5 Secret Strategies Bestselling Authors Use to Launch Their Books (That You Can Steal Too!)

What if I told you that best selling authors aren't always great writers? Sometimes they hired a great writer and sometimes their book is actually just okay. But what they are always is savvy marketing minds with great strategies. Behind every chart topping book, there's a set of powerful tactics that most people don't see. These aren't just random tricks, they're proven strategies used by top authors time and time again. If you want to know what five of these insider secrets are, well, this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad, Founder of Book Launchers. Today we're diving deep into a world of successful book launches to uncover five secret strategies that bestselling authors use to launch their books. Now, the first strategy is one you won't want to hear if your launch is tomorrow. But the first strategy is Drumroll. They spend a massive Amount of time in pre launch My favorite story of this was from author and speaker Vanessa Van Edwards. She was sharing her book launch stories and how her book was done for more than a year while she did media tours, called in favors from all her friends and fellow authors, and essentially spent that entire year marketing the book before the book even came out. She said she continued to do that for about three more months post launch and then pretty much went into a year of hibernation and recovery because it was so much work. Which when she laid out this strategy she uses for her New York Times bestsellers and her chart topping launches, you know it's something that you could do but you probably don't want to do. Imagine if you spent an entire year where your primary focus was to sell your book. When you booked speaking engagements, you had them pre buy your book in bulk. You went on every podcast you could and asked them to release your episodes the week of your book launch. You prerecorded media and created a ton of content for social media and your newsletter, all to promote pre sales of your book and then promote the launch. This would also mean you've spent time lining up press tours and book tours for the month of your launch. Even if you don't have an audience today to sell books to. If you spent an entire year doing all of those things with the singular focus of selling a lot of books for your launch. Of course you're going to have a successful launch, but most of us are writing a book to supplement or support what we do full time. We're not full time authors, so it's just not feasible to spend so much time doing that. However, a big long work filled pre Launch is something that many of the most successful nonfiction authors do. Let me point out something here. It might seem like an author is doing a ton of things in their launch month, like they're suddenly everywhere, and there is an element of that. But so much of that work was completed three, six, nine months in advance. And it's orchestrated to happen at launch. So if you can sit on your book after it's done for a year and do all that, you're going to have a great launch strategy. Number two, build a base of people who are excited for your launch. The authors we've worked with who have had the biggest launches, like Kathy Joseph, author of Lightning Tamers, Nick Hutchison, author of Rise of the Reader. Rob Berger, retired before mom and dad. They all had great book launches. And they had one thing that some authors don't have large audiences. Kathy had a really big YouTube channel when she launched her book. It actually was fun to watch because while she was writing her book, her YouTube channel was blowing up. Nick had a large Instagram community through his brand Book Thinkers. And Rob had spent a long time in the financial industry and had a strong newsletter list and a lot of industry contacts that supported his book. These audiences were years of work in progress to build. It was not an overnight solution. And no amount of book marketing can compete with an existing audience when it comes to a big book launch. Publishers know this, which is why a lot of deals don't happen. Unless you can prove you have a path to sell a lot of books through your own audience. You don't have to have hundreds of thousands of people in your audience like these folks to have a great launch. Jillian Gertzen, who worked with us years ago on her book Elephant in the Gym, had an amazing launch from a list of 1,000 people. The key was her 1,000 people were engaged and interested in what she had to say. In many ways, her 1000 were more valuable than people with a hundred thousand because they were listening to everything she had to say. They, they supported her on this book journey and could not wait to buy her book and tell everyone they knew about it. How do you do that? Well, you have to start where you are. It's the only place you can start. But start today and start building your newsletter list. Create a high value opt in item. Need a sample example? Well, go ahead and visit booklaunchers.com 7 steps to get our 7 steps to write a book that is set up to sell workbook. Then when you have an opportunity to get in front of someone's audience share that high value item that you've created. You can run ads or submit your giveaway to sites that will run email newsletter offers. You know, I think I'll actually do a video on these items because that is a subject we haven't quite covered yet. So if you're interested, be sure to let me know in the comments below and subscribe to the channel with those notifications on so you know when I've put that video out. If you're on social media, post high value content and offer your freebie here and there as well. Little bit by bit you will build an audience. And if you are giving high value content, you'll find that you will build an audience that will be there to support your launch with buying your book, posting reviews and telling other People now let's go into strategy number three. I kind of alluded to this one in what I was talking about already, but they leverage other people's audiences. In real estate we had OPM other people's money. In Author world we have OPA other people's audiences. And this is my favorite strategy. It's the strategy that bumped my first book to be number one on Amazon for print books and kept it in the top 100 for almost two thirds of a year. It wasn't my audience or even a ton of time in presale. It was a handful of people with medium to large audiences that were perfectly positioned to promote my book because my reader was their audience as an example. My book, by the way, was more than cash flow, the real risks and rewards of profitable real estate investing. And Nick and Tom Caradza of Rockstar Real Estate in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, were probably the biggest reason my book topped the charts. Their audience of about 40,000 email subscribers were precisely my target audience for that book. And when the book cracked the top 10 print books on Amazon, they were the ones that were that had decided it was going to number one. And they sent multiple emails to their list promoting the book. And it worked. Their audience trusted them and took action when they told them to. And that is so powerful. I was at the summit of greatness put on by Lewis Howes and his speakers are on stage unpaid because he helped them by leveraging his audience. Rory Vader, who's the founder of Brand Builders, who many of our book Launchers clients work with, started his new business because of Louis, and all his clients in the beginning were as a result of Louis putting him on his podcast. Never underestimate the power of someone else's audience. All right, strategy four Be everywhere. You probably have to say yes to everything. When I did my big push for more than cash flow, I had tons of people say to me, I see you everywhere. And for a while, I was everywhere. I said yes to everything. It was a lot. And it was all I did for the better part of a year until I finally started to say no to a lot of the invites. But it worked. And that massive effort sold a lot of books and built momentum that still rolls through to this day, helping me sell that book without me doing anything else. Your book launch is not the time to be picky. We have a lot of clients that come to us and say, okay, I want to be a bestseller and get speaking gigs. I don't have anybody in my audience right now, and I don't have a big network. But I also don't want to waste time on small podcasts or with small events. Well, when you're David Goggins or Seth Godin, you can be picky because almost everyone knows your name and will buy your next book because of who you are and what you've done already. But if you're not that well known, saying yes to everything for a while can go a really long way. And I can tell you that some of the smaller events and smaller podcasts have actually been the very things that led a client right to me or opened the door to a phenomenal opportunity for me or for some of our clients. Maybe that thing only sold 10 books, or maybe it didn't even sell any, but I landed a massive opportunity or a small niche experience that grew the business. At some point. I get it, you have to protect your time. But if your goal is a bestseller and massive momentum from your book, say yes. Strategy five. Those bestsellers, they have a big team behind them. They're not doing this all alone. There are entire teams of people behind the sales of thousands of books. Who's on that team? Well, it depends on the author and their goals and what kind of business they have. But you can almost guarantee there is a book marketing strategist of some kind. This could be a company like Book Launchers, but it could be a publisher or a marketing mind who is in house at their company. There's likely someone who manages social media, possibly a team around video creation or just a video editor. There's also probably an agency of some kind doing pr, podcast or speaking outreach, and there's probably an ad expert running social media and or Amazon ads. We do almost all of that at Book Launchers, by the way. So if you'd like our help, you can contact us@booklaunchers.com apply and we can have a call and chat about it Ultimately, there's one thing I know about success. It is not a solo pursuit. The bigger you dream, the more help you will need. Of course, you can also grab a copy of my book, Self Promote and Succeed to help you along. And if you've already read it or listened to it, please post a review. I've given so many away for free that I haven't had as many reviews on this book, so I'd be so grateful if you'd post a review. And if you haven't read it, you can grab it or you can go to selfpromoteandsucceed.com audio to listen to it for free. To help you get ready for your big launch, here are four launch strategies to review and this video right here is the one YouTube recommends you watch. Now go on, click on over and comment when you get there. I'm waiting.