Self-Promote and Succeed Chapter 8: Bestselling Book Guaranteed

Chapter 8 the Siren Song of Sales Numbers All About Bestsellers when my first book topped the print book charts for Amazon, I tried to update my description to include Amazon overall number one bestseller. Amazon rejected it. It's against their policy to say Amazon bestseller in the description. It was also rejected from the book cover. It seems ridiculous, doesn't it? Not only did I have screenshots proving the bestseller status, but but Amazon would also be able to check it themselves and see it was true. But that is what happens when an author tries to include this claim on their Amazon listing title or keywords. Anyone, absolutely anyone, can have an Amazon bestseller. It's not hard and it's not a big deal. Getting that coveted orange flag will not change your life, but for many authors it feels like an item they must check off their to do lists. I get that topping the charts was definitely one of my big wins in life. But please don't pay a company to make you an Amazon best seller. It's definitely not worth it. The reality is that you can get that flag pretty easily without paying anyone. There's a bigger issue too when you pay a company specifically for the guarantee of becoming an Amazon bestseller. Most companies first help you choose an obscure category for your book. That makes it easy to rank for metadata, which includes category selection and pricing decisions, is coming up. Then they either have their own list of people they give gift cards to buy books with, or you're put in a group with other authors on a designated day. Everyone discounts their book to 99 cents and you buy one another's book on that day or the assistants all make a purchase. If there's 25 to 50 people in the group, you can easily get to number one in most lower level Amazon categories. These aren't book readers and you better believe Amazon knows when an ebook is purchased and not read. Even worse than the fact that you haven't sold that many books and the books you sold were to people who won't read them or post a review. You've messed up the algorithms on Amazon. A friend of mine with a real estate book did this and one year later the also bots on his Amazon listing still showed books on divorce, the law of attraction, and other woo woo type subjects that had absolutely nothing to do with real estate. It's no wonder he couldn't get his book sales moving. Amazon also doesn't like these quick hit blips. The algorithm rewards authors whose books have consistent conversions to ideal readers. How does this Amazon algorithm work? Amazon is a mysterious book selling machine, isn't it? And it has various tentacles with different lists with for Amazon Sales Rank and Amazon Best Sellers. When you go to Amazon's product listing for a book, you see the COVID title, subtitle and description. As you scroll down, you see books you may like and related or recommended products. Then you see Editorial Reviews and an about the Author section. Finally, you get to the Product Details, which has the Bestseller ranking. What is that? Sales Rank. It's calculated by an Amazon algorithm and is not a measure of your overall sales. It's a measure of how you are selling relative to the other books in your category in that format for that store. Because the print store is different from the Kindle. In Audible stores, the sales rank number is not a matter of highest number wins. Lower numbers mean you're actually selling more books. This number is based only on sales. But not all sales are treated as equal. Sales that occurred in the most recent hour are given more value or weight than sales that occurred yesterday or even half a day ago. There are a lot of online sites that talk about this, but one of the best sources is David Goggren's book Amazon Decoded. Sales Rank is updated hourly, but it's not something that happens immediately. There's a lag. It can take hours for your sales rank to reflect the sale. All Amazon Best Seller rankings are based on Amazon Sales Rank. Amazon made changes to how sales were ranked after too many people used gimmicks to get books flagged as best sellers. So you're no longer rewarded for a single push of sales. Let me repeat this because I know you're still secretly coveting that orange Amazon flag. I know it. I can read your mind. Amazon wants conversions on a regular basis. A one time push plus continued sales is good. A one time boost in sales and then no sales is not good. You will be rewarded on Amazon for consistent momentum and conversion. Focus your efforts on generating ongoing sales and Amazon will help you sell your books as long as you don't try to game the system. It's also important to know that metadata matters a lot to Amazon. Choose the right categories, relevant keywords, and sell consistently. So you sit beside the books your ideal reader is already browsing and set yourself up for more success. New York Times Bestsellers maybe you're thinking I don't care about Amazon. I want to be a New York Times Best Selling authority. I get it. My ego sometimes plays tricks on me, trying to convince me that I have to have a highbrow endorsement to be in the publishing business. How can I possibly write a book on Marketing a book if I've never been on the NYT Bestseller list, but when I tell my ego to eat a sandwich and focus on the facts, I realize that the title would make anyone feel good, and for some folks it might translate into a higher paying career as a consultant or speaker. For the average person marketing a nonfiction book, however, it's not worth the lost sleep or money. It's a game, and if you're at a point in your career where you have energy and resources for the game and a strong desire to win, go for it. For the rest of us, it's much more important to focus on the primary goal of why you're writing a book and aim for that result. So long as my books help people, support my team at Book Launchers, and ultimately grow Book Launchers by attracting our ideal authors, my books are doing their job. As noted earlier, the New York Times Best Seller list is curated by the editors. You still need to sell thousands of books through approved channels and you have to be deemed worthy of their attention. The channels also need to be diverse. In other words, you have to have sales that are distributed across outlets. Amazon alone will never get you on this list. You also need to sell somewhere around 5,000 to 10,000 copies of your book in a single format. If you're self publishing, I would just pretend this list doesn't exist because you and your book have to be a unicorn to get on it Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and USA Today Best Seller Lists if you're feeling defeated, you shouldn't. Some pretty big lists are still open to you, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and USA Today Best Seller lists. These outlets use NPD Bookscan, which collects point of sale data to compile their lists. Barnes and Noble, Hastings, Target, Walmart, Costco, Amazon plus all the independent bookstores across the nation all report back to npd. To qualify for the Wall Street Journal list, you'll likely need to shoot for at least 5,000 book sales in a week through these various channels, but some authors have reported hitting it with 3,000. Of course, the number changes week by week depending on the hot titles you're up against in any given week. The list is also divided by format, so it can be challenging if you sell 5,000 copies split between print books, ebooks and audiobooks. Washington Post best sellers alternate between hardcover and paperback lists each week. They count hardcover, paperback and ebook sales and use a combination of MPD reporting and Amazon reporting. The interesting thing about the Washington Post list is is that it includes Kindle Unlimited books The Post is also the first publisher to syndicate Amazon Charts Most Read List this list measures the books millions of Amazon customers are really reading and listening to by looking at the average number of daily Kindle readers and Audible listeners each week. USA Today ranks all print and ebook sales from select groups of booksellers in one massive list, which can be easier to hit than a single category like hardcover or ebook. Each list has its own nuance. If making one of these lists is vitally important to you and you don't have a strong platform, you can hire a company to get you on them. This cost is somewhere between $30,000 and $100,000 to buy your way on these lists, but that doesn't mean your ideal reader is buying your book, reading it, and wanting to hire you or put you on a stage. If you go this route and pay for placement, you had better have another way to monetize that title of Best Selling Authority. Hitting these lists requires coordinated timing of sales. Most of us need to provide some sort of incentive to drive people to buy during the period of time needed to get on a list. This is the reason why we recommend the Maximum Momentum launch strategy in combination with the periodical best seller launch strategy from the previous chapter. It also helps to funnel some bulk orders through companies that report individual sales back to npd. This takes a lot of effort and it's why most people hire a book launch coordinator if they're really serious about these lists. Your Book Birth how are you measuring success? When I was pregnant with my Jackson Jackson, the doctor encouraged me to create a birth plan. I could see the benefit of planning ahead, but I also had a really full plate. My second book, the New Brand U, launched when I was only a few months pregnant. At the same time, I had licensed off all of my real estate training courses and had to support the licensees, was working on my Visa submission to move from Canada to the U.S. and was putting together my business plan for Book Launchers. On top of all of this, I was ridiculously sick with morning and afternoon sickness for seven months. Creating a birth plan just didn't fit for me. Instead, I did research and understood what was likely to happen and what decisions would need to be made when I went into labor. I didn't put any pressure on myself to have a natural birth or do it one way or another. My big picture goal was simple to give birth to my baby and not put our health at risk. I kept an open mind and because my definition of success was to have a healthy baby as safely as possible, I wasn't set on getting there in a specific way. What happened I never would have planned for anyway. My son was born 10 days late and I required a C section. If I'd created a birth plan, it would have been useless. But we were both safe and healthy so my goal was achieved. Be being clear on your bigger picture goals. Doing research so you understand key decisions and leaving details a little looser might be a good approach for you as an author as well. Look at what else is on your plate in your life and business. How much pressure do you want to put on one launch day? The answer is different for everyone. There's no right way to put a book into the world. Much of what you have been told by others feeds an outdated publishing industry or or is designed by companies to sell programs and services. There are certainly optimal ways to meet your goals, but do it your way. You're no less an author if you don't make a major list, just like you're no less a mother if you don't have a natural birth. Remember, the launch is the beginning, not the end. If you put all your energy and effort into driving hard into launch, you may not have anything left to do the work needed to gain momentum and enjoy the benefits of your book. From what I know about our Book Launcher's authors, the ones who kept going for a year or two post launch are the ones who really enjoy the benefits. Shel Phelps, author of The Big Bliss 100 Little Thoughts to Build Positive Life Changes, was two years post launch when she appeared on the COVID of a local magazine. She never stopped promoting her book and serving her audience, and it's still paying off, but it took time. Robert Bell landed his TED Global Ideas Talk more than a year post launch after doing every podcast interview that came his way. It's been viewed more than 2 million times. Again, I'm not saying don't go for a list. It can be fun if you have time, energy and drive. But for many authors, the book is a tool to achieve other goals and your resources are best served maximizing the opportunities it can provide. Most importantly, remember that it is never a matter of launching your book and becoming instantly successful. It takes time for people to read your book, become familiar with your name, recognize the problem you solve, and get to know you. Even with the success of More Than Cash Flow, it took about six months before we really started to see the benefits with our businesses. I hired a PR firm four months after launch for a big second push, and it took almost a full year before things were dramatically different I didn't Launch and Stop Part of your ongoing work involves monitoring how you're doing. Measurements are useful because they give you hard data, but it's how and why you use them that can be important. You can use your launch to measure your success in terms of book sales, or you can look at your launch with a different lens and focus on metrics that are more likely to move the needle in the direction of your bigger picture. Goal measurements that monitor your momentum. Sales numbers give you data that helps you understand what is working and what isn't. As far as promotions and other tactics you use to sell books, there are other things to monitor to get you where you want to go. Using your book as a tool in your brand growth and business. Instead of measuring books sold to determine whether you're successful, track what matters the most to your main overall goal by looking media appearances. Track coverage, audience size and connected opportunities for a year or two and you might be stunned to see how much media appearances have done for your business and brand. My book promotion efforts put me on podcasts where the audience maybe didn't buy a book, but the podcaster became a client of book Launchers. One of Rachel Brown's goals was to be on Forks Over Knives and her book got her the feature. Tracking your media appearances with contact information is smart too, because you can go back and follow up for additional features in the future. Your platform Growth Measure the number of people entering your ecosystem. Newsletter subscribers, social media followers and and people in your online or in person groups that you manage. Use each opportunity to increase exposure to your platform. Look at what is working and what isn't and do more of the former. Using a book to build a platform is really smart because it allows you to offer much higher value to your audience in the future. New Connections Make a list of new connections with influencers and other industry names who will help you grow your audience and credibility even more. This is something I wish I had tracked with my past books because I could say with certainty what I suspect the books each led to New high value relationships with people who helped me connect with new clients, new team members and partners and affiliates. If increasing your brand awareness is important, this would be a great metric to start tracking after your book launches. I guarantee you'll be impressed with the results after a year or two. And beyond reviews or other mentions, this is a powerful way to measure your impact. Track it in a spreadsheet so you can see it all in one place and you also might uncover something that you've said that people keep mentioning in their reviews or posts. This could become the subject of your TED Talk like Robert Bell's or a new talk. You start selling, start tracking and measuring reviews and do things that will help you grow your reviews from free and paid sources and as well as from readers. Look at what's getting reviews and do more of that. We will cover reviews soon, but this video covers what garnered reviews for self publish and succeed. What's worked to get more book reviews, interesting opportunities or doors that opened as a result of your book? I'll never forget Martha Tetenborn talking about how she was featured in a documentary and received a lot of other cool opportunities a year or two after her book Hacking Chemo came out. AJ Coleman got a PBS show interview right after his book Keep those Feet Moving came out. Cracking your results could give you really eye opening information a year or two or five later. It's also worth noting that all of these things are likely to lead to things that are far more lucrative than selling several thousand copies of your book. That's not to discount the value of selling books, but only to highlight the fact that there are plenty of higher value benefits. You might not give them enough attention if you haven't figured out what is most important for your goals and started tracking and recording them. You also might not spot the things that are working and do more of them if you're only watching book sales. Most people look for quick wins, but the reality is that they are successful because of time spent in pursuit of their goals, not because they did one thing right. Regardless of whether you're trying to hit a list, reach your audience, or grow your business with your book, the next piece you need to have dialed in is your metadata. So turn on over to the next chapter to get your arms wrapped around this subject. I know you might be tempted to skip it because it sounds boring, and compared to speaking, podcast interviews, promotional book sales, and best seller lists, metadata is definitely less appealing. But it's what will sell your book even while you're sleeping. And we'll still have fun, I promise. Chapter 1Amazon Best Seller status isn't meaningful enough to pursue at all costs. 2. Amazon's algorithm rewards you for consistent conversions, a lot more than a one time hit of big sales numbers. 3. Periodical bestseller lists are a bit of a game, but if you want to play, know how to play the game and why you're playing so that you can make the most of it. 4. Being a best seller is fun, and if it's a lifelong dream, you can pursue it for your book. But for most authors, a focus on using the book for bigger picture goals is a better use of resources. 5. Measuring more than just book sales to determine whether your book is successful will set you up for longer term success. You can measure reviews, media wins, new relationships, leads and platform growth. What you measure depends on your goals.