Story Grid

Views: 8,962

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Id: MASo0A-fj7s

Length: 15min 12sec (912 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 05 2024