Self-Promote and Succeed Chapter 1: Book Marketing Doesn’t Sell Books — So Why Does It Matter?

We are going to record the audiobook for Self, Promote and Succeed and as a experiment and gift, I am going to be giving this to you, my beloved YouTube subscribers for free now. Probably just going to want to listen to this. I think it's going to be really, really boring to just watch me talking and recording this. At the end I will shoot like a five tips and lessons learned kind of recording. I've previously done this in my home. I've previously done it in a studio. Not for this book they'll publish and succeed. I recorded in a studio and that was fantastic. This time, because of my schedule and lack of studio responsiveness, but also availability, I decided to shoot it in the podcast studio in my local WeWork. So I'm still going to upload it to Audible eventually. But first I'm going to give it to you and also give it away on a book funnel in exchange for email addresses.

So I've got my setup.

I'm going to be doing this on GarageBand. We've got a Rode Caster Pro and a Rode Mic here. So it's not high, high level quality, but it's going to be good. It's going to be good enough quality that ACX will accept it. The only caveat here is that there's a lot of noise around this facility so I probably will have to stop midday. There's 20 chapters in my book. That's a lot. But I only have three days to get this done. So that's it. I'm just gonna dive right in and we're gonna get as much done as we possibly can. So hope you enjoy, Self Promote and succeed the no Boring Books way to build your brand, attract your audience and market your nonfiction book.

Written by Julie Broad Narrated by Julie Broad.

Thank you for reading this book Marketing A book is a journey, not a destination. As with any journey, it can be.

A lot more fun and rewarding when.

You have a map, the right tools, and the right people around you. To support your book marketing journey, we've put together a special resource page for you. @self promoteandsucceed.com you'll find email templates to help in your book promotion, outreach, sample.

Launch calendars, the launch strategy menu in.

Detail, videos to support your marketing and more. And if you'd like to have a team to surround you and support you in your journey with, we have courses as well as hands on services to help you. Visit www.booklaunchers.com to learn more or send us an email@teamoklaunchers.com. thank you from Julie and the Book Launchers Team.

Introduction A Peek Beneath the COVID of.

Book Marketing Many good books don't sell. This isn't meant to discourage you, it's meant to inform you and motivate you. Writing a book is a wonderful accomplishment, but it's not the finish line, it's really where the work begins. Publishers know this. For them, a book's success is clearly.

Defined and it's about making money from each book.

Because of this, they strategically plan to make money from every book they publish. And that plan begins well before the book is complete. When most authors choose to self publish, money would be nice, but there are often other objectives in play like brand recognition and business growth. What happens then is that the author often writes the book and then figures out how to market and sell it. In other words, everything that should have been done to set the book up for better sales and marketing hasn't been done. Maybe the author has written a good book, but unless they are lucky, it is not positioned to attract readers. And once the book is on the market, there is a limited number of things you can do to improve the book's positioning and sales. An even bigger issue for many nonfiction authors is that the book sales are one metric of success and often the easiest to measure, but they are not the true objective. The power of publishing a book is that it can lead to something much grander and more lucrative than book sales for you. That may be achieving audience impact, differentiation from competitors, increased personal brand value, lead generation, thought leadership, paid speaking engagements, workshop or course sales, and so much more.

These goals must be carefully considered at.

Every stage in the process of researching, writing, editing, designing and distributing a book so that you're set up for success. Self Publish and succeed the NoBoringBooksWay to write a nonfiction book that sells addresses.

A lot of the early stage requirements to plan and write a book that.

Will achieve your goals and get copies into readers hands. But it didn't dive into the strategic decisions and tactical moves you need to make.

Once you are involved in book marketing.

That'S what's in store for you in the pages ahead. This isn't about how to send mass press releases or print stylish bookmarks to attract an audience. It's also not all about how to use AI to succeed as an author, although AI has quickly become a wonderful way to shortcut some of the research.

And content creation you'll want to do.

What you're about to uncover are high.

Level marketing strategies to plan your own book launch.

You'll also receive expert guidance on the tactical execution of those strategies, along with some innovative ideas. Because book marketing is one part tried and true methods and one part experimentation.

To find what will work for you, your book, and your audience.

There are no guarantees when it comes to book marketing, and looking for them sets you up for scams and disappointments. I don't want that to happen to you. I've witnessed too many companies publish books without proper editing or make big promises like guaranteeing best seller status or fake awards. It makes them money, but it's a major disservice to their authors. After self publishing three of my own books, now four, including a title that hit number one on Amazon overall for print books, winning 15 different awards for my books and helping more than 400 other authors write, publish and promote their nonfiction books with my company, Book Launchers.

I've learned an incredible amount about the.

Hidden pitfalls as well as where the greatest opportunities lie.

Book marketing is full of rewards and fun, but only if you have the.

Right mindset, strategy and tactics. By the end of the book, you will have all that and a little more. If you ever have questions, head to selfpromoteandsucceed.com and download the bonuses we have for you to supplement this book. You can also find my contact information.

So you can reach out.

Feel free to say hello by posting comments on any of my videos at booklaunchers tv. I promise I always read and respond well. Introduction down 20 chapters to go chapter.

One book marketing doesn't sell books, so why does it matter? You want your book to be a bestseller Right now, what bestseller means to you might be different from the next author. For some, it's getting that little orange flag from Amazon. For others, only major bestseller lists like the New York Times or Wall Street Journal will do. Regardless, the path to success is the same. Topping a list requires connecting to an established audience of eager readers or exciting a new audience enough to buy your book. If you can do that, you're going to sell books. And if you can get enough people to act and make their purchases on the same day or during the same week, you're going to top lists. It's that simple and that difficult. My first book, More Than Cash Flow, topped Amazon charts for print books because of my newsletter list and the lists of a few key influencers who simultaneously promoted my book. Together, we sold roughly 3,500 books in a three day period on Amazon CA. The book continued to sell well past that period and stayed in the top 100 print books for 45 days. I'll share exactly how I did it later, but the majority of those sales were due to newsletter lists, mine and those of influencers beyond how to Become a Bestseller, the bigger question you need to ask yourself is do I need to be a bestseller? Be aware that there are a lot of people in the book publishing and marketing business ready to make a lot of money from your not asking yourself that question. When you honestly ask yourself how much your book needs to be a bestseller for you to achieve your goals, you'll realize you're better off spending $5,000 on proven marketing methods to cultivate loud noises. When you honestly ask yourself how much your book needs to be a bestseller for you to achieve your goals, you'll realize you're better off spending $5,000 on proven marketing methods to cultivate long term success than using a gimmick to get a bestseller flag from Amazon. Book marketing isn't overnight magic. It's planting seeds today that you can fertilize, water and watch grow over months and years. But we're not there yet. First we need to cover what is actually going to sell books and what isn't. Then we have to talk about the fact that book sales may not be the most important target for you as an author. Sales and marketing are not the same thing. For a successful book launch and long term gains, you need both and for your mental sanity, you also need to understand the results that are reasonable to expect from your efforts. Marketing is about strategy. It's about creating awareness. You need marketing, especially if your ultimate goal is to become an industry thought leader, grow your brand and build your business. Book sales are a metric that can help you understand how well your marketing and advertising, publicity and promotion works. However, they do not help you accurately understand what is effective in helping you achieve your bigger goals. Marketing is eyeballs and hopefully attention on you and your book, while sales are credit cards and contact information. Now you might think, okay, I want book sales and book marketing will get me those book sales. That is true. Sort of. It is true that the more marketing you do, the more sales you should see. However, the correlation isn't that simple. Let's take PR as an example. If you have an earned media feature, what it's called when you haven't paid for an interview or appearance on a popular outlet like TechCrunch or Good Morning America, you may or may not wind up selling that many books. However, you likely will have gained some exposure and credibility as an expert in your space. If you leverage this wisely. And I'll show you how you can often gain other opportunities, build your brand even more, and increase the size of your platform. That's when you'll start to see a difference and sell more books what you measure matters most Many authors long for that major media appearance. It looks and feels so good to say you were featured on a national show, whether you post it on social media or include it in your bio or both. But it may not necessarily lead to book sales. Does that matter? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on your goals. A friend once introduced me to an author to see if I could help market his book. It had been out for four years and he'd sold 12,000 copies, mostly at speaking engagements. Those are pretty good results for a first time author, but he was disappointed. He made money because the book was built into his contract and increased his fees for speaking engagements, but he didn't receive more bookings, which was his primary goal. That told me that all the marketing in the world wasn't going to help. Instead, he had a positioning issue with his book in terms of what companies would hire him to speak about. If you've sold 12,000 copies without a larger tangible payoff, there's a disconnect somewhere. You see, book sales are great, but they aren't everything. It's essential to measure and monitor other factors besides sales to understand whether a book works for the bigger picture. Plans and goals that drove you to become an author. You could look at book reviews Number overall ratings prestige of the review source bulk sale inquiries leads generated from your book that result in new clients or product sales opt ins to your email newsletter speaking engagements unexpected opportunities invitations to discuss partnership opportunities awards for achievements or other recognition, website traffic or your rates for consulting, speaking and services. Many authors measure book sales against an arbitrary number and feel disappointed if they don't meet it. Before you set out on this marketing journey, figure out what is most important to you. In other words, what is the best way to measure your book's success against your ultimate target? When you know that you can focus on what will get the results most important to you. Self Publish and Succeed hasn't even sold half the copies that More Than Cashflow did in the same period. But I still believe it's a success because a speaking engagement in front of my ideal client group for book launchers landed in my lab as a direct result of an event organizer getting a copy of the book. Additionally, it's led to forums, panels, awards, judging and many other event invites, including being a featured expert workshop speaker at the American Library Association's national Learning event. During that talk I was able to feature a bunch of our authors and promote self published books as credible and worthy of librarians attention. When we turned marketing off for Book Launchers for four months due to a company restructuring, my organized content on Book Launchers TV generated new authors, but the consistent sources of new authors for us were referrals and people who had read the book. Often they were the same. You see, it is much easier for a friend to refer someone to a book resource than to a company sometimes. The book has won 13 awards and received very prominent recognition from people in the independent author world, including a glowing review from Jim Barnes of the Independent publisher. They review 5,000 books a year and he gave the book an absolutely glowing review. This this book is loaded with helpful information and I highly recommend it to anyone involved in or considering self publishing. The book Broad really knows what she's talking about and Self Publish and Succeed is truly not a boring book. Many of the authors who chose to work with us in the last couple of years have done so entirely because they read the book and knew self publishing was for them.

I've received dozens of messages from authors.

Who'Ve written and published a book they are proud of and that is doing well solely because they followed the advice in the book. For me, my book is a success because it's doing what I wanted it to do and more. Of course I would love more book sales, but it's not as important to me as the fact that it helped achieve these other goals. Morning Media Means More Coffee is Needed When More Than Cash Flow came out, I was a featured real estate expert on morning news shows in cities all over Canada. I often had to be in a green room before 6am and ready to sound intelligent half an hour later. The pictures of me in the broadcast studio were really popular on social media, and the television exposure lent credibility to my real estate training and education company at the time. The producers were great and always made sure to put my book on the table when I was interviewed or have it shown at least once during the show. That marketing was very valuable, but it didn't sell many books, at least not directly. I never saw a lift in sales after a television appearance. TV appearances led to more TV appearances, then more referrals and more speaking engagements. Those engagements often came with a table at the back to sell books or give books to audience members. In other words, the media appearances likely led to book sales, but it was not a direct path. More important, it led to the growth of both of my businesses at the time I attracted more investors and many more coaching clients for my businesses. It was a lot of fun for a while and I only began referring producers to other experts when I wanted to focus on other things and get a little more sleep. We've seen the same thing with our authors at Book Launchers, with only one real exception. A true crime book that came out at the same time as the criminal in the story was in court and making major national news headlines. That author's 2020 appearance and other national news channel appearances definitely contributed to a lot of book sales, as well as a movie producer wanting to buy the rights to his book. In the end, the author didn't want all the attention and faded into the background. But in that one case, the media attention did lead to major sales, but that was the exception, not the rule. One of the marketing and PR contractors on our team told me a story about how she landed an author on the Dr. Phil Show. She was pumped up because she thought this was going to rocket her client to the top of the sales charts. It didn't, but the instant credibility lent by Dr. Phil made it much easier to land other major media appearances and higher paying speaking engagements for her client. Understanding this is important because we don't want to discuss tactics until you're clear on strategy and goals. You can spend a lot of time, money and energy on book marketing and book promotion, so let's make sure that you get the results you want from your investments. If book marketing doesn't sell books, why bother? Marketing is important because it builds awareness. You've likely heard the old statistic that it takes seven touch points to get a sale. Rarely will anyone buy something the first time they hear about it. Effective marketing reaches the same person repeatedly until they engage with you. The kind of marketing you must do largely depends on your primary and secondary goals for your book project. We'll get into the specific strategies that make sense for these goals in a moment, but for now, know that book marketing is necessary. It just looks a bit different for each author. For most nonfiction authors, book marketing tremendously benefits your business because it creates a no like and trust feeling that is invaluable. You're top of mind when someone asks for a referral, and your personal brand has greater value, which can translate into higher consulting fees, more clients, and just a lot more ease in your business life. Marketing can open the door for large speaking engagements where you can sell books to the organizer or at the back of the room, your email newsletter list.

And business will also grow as a.

Result of the right Marketing as you expand your audience, you can find partnerships and spread the word about your book so more people buy it. The value of your book goes well beyond its actual sticker price. Your first step is to get clear on what is important to you. Your Marketing Mindset Many authors think they should copy the marketing techniques of successful people in their space, but they don't take into account the years prior to publication when those authors dug deep to build an audience or or held event after event where nobody showed up until they finally found a formula that worked. It's great to get ideas from others and then use a curious mind to move forward with your own marketing. Ask yourself what if? And I wonder if. Don't expect an overnight solution to anything. The majority of overnight bestsellers result from authors building audiences for many years before publication. Book marketing is a long journey, not a one time event like a book launch. The good news is that even if your launch is a bust, it's not the end of your book. Visit author forums or groups and ask if anyone had a slow launch but found success later. It happens all the time in traditional publishing. If a book doesn't succeed within the first three months, they turn their resources and attention to other books. But that doesn't mean you have to stop putting in effort. Go into your marketing journey with the mindset that you're going to create success and make decisions for the end goals you've set for yourself. Remember, marketing gets the word out for your book. It's the act of getting in front of other people's audiences through things like podcast interviews, speaking opportunities, and newsletters while connecting with your own audience. Promotion is when you discount your price or create an incentive to buy your book, as I do with my books. If you visit selfpublishandsucceed.com, you'll see incentives to get your copy, self publish, and succeed. These incentives can include an ebook sale, a two for one deal, or bundling it with other offers for a limited period of time. Advertising is when you pay money for promotions and listings. This could be paying for media placement, running Amazon ads, social media ads or banners on websites your audience frequents, taking print space in newspapers or magazines and more. Advertising is when you pay to get your book in front of your target consumer, bookseller or organization.

Publicity is when you get other people.

Talking about you, your book, and your message. Publicity can take on many forms these days, from podcast appearances and traditional media to blog tours, live streaming or influencer platforms. Publicity is great for thought, leadership and brand awareness. It's often the first thing people think about when they consider marketing, but it is only one piece of a bigger strategy. Each strategy is designed to achieve a specific goal. If you combine them without considering your overall plan, you might not get the outcomes you desire. For instance, most marketing doesn't result in book sales at first. It's essential in the long term, but usually yields minimal results in the short term. Book promotion, however, should yield book sales. You might run a 99 cent deal or maybe you sell several books packaged together. I've done promotions at live events where people could buy my book and get another book free. That's a promotion and the goal is book sales. In my opinion, there are only three reasons authors should pay for advertising. One Attract book reviewers two Build an email database and author platform and three Sell books. All three of these goals are essential and well worth paying for. They also give you valuable information that you can use going forward. More on that later. The key is to understand that you need to get behind your book over the long term. Be prepared to invest time, energy and money into your marketing, promotion and advertising efforts, but also be clear on your goal so you can set realistic expectations and get the results you want. Let's look at some common book marketing goals and how promotion and advertising or publicity can build towards that goal. We're still recording. My screen just went to sleep made me nervous. Goal Book sales tactics promotions 99 cent ebook sales BookBub features 2 for 1 offers incentives for purchase Advertising Amazon Ads Banner ads Social Media ads Goodreads ads BookBub ads Measure of Success Number of books sold per dollar spent Goal Platform Growth Tactics Advertising Promote your book as a lead magnet or sell it for the cost of shipping only. Publicity Use the book to land PR and then drive people to connect with you. Measure of Success the size of your audience. Email list is best, but this could also be social media the phone numbers addresses your network goal Business Growth Tactics Publicity Use the book to put you in front of the right audiences so you attract sales leads, clients or speaking engagements. Measure of Success Measure the leads and the sales if your primary goal is book sales, then promotion and advertising are key. Promotions could involve partnering with other Authors to do 2 for 1 offers or running ebook sales. There are a ton of ebook websites that will run 99 cent deals on your ebook. You can also run promotions through programs like BookBub. Advertising will get your book in front of eyeballs and if you do it on the right channels, ideally those eyeballs are your target readers. You may find select book catalogs in which to buy ads. Or you might pay to place a banner ad in someone else's newsletter. Or you can leverage the power of paid ads on social media, bookbub, Goodreads, or other places your reader may hang out. Your measure of success is the number of books sold for every dollar spent. If your goal is to build your platform, your platform is anyone in your audience, but likely measured by the number of newsletter subscribers, social media followers, or subscribers on a platform like YouTube, advertising and publicity will likely be the best way to get results. You have to offer an incentive for someone to sign up for your newsletter or promise some amazing content that provides added value if they follow you or subscribe to your content. Your goal is to use your book to open the door to a larger audience for other products, services, or books. More on how to do that later. If your goal is to grow your business or get on big stages as a speaker, getting books into the hands of the right people and getting your name known as an expert in a specific space will be really important. This is harder to measure because it can be hard to identify the right people. That said, publicity is a key piece to achieving this goal. The more media attention you receive, the more potential buyers may see you as an authority on your subject, leading to results you can quantify. We have a lot more to cover before you go too deep into the rest of the book, take a moment to think about your goals and what success looks like so you know what type of marketing to focus on. How many books do I have to sell to break even? Are you scared you'll lose money on it or just break even? I have many, many thoughts about this, and the first one is that this is actually the wrong question to ask. Goodbye, break even. Hello incredible returns. When we really get down to the nitty gritty of whether a book is a success, it's rarely about units sold, but instead what that book does for you and your business. My favorite story about this comes from one of my podcast interviews. The host said, you know what? I didn't sell many copies of my book, but one guy read it, decided he wanted to buy my business and he paid me $6 million. So I consider that book a success. I think I probably would too. That was a conversation with John J. Bowen, who has authored more than 20 books. He said, every single book has been a success, but not all have sold very well. Some turned into great lead magnets, generating seven figures in sales. Others sold thousands of copies at events or led to big speaking engagements. And that one copy led to the sale of his business. Many authors try to figure out how many copies they have to sell to pay back the cost of writing, publishing and promoting their book. Most authors of nonfiction books who invest in creating a high quality product have to sell around 1500-2000 copies to break even. A better question than how can you break even? Is how can you multiply your investment by 10? It's gotten very loud in here. A little worried that we're picking up.

A bunch of ambient noise.

Let me just listen. I'm going to take a break while he talks because he's very loud. Of course this depends on your goals and your business. For you, it may look like 10 speaking gigs, a TV or movie deal, 20 new clients, a strategic partnership or brand extensions like swag courses, retreats or workshops. The point is to turn your book into a massive profit producing product. If all you do is figure out how to break even, you're probably always going to break even. But you're limiting yourself by not thinking bigger. What is it that you really want your book to do for you? How can your book be a tool and a vehicle to help you get there, focus and work toward that? Five Things that Won't Help your Book Marketing in the upcoming chapters of this book, you're going to get an enormous list of things you can do to set yourself up for successful book marketing, publicity, sales, and promotion. Much of what we'll cover is going to help you become a thought leader, build a brand, or grow a business around your book. In addition to book sales, you'll learn about building an author platform, ads, ebook sales, the wide array of distribution channels, corporate partnerships, library events, launch events, virtual events, bestseller strategies, media pitches, and so much more. It's going to be a lot. You don't need to do it all, but you need to do a lot in order to achieve your goals. Before we get to everything you should consider doing, let's start by telling you what you should not do. Do one. Don't ask your friends and family to buy and review your book on Amazon. You need reviews on Amazon, Goodreads and wherever books are sold. That said, you really don't want reviews or even a lot of sales from people who are not your ideal readers. This is especially true when it comes to Amazon. This isn't just because Amazon expressly prohibits reviews from your friends and family, but also because Amazon is an algorithm machine. You need to teach the Amazon algorithm to identify your ideal reader. If a bunch of people who would normally buy gardening books buy your book on software strategy because they want to support you. Amazon might show your software strategy book to the gardening community for a long time. That's going to hurt your sales, not help them. Your friends and family can help you in other ways, like asking the local library to get your book. But when it comes to buying your book and getting reviews, let's focus on getting that to happen from people who are your ideal readers. Number two don't spam groups online looking for reviews or book sales Add value to the groups you're in. Answer questions, cheer people on. This takes time and effort. Over time, by supporting others, you will uncover opportunities to pitch your book as something that brings them value. Or someone will ask you about your book and you can share. Until then, you're in that group to help spam groups and you will lose your network along with any book sales. 3 Don't treat your book like a hobby. Even if your book is a side gig or a passion project, being an author means you have a business to run. You have to invest in the success of your book. You will have revenue. You'll have things that you can write off for tax purposes, you'll have things you need to buy, and you'll have business decisions to make around your book. We'll talk about business considerations later. For now, invest money where it makes sense, protect your assets, and most important, plan for your success. Number four don't look for easy wins. Occasionally a book hits big because it covers the right topic at the right time, but that is incredibly rare. More likely, you're going to work for years after your book is out. An investment of $150,000 might buy you a spot on a bestseller list on top of the costs incurred to create your book and brand. But you better have a big way to capitalize on that to make up for your expenditures. Buying a list doesn't buy people who actually read your book, so if your results need to come from readers, you're out of luck. The vast majority of authors have to find success the hard way, which takes consistent effort over time. Know that if you haven't already built the audience for your book before it comes out, you're going to be building it afterward when it's harder to generate the momentum of a launch. If you do something every day, you'll find success in the long term. Number five don't try to do all the things there's a lot to cover in this book. Please don't freak out that you'll never be able to dance on TikTok and stand out on Instagram while building an email list and growing a speaking business and building a course and selling your services all at once. Tackle one thing at a time. You don't even have to do all these things. You will never find me on a TikTok, for example. Find the tactics you like and that are getting results. Then double down on them and add to them. Let me say that again for you to really let it sink in. There are hundreds of things you could be doing, but you don't need to do them all. There are also things that you should stop doing. Stop assuming someone will say no before you even ask them. Stop trying to do everything yourself. Book marketing is a team sport. You need help, even if it's recruiting your son or your daughter to help you. And for goodness sake, stop trying to sell your book to everyone. Everyone is not your market. You get the picture, right? Okay, now that we've covered some of the things you don't need to do and shouldn't do, let's get into what you should consider doing and when. Chapter summary 1. Book marketing doesn't always lead to book sales and it often takes a lot more time. Set your expectations and plan the right tactics for your specific goals. 2. Big media features and appearances have benefits beyond book sales, which is good because you often won't see an immediate increase in sales. 3. Promotions should sell books. 4. Advertising can support book sales, audience growth, business development and other bigger picture objectives, but paid ads should have a clear, measurable objective. 5. Most important, make sure you match your big picture objective to day to day tactics and measurable goals.