Peter Winick flips five publishing mistakes into satirical advice: never define success, refuse help, obsess over cover design, trust your publisher blindly, and ignore online promotion. By exaggerating what kills books, he shows what actually works.
Peter Winick here with Thought Leadership Leverage. We all know that there are hundreds of experts out there that have the hidden secret to ensure your book is a success. Online or offline, it's not hard to hunt down a formula, strategy, marketing plan, whatever, that'll catapult your life's work to the top of the bestseller list. So today, Instead of telling you the same tips every other business book is using, I'm going to share the 5 things I've learned that will 100% guarantee that your book is a colossal failure. Number 1: Don't define what success looks like. Whether it's hitting the bestseller list, getting exposure for yourself or your brand, engaging people that will follow you in the future, or driving sales of a specific offering, don't consider these things upfront. They are difficult decisions that will all just work themselves out once the book is released. You'll know what success looks like when you get there. Number 2, don't ask for help from anyone. You are flawless. Let's face it, your friends and family are busy folks with lots of important things to do, and your clients have full schedules with meetings and emails and conference calls. It doesn't make much sense to bother anyone and ask them to help you. It's awkward, and if we can avoid asking for help, we certainly should. Most books become incredibly successful by a combination of luck, fate, and serendipity. Number 3, spend as much time as possible on the COVID You can never have too many versions of the COVID 30? 40? Come talk to me at 100. Ask everyone around you for months on end to give you their input, but don't waste time asking an expert. Your friends and colleagues certainly know best. You've spent a year or more of your life writing this book. It deserves your nitpicking over cover fonts. Content be damned, we know appearance is everything after all. Number 4, the publisher knows best. Never argue with the publisher. They publish hundreds of books a year, but your book is obviously the one they care about the most. They know your content better than you, And the 23-year-old assistant to the assistant of the junior director of marketing that they will assign to market your book clearly knows what she's doing. In her 3 months of experience, she's learned to follow their marketing template fairly well. Plus, she's read a ton of books on this stuff in college. You're in good hands. Number 5: The web? Social media? They're a fad. Print is where it's at. As an author, you just need to know how to write a good book. The web, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter— it's all millennial garbage that won't be around much longer. Book buyers just go to the bookstore. They aren't wasting their time online, so neither should you. So if you want to make sure your book is a colossal failure, just follow these 5 tips. Thank you very much.
