The #1 Asset Every Successful Author Builds (It’s Not Their Book)

If you don't have an email list, your book could be invisible. I don't care how good your book is. If you're an author or you're about to be an author and you want authority and visibility and you want to be able to open doors with your book, well, this video is for you. Hi, I'm Julie Broad, founder of Book Launchers and your host here at BookLaunchers.tv. Book Launchers is your first choice for all things relating to writing, publishing, and promoting a nonfiction book to grow your authority. One of the biggest lies authors do believe is, "If my book is good enough, people will find it." And they won't. There are millions of books competing for attention. And guess what? There's millions more coming out this year. A good book? That's not rare. Plenty of the books out are good. Less are great and few are spectacular. But even if you have a unicorn book like Atomic Habits or or Freakonomics or The Let Them Theory, you're still not gonna get your readers to read it if you haven't taken time to curate an audience. A good book almost never sells itself. Other people's audiences are in fact a fabulous way to get your book into the hands of readers. But while you're doing that, while you're getting media, doing podcasts, you're speaking or doing collaborations, build your email list. 'Cause if you don't build an email list, you are completely dependent on those collaborations, algorithms, retailers, publishers, and just favors from other people. And those things, those people, those outlets, they're not prioritizing you. Your email list is the only audience you will actually own, 'cause social media is nice, but how many people have seen the algorithms suppress their content? So many. Inevitably, every platform moves to some sort of pay-for-visibility model and suppresses organic reach of a lot of the content. Now, before you shut this video off and groan, "Oh, I don't want to build an email list," I get it. Building an email list does feel like a lot of work and there's tech involved and you don't know what to say. You probably got that voice in your head going, "Who actually cares what I have to say?" I get it and that's real and I've felt that and Almost every author we've worked with at Book Launchers has felt that at some point. But here's what's not true. People don't subscribe to you because you're well-known or famous. They subscribe because you're useful or interesting or clear about who you're for and why somebody should care. And you don't need thousands and thousands of people. You need the right people. And I'll tell you in a minute, we actually deleted over 14,000 people from our email list recently. So it's not about numbers. There's so much more to this. But first, what actually gets people to subscribe today? Well, first of all, it's not, "Get my update about my book." No, that doesn't work. What does work is having a solution to a problem or giving somebody something that's useful. They can use it right now. We're sharing insights they can apply. We're taking them behind the scenes, giving them some insider intel. You know, access they can't get elsewhere. People just don't subscribe to authors. They will subscribe to a promise, a point of view, steps for a transformation. For example, if you haven't written a book, then you might be surprised to learn there are 4 important things you need to do before you write a single word. And you can get the workbook that will walk you through all 7 steps, including the 4 you need to do before you start writing, when you go to booklaunchers.com/7steps. 7 steps. Link below. Or another way to do this is say, you know what, get my entire multi-award-winning book on promoting your book to build your authority, Self-Promote and Succeed. You can download the audio version at selfpromoteandsucceed.com/audio. My gift to you. I'm not telling you to go get my newsletter. I'm offering something so valuable you might otherwise pay for it if that problem is one you need support with. In fact, I do sell my book, but I'm giving it to you free. So that is the why and a bit of the what, but let's make this simple because this is where people get stuck. You don't need a complicated tech stack to do this. In fact, two tools can do almost everything you need, and I'll outline those and a few other options for you. So number one, you need your email platform. This is where your list lives and where you'll send emails from. If you're a nonfiction author building a business, selling courses, or doing more than just the book, I like Kit. It's powerful, it's better for automation, and it can grow with you. We are affiliate partners with Kit and it's what I send my newsletters with. So if you want to check them out, you can start your list for free at booklaunchers.com/kit. That's our affiliate link. If you want something simpler, MailerLite is an option plenty of folks use. I like Kit and it can be the only tool you have to have if you only need a landing page, a simple way to deliver a download, and your email list and your email sending ability. Don't overthink this because you can also transfer your list to a different platform later if you need to make a switch. Number 2, your lead magnet and the delivery mechanism. You need that reason for people to join. You will need to build a lead magnet. We've been building interactive tools now more than we used to, but whatever you do, just create something that is so valuable someone would otherwise pay you money for it. So like checklist or a guide or a bonus or the audio version of your book. Just please don't offer a free chapter because that is boring. Nobody wants your free chapter. What you could do is in my book Self-Publish and Succeed, I have a chapter on how to save 1,418 hours writing your book. I wouldn't even say get my free chapter. I would just say, hey, if you want my guide on how to save 1,418 hours writing your book, you can get it here. Here. Regardless, you need to get that nicely designed. 99designs will do that for you. They are partners with us on graphic design. They also do book covers and interiors. You can check them out at booklaunchers.com/99designs. I'll drop the link in the description below. Once it's designed, you need to deliver it. Now, if it's a simple PDF download, Kit will do the delivery for you. Easy peasy, no additional tools needed. Now, if you've got a more complex thing or you want to spread it a little wider, StoryOrigin could work. Simple, cheap. It's a good system. If you're doing something advanced like delivering audiobooks or premium content, you may want to use a tool like BookFunnel. And that's what we use when you go to selfpromoteandsucceed.com/audio to download the audiobook that is delivered through BookFunnel. Now here's something to pay attention to. Number 3, once you've built a list, you also may want to have some email health tools. You don't need them to start, but list hygiene is so important. And that's where our 14,000 deleted emails came from. 14,000. Those people weren't opening our emails and them not opening was hurting our deliverability. And if people aren't engaging with you, it hurts your ability to reach the people who actually want to hear from you. So sometimes your problem isn't, what do I say? It's who's actually listening. Now, by the way, if you used to get our emails and we disappeared on you, you may have been deleted in this cleanup because the system doesn't always get it right when it thinks you've never opened the email. So you can go to booklaunchers.com/newsletter and get signed up again. I do want to stay in touch with you and it was not personal. All right. Now you might be wondering, what the heck am I going to say in these emails? I don't have content for a weekly or even every other week newsletter. Well, here's some things. You can share an idea from your book. You can teach something useful, tell a short story. If you're out promoting your book, doing podcast interviews, media, bookstore signings, share all of that and then share your lessons or experiences or behind the scenes when you do that. And if you're really stuck, that's also where our tool Author Launch Kit comes in. Have you checked it out yet? You can do a free trial at authorlaunchkit.com. But it will draft your email sequence for you and then you can refine it from there. Or if you're not feeling it and you're stuck, head to Julie the Book Bot and get some strategic counsel to spice up your newsletters and just get help with your overall email strategy. My personal recommendation is to go ahead and get Kit and get Author Launch Kit. The combination is going to set you up for massive success building your email newsletter. Other people's audiences can make up for you not having a list for a while, But generally speaking, if you don't have an audience and you launch your book, you'll find that there's no reviews, minimal momentum, that you don't have that sales spike from the start. Now, if you do have a good launch and you have engaged other people's audiences doing podcasts or speaking, but you're not building a list, a year from now you're not much further along than you are right now because your list allows you to build relationships. Sell products, services, and leverage opportunities. In fact, when you're on a podcast, you can tell your list which podcast you've been on, and you'll be more valuable to the hosts and can build better relationships there. Same with speaking engagements and media. It's great to be able to promote the things that you're doing. It's beneficial to the people that you're doing them with, as well as to your list. When you haven't put the work in to build a platform, you might think your book didn't work, but the truth is you just didn't build the audience that's gonna care about it. Your book might be the start of building your audience, because the authors who win, they build demand before the book is finished. But if they don't have an audience when their book launches, they use every book promotion opportunity to build that audience. It's not about being brilliant or knowing how to do all the things. It's about being consistent. And that's why tools like Author Launch Kit and K.I.T.T. are really valuable. And if you want your book to actually reach readers, start building your your email list now. I'll see you on the next video.