Does Your Book Dedication Sell Your Book?

Fun fact for you. According to some research David Chilton's company did around book marketing, 80% of readers read the dedication of a book. Compare that to the introduction and other book matter at the start of your book that most readers skip. And my bet is that you're not even thinking about your reader when you write your dedication, but you should be there reading it. Stick around so you can stand out in the sea of books coming out by making one tiny little change to your book. Hey, I'm Julie the Book Broad, an award winning author and the founder of a fantastic company called Book Launchers. Your fabulous professional self publishing team helping you write, publish and sell nonfiction books that will grow your business and make you money. We've talked about the importance of the handful of first pages in your book before, but we haven't yet talked about that one single page with usually only one or two sentences in your book, where you dedicate your entire book to someone or a group of someones. You may think that this page is just something special that you get to have all to your sleep to do whatever you want with as an author, and it kind of is. But if you're a smart marketing author, and you should be, you will realize that this is the first taste of what you like that the reader gets. So do you want to make a good first impression? The answer is yes. So have you made them curious? Do they feel even a tiny bit more connected to you after they read it? That's something you should be thinking about when you write your dedication. Here's my first dedication that I wrote before I knew anything about book marketing. To my grandpabroad, or more than any property he owned or any business he ran, nothing was more important than his family. That's the dedication in my first book, More Than Cash Flow. I don't think I crushed it as far as dedications go, but it actually sets the tone for a book that is all about why you need to make better decisions and not focus on the money you can make as a real estate investor, but rather thinking about the life that you're trying to create when you buy these properties. Thomas Gabor recently launched a book called Enough Solving America's Gun Violence Crisis. His dedication says, to the victims of gun violence and their families as well as the activists, researchers and healers working to alleviate the suffering from the scourge. I think that's a great dedication and it also sets the tone. It makes you feel the impact of this problem and how widespread it is and how many people are trying to help and fight it. Depending on your book topic and your personality, you could get funny with yours. Let's see, what could we do in Chilton's course on book marketing? Highly recommended by the way. Hands down the most comprehensive book marketing I've taken. I'll post a link below. He said one of his favorite book dedications was when an author said to my two fabulous wives, I pray you never meet. Lynae St. John has a book called Read A Parental Primer for the Talk. She has a two part dedication, but the second part is really focused on her reader and shares what she is offering to everyone to give their children in her book. It's a great start. Here's her dedication to the generations that come after us. I wish all, all of you passionate, healthy, loving sex lives free of shame, guilt and stress where you love and are loved deeply in all the ways you define it. Take care and love one another. Her book's about talking to your kids about sex, so it's a great setup. The dedication is your opportunity to set the tone for your book, so don't feel you need to dedicate it to your spouse and kids. And your dog can't read. So seriously, you don't have to put it to your fur baby. So think about your reader when you write your dedication. Set the tone, create curiosity, and maybe make them feel a little bit more connected to you. This tip. Smash that thumbs up button. Go ahead, try it. It feels so good. Now I'm curious. Who are you going to dedicate your book to? Share that in the comments below. And when you comment on the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some sweet book launcher swag. And while you're here, make sure you've subscribed to the channel and turned those notifications on. That way we can hang out in the comments after a video comes out because I'm always the most active in responding in the day or two after a video is released. Now if you haven't watched my video on creating a killer table of contents for your nonfiction book, that's must watch material. So click on over to that one or if you've already seen that one. This recent release will also help you out and I think you'll enjoy I'll see you on the next video.