5 Reasons My Second Book Didn't Sell Well

Good books, great books in fact, don't always sell. Many authors think if they just write a great book, they will be successful. Well, let me tell you what, my second book, a book that I believe is a truly great book, didn't sell, doesn't sell, will probably never sell, no matter what. But I can use that book to help you. So if you want to know why that book didn't sell and won't sell, so you don't make the same mistakes, well, this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers. I'm also the author of a book that topped Amazon. Yep, my first book, More Than Cashflow was number one in print books. It was in the top 100 books for 45 days. This was a niche nonfiction self published book topping those charts. Can you imagine? Well, more than a decade later it is still selling. But my second book, the New Brand New, which I've heard more than a dozen of my readers say is a really, really great book, doesn't sell. It had a short burst on launch and it got me some speaking engagements. But in general, that book was an anchor of a book. Not because it's not really awesome content, but because it had a positioning problem and a title problem and a lack of reader clarity problem. So it had some problems. Alright, let me just break it down for you. My first book was for new. Dogs. Alright, let me break it down for you. My first book was for new real estate investors and it solved a very specific problem. It helped them figure out if real estate was even for them and if it was how they were going to approach it so that it didn't ruin their lives. Okay, I'm paraphrasing. But regardless, my second book, I wrote it with the experience of someone who had raised millions of dollars in capital for investment deals. But I didn't write it specifically to help people raise capital. In fact, I wrote it more generally thinking, well, I grew my training and education business at the same time with the same approaches to branding and sales. So the new brand you, your new image makes the sale for you was written for a person who wanted to attract business or money to them or without cold calling or using icky sales tactics. It had really great high value content on building a brand that attracts people to you. It's what I've done to build, like I said, the previous businesses and even what I've done to build book launchers. And I do it pretty much with everything I've done with success in my life. The problems with this book. Well, number one, that's not really an audience that you can easily market to because it's so general. You're competing with some really big names in the sales and branding space. It's really not much better than saying my book is for anyone or everyone. In my head at the time, I thought I was leaving it open so I could help realtors and coaches and mortgage professionals and people raising capital, but instead it was so general, nobody really knew who the book was for. I was on nearly 50 podcasts after the book came out and we had great conversations, but there wasn't a whole lot of traction being gained from the book. And I do believe that is because there was never a clear problem solved for a specific audience. It wasn't the book to do this. Compare that to Self publish and Succeed, which is the book to write. A non fiction book that is set up to grow your brand and your business and it gives you the entire no boring books writing process. This is specific. You know who and you know why. This is why I'm an enormous advocate for getting a specific audience with a specific problem that you solve in your own special way. Because. Because it's a game changer and it's been behind the success of three of the four books that have done well and behind some of the best of the best books that we have helped market and launch at Book Launchers. All right, problem two, the title was a big time problem. For whatever reason, this title is one that Nobody can remember 10 podcast interviews in. I knew I had an issue because even reading the title off a page or even holding the book looking at it, you people said the brand new you, not the new brand you. And the bigger problem was that when you went to Amazon and typed in the brand new you, Dori Clark had a book that came up. Dori's more famous in the branding world than me by a long shot. So even if someone did search for my book, they would probably find hers and probably buy it over mine. This is why I am always telling authors not to fall in love with the title. You need to make sure your title passes our checklist, which I will link to at the end. All right, problem three, the strategic plan behind the book was flawed. I was leaving real estate and I wanted to do more speaking. And I was also exploring what else I could do outside of a real estate training and education business. I'd licensed off all my real estate courses and had wound down the education and affiliate marketing stuff I was doing. And I thought the book would open doors to new things. And at first it was leading to that as the chapter title, you are who Google says you are got traction out of the gate and got me some speaking gigs, but the reality was I still had a market and message match issue. Whether it's a book or a talk, it needs a clear audience and a clear hook that matters to that audience. And while this could be tailored to a lot of audiences, it wasn't strategically pointed in a clear direction to make me the person that to go to. I'd done some stuff to start building juliebroad.com, but there wasn't a clear funnel or a clear plan. That makes it really hard to get where you want to go when you don't know exactly where you want to go. Ultimately, if the book had been how to raise capital without Cold Calling for Real Estate investors, I think it could have been very successful and it certainly would have fed into my original business. Now I believe that it can be reworked into a book on author branding for book and business success. So look for that in 2025. Oh, and number four, I got the COVID from 99designs. 99designs is not a bad company, but the designers reuse ideas over and over and over again because they have to make covers to win contests and they don't get paid unless they win. This is a good model for an author who can get a ton of designs and only pay for the one they choose. But for the designers, they have to be efficient. As a result, there's a lot of books out there that have the look and feel of this book. Maybe they didn't use 99designs, but I've talked to two other authors with a similar style cover who did use 99designs. Your cover is vital to the success of your book. There was a recent study by Reedsy and the professionally designed covers outsold the other covers by big, big numbers, not little numbers. I'll link to the full study below. But for nonfiction, it was a 28% increase in sales. Now fiction, those numbers were out of this world. In some categories, having a professionally designed cover doubled the sales. Regardless, a stronger cover would have helped, but nothing really would fix a positioning and title problem. Which is why I'll take this book back to the drawing board and extract some of the great content inside and repurpose it and repackage it for you, my author friends. All right, now you need that title checklist. It's right here. And let's make sure you are super clear on who your reader is. That's right here. After you hit like and say hello down below, click on to the next video because I'm waiting for you.