Selling Books With A Small Audience

The best way to sell books is to have an existing audience of people who are excited to support you or hungry for your next message, lesson or teaching. But many authors are launching a book to build that audience or they just haven't dedicated time and effort to building a large platform. If that's you and you're wondering how can you leverage the audience that you do have, even if it's tiny, into big results, then this Author Spotlight video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Brock from Book Launchers. We're your professional self publishing team helping you write, publish and promote a nonfiction book that grows your brand, builds your business and makes you money. Our superpower is caring more about you and your book than any other company as we support you to succeed. And the best part? You keep all rights and royalties and have full control. Today I'm excited to introduce you to Gillian Geertsen, author of the Elephant in the Body Positive guide to writing your own Health and Fitness story. This is a book that's for everyone that's sick of how traditional health and fitness marketing makes you feel guilty and like you and your body aren't good enough. This book really helps you reconnect to who you are and appreciate what your body does and it changes the focus from how you look to how you feel. It is a powerful read and the book has done really, really well. And one of the things that really stood out to our team about the author and this book was how well the she included her community in the entire process. Right from the first day she committed to it. And when her book launched, that small but mighty community of people rallied around her to buy her book and share it with their friends. I believe she even hit the top 100 books selling on Amazon in Canada at one point and topped multiple categories as the number one bestseller. The Canadian retailer Chapters Indigo took notice and when we reached out to get her book listed at a few stores, the response was like woo, this book is selling. And they not only listed it and put it on shelves, but they felt featured it in a section for an entire month. So how did that happen? What did Jillian do to rally a small number of people into big results for her book launch? We asked her.

I signed up with book Launchers and kind of put all both feet in and committed to writing the book for me. That was my commitment moment. But right from that moment I shared it on social media. I shared it when I saw people and I really harnessed their enthusiasm and excitement for the project in those moments because I Knew I'd have those moments where I would struggle. Knew I was going to be on the struggle bus a lot. So I got them on board right from the get go, and I really had my army to speak, so to speak, really there to back me up the whole way along. And when it got closer to launch time, I really decided I wanted to really engage and involve my community at another level. And so what I did was I created what I called my launch team. I got their emails and I created a little email list and I created a Facebook community. And I used that opportunity to connect with them, number one, just to stay connected with them and keep them up to date on the project. Because what that meant is that they got as excited as I was and they started. Sometimes I think they were more excited than I was and they got excited about the process. I asked them questions along the way when I kind of needed kind of market research or I had questions that I wasn't sure how to answer about which direction to go, kind of things like the subtitle. The subtitle was a struggle for me, so I definitely pulled on them for things like that. You know, ultimately, of course, they were all my decisions, but my community was a huge support structure. And so the launch team was awesome because I also used those people as early readers. And so by having those early readers and then getting them to give their honest opinions and reviews on Amazon, et cetera, and Goodreads and places like that, I had really early feedback. And then the early sales and the early feedback that resulted actually in something really cool for me and my project, which was I was able to get in store in chapters across Canada.

So to recap, Gillian shared her journey early. She engaged what was a fairly small group of people on social media to get their email addresses and to build a community who felt emotionally invested in her journey. She got them excited about her message, excited about her book. She let them participate by asking their opinion, like she said on subtitle and some other things, probably her cover too. And she let them share in the entire behind the scenes of the process. By the time the book came out, they'd sweated with her. They'd invested in the process and were happy to get on board with purchases and reviews and shares. And as she noted, the online orders that were made at Chapters allowed us to get bookstore distribution. Once in stores, her supporters made in store purchases. So when we connected with the regional book buyer, they brought her book in for all of the Western Canada stores with a health focus and gave her some Amazing display space. Check this out. Woo. It was so good. So more than a year later, what's been the best thing or even the most surprising thing that's come from her author journey?

I keep getting emails. I keep getting emails from people literally throughout North America, even in other places in the world. Japan being one from people that read the book and the feedback that kind of hits me in the heart, gives me all the feels the most is probably when I was reading your story, you know, because I share a lot about my personal story. When I was reading your story I felt like you were telling my story and that relate gives me even goose pimples just now saying that because as people can hear that they're not alone. This is the piece of common humanity that I'm so passionate about with the self compassion piece. And if we know we're not alone in the struggle, it takes a lot of the pressure off. It's like, oh, I'm just a human having a human experience. So that's been really profound for me and it really inspired me to decide to create what I launched last April, which is the super you studio, which is my online platform and community to kind of keep the conversation going. And I've got, I've developed all these masterclasses now and we have this really thriving community of women coming together to create a healthy lifestyle they love.

So how cool is that? She's had an incredible impact on people all over the world and she's built another stream of income around supporting and connecting with those people by creating her online studio. Woo hoo. Way to go Jillian. If you want to check out what she's doing, go to superu.ca. that will connect you to Jillian's book, her studio and her social media superyou ca. To thank Jillian for sharing a bit of her journey and her tips with you, please smash that thumbs up button. Go ahead. It makes you feel good too. Try it and share your question or comment below. And if you have something you want me to ask one of our authors for a future spotlight, know me let let me know that below too. Oh, and make sure you've subscribed to the channel so you can catch future spotlight videos. And turn those notifications on so you get notified when the videos come out. Because when you comment the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some sweet book launcher swag like our oh so popular noboringbooks mug or our oh so soft journal. If you want tips to mobilize your book army, this video right here is what you need to watch. And if you're feeling stuck, watch with writer's block. This video right here is for you. Either way, let's keep hanging out because I'm finding time with you to be delightful. So click on one of those videos, and I'll see you there.