Self Promote and Succeed Chapter 2: Layered Like a Delicious Cake

Chapter 2 the marketing layers you need to succeed the most common email I get from strangers reads my book is on Amazon and now I need your help to market it. Here's the bad it's very hard to get a book to sell after you've published it on Amazon and nothing has happened for a while. It's like a house that sits on the market too long. Here's the good I did not use the words impossible or never or can't. It's possible to get this book to sell, but it usually takes a cover redesign, content improvements, better keywords, and a renewed sales and marketing effort behind the book. Now here's the best news it's much more effective and efficient to lay a foundation for marketing by layering it into your book writing, editing, and design. Layering in marketing. What does that mean? Layering in marketing? It all begins with knowing what your ultimate goal is for writing the book. Once you know that, then you need what I call the five layers. 1. A connection to and understanding of your audience. 2. A clear brand that communicates your message to your ideal reader so they care. 3. A juicy reason why the audience needs to read your book. The hook 4. Invitations to ask readers to form a relationship with you beyond the book. 5. SEO Search Engine Optimization Using metadata that positions your title, cover, and book copy for marketing success. What do you offer your reader that they're not getting elsewhere? What problems do you solve in a unique way, even if it's only a little more unique than others? And does your book improve your reader's life? This is true even if you're writing a memoir. If you're trying to write something that gives readers hope, how do you address their fears and aspirations? Notice that I didn't ask you about demographics. Knowing your audience and what you want to offer them has little to do with age, gender, education, or economic status. It's about hopes, dreams, worries, and challenges. This was covered extensively in Self Publish and Succeed, so if you followed our NoBoringBooks process, you likely have baked yourself a deliciously marketable bookcake. Let's look at an example of how the first three layers work together. Michael Brenner had a career as a consultant for marketers at big organizations. The challenge he kept bumping into was that people were unhappy in their jobs because of the tendency for company leadership to try to get things accomplished by being mean. To help these organizations achieve better employee engagement and customer connections, he wanted to confront middle managers about their leadership style. Just writing a book, telling them to be nicer wouldn't work. The people who most needed to hear his message were not likely to listen. Instead, he positioned his book against mean people. Mean People Suck became his book title and his mantra. He advocated using empathy as a leadership style to create better teams, bigger profits, and a better overall life. For this message to work, he had to identify a specific audience. Middle managers at big companies understand what their challenge might be, growing and succeeding as a leader, and demonstrate how empathy could get them the results they wanted. He also had to watch out for the trap that so many authors fall into, which is thinking the hook of their book is a message of hope or inspiration that can apply to anyone. You can easily believe the audience is everyone because who doesn't want that message? But if you try to write a book for everyone, it will be important to no one. Not only that, but it will prove impossible to market. Even brands with the biggest marketing budgets like Coca Cola, the Tide, or Samsung aren't marketing to everyone. They know that some people will use their products and some people won't. Even more important, while it might be true that your book is going to motivate, inspire, or give hope to the reader, those desires are not marketing hooks. Let's take the example of hope. The concept of hope could be applied to anyone, but if we get clear on our audience, we could say a book gives hope to single people looking for long lasting love without using an app. Or it gives hope to cancer patients that they can be in control of their treatments and enjoy long and meaningful lives. Or for people who have lost loved ones, it gives hope that there is light amid darkness and lessons in grieving. The more specific, the better. Book Launcher's client, Dr. Leslie Kernison, is a practicing geriatrician and founder of the popular website and podcast Better Health While Aging. While aging is an issue we all encounter life. Leslie wanted to specifically target adults with parents showing signs of declining health. Specific right. By homing in on our audience, she was able to write a book that addresses their specific challenges and questions. She even calls out her audience in the title when youn Aging Parent Needs Help to succeed in your mission, you have to get into details and connect with a specific reader. If you can't do that, you need to spend more time figuring out who your reader is and and how your book will benefit their life. Layer one Ideal Reader Intimacy the greatest sales letter of all time is one that sold more than $2 billion of subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal. Here's how it began, Dear Reader, on a beautiful late spring afternoon 25 years ago, two young men graduated from the same college. They were very much alike, these two young men. Both had been better than average students, both were personable, and both, as young college graduates are, were filled with ambitious dreams for the future. Recently, these two men returned to College for their 25th reunion. They were still very much alike. Both were happily married, both had three children, and both, it turned out, had gone to work for the same Midwestern manufacturing company after graduation and were still there. But there was a difference. One of the men was manager of a small department of the company. The other was its president. It starts with a story that most Wall Street Journal readers can relate to, the tale of two college graduates with shared traits and credentials entering the workforce. But then there's a twist, and the letter eventually leads readers to believe that subscribing to the Wall Street Journal will put you on the path of the more successful of the two graduates. Read us and you'll win at business. The letter suggests it's great copy because it connects to the aspirations and fears of the publication's ideal readers immediately. I'll often post a YouTube video to Booklaunchers TV and someone will comment that they felt as if the video was made just for them. That kind of connected feeling arises from intimate knowledge of my audience and industry. I read every comment I I speak to authors every single day, and I'm an author too. I also write down the exact words people use when they describe their frustrations, when they ask questions, and when they explain what helped. Paying attention to specific details creates the connections you need to get attention for your book. If you're not as intimately connected to your reader right now, try lurking around online forums, Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, influencers, social media platforms, YouTube channels, or anywhere your ideal reader is hanging out. Read the questions, contributions, and answers. Also, read reviewers comments on Goodreads for books in your category. Other websites can be useful like Reddit, Answer the Public, and Quora. Search your topic and see what people ask and how they answer questions. Find communities or topics related to your book subject. Attend live events that attract your ideal reader so you can meet them and learn what is on their mind. You'll know you have a good grasp on your reader when you can do this exercise easily. Imagine telling someone why you wrote your book and how you know it's for them. Complete this sentence Hey, I know you're worried about this insert specifically what this is and you're probably wondering if there is a way to do this without hitting insert. The Common fear, common obstacle, or common objection? I wrote this book so you can insert the desired outcome of your book for the reader. Let me show you. Hey, I know you're overwhelmed with all the things you have to do to write a book, but you're also pretty worried nobody will even care you wrote a book, let alone buy it. And I know you're afraid of wasting time and money on this project. Book marketing is a huge subject and there's a lot you can do. I wrote this book to help you know what you need to do to market your book to achieve your specific goal, whether that's book sales, a bigger audience, a known brand, or paid speaking engagements. When you've nailed a specific problem and how you solve it in a specific way that works where people failed before, you will have their attention and the sale promotional partners will step forward too, because they will see how you can help their audience and make them look good too. 2 Layer 2 Author Brand your perfect pitch appeal to your reader. I've dedicated an entire chapter to this subject in chapter three, so let's move on to the next layer. Layer three your book's hook. Your book's hook is that outcome of an outcome that we discussed earlier. This is the piece that makes your book irresistible, and without a strong hook, no amount of marketing will ever boost your book sales. One of my favorite examples of a hook is in the title of Tactical Lock Picking, a systemized approach to responding to locked obstacles in emergencies. What's the outcome? The reader will be able to pick a lock. What's the outcome of the outcome? By knowing how to pick a lock, the reader may be able to save lives and reduce property damage when responding to an emergency. It's a powerful skill, especially for firefighters and first responders. Brandy Olson also has a powerful hook with her book Real Break the Burnout cycle and Unlock high performance in the new world of work. The first outcome she's promising organization leaders of high complexity teams is to handle burnout. The outcome of the outcome is that readers can create happy, healthy, and engaged employees and achieve a high level of performance. Layer 4 Creating a deeper out of book connection with your reader Research from Kindlepreneur indicates that including a simple line at the end of your book description telling the reader to buy your book increases sales by 3.7%. That speaks to the need to explicitly tell people what action you want them to take in your book description. You may tell them to buy the book now inside your book. You need to tell them what to do too. If you want your reader to join your community, let them know with invitations telling them explicitly what website to go to, what to do when they get there, that is Enter your email address and what they will receive when they do that. If you want them to write a review, you need to tell them where to write the review and post it. This is something to consider before you publish your book because you can create plenty of opportunities for readers to build a relationship with you throughout the book. Of course, sharing your personal story helps a reader feel connected to you, but then you want them to take the next step to strengthen the relationship. Social media connections are okay, but you don't control them. Platforms come and go and digital algorithms suppress or shut down users. It's far superior to get an email address from your reader to make invitations effective. However, consider how to add value and continually serve your reader. It's why you will see different places in this book where I invite you to go to self promote and succeed for various resources. Sometimes a video, a link to a service, or a downloadable checklist or tool is a much better way to serve you and it's a great way for us to connect beyond the Book Layer 5 Metadata and Market Research for Book Marketing Chapter 9 addresses this topic in depth, but let me share some information here to whet your appetite. You can access a lot of ways to do metadata research and more tools will likely emerge over time. We use two primary tools at Book Launchers, KDSPY and Publisher Rocket. There's also K Lytics, which is a fabulous tool for fiction authors and with limitations, nonfiction authors. In Publisher Rocket, you can search keywords, categories, competitors, and more for the purpose of understanding where you'll fit into the market and how that should be layered into your book positioning. As you write, edit and design your book, I recommend you find the category in which you want to compete, then head to the page of each of the top 10 books in that category and read the reviews. What do you offer that is different from those books? Is there a gap that you can fill? Pay special attention to comments like this was a great book for a beginner, but I was hoping for advanced strategies or this book did a great job of tactical tips, but the emotional aspects of this were ignored. If your book addresses the things that are missing from other books, you use that in your marketing. Put those things in your description or other promotional materials. Identify common elements in that category and aim to have some common elements while using your specific title, brand and hook to position yourself to stand out. You'll even want to consider common keywords in Publisher Rocket, KDSPY and even Google, because your title and subtitle offer high value space that can make it much easier for readers to discover your book. Your title also needs to sell your book, so it's an important part of the marketing cake you're baking. Your book title is an important layer of the cake that is tough to change after publication, so keep those keywords in mind, like leaving out sugar or eggs. A cake may come out of the oven, but it won't necessarily be appealing. A book missing one of those layers won't appeal to your reader the way you hoped either. In the next chapter, we'll go into layer two Your author brand who you are is just as important to your success as knowing who your reader is Chapter Summary the Big five Book Marketing Magic Moments from this Chapter one. The best book marketing plans begin before you start writing your book. 2. Your readers aren't numbers or demographics. They are people with specific challenges, fears, aspirations or circumstances to that you can help or support in particular ways. 3. Hope and inspiration are not enough to sell your book, even if your story is powerful. 4. Book marketing should be layered into your book. You need to develop an intimate understanding of your readers, your brand positioning, why you are the person they need, the hook invitations to build deeper connections and metadata that makes your book easily discoverable by readers. Your book is not for everyone and if you try to make it for everyone, it will be important to no one.