This is a short transcript excerpt from a Garlic Marketing Show podcast episode (Ian Garlic interviewing Julie Broad) about how authors can make a published book successful. Julie emphasizes there are no guarantees or gimmicks for guaranteed bestseller status; instead success depends on defining concrete goals (e.g., becoming a paid speaker, getting clients in a target industry) and writing/positioning the book for the intended readers. She also frames a printed book as one of the smartest pieces of marketing—long-lasting, paid-for material that can sit on desks, be passed on, and function as durable marketing collateral.
So even if someone didn't publish the book, you know, this is great, but once someone does publish a book, I mean, how. How do they make sure it's. How do you make sure it's successful?
Well, there's. There's unfortunately no guarantee. Like, that's. That's the thing. You know, people are always, like, guaranteed. If somebody's guaranteeing your book is going to be a bestseller, there's a gimmick, right? There's some sort of a gimmick. They're going to game the system. And, you know, if. If all you want is to be able to post on Facebook and say you were a bestseller, then, cool, go for it. But if you want your book to actually hit and have results, then the biggest thing is you focus on what's most important to you. And so as a business person thinking about your goal, are you doing this because now you want to be a paid speaker? Are you doing this because you want to get clients in a certain industry and think about that particular goal and who is going to read your book and what makes you unique to write the book that those people will want to read? And if you put all that together, then if you define success as my business grew 10 times as a result of this book, or now I'm getting paid $5,000 to speak where I used to speak, for free, then your book will. If you've planned it out that way, your book will more than likely be successful. You know, trying to say, I'm going to be number one overall on Amazon, like I said, it was really. A lot of things happened all at once that were lucky for that to happen, and it would be very hard to repeat that over and over again. But making a book successful for you so that it achieves your goals. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. And that's crucial. I mean, it's crucial in marketing. And book is a piece of marketing for the most part, right?
Mm. I mean, I like to. I love books, so I never want to diminish it, to call it, you know, a business card or just like a brochure, because I treasure them. But at the same time, it's the smartest piece of marketing you could ever have. Because if you have a printed book and you give it to people, I mean, unless they hate the book for some reason, they're going to keep it, they're going to sit it on their desk, they're going to put on their shelf, they're going to pass it to other people, and they paid you for that book in a lot of cases. So you got paid to give them marketing material that lasts for years.
