Julie Broad (Book Launchers founder and four-time author) explains that many times the person who purchases a book is not the eventual reader, and that recognizing this expands marketing opportunities. She gives concrete examples — parents buying for teens, professionals/organizations (HR, corporate trainers) buying presentation books for staff, prisons/outreach programs sourcing books for formerly incarcerated readers, mortgage brokers/realtors buying copies to give to clients, and retailers/clinics (pet stores, chiropractic clinics) selling topic-relevant titles — and recommends authors identify who in the reader’s life or which organizations already help the reader and target those buyers as part of a book-marketing strategy.
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Many times the person buying your book is not the reader. Have you thought about that when you're working on your book marketing strategy? If you haven't, well, you're almost certainly missing opportunities and sales. So this video is absolutely for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the book broad. I'm a four time author, including the author of a book that topped Amazon in print books as well as I'm the founder of a fabulous self publishing services company called Book Launchers. At Book Launchers, we've worked with more than 450 authors and I can tell you that so often the buyer of the book is not the reader of the book. And when an author realizes that, the doors of opportunity start flying open. What do I mean? I'm so glad you asked. This is really true. If you're writing a topic that you want to reach young adults or teenagers with, you're writing the book for that market, but you also want the parents to buy it. So you essentially have two audiences that you have to reach with this. We also find that many authors are writing a book that will be given to the reader via a therapist, accountant, a lawyer. So know how your book will get into the hands of your reader because it's not always the reader buying it directly. Let's take a practical example that applies to a lot of nonfiction authors that are doing speaking and consulting. We'll use Dan Fraser's book Kick Ass Presentations. Sure, you might buy this if you want to be better at delivering presentations. There's a direct to reader angle for this book. Absolutely. But there is a huge direct to HR or corporate training angle here. There are tons of horrible PowerPoint presentations being delivered in the corporate world every day. And if the presentations are better, the messages will be heard, which should lead to better alignment, profits, company culture and so much more within organizations. Those are huge selling benefits to a buyer within an organization. And that buyer is likely to be putting on the training, not reading the book. Another example is from Gregory Lebeit and his book the End of Recidivism. By the way, that title, oh, I struggle with that title because I struggle to pronounce it and spell it. But apparently that's just my own personal struggles with saying and spelling it because he's done very well with his book, so he knew what he was doing when he chose that title. So go Gregory. Now, this book, the ideal reader is someone who is in in prison or has been just released. That person is not likely to be the one buying the book. The family of someone who is incarcerated is likely to be the buyer or anyone from the many outreach programs that try to keep people from being imprisoned. Again, the market for the people who will get the book to the reader is much stronger than marketing to the reader directly. So marketing for a book like this is to get yourself into prisons, find the outreach programs that are helping those just released and so forth. I mean, there's such good evidence when you just read the reviews. This one review right at the top, it says, I work in a local jail and I am part of a team that brings in substance abuse programs. And she gave the book to one of the people she's working with in the jail and she's putting it in their library. That's your core market. She even says in her review that she hasn't read the book yet, but she's been using it and the people that she's given it to have been helped. There is always a buyer for your book that is different than the reader for your book. Have you considered the buyer for your book along with the reader in your marketing efforts? One more example. My book, the first one, More than Cash Flow, it sold a ton of copies to mortgage brokers and realtors. Some read the book, but most were giving the book to clients because they loved the advice in the book. And the more equipped their clients were to do good quality real estate deals and make good quality real estate investing decisions, the better it was for their business. The book benefited everyone involved. I had a couple of mortgage brokers buying the book from me by the case and getting me to sign copies so they could give them to clients free. And this was going on for years after the book was released. If you've written a book about the trauma you've experienced, have you thought about the therapists and support groups that might want to have your book on hand as a resource? If you've written a book on business finance, have you thought about the accountants or business attorneys that might want to give your book to their clients as a gift? Or the local chamber of commerce or business group that might have you come in and do a talk and have you sell the books to their group? It's smart book marketing to be thinking about your reader and think about what problems do they have, what do they need and aspire to, and who is already trying to help them with those problems? Because when you think about that and you think about who is in the reader's life helping them with their business, their life, and the other problems, and then you think about how you can appeal to that person or organization to get your book into their hands to pass along to your reader. You've opened up so many more doors. Of course, you can also think about who sells products and services to your reader as well, because you might be able to create a selling opportunity. Saha Azidin has been successfully getting her book into pet stores around her because her reader is also their customer. We had a book on CBD Oil many years ago that was also getting sold out in chiropractic clinics because their patient was the ideal reader for the book as well. Did this give you an idea? Let's chat about it in the comments below after you've subscribed to the channel and click the like button. Of course. Now this video is all about creating an Alex Hormozi launch. And maybe you don't know who he is or why his launch was legendary, but this video has some rock solid advice that every author should know about. Or if you're not interested in that, this video is the latest and greatest from the channel, and I promise both are worth a watch. So click on over to one of these videos and then say hi when you get there. I'm waiting.
