In this instructional video, Julie Broad (founder of Book Launchers) explains why publishing a nonfiction book without a supporting website, email list, and systematic content strategy leads to poor discoverability and limited impact. She frames the issue as a "system problem" rather than a book problem, emphasizing that impact comes from reach, which requires three coordinated elements: awareness of the book, desire to read it, and an easy path to purchase and act on its teachings. Broad outlines the bare‑minimum author website—home page with a clear above‑the‑fold call‑to‑action, a dedicated book page with cover, description, and universal purchase links, an about/bio page, contact information, and a blog or resources section. She stresses that the primary conversion goal is to capture email addresses, turning readers into a long‑term community that can be nurtured for future sales, speaking gigs, consulting, and partnerships. The video details how to create a high‑value lead magnet that solves a specific problem and ties directly to the book, recommending formats from checklists to interactive apps. Broad demonstrates how AI tools, especially the Author Launch Kit and Tertulia website builder, can automate the creation of website copy, lead magnets, blog posts, social media assets, and email sequences, dramatically reducing the time required to launch a professional author platform. She also covers building a content calendar for multi‑platform publishing (TikTok, X, YouTube, Instagram) and ensuring consistent author bios across the web to improve LLM discoverability. Throughout, she provides concrete examples, showcases the tools in action, and urges authors—whether income‑driven or impact‑driven—to adopt these systems or use Author Launch Kit for guided implementation.
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If you don't have an email list and a simple website, your book is going to struggle. Period. And most authors don't realize this until after they publish when nothing's happening. So if you don't want to be an author missing out on sales and opportunities, well, this video is for you. Hi, I'm Julie the Book Broad. I am the founder of Book Launchers, a full-service self-publishing company helping nonfiction authors write, publish, and and promote a nonfiction book that builds an empire. Now, I see this a lot. Someone, maybe you even, writes a great book, gets it edited, puts a cover on it, puts it on Amazon, and then they're refreshing their dashboard wondering where the sales are. They probably heard they should have an author website and an email newsletter, but they wrote the book to help someone and didn't want to send a monthly or even weekly newsletter. You know what? I get it. While many people are writing their book for income, some are writing it to give back. And if that's you, then you may have dismissed the idea that you should create a website and an email newsletter and a funnel, 'cause you're probably thinking, "My book is the gift and I don't wanna do the other stuff. I just want people to have my knowledge, my stories, my experience." Well, getting the book into reader's hands for impact is actually at the heart of everything we do. And it changes how you think about every decision along the way. So you may not be income-driven, but this is still vital. And if you are income-driven, well, you've likely accepted the reality and still need this faster and easier. So here's what I know. Impact comes from reach, and reach comes from 3 things working together. First, you need people to know the book exists. Second, you need them to want to read it. And third, you need to make it easy for them to get it and actually take action on what they learn. A lot of authors just skip straight to publishing and wonder why nobody knows about their book. I wrote this book. Well, the real work happens before and after. The website is your home base. Your email list becomes the foundation for your community, and your book becomes the credibility builder that opens doors to speaking, consulting, partnerships, or whatever lets you reach more people with your message. A lot of authors, they think no website, no email list. Well, guess what? There's no way to capture or follow up with your readers, and that often means little to no activity around your book. And that— it's not a book problem at all. It's a system problem. Your website is where interested readers will go to learn more and probably decide if they trust you. It's where most people will want to buy your book for their school or their business in bulk and decide if you're credible. It's where people who want to interview you on media or their podcast will go to learn more. And if you are working on being a speaker or building a brand, it is your hub for all the things you do. If your website doesn't exist or it's not well designed or it's unclear, you're going to lose these opportunities. So whether you were doing this for income or impact, you want to be thinking about what is the next step for the person at every stage in their journey. Because if there's no next step, poof, it's like they weren't there. So my first step, usually when somebody hits a website, is to get them to sign up for a newsletter. It's not to buy a book because they might buy the book and I might never hear from them again, but that could be your next step. Usually it's get them on your email list. Now, if someone does read your book, what happens next? You want to figure that out. If someone hears you speak, what happens next? For me, I'm usually offering them some additional resources to get on my email list. But if you're not giving them that next step, you've lost them. If you can't follow up, you can't build anything. And again, you might be thinking, well, I just wanna do this to help people, but how are you going to have impact if you aren't building those connections? So what do you need to create? What's the bare minimum that we need to create here? Well, number one, simple website that converts. The number one must-have is a clear call to action above the fold, which means just before somebody has to scroll with an offer to join your newsletter. And I know you probably think, oh, she's telling me to focus on email. And I am. A book buyer is great, but an email subscriber, that's a long-term relationship and they might buy your book and future books. They might buy your product, your courses, your recommendation. They might stay with you for years. And I've told this story many, many times. But the whole reason Book Launchers exists is because I built a newsletter list with my real estate training and education company that I had before. My first 10 clients for Book Launchers came from my real estate training and education list. They knew me and trusted me, and even though my history wasn't in book publishing, they decided to work with me on their book. So what does your website need? Well, a typical author who's doing podcast interviews and wants to drive people to buy books Your website kind of needs 4, 5 core pages. A homepage with a clear headline that tells visitors what you're about, plus a newsletter signup above the fold. Don't just say sign up for my newsletter or get my updates. Give them a juicy reason like get your book discoverability guide or get your audit here or 5 steps to better skin in 5 minutes a day. Get your guide. Nobody wants your updates, but they do want a solution to a problem and value. So offer them that to get their email. Okay, now this is an author website, so you need a book page. Show your cover, have your description, and have your purchase links. I would recommend using a universal book link so readers can choose their retailer. Sell direct if you can, so have a buy button right there that will sell the book, and then of course you capture their information that way. Have your about or your bio with your professional photo and credentials so that podcast listeners know why you matter, contact information so media and speaking opportunities can reach out to you, and a blog or simple resources section to showcase your expertise. Speaking of the LLMs, this website is now more important than ever because you want to tell the LLMs exactly who you are and what your book is about. And make sure that bio is consistent with what you're using on other sites too. Inconsistencies can throw the LLMs off. So if you want to be recommended as a key resource or solution for someone or something, Get it all cleaned up so it's the same everywhere. That's it. You don't need fancy, you need functional. Now, getting a great author website is so much easier today than it ever has been. Our Author Launch Kit software combined with Tertulia's website builder gets your website done quickly and without much cost. Check out the first steps here in Author Launch Kit. And by the way, you can try all this out yourself for 7 days free at authorlaunchkit.com. But check this out. After you've completed the form at the start to get yourself set up, it knows about you and your book, and you can click on this button right here and go, okay, build my email list. And the first step, of course, is a website, and it gives you all the important content you need right here. And here's a button to do this, to the simple tool for authors to build a website. Their websites look great. We use it for so many of our authors who just need a basic site. And if you want to create some blog content, which I recommend you do because it will help with your discoverability, we have some first drafts for you too. There's also a piece here to help you with that lead magnet. And this is where you can make it so people aren't being told to get my updates. And ideally you're creating something that is not a long ebook, not a generic 10 tips. You want to create a lead magnet that is something valuable, ideally something so valuable they would pay for it. So you want to solve a painful problem or give them a quick win with it and ultimately have that directly tie to your book. If your lead magnet doesn't solve a real problem, no one cares and you're not going to get email addresses. Author Launch Kit has you covered here. There's some ideas and content here for a lead magnet. Also, one idea that we have done to take this idea just to a next level and make it more interactive is using a vibe coding website like Replit. And turn your lead magnet into an app. If you want, there's a link below where you can play with our 7 Steps PDF, which has been turned into an interactive app for you. It's a really cool way to take what's been a, a really well-performing 7 Steps PDF for us for 6 years and just take it to 2026 and beyond by vibe coding it. Now, if that sounds way too technical for you, stick with creating a checklist or something else that's going to solve an immediate problem for your reader. But go ahead, check it out down below. I'll put the link below so you can play with our 7 Steps app. And it's 7 Steps to Write a Book That Is Set Up to Sell. Now, the next people— the next people— the next piece that people find overwhelming is actually creating regular content. Now, people generally don't buy just because you have a book. They buy because they trust you, they like you, they want to learn more from you. And the best thing you can do is get on video and share a report of what's happening in your author world. But if you don't want to do that, you can create some great written content, and Author Launch Kit can help with that too. If you need ideas or a starting place for content, just go to this button on Author Launch Kit. You can actually have it generate images, social media posts, a social media calendar, and more. For now, I'm going to show you the email sequence and how you can get some changes made if you didn't like it. And if you uploaded your book, you're going to have a lot more options for it to create great content directly from your book. So here I gave it a suggestion to use more stories because I didn't love the content that you created at first. And at first it's a little overwhelming, but it's giving you the structure so you can edit it and know what the goal is for each section. Same with the blog posts. So use this as a first step and then edit it to be the best it can be. But instead of taking you 50 minutes, it might take you 15. And with this content calendar and descriptions of what you should be posting, you now know exactly what to do for TikTok or X or YouTube or Instagram or whatever it is. Once you know what you're trying to create, you can all pop it into this image creator and tell it to create something for you as well. And see, it gives me this one from Self Publish and Succeed, but eh, this isn't my style. I want a woman who's proud of her book. So I tell it that and I get this image along with the caption. Woohoo! Excuses that you don't know what to post are gone. Well, you might be like, I'd never say that. Well, I would edit the heck out of this too, but not knowing where to start is where people get stuck. And now you have the answer to what do I build? What do I write? What tools do I use and how do I connect it all? And if you don't have those answers, you might overcomplicate it and do nothing. And that is the worst thing that you can do. Now more than ever with AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT, Perplexity recommending authors and books, it does that when it can see clearly that an authority is present and is the author of that book. So more content in more places is a necessity. And Amazon, by the way, won't show your book unless you're helping it get traffic from a variety of sources as well. So this is the shift you have to make whether you're in it for income or impact. Your website is your hub. Your email is how you build relationships. And your book is the entry point to everything you're building. When these all work together, your book is going to start to perform. And you can do all of this on your own, but you have to do it. And of course, if you want help or expert guidance without the big agency price tag, that is why we created Author Launch Kit. What used to take weeks, you can now do in about an hour. If you want your book to succeed, don't just publish it, build systems around it to get it into readers' hands. And if you want help, grab Author Launch Kit at authorlaunchkit.com. And of course, subscribe to this channel for the best tips. And I hope to see you soon.
