5. Dedication
This book is dedicated to Jason Sheftell who told me to live my life, every single word
of it. Rest in Peace, buddy.
5
6. Foreword
Thank You For Giving Me My Crayons Back
Maybe you had a childhood dream to create or write or make something with your own two
hands. Many of us did but a bit too early in life, our crazy wild-eyed dreams were put away on
a shelf. We were told there is no time for such frivolous pursuits. We must get practical,
realistic, and go to a place where imagination apparently causes more harm than good. Some
people call this place 'adulthood.' But if you've got a burning desire to be an unmistakable
creative, this place is hell.
If you compare a kindergarten classroom to a college lecture hall, one looks like a playground
and the other an intellectual prison where old men in glasses and golf sweaters prescribe a
future that is predictable, certain and gives you the opportunity to paint with only a few colors.
That is, if you're lucky enough to paint at all. If not, you go through the motions of life and you
lose sight of the difference between living and waiting to die.
The mortgage must be paid
The kids must be fed
The lights must be kept on.
You may try to convince yourself there is no time for writing or making art, or that the
opportunity is reserved for the chosen few lucky enough to land on a reality show, become a
hot mess, and get the attention they need. But, as Steven Pressfield wrote:
"It's one thing to lie to yourself. It's another to believe it."
The simple truth is that there's no better time in history to be an artist, to create, and especially
to write. Technology has leveled the playing field - the advent of eBooks, the internet, and
self-publishing have opened up opportunities for anyone to share their words. If you have a
burning desire to write, you simply need to start and you, yes YOU can soon give your book to
the world.
The information you're about to read comes at the perfect time, filling a huge void for practical
knowledge about marketing and selling books that's lagged behind innovation. Too many
would-be authors are so intimidated by the prospect of finding an audience that they buy into
the excuses, shelving their creativity once again. But now, with the help of The Book
Marketing Bible, we're all free to share our stories with the world, with infinite possibilities
and unfettered imagination.
I'm here to tell you I've been given back my box of crayons, and so have you.
6
8. Table of Contents
Introduction: What this book will do for you
Chapter 1: What you’re up against
Chapter 2: Self-publishing and the revolution of ideas
Chapter 3: Why traditional publishing purists are wrong
Chapter 4: Why listen to me
Chapter 5: First, Get Your Mind Right
Chapter 6: The secret to marketing your book
Chapter 7: 3 Questions to Ask Before You Write Your Book
Chapter 8: Book marketing mistakes self-published and new authors make
Chapter 9: The instant game changer to help handle critics
Chapter 10: Draft a mission statement, Why I write.
Chapter 11: The essence of social media
Chapter 12: Your sales funnel
Chapter 13: The four stages of book marketing
Chapter 14: Marketing tips, techniques, and strategies
1. Twitter, the book marketer’s best friend.
2. Create your Facebook Fan Page.
3. Build a website.
4. Blog through your website.
5. Blog to sell books and influence people.
6. Register your domain names.
7. Write a bio for the book.
8. Write an author bio.
9. Setup your author pages.
10. Set up your YouTube channel.
11. Shoot author videos.
12. Make a video trailer.
13. Write a press release.
14. Offer a free download on your website.
15. Presell your books.
16. Set up a shortened URL.
17. Ask people to test read your book.
18. Get a celebrity to endorse your book or write the foreword.
19. Post book excerpts.
20. Email marketing.
21. Call the mayor’s office.
22. Get a poster of the book cover made.
8
9. 23. Order business cards.
24. Order mailing labels.
25. Set up a PayPal account.
26. Use a mobile payment processor like the Square reader.
27. Plan a book release party.
28. But don’t call it a book release party.
29. Use a great email signature.
30. Solicit and collect reader photos.
31. Get a custom email address.
32. Free book giveaways and raffles.
33. Build banner images.
34. Reach out to your schools.
35. Put together a media kit.
36. Offer to speak.
37. Grab media logos and put together a “brag book” image.
38. Internet radio shows.
39. Offer bonus material.
40. Post testimonials.
41. Take wildly creative photos.
42. Photo ops with the book.
43. Link it in.
44. Sign up for Pinterest.
45. Sign up for Instagram.
46. Answer all comments, correspondence, and reviews.
47. Answer reader questions on your blog.
48. Collect and share all feedback.
49. Blog on a bigger platform.
50. Blog around important dates.
51. Guest blog.
52. Comment on other blogs and join discussion groups.
53. Produce webinars and podcasts.
54. Contact your public library.
55. Interview someone.
56. Interview yourself.
57. Voting and polls.
58. Create an online group or community.
59. Connect with a charity.
60. Review and promote other books in your genre.
61. Donate free copies of your book to waiting rooms.
62. Donate books to charities.
63. Host a reading.
64. Record an audio version of the book.
9
10. 65. Offer your book to indie and local bookstores.
66. Make a map of your readers.
67. Pretend you are a reporter or gossip columnist.
68. Enter writing competitions.
69. Get your book translated and go international.
70. Create a #hashtag for your book.
71. Tie your book in to trending topics.
72. Teach a class.
73. Register your book with Scribd.com.
74. Get on Tumblr.
75. Sign up for Google Plus.
76. Infographics.
77. Generate a QR Code.
78. Get a Wikipedia page.
79. Register a definition with the urban dictionary.
80. Add your book to Google Books and others.
81. Bundle your books.
82. Enroll sales affiliates.
83. Consider using Facebook and Google ads.
84. Design T-shirts and other merchandise.
85. Make a bet.
86. Make goofy videos for fans.
87. Use signs in your photos for social media.
88. Celebrate your bad reviews.
89. SEO and keywords.
90. Sign up for Google Authorship.
91. Set up an online book tour.
92. Let other sites promote your book.
93. Release a new addition.
94. Put your contact info at the end of the book.
95. Create urgency with limited time pricing.
96. Donate a percentage of your books sales.
97. Find new homes for your videos.
98. Group pricing incentives.
99. Price pulsing.
100. Say thank you with discounts and coupons.
Epilogue
10
11. Introduction: What this book will do for you
As a self-published author, perhaps even a first-timer, you’re searching for a clear roadmap to
market and sell books. You’ll read a lot of articles, buy plenty of books about marketing, pore
over blogs, pay way too much for seminars, and single-handedly keep Google in business with
your queries for the one “right” method to turn your book into a commercial success. If you’re
like most people, you’ll grow overwhelmed and more than a little confused by the dump truck
of information available.
Googling “How to market a self-published book?” yields more than 55 million responses!
Before you start from #1 and read all the way back to 55 million, let me relieve the mystery for
you right now:
There is no one right way to get people to buy and read your book.
Why not? Think of your marketing journey as crossing an unmarked minefield. A lot of
unknown territory is out there, with no path across to safety. Just like there’s no one, clear line
to bookselling success. The best we can do is follow the footsteps left before us… and hope
they lead all the way to the other side.
Yup, you’re going to have to find your own way – different things work for different authors,
and even the genre of your book will impact how you best share it. But don’t be discouraged.
After reading this book, you’ll have a comprehensive list of book marketing techniques I’ve
found most effective, with the least amount of time and money expended. You’ll get the pros
and cons of each and resources to get you started. You’ll understand marketing your book is a
process, and success is just a function of knowledge, execution and time, but a positive result
is inevitable. Most importantly, you’ll glean the psychology of why certain marketing tactics
work, empowering you to get creative and go on to far greater success than your teacher (me)
has ever seen.
Basically, I want to energize your career as a book marketer as though you were shot out of a
cannon. For me, anything short of that won’t suffice.
So how DO you market a book?
Beg people for reviews?
Send out hundreds of press releases?
Do readings at the library and open a kiosk at a book fair?
Throw a book release party?
Drop some coin on paid advertisements and search engine optimization online?
Open up Facebook and Twitter accounts for your book and post links asking people to buy it
every twelve minutes?
Or just outsource it all and hire a book publicist?
11
12. The first thing you should understand is you won’t get it all at once. You don’t have the time
(I’m assuming) or the money to get your PhD in book marketing and online commerce before
the release. Even if you could take that four-year university course, things move so quickly and
change so much in the industry, what you learned today could be irrelevant a year from now.
Instead, you’ll have to learn on the fly, and that’s exactly where this book fits in. I’m extremely
protective of your time and effort as you start your book marketing campaign, so I’ve presented
information here with the eighty-twenty rule in mind. That is, eighty percent of your results will
come from twenty percent of your efforts. Another way to put it: keep it simple and stick to the
stuff that works without getting bogged down in minutiae that won’t yield spectacular results.
Of course you’ll want to arm yourself with as much information as you can, but in the real
world, experience is a process that includes action – you learn by educating yourself and
doing. And book marketing is no different. However, you don’t want to waste a lot of time and
even worse, money, along the way. So let’s learn from mistakes that only cost you minutes and
pennies, not months and thousands of dollars. The good news is this book will help you
accelerate your learning curve tremendously – and minimize those mistakes.
I believe book marketing happens in levels, or waves, for the self-published and especially for
the new author. Don’t expect to go down the list of one hundred marketing techniques we cover
and initiate them all within weeks, or even months. One of the biggest challenges for book
marketers is taking on too much at first. They end up doing a thousand things simultaneously,
but none particularly well. (Again, I speak from experience.) So I’ll also suggest a sequence of
book marketing activities, or what waves to plunge into first, second, etc. Take on the most
important marketing tasks first. Master them so they’re effective and running on autopilot, and
then move on to the next few.
I’m going to offer personal examples of marketing with my books, particularly my latest, South
of Normal. I don’t do that for any other reason than to intimately document the imperfect
process I went through, the footsteps I’m leaving so you may follow.
What else will you get from this book? Two important things you won’t find elsewhere:
1. The mental and emotional aspect of marketing your book – getting your mind right.
That is SO important, yet never seems to be covered because we ego-driven and
vain authors want to pretend we came out of the womb destined for greatness. It’s
just not so.
1. The many mistakes I’ve made along the way. No one wants to talk openly about their
failures, but being honest about them is the best way to be of service. I don’t care
about impressing you. I care deeply about helping you. Trust me, it’s far less painful
12
13. – and ultimately, more profitable – to learn from someone else’s mistakes than make
all your own.
This book will be useful to writers at different points of their journeys:
1. First-time authors who are self-publishing their work.
1. Seasoned self-published authors who are trying to improve their marketing.
1. Those who are starting out writing their first book with an eye toward its release.
1. Authors who’ve signed with an agent and traditional publisher but are being
proactive with marketing.
1. Indie artists of all disciplines who are trying to invigorate their marketing plan.
Likewise, we all have varying degrees of comfort and expertise with social media, so the
people who will still benefit from this book include:
1. The newbie who barely uses their existing Facebook account.
1. The average person who uses social media to stay in touch with friends and kill time
at work.
1. Those who already have an online platform for e-commerce but want to improve
results.
1. Social media professionals who are looking to enter book marketing.
No matter where you are on that list, you’ll get something out of this book. Even experts will
pick up a few tactics that can yield exponential results and income, and the first-time self-
published author should sleep with this book under their pillow. But in no way should this be
considered the only authority on book marketing, nor is it an academic tome that’s published
once and quickly becomes outdated. It’s a basic training survival guide, an instruction manual
to success, a living document that should be updated and amended often as we go forward in
13
14. this journey, together.
My only goal is to empower you with practical, battle-tested information. You’ve done the
hard part – committing your story to the page – and now we can undertake the OTHER hard
part as a team. I promise you, if you trust me and follow my footsteps across the minefield,
you’ll be happy to see they reach the other side.
14
15. Chapter 1
What you’re up against
Let’s get the bad news out of the way. As a self-published author, this is the stuff that’s going
to scare the hell out of you, leave you with a bad feeling in the pit of your stomach and
contemplate giving up and doing something far more fun. What you read next will also reveal
why you need this book, or at least need to understand the information covered in it.
To make the understatement of the year, you have some competition as an author. In fact, more
than 391,000 self-published titles were released in 2012, according to Bowker. That’s a fifty-
nine percent increase compared to the year before, and a four hundred and twenty-two percent
increase since 2007. It’s estimated forty percent of all books are self-published these days.
Now the really bad news. The average self-published author sells less than two hundred and
fifty books. That’s not a misprint. Two hundred and fifty is the approximate number they sell to
family, close friends and coworkers and a few random buyers. The rest of the books collect
dust in boxes in their garage (or, in my case, my basement.)
Almost twenty percent of self-published authors report making no income at all from their
books, according to Digital Book World. That’s one-fifth of all self-published authors making
a big fat goose egg, despite their costs and huge time expenditures.
In that same survey, the median income for self-published authors is reported between $1 and
$4,999, which accounts for almost sixty-five percent of self-published authors.
Indeed, Keith Smart reports that fifty percent of all self-published authors make less than $50
on their books, and ten percent of self-published authors account for seventy-five percent of all
income in the field.
Add that up: almost eighty-five percent of self-published authors make less than $5,000 per
year. And that’s just gross sales – no one has factored in taxes and other costs.
Furthermore, only 1.8 percent of self-published authors make more than $100,000.
Your competition is also increasing rapidly, at a rate of approximately fifty percent per year
for self-published books. But it’s important to remember your competition isn’t just self-
published books but all books, because that’s what readers have to choose from.
Approximately 129,864,880 books have been published, according to Leonid Taycher, a
Google software engineer who works on the Google Books project. Only twenty percent are
available in the public domain and still in print, but that’s still about twenty-five million
15
16. books.
An easier way to figure out the approximate number of books for sale in the United States: On
Amazon.com, the numbers are listed in the left-hand column:
Paperback (24,191,665)
Hardcover (8,586,060)
Kindle Edition (1,306,851)
That equals… 34,084,576 (though some books have all three version available.) Remember,
that’s just on Amazon and only in English.
We can find another telling statistic of the eruption of self-published books on Amazon. It
shows a tally of new releases. Around Christmas 2013, Amazon reported:
Last 30 days (152,893)
Last 90 days (510,666)
Wow. Half a million books released on Amazon within the last ninety days.
So what does that all mean?
1) Don’t quit your day job just yet.
16
17. 2) You probably won’t be sitting on Oprah’s couch any time soon.
3) You need to have a smart, focused and efficient marketing plan in order to push through and
avoid becoming another depressing statistic.
Do I have your attention, now?
Do you still have that bad feeling in the pit of your stomach, or are downright terrified?
Good. Fear is a hell of a motivator – we just need to shift that into knowledge and then
intelligent action. I can’t do the work for you, but I’ll certainly provide you with everything
else, empowering you to break through.
So roll up your sleeves and grab another cup of coffee. It’s time to get to work.
17
18. Chapter 2
Self-publishing and the revolution of ideas
There’s a revolution going on. It’s not a political revolt, it has nothing to do with ruling
countries or commanding armies, or even an economic coup d'état. This revolution has to do
with something far more powerful – control over ideas.
For a long time, the publishing industry held the power to control our ideas – who expressed
them, whose ideas to should be celebrated, whether they were shared with the public or not. If
they embraced an author, he or she “made it.” If they did not, then they were shut out
completely. But now, a huge threat has cropped up -– the ability to print and disseminate our
own books with self-publishing. We have the potential to crystallize our ideas in print and
share them, at times reaching a huge audience that rivals what the traditional publishing model
can achieve. The entrenched system -– from literary agents to The Big Six Publishers -– are
fighting hard to keep control. They tell us their system is far better and even necessary, but
power is rapidly shifting. As Victor Hugo said, “There is nothing more powerful than an idea
whose time has come.”
The majority of you reading this book will be using self-publishing to share your work with the
world, so it’s essential I arm you with the sword of inspiration and the shield of context before
you enter that wilderness. Even authors who are traditionally published need their own
marketing campaigns these days so everyone will be able to relate to what comes next.
To start, I’m going to illustrate the revolution of ideas by telling you about three people: Bill
James, Del the Funky Homosapien and Vincent Van Gogh.
What do they have to do with marketing self-published books? They’re amazing examples of
people who were shut out of the establishment in their time – ostracized, underappreciated and
rendered powerless to spread their ideas and art. But instead of giving up, they chose to blaze
a new path, to find a way to survive outside of the established order. Whether intended to be or
not, they are marketing geniuses by attrition, and there are so many parallels between their
struggles and what you as a self-published authors need to do to sell books outside of the
traditional publishing model.
They broke the rules and emphasized what made them unique instead of trying to conform.
They hustled through setbacks and stayed true to their visions. And now, these three men are
celebrated as pioneers in their fields.
Vincent Van Gogh is considered one of the best painters in history. His works sell for tens of
millions of dollars and are hanging in the world’s best museums. But few people realize that
18
19. during his lifetime (1853-1890) he was a complete failure – starving, estranged from his
family and blackballed from the commercial art world. In fact, he produced more than two
thousand works of art but sold only one. So distressed by his lack of success, penniless and
suffering from mental illness, he took his own life with a gun at only thirty-seven years old
(though interestingly enough, they never found the gun.)
Near the end of his life, when asked about his failure as an artist, Van Gogh said, "I can't
change the fact that my paintings don't sell. But the time will come when people will recognize
that they are worth more than the value of the paints used in the picture.”
I can’t summon a better example of faith, passion and perseverance in an artist. Van Gogh was
so unsuccessful, he almost served as the anti-artist, the punch line of jokes by the cultured elite
his whole life. But he was so possessed by his artistic vision that he continued to paint and
produce until the day he died. I’m certainly not encouraging you to be like Van Gogh. (It sure is
nice to sell plenty of books while you’re alive.) But the lesson is there: don’t listen too much
to critics, judge yourself by sales in the short-term, or worry if you’re operating outside the
literary establishment. Stay true to your art and keep going, no matter what.
Del the Funky Homosapien, whose real name is Teren Delvon Jones, is a rapper out of
Oakland, California. His cousin is the superstar Ice Cube, who helped him produce his first
album with Elektra Records when he was only eighteen years old. (You might remember the
song “Mistadobalina”.) But Del, frustrated with the tone of his album and the commercial
direction Ice Cube was leading him, decided to go out on his own on his second album, staying
true to his art. No Need For Alarm fell flat and received almost no attention in the industry.
He tried again with his third album, but based on initial demos that were unpopular with the
record execs, Elektra sent him a letter only a few weeks before the debut of Future
Development, releasing him from his contract. In those days, there were really no other options
for a musician who wanted to sell records. But he still didn’t give up.
Instead, Del reinvented himself, and subsequently changed the music industry forever.
Collaborating with fellow Oakland rap group, Souls of Mischief, they formed their own label,
Hiero Imperium, and released Future Development in 1998 as a tape, sold only via their
website. Del and Hiero realized the exploding phenomenon of the World Wide Web and
performing live were their only chance to share their music with the public and make a living.
It wasn’t pretty, but they earned enough to continue with music.
Now, almost twenty years after the unassuming and art-driven Del started to rap, he’s
considered a hip hop icon, achieving career longevity that’s rare in the industry – all on his
own terms. Being outside of the all-powerful music establishment allowed (or forced) him to
be a constant innovator. He sells Del and Hiero merchandise, released at least ten albums in
his career and is a frequent collaborator on some of the best projects in rap history, including
the Gorillaz’s Clint Eastwood.
19
20. Throughout his career, Del continued his love affair with marketing (along with a great team
behind him, like former manager, Domino,) through the internet that earned him a moderate but
extremely loyal fan base. He’s constantly experimenting with promotions that put the fans first,
releasing albums for free via the internet, selling another at pricing the fans could dictate (they
could pay anything they wanted for it with a minimum of $3), and a third album that has
completely open-pricing. He’s found new ways to connect with fans that bigger artists never
would dream. He’s also become a legend among a demographic of fans far outside the rap
norm – skateboarders, snowboarders and extreme athletes – landing as the soundtrack for
dozens of video games, documentaries and highlight videos.
More than just forging a living with innovative grassroots marketing, Del changed the music
industry forever. If it wasn’t for his circumvention of the system, I’m positive we wouldn’t see
so many talented, young artists finding their way through YouTube, MySpace, iTunes, etc.
Imagine if the great musicians of the last twenty years all started conforming their sound to
what would get them through the record companies’ commercial bottleneck, instead of singing
what was in their soul? We owe Del a lot. When it’s all said and done, he’ll go down as one
of the most storied and authentic rappers ever – and the godfather of a movement that
connected artists directly with their audience.
Bill James is one of the most influential people in the history of professional sports, but he’s
not a star athlete, a manager or even a team owner. Unless you’re a big baseball fan, you’ve
probably never heard of him. Yet for a decade, teams have made hundred million dollar-
decisions and won championships based on his philosophies. But James’s work started from
humble beginnings outside the establishment, way back in Holton, Kansas, in the 1970s. James,
fresh out of the army, landed a rather pedestrian job as a night watchman at a pork and beans
cannery. During those long, quiet nights with nothing but the fiery boiler to keep him company,
James indulged his love, undisturbed – tallying statistics from baseball games and jotting notes
on the patterns he saw emerge. His findings led him to reject the conventional wisdom about
players in baseball, the “eyeball tests” and rusty adages that still led teams to fill out their
rosters. James didn’t tell the anecdotal stories of the games (and didn’t care who won), but
instead let the statistics dictate what skills were important and who was valuable – a unique
discipline coined, “Sabermetrics.”
He wanted to share his passion, but when he submitted his work to publishers, they scoffed,
believing his material was too quirky and esoteric to ever find an audience. Undeterred, James
self-published The Bill James Baseball Abstract in 1977, an eighty-page analysis of baseball
statistics from the previous season. He placed a small ad in the back of the Sporting News and
was amazed that a few baseball geeks like him loved it and wanted more. So the self-
published release of his self-named abstract became an annual right.
Fast-forward to 1982 and his humble work had grown tenfold, catching the attention of a media
conglomerate that finally agreed to sign him and publish it. Within another ten years, James had
20
21. spawned a whole new branch of philosophy in baseball, applying those statistical patterns and
postulates to running a baseball team. His work was most widely accepted by the Oakland
A’s, a Sabermetric success story made popular in the movie Moneyball. (Though for some
reason, General Manager Billy Beane got all the shine, with almost no mention of Bill James.)
The A’s had a serious predicament – they were a small market team with a miniscule budget
trying to compete with big spenders like the New York Yankees. Baseball is extremely
imbalanced to favor big budget teams, so Oakland needed to find a way to beat the teams that
spent $200 million with a payroll that hovered in the $40 to $60 million range. Thanks to Bill
James’s Sabermetrics (and a huge leap of faith – or desperation - by General Manager Beane),
they did just that, averaging a formidable eighty-eight wins per season since 2004 and making
the playoffs an incredible seven times.
His philosophies soon caught the attention of the Boston Red Sox, a big market team who
nonetheless were divisional doormats to the Yankees. By adopting James’s disciplines, they
went on to usurp the Yankees and win two World Series titles (and counting). Sabermetrics
have become a contributing factor in roster decisions made by almost every team in the league.
What if James, frustrated by the closed doors of traditional publishing, gave up on his passion
and never published his abstracts? Think about where baseball would still be if that geeky
night watchman hadn’t decided to get his ideas out into the world by himself? Ideas are
powerful, like seeds. Plant the right seeds in rich soil and give them the right conditions to
grow (your marketing plan) and, given time, they’ll grow into something bigger than you ever
dreamed. Don’t be deterred one iota that you’re self-publishing, or that you’re a new author.
Don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle, as they say. Be unwavering in your
resolve to see your idea grow strong and hearty.
What do these Van Gogh, Del and James have in common? Up against an all-powerful system
that kept them locked out, they were courageous enough to do something totally avant-garde at
the time. They are marketing vanguards, taking on extraordinary risks and delving into the
unknown because they believed wholly in their work, never accepting “no” as an answer.
Some of it was necessity, some accidental, but the overwhelming majority came from courage.
Again, how does this apply to you, the self-published and possibly new author? My advice is
this: as long as you have a story to tell, tell it. The world will decide how near or far in the
ocean that wave will travel. Don’t for a moment hesitate to continue on your journey of writing
and selling your book just because it’s self-published. If you have something to add to the
eternal conversation, a story filled with truth and humanity, then get it out there. Yes, your book
is one little flickering light in a huge, impossible darkness, and the task of getting it noticed is
daunting. But I promise it’s possible and even realistic, and that’s exactly where I intend to
lead you.
The revolution of ideas is already here, and for self-published authors and all writers looking
21
22. to shake things up to achieve success, your time to shine brightly is now.
22
23. Chapter 3
Why traditional publishing purists are wrong
I want to address a debate floating around the book world and explain why traditional
publishing purists are one hundred percent, unequivocally, irrefutably wrong.
If you’re a self-published author or maybe a newbie shopping for an agent, you’ll encounter a
fair amount of lip-curling scorn from those in the traditional publishing world who think you
don’t deserve to be taken seriously. These “purists” are an old-boys network of literary agents,
the Big Six publishing houses, media, critics, book stores, who have been the gatekeepers to
publication and distribution for a long time. They decide whose work the world should see and
whose isn’t up to snuff. If you want to get signed by a publisher and make it big, absolutely
everything depends on catching the interest and favor of these people. Even a few years ago,
traditional publishers, along with a smattering of smaller of university publishing houses,
accounted for ninety-nine percent of the books that went to market.
The only problem was it was a flawed system, increasingly driven by profit, not promotion of
literature or the art of ideas. Agents received thousands of queries and manuscripts, and what
caught their attention was based mostly on recommendations from their existing clients or
industry insiders, and what they were confident they could sell to the big publishers. The big
publishers signed only those books they thought would sell with reasonable certainty. Often,
being accepted into this world was based on marketability, networking, or just dumb luck, not
screening for the best stories or highest quality writing.
To pace this discussion with a few examples: Snooki, of the reality show Jersey Shore,
released a novel called It’s a Shore Thing . Of course traditional publishers snatched it up and
promoted it like wildfire until it ended up on the New York Times Best Seller list. Does that
mean it was a quality book? No. Does the fact that it sold a lot of copies justify their decision
to publish it? Maybe. But we have to think of how many other writers and stories of quality
they rejected to chase sure profit with Snooki’s drivel. Are those the gatekeepers we should
entrust?
Another example: a brilliant writer in the year 2000 crafts an epic three-part series about
vampires and werewolves. She submits it to literary agents, trying to garner a big publisher,
but they all reject her because the subject matter is too bizarre and dark. Then, the same writer
sends the exact same manuscript to agents in 2010. Based on the commercial success of the
show True Blood and the Twilight series, agents can’t get a contract to her fast enough and the
publishers get in a bidding war for the rights to her work. Why? Same manuscript, same story.
The agents and publishers knew the project had a much better chance of selling in 2010, of
course, because it’s already commercially viable.
23
24. Money.
That’s what drives most decisions of the traditional publishing model.
Don’t get me wrong, that’s okay. It’s a business and we all have to make a profit and feed our
families. To be clear, I’m not saying the traditional publishing model is WRONG or shouldn’t
exist, only that there’s space for self-publishing to coexist. It shouldn’t be a big room with only
one door.
The paradigm of self-published work fighting for inclusion reminds me of the advent of
eBooks, and there’s a lot of causation. When eBooks first caught fire, people lamented and
shouted about how digital books would signal the end of printed books as we knew them. But
in the end, there was room for both. They both served a purpose, filled a need and offered two
different reading experiences. The ratio of print books to eBooks has settled at around sixty to
forty percent (to oversimplify) and I expect the split to land around fifty-fifty going forward.
Likewise, there’s plenty of room for traditional publishing AND self-publishing. I truly
believe the existence of both offers the best possible book publishing climate for everyone – a
hybrid model, allowing any humble writer to get their story out in the world, have an
opportunity to make money and promote literature as an art.
I made a statement with this chapter’s title, that traditional publishing purists, who reject self-
published work and authors are wrong. Here’s why:
Art belongs to everyone.
If you have something important to say, then say it. You should be free to share it with as many
people who want to hear it without censor or filter, or begging for permission.
Can anyone set up a canvas and buy some brushes and create a painting? Yes. Are they free to
show it at a local coffee shop if both parties agree? Yes. Who will decide if it sells? The
public, the viewer, the listener and the reader. If they like the art, it will sell and word will
spread and it will rise in popularity. If it’s terrible, it won’t. It’s really that simple. Art isn’t
meant to be placed in an ivory tower and guarded from us commoners. It’s meant to be shared
so it can bring joy and humanity to our time here on earth.
The movement to empower the “every man” to release their work and endeavor to find an
audience is called the “Democratization of Art,” and it’s already spread through visual arts
and the music industry (as we found out with Del the Funky Homosapien), morphing them
forever into a more inclusive model with multiple access points.
Therefore, the idea of self-publishing is nothing new or drastic, it’s just high time for literature
to follow what’s already occurred in other mediums. It used to be called “vanity publishing,”
24
25. because that’s essentially what it was – small personal projects that people paid a lot of
money to get printed and bound, or super esoteric books that had almost no viable market. But
now, self-publishing has a much bigger purpose – giving writers a fighting chance to get their
stories out to the world, where they can find their audience and be judged on merit, not money.
There are plenty of famous authors who were rejected again and again by the traditional
publishing industry, only to self-publish their work and find meteoric success. Later, the
publishers came back around and wanted to sign them, of course, which is great for everyone.
But imagine if these famous authors gave up after they heard no? Or if self-publishing didn’t
exist?
A recent mega hit, Hugh Howey’s scifi series Wool, was originally self-published via
Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing.
John Locke, the first author to sell a million eBooks and one of only eight authors to ever do
so, self-published his Donovan’s Creed series.
Those are recent hits thanks to the advent of digital technology. But what if we go back further
to find successful self-published books in print?
What Color is Your Parachute by Richard Nelson Bolles, which sold six million copies and
spent two hundred and eighty-eight weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list, was
originally self-published.
The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield was rejected by traditional publishing houses, so
he released it himself and sold copies out of the trunk of his Honda. It went on to sell five and
half million copies.
A Time To Kill by John Grisham was also first sold out of the trunk of his car. (By the way – if
someone called me over to the trunk of their car and asked me to lean in for A Time to Kill, I’d
mace them and run like hell.)
Real Peace by Richard Nixon was self-published in 1983.
We’re just getting started. How about these classics that were first self-published?
The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer is now up to its 75th anniversary edition.
Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard - twenty million copies sold.
Dr. Seuss was rejected twenty-three times by traditional publishers.
Other authors who have self-published include Deepak Chopra, Mark Twain, James Joyce,
Upton Sinclair, Gertrude Stein, Carl Sandburg, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound,
25
26. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Stephen Crane, George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Wolff, e.e. cummings,
William Blake, Edgar Allen Poe, Rudyard Kipling, Henry David Thoreau, Benjamin Franklin,
Walt Whitman, Alexandre Dumas and William E.B. DuBois.
In fact, twenty-seven of the top one hundred Kindle books at the time of this writing were self-
published via Kindle Direct Publishing.
As self-publishing has exploded in the last few years, and eBook formats and online content
make it easier than ever to share our work, some of the traditional publishing elite have
scoffed at the phenomenon. They say that self-published books are only pseudo-worthy of the
title published. In their opinion, everyone who writes a book good enough to deserve
recognition should go through the channels of query letter-agent-traditional publisher. But their
worst fear – self-published books flooding the market – is actually a good thing. It creates an
open economy where books rise or fall based on end user demand, not a false market created
by a small number of the elite. Self-publishing, eBooks and platforms like Amazon.com and
Kindle only make room for more of our voices. So you have an obscure little book about left-
handed fly fishing? That wouldn’t have a chance in hell of being signed if publishers looked at
the small demographic of readers and lack of big sales potential. But if five thousand left-
handed fly fishermen are out there who need the advice and welcome it enthusiastically, then
why shouldn’t it exist in the world?
Of course I’m not telling you NOT to pursue an agent, or shoot for the moon with a traditional
publisher. By all means, go for it. If one came knocking on my door tomorrow would I sign on
the dotted line? Possibly. Does that make me a hypocrite? Not at all. Seth Godin made a heroic
exodus into self-publishing and sang the anthem of the independent for years, only to go back to
his old traditional publisher in 2012. That’s just good business – the right thing for him at the
right time.
Self-publishing has been accused of being amateurish, unprofessional, and chock full of
mistakes. To be honest, that perception is correct in many cases – those things do exist more
frequently in self-published books. Whether it’s inexperience, part-time authors or a lack of
big editing budgets, indie authors do need to step up their game (and that includes me!) Then
again, I hear a lot of people accusing the writing in Fifty Shades of Grey of the same crimes.
I think it’s healthy if all of us in the industry – literary elite, self-published and newbie writer
alike –focus on improving the quality of our work, mastering our craft and promoting the art of
storytelling. There are two things I know for sure: that pursuit is a lifelong journey, and we’ll
never get there if we can’t get started.
26
27. Chapter 4
Why listen to me
First off, it’s not about me – it’s about you, and your goal of getting your book to as many
readers as possible. So please consider my credentials only as good or bad as the results we
achieve for you. But why should you follow my advice? Am I a household name in literary
circles? No. Have I sold a million copies of my book and made a ton of money? No. Am I a
super-geek with some new internet marketing magic tricks? Definitely not.
You should listen to me because I am, essentially, YOU, just a few years and a few books
later.
In that time, I’ve made a ton of mistakes, pushed through frustrations and failures and
weathered all of the challenges you’re going to meet… And in the process found some great
marketing tactics that work like a charm. Why is that important? I understand exactly what
you’re up against and the pride you feel in your baby – your book – and your burning desire to
get it out there to the world. I know what keeps you up at night, looking for answers in the
cracks of the ceiling.
Now it’s my turn to reach out and help pull you up. Through a lot of hard work and a little luck,
I’ve managed to break through and I’ve got to tell you, it’s nice on this side. Things are much
quieter. The work is just as hard (or harder) but without the fast-moving trains of confusion
and desperation constantly rumbling through town. It’s more about the writing, and truly
enjoying the time and space to form genuine connections with people who read it.
My long story, short: I put out my first book, Pushups in the Prayer Room, with all the wild
expectations and emotions first-time self-published authors have. I sold more than two hundred
and fifty copies but it still didn’t do nearly as well as I hoped. I tried a little of everything
when it came to book marketing, failed a lot more than I succeeded, became disillusioned with
how it all worked, but decided to rededicate myself to writing anyway. I did some more hard
living, sequestered from the world in a sleepy seaside village in Central America, and then
wrote another book, South of Normal, about those experiences.
I thought it was inevitable it would sell better than the first book. After all, I’d gone through all
the mechanics of basic marketing and building a platform. But it faltered, leaving me
dumbfounded when sales were even slower than the first book in the beginning. So what did I
do then, when the going got tough? I gave up. Seriously. I was so frustrated with the whole
puzzling game of marketing and selling books that I threw in the towel on the hope I’d ever “hit
big” or make money at it. However, I still went through the motions, figuring I’d just sell the
books I’d already printed. I continued to interact with people, blog, interact on social media
27
28. and have fun, but I abandoned any desire to push my book to a large audience and figure out the
book selling game.
However, within the defining process of that surrender, I found some marketing magic that
changed everything, a shift in my vision that gave me the keys to the kingdom. From there, the
book took off and quickly hit the Amazon.com bestsellers list. It’s won a few awards and made
a tiny bit of money, but more importantly, connected me with amazing friends and readers all
over the planet. What I’ve learned from that process has opened up opportunities I never
dreamed, landing me on ABC, NBC, Good Morning America, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, and
more. Thanks to that epic shift in my focus – and the marketing tactics I’ve sharpened – I’m
promoting my writing brand on a level I never expected, gaining exposure among hundreds of
thousands of people all over the world and am on my way to a solid, workman-like career
with the written word. My success may still be considered “humble” by many in the industry,
but the point is I’ve unlocked the gates to book marketing success. The rest is just time and
execution… and writing a whole lot more.
Now, let’s unlock those gates for you, too.
28
29. Chapter 5
First, Get Your Mind Right
The typical author story plays out again and again, hundreds of thousands of times every year,
yet little changes. This cycle repeats itself for many reasons – our intoxication with wealth and
celebrity, lack of reasonable expectations, opening of the self-published and eBook floodgates,
a record number of first-time authors, and finally, an information vacuum when it comes to
good book marketing practices.
Don’t think for a second that your book is so good it doesn’t need professional-caliber
marketing. You’re a writer, not a marketer. Those are two totally different things and should be
treated as such. No worries, this report is the crash course that’s going to bring you up to snuff
on that side of the business.
The typical author story even played out for me, much to my frustration, even though I have
twenty years of marketing experience. But there is a way to smash through it and go on to
selling books on their own merit. Not go around it, not sneak under it, but smash through it.
Here’s the typical author story, with context:
Isn’t it interesting that people read less and less, yet everyone wants to write a book? Is that
the same phenomenon that drives the reality TV craze? Regardless, the fact is people read full-
length books less and have far more to choose from – as we saw, maybe twenty-nine million
books in print. Even these numbers will be swallowed by a tsunami of self-published and
eBooks over the next five years.
Gone are the days when you can just show up online and declare, “Hey, I wrote a book and I
think it’s pretty good!” and expect to sell copies (though those days probably never truly
existed.) Unfortunately, the first-time author does just that far too often, charged with emotion
and “in their own head” from the intensely personal process of writing the book. (“Stare into
the abyss long enough, and the abyss stares back into you.”)
The newbie (and that’s not a bad word) starts out as gung ho about their book as a kid in an ice
cream store. They just know their book will be a success. They’re certain every person they
know will buy it. The media will embrace it. Reviewers will love it. It will become a big
commercial hit. SUCCESS is on the horizon.
But when the book comes out…
They sell a few copies to their family and friends, mostly out of support (pity), but people in
general don’t seem too excited. Sales are disappointing and flatten out after the initial burst.
29
30. The new author sends out press releases about how they wrote a book and it’s great, but hears
no reply. The few reviews they get (by begging bloggers and reviewers online or early
Amazon.com readers) are mixed. In fact, some of them are downright critical.
“But how can this be?” the new author thinks. They get frustrated, depressed and take it all
personally.
“I poured my heart and soul into this book and people should be buying it like wildfire. It’s
ME. It’s SPECIAL!”
So they redouble their marketing efforts, trying to talk people into buying it, but nothing much
changes.
“WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE WORLD????!!!!!!”
With that sick feeling of rejection in their throat, they compensate by pushing harder. Like an
injured gunfighter, they start shot-gunning social media messages wildly. Some authors even
become downright aggressive, trying to confront people for their perceived slight of not buying
a book.
But people feel that desperate energy and pull back. What the writer thought was good
marketing and hustle is actually counterproductive, pushing their potential audience away.
Why?
Everyone wants to buy, but no one wants to be sold.
Have you ever driven to the mall, walked to your favorite store and entered with a few items
in mind? What happens next? The friendly salesperson walks up to you with a big smile and
says “Hi, can I help you with something?”
And what do you say? Every. Single. Time.
“No thanks, I’m just looking.”
You might even hold your hands up in a defensive position, like you’re trying to fend off a pack
of ravenous coyotes.
It’s the same thing with book marketing – trying so hard to sell and pushing marketing messages
about the book and the author is counterproductive. Their sense of urgency cheapens the
perceived value of the story and the reader experience.
Do you see what’s happened? The author makes it all about him. Trust me on this folks, the
world keeps turning just like the day before, whether or not there’s one more book in it. People
still have to go to work and pay bills and have plenty of family obligations and a mile-long to-
30
31. do list. Your marketing emergency isn’t necessarily their priority.
Yet this is the story that happens again and again with new authors. It definitely happened to
me – twice. But do you want to hear something crazy?
I only started selling books and achieving success when I gave up. That’s right, I gave up
completely. I don’t mean I abandoned marketing the book, but I surrendered the notion that it
would sell a certain amount of copies and make a certain amount of money. I felt like a failure
as a writer (when really I was just a bad book marketer) and all of my dreams were trampled.
Looking back, hitting rock bottom and giving up were the best things that could have happened
to me. With sales and money and reviews and press out of my mind, I only wanted to share my
books with people so I could get rid of the boxes in my basement so I could move on to the
prestigious career of ditch digger. But that caused a shift in my marketing, and most importantly
in my mindset. I began to judge success by one happy reader or literary friendship at a time. I
started to have fun. I interacted with people coming from a genuine place, not leading with a
transaction in mind. I focused on sharing the story I’d lived, not the book I’d written, and found
out there was plenty of overlap into the lives, experiences and stories of other people. I
connected with them on that common ground and I made sure we had even more fun, together.
Within months I noticed unexpected and exciting changes:
I found my target market.
People were talking about my book via social media on their own.
I was having fun and “meeting” amazing new friends every day.
I was connecting with and helping people.
Instead of focusing on who hadn’t bought my book yet, I circled back and
thanked and shared time with those who had bought it.
I didn’t care about sales anymore – I cared deeply about people reading
my book. (There’s a huge difference.)
Media and networking opportunities I never imagined opened up almost
effortlessly.
BOOM.
I looked up one day and South of Normal had hit the top ten list in its genre on Amazon.com,
making it a bestseller. In fact, it was all the way up to number four , behind fifteen-year
heavyweights, like John Krakauer’s Into Thin Air.
And you know what? That was nice and all, but I still didn’t get too excited about sales… I
was having so much fun with the book and meeting so many cool people, and THAT was the
reward. Of course, sales and industry accolades are great. (Let’s keep it real.) But I was no
31
32. longer killing myself trying to sprint the first mile of a marathon.
They say if you can’t find the book you want to read, then write it yourself. When I was a new
author, I would have loved to hear the wisdom I now have to impart. So I realized my insights
into book marketing could help other self-published authors. I started sharing it via my blog,
got invited to teach seminars, asked to write a few guest blogs, published a few articles on the
subject, and received a ton of feedback for even more content, and this book was born.
I attribute one hundred percent of any humble success I’ve enjoyed to my shift in mindset. So
as you go through this information, remember your mindset has more to do with breaking
through than any specific marketing tactics.
Here are a few tips to help get your mind right:
Loosen up. You’re WAY too uptight from the pressure cooker of writing
and releasing your book.Now, loosen up some more – it’s not life or
death, and you have plenty of time to get it right.
Have fun. If you don’t have fun, I promise you, no one else will.
Lead with your passion.
Do it for ART and for LOVE, not for SALES.
Before I leave you to it, I want to share one more super important note, that thing we stuck a
pin in and promised to come back.
The Golden Rule of book market is: it’s NEVER about the author.
The benefit to reading the book must be all about the reader. You’re selling the entertainment
value the reader will get when reading the book – the experience – not the book itself.
The best way to think about your marketing is basically to have a huge online party and invite
as many people as you can. Celebrate the readers, the experience the story conveys and the
interests you all have in common. People are attracted to that energy. Sooner or later, they’ll
come to you because they won’t want to miss out on something good.
Do you remember that analogy we used earlier of walking into your favorite store? You went
there with the intention to buy something but then threw your hands up and said no when a
salesperson asked if you needed help. Now, think about that same store on Black Friday – the
day after Thanksgiving – when people line up around the block at 3 a.m. and stampede into the
mall for the privilege to spend their money first? What’s the difference? Mindset.
A lot of very smart people have sold a lot more books than me and written books about
marketing, so read their advice too. Figure out what’s right for you, and then do a lot of it. But
32
33. no matter whose advice you follow, I can promise you this: get your mind right first, and
success will find you – in ways and places you never expected.
33
34. Chapter 6
The secret to marketing your book
I propose you try something crazy. Don’t ever, never, ever come right out and say, “Buy my
book.”
Instead, shift your goal from book sales to warm introductions for people to have an
experience with your book. It may look like semantics, but believe me, there’s a fundamental
difference.
As I explained before, no one wants to be sold but everyone wants to buy. We’re so
bombarded with sales messages and advertising crap that when we perceive another pitch
coming, our brains instantly retreat into the castle and pull up the drawbridge. Yet, we continue
to buy more than ever. Why is that? Because we want to buy things on our own terms and for
our own reasons, not be lab rats responding to cheap and self-serving prompts.
In regards to marketing your book, this is how that change of intention may play out. Instead of
composing Tweets like this:
Buy my new book, Summer of Love, Don’t miss it! (LINK) #Romance #BestBooks
Or something like that, there’s a better way.
Start a conversation with your new audience, first. Explore what they have in common with the
themes, topics or experiences they’ll garner by reading the book. Delve into the values, issues,
challenges, needs, hopes, desires, hobbies, passions, dreams and fears covered in the book.
Why is Fifty Shades of Grey so popular? Luck, for one, but also because every woman who
reads it secretly (or not so secretly) imagines herself as the protagonist, translating the good
stuff into her own life. People want the fantasy, to imagine that, even for a few moments, it’s
possible. They want escapism.
Help your reader escape into your book not by reaching for their wallet for $14.95, but by
reaching out to them as human beings on a more profound and personal level. If you only think
of them as a potential transaction, you’ll end up with nothing. If you think of how you can help
them escape, being an accomplice in the jailbreak from their life, then you’re on the right track.
That’s great advice (which isn’t my own, of course – I had to learn from people much smarter
than me). But how the hell do we DO it? I wouldn’t leave you hanging – I’ll teach you.
Start by making a list of all the themes and topics in your book – absolutely everything it deals
with or covers.
34
35. For instance, South of Normal’s list may look like this:
Costa Rica
Tamarindo
Expats
Surfing
Travel
Ocean
Beach
Vacation
Tourism
Tropics
Swimming
Fitness
The drug trade
Marijuana
Escape the USA
Minimalism
Forgoing material possessions
Writing your first book (because I talk about that a lot in the book)
Finding happiness
The meaning of life
Spare no detail – if it was an important issue or topic in the book, include it on your list, as
well as people’s names, names of places, world events and more. These are the points you
have in common with your audience. Not all of them, of course, but it’s good to define them
first, then focus on what’s most prevalent. Next define the items on your list that will have the
most gravity with readers.
I narrowed it down to:
Costa Rica
Expats
Surfing
Those three keywords best describe my target market. From there, I wrote, produced and
shared content about those topics. Your goal is to be the best curator of those topics they’ll
ever find. That way, you are introducing yourself to people in a friendly, non-salesy manner
while establishing an authentic relationship, not chasing $14.95.
So what if a tweet looked like this:
What are the top surf destinations in the world? #Tamarindo, #Costa Rica? www.link.com?
35
36. Or
Have you ever thought of moving abroad? Here are 10 reasons why Costa Rica is the place
for you. www.link.com.
Can you see how someone might come across those online and be infinitely more likely to
click and read on?
How will that sell books? Because you probably won’t attract, engage, build trust, establish
credibility, form a relationship and conduct a sales transaction with a reader within one sales
message. That’s like expecting to get married on the first date when he or she first answers the
door. There’s a process of getting to know each other, a courtship, just like there’s a sales
process. But what you’re doing by putting out the correct content is getting a lot of first dates.
In sales, that means you’re bringing people into your sales funnel or sales cycle. They say it
takes at least seven positive exposures or interactions until someone automatically deems your
brand psychologically comfortable, and they can’t just be seven billboard ads saying, “Give
me your money, now.”
There’s another name for what I propose you do – it’s called content marketing. That’s a fancy
new moniker for a simple, fundamental sales premise: provide something of value first and the
sales will follow naturally. Or as the late, great sales guru Zig Zigler said, “If you help enough
people get what they want, you get everything you want.”
A little about the resurgence of content marketing from a pure business perspective, sometimes
also called outbound marketing:
Content marketing is a way of spreading information and value to the people who need it or
want it, while actively promoting your brand. Content can take many forms, articles, blogs,
infographics, Q&As, special reports, guidelines, workshops, podcasts, videos, speaking
engagements and educational tools.
These days, people automatically tune out sales messages – they fast-forward through the
commercials, close out the banner ads, breeze past the advertisements. How many times have
you pulled out a pen and paper and wrote down the number during a radio ad or as you drove
past a billboard? Those forms of traditional advertising have yielded vastly diminished
results.
The sales paradigm has changed, including with book marketing. Put enough great content out
in the world (internet,) and people who have an interest or need, and who are already active in
finding a solution to their need, will find YOU.
Every business has one agenda in mind, whether you’re selling books, designer jeans, cars,
36
37. whatever – to bring in more clients, serve them well and make money. Period. How we go
about doing that is called sales, and as you’ll see, the traditional method of sales has some
serious deficiencies for today’s market.
The Traditional Sales Paradigm
Our traditional marketing process looks like this: we tell people about us as loud and as often
as possible. “This is ME. This is MY COMPANY. This is what WE do. Sign up with US. Do
it NOW.” The problem is everyone else is doing the same thing. Everyone claims to be bigger,
better, faster and cheaper. The result is a super-saturated consumer environment that turns
people off. It gets more difficult to get their attention so, as marketers, we feel the need to turn
up the volume and frequency of our marketing messages even higher in order to keep up.
This doesn’t work well.
It’s called ‘shot-gunning,” and believe me, it will yield you diminishing returns until you’re
advertising a going out of business sale.
Let’s look at a marketing message you shotgun out to a thousand people, possibly a billboard
or radio ad, or even an emailing list about your product.
To earn a client this is the process that has to work correctly.
You hope the consumer receives your marketing message. (500 out of
1,000 people.)
You hope they open it and read it. (50 out of 1,000)
You hope they act and contact you. (2 out of 1,000)
You hope they need your product or service and are QUALIFIED. (1 out
of 1,000)
You hope they are financially committed to paying you. (.5 out of 1,000!)
Those are not good odds, especially when you're spending big money and expecting a decent
marketing return on investment.
But if we look at content marketing compared to the traditional sales paradigm…
The client searches for the information you have provided, perhaps
through Google or Yahoo.
They are motivated to read and internalize the message.
They have already acted to start solving their problem or filling their need.
If you provide valuable content, you’re already building trust and
credibility.
37
38. You are their new favorite resource, so they’ll return to you or contact you
to continue the conversation.
To put it simply, THEY are looking for YOU, not the other way around.
This works extremely well with book sales (with minor adjustments based on the nature of the
product.) In fact, John Locke, who set the record as the first to sell a million eBooks,
documented how he used this process in his book, How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!
Basically, he attracted and engaged people through Twitter and then continued the relationship,
moving the conversation over to email, forming literary friendships and creating brand
ambassadors.
Too often, new or self-published authors release a book and their whole marketing campaign
insists of imploring (no, begging) their friends, family and coworkers to buy the book. I know
this because I made that mistake, too (as well as every other mistake you could make). How
many of us have made a list of our friends or added up how many Facebook friends we have
and silently calculated, “If even half of them buy my book, I’ll have a thousand sales instantly.”
Or something like that. Don’t push your friends to buy. Tell them about it, of course, share the
experience with them, have fun, celebrate, invite them to the book release party. But the friends
you already know, who are buying the book out of charity (and probably never reading it) are
ultimately not your target market. It’s fun to see book sales numbers bounce at first, but it’s not
where you want to place the majority of your attention and effort.
Guess what? People will buy a book when they feel like buying a book, not just because you
showed up one day and released one. They have hundreds of friends and people they know
selling them stuff – from purse parties to fantasy football leagues to Girl Scout cookies, so if
you think your product automatically deserves to be at the top of that list, you’re misguided.
Have fun, keep putting out good energy, slowly but surely introduce the book and what it’s
about, and be the best damn curator of the topics in the book. Sooner rather than later, your
audience will come to you on their own. They’re a thousand times more likely to buy out of
fear of missing the party than because they just might enjoy it.
Yes, your competition among other books and entertainment options is overwhelming, but as a
self-published author you also have unique opportunities to spread the word about your book
and your brand in unique, creative ways, with unlimited potential to reach a huge audience.
38
39. Chapter 7
3 Questions to Ask Before You Write Your Book
My biggest thrill is getting an email from an aspiring writer who asks for advice on how to
start their first book. Some of them are bright-eyed and optimistic, some seasoned and
cautious. But whether they’re penning a business book or the next great teen-zombie-thriller,
there’s one question they all have in common:
“Where the hell do I begin?”
Great question.
The process of writing a book and sharing it with the world can feel so overwhelming, it may
drive you to drink. Even a simple Google search about ‘writing a book’ will bury you in an
avalanche of information, at times so diluted, confusing and contradictory, that it’s kept many a
talented writer from getting started.
Of course you can begin like I did – wasting time on Facebook and calling it “marketing,”
daydreaming about groupies (who never appeared) and choosing actors for when Hollywood
called (which never happened, but might I recommend a better way?)
I truly love coaching new writers, doing my best to simplify and clarify the process while
encouraging them to take the first steps, so this is how I respond to their inquiries:
“Here are three questions to ask yourself BEFORE you start writing your first book.”
1. What are you trying to achieve with this book?
What are your goals? Your expectations? Is it to sell a certain number of copies? Do you want
to make a specific amount of money? Or is it to get great reviews, have as many people as
possible read it and entertain them? If you’re planning on quitting your day job and pouring
yourself one hundred percent into writing, then your goals will be much different than if it’s
just a passion project. I do a fair amount of ghostwriting for business people who want to put
out a book as a way to establish themselves as an industry expert and engage new clients, not
necessarily contribute to the field of literature, so obviously their goals are different.
Furthermore, are you planning on starting a series of books or are you one-and-done? Will you
be doing speaking engagements? Workshops? Are you trying to get your name in the media?
There is no right answer to this question, but knowing what you hope to achieve helps you
focus on reaching that outcome as you write.
39
40. 2) How is your book going to be different from every other book out there?
One of my favorite quotes offers advice that translates well to writing and marketing a book.
“Do not speak – unless it improves on silence.” -Buddha
In other words, don’t talk just to talk, and don’t write just to write or see your name on a book
jacket. If you have something that improves on the status quo, then write it. But if you’re just
creating more noise in the already deafeningly loud room of publishing and media messages,
then skip it. Only write if you have an important story to tell, a human truth to expose, or
something of value to add to the eternal conversation.
Right after I released my first book, Pushups in the Prayer Room, a friend of mine who’s a
producer for the TV shows, The Amazing Race and Survivor, gave me some feedback. She
asked me the ultimate question. “Why should the reader care about your book? How is yours
different?”
I was tongue-tied, taken aback and a little bit offended for about five minutes, until I realized
she was right. She’d asked the absolute best question any writer could be asked.
Why should the reader care?
As we documented earlier, it's a crowded market, so to have a snowball’s chance in hell of
competing, you have to have a specific niche, remarkable story or unique proposition that
clearly separates you from the hundreds of thousands (or millions) of other books in your
genre. Unless you have something DIFFERENT, BETTER or VALUABLE to say, you’re just
being redundant and creating noise.
3. When a reader puts down your book, what do you want them to say?
Picture this. A wife and husband are lying in bed, reading. She finishes your book, closes it,
takes off her reading glasses, turns to her husband and says…
You have some control over what happens next. I’m not just talking about her assessment of the
book’s quality, which is subjective, but what specific message she conveys to him. And then
conveys again on Facebook the next day, and to a friend, and maybe tells her coworker about
it, who tells his wife, who is in a reading group, and so on. That is how books get sold – word
of mouth (and social media) recognition based on a clear, concise, overriding message from
author to reader that’s easy to pass around.
Have you ever heard of an elevator commercial in business? It’s the thirty-second script you
use to describe who you are, what you do, what problem your product or service will solve
and how you’re different. The whole story of your book, even if it’s five hundred pages, should
40
41. fit neatly into a brief pitch line like an elevator commercial. Figure out what that is and make
sure you convey it to the reader effectively so that wife will tell her husband exactly what you
want the world to hear.
41
43. Book marketing mistakes self-published and new authors
make
Since I promised you we’d help minimize your marketing mistakes in this book, here are the
top twelve errors self-published and new authors commit. Highlighting what errant roads NOT
to go down will help you stay on track… and sell books.
1) They shotgun sales messages and call it marketing.
Too often, self-published or first-time authors release a book with LOUD! and persistent-
persistent-persistent announcements all over social media. If you’re selling used cars that
might work, but marketing your book is a more sophisticated endeavor. Nearly 500,000 new
books will be released this year, all clamoring for attention and sales, so when you shotgun
marketing messages about buying your book, you do nothing but add one more car to a nasty
traffic jam – and no one appreciates that. There’s a far better way to market and gain sales.
2) Not blogging and then not blogging some more.
Blogging is an overused word these days but the intention is to release quality content about
the subject matter in your book, not document driving the kids to soccer practice. Keep your
posts short but write them consistently – a blog should be just one thought on paper. They
should always answer a question, solve a problem, entertain or provide value. Blogging will
give you something to post via social media (think of the bullets and the gun analogy), draw an
audience, establish yourself as an expert, build trust and form literary friendships – all while
selling books.
3) They don’t establish their niche.
With tens of millions of books flooding the market, it’s more important than ever for an author
to understand their ultra-specific niche. Before you even write your book, figure out what niche
it will serve. I don’t mean just a genre, like romance or travel adventure, but you should know
the specific demographic of who will absolutely love and who needs your book. Make a list
based on age, gender, location, lifestyle, hobbies and interests, and you’re just getting started
defining the niche you want to target. No lie, it’s easier to market that book about left-handed
fly fishing than a romance novel because you know exactly who your demographic is. If you
want to read a fantastic book about niche book marketing, especially to promote your business,
check out Own Your Niche by my friend and mentor, Stephanie Chandler.
4) Not realizing their value proposition.
Don’t write a book just because you want to see your name in print or drop that you’re an
author at fancy parties. (I’ve tried it – people aren’t that impressed.) Your book should add
value to readers’ lives above and beyond what already exists in print. Does it fill a need?
Solve a problem? Explore a human truth? Tell a story in a unique or fresh way? If not, then
you’re just regurgitating what’s already out there.
43
44. 5) They set unrealistic goals.
I get it – you want to be a best seller, sell the movie rights and end up on the Oprah show.
Those are great goals and I’m all for dreaming big, but you might want to focus on jogging a
mile before you’re ready to qualify as an Olympics sprinter. By setting up certain stages of
marketing, you won’t get burnt out or disappointed when reality comes knocking. I like to set
goals for tasks executed, people who are exposed to the book (not necessarily pay for it), and
literary friendships formed, instead of raw sales numbers, because you can directly control
those.
6) They think the book is about them.
Writing a book can be one of the most intimate and deeply personal experiences you’ll ever
have. You’re baring your soul for all the world to see, but marketing is the exact opposite.
When you’re promoting your book, the focus should be one hundred percent about the reader
and their experience with the topic in the book, not your art and certainly not your ego. It is no
longer your story when you release it into the world – it’s a gift you’re giving away. This is
perhaps the biggest shift of perspective authors as book marketers fail to make, but it does
make all the difference.
7) Not treating it like business.
Never forget you are a businessperson trying to market a product, expand your brand, garner
sales and build a following. What you’re trying to accomplish is on a root level the same as
Coca-Cola or Toyota. Treat it as such with a focused business plan, analysis of your
competition, strategic partnerships, a marketing schedule and accountability. It’s just business,
so don’t be afraid to look outside the narrow world of traditional book publishing and
marketing for inspiration.
8) They take it personal.
You’ll need to grow a thick skin quickly if you’re going to be in this game, and it takes practice
to reach a balance where you can be emotionally detached but not dispassionate. You should
put your heart and soul into writing but then market the book like a cold robot. At first it’s
almost impossible not to live and die with every review, every insult of a friend who didn’t
buy your book, or every rejection. But with conscious training you’ll also be able to bounce
back immediately and even turn negatives into positives.
9) They don’t get creative.
Hanging out on Facebook all day does not a book marketing campaign make. (I know – I’ve
tried.) There are endless possibilities to gain exposure for your book in creative way,
especially with social media these days. Make custom photos, infographics, shoot author
videos, conduct giveaways and raffles, make silly bets with your readers and fans, conduct
readings, speak in public, contact big shots and taking advantage of national days and holidays
(like Valentine’s Day for romance novels), just to name a few. Make a brainstorming list and
get a little crazy.
44
45. 10) They don’t have fun!
Guess what? If you don’t have fun while you’re marketing the book, no one else will. (Nor
will they buy it.) Excitement is contagious, so if you have a fun, positive reader-first attitude
while marketing, it will rub off on others and reinvigorate you. Think of your book marketing
as a huge party – a celebration of art and life – and your job is simply to invite as many people
as possible.
11) They pay too much for the unknown.
When I started out, I knew a lot about marketing but little about book marketing, and would
have gladly paid someone a fair sum to handle my social media and book promotion campaign.
But when I shopped around, I found high-priced PR firms who offered to send out a certain
amount of press releases a month for inflated sums, like $2,500 a month. They made it sound
wonderful, but in reality you have no idea if those press releases will ever actually garner you
any coverage, or if that would translate into book sales.
Like author Tamara Dorris says, “The best advice I can give authors is not to think you can just
pay someone else to handle your book marketing and that’s the end of it. No one will love your
book much as you do, so you can spend thousands on publicity but your personal involvement
will always reap the best results.”
Unfortunately, there are plenty of people quick to charge for the unknown in the book game and
make it sound like a sure thing, so be careful. The decision I made was to take on the marketing
campaign myself so at least I could learn, control my efforts and care more than anyone else
would. I also designed a platform of book marketing services to help other authors that looks
exactly like what I wanted – and for exactly what I wanted to pay.
12) Thinking there’s a magical shortcut to selling books.
Too often we’re swinging for a homerun, looking for that one lucky thing that will turn us into
millionaires overnight. When you’re starting out, it feels like you’re going to live and die with
every decision, made or broken by every trivial misstep. You won’t – there is no panacea.
Book marketing is about have a focused plan that’s all about the reader, executing it with
energy, passion and fun, sticking to it with consistency over the long-term, and building a rock-
solid foundation so you can rise as high as you want to keep adding to it.
45
46. Chapter 9
The instant game changer to help handle critics
You’re going to get bad reviews. In fact, the more books you sell and the more your name gets
out there, the more haters, malcontents and weirdly angry strangers will cross your path. I can
tell you just to brush it off and not worry, but of course that’s ridiculous advice. It stings like
hell every time someone expresses a poor opinion of your work, which you poured your heart
and soul into. It fills you with rage, makes you want to defend yourself vehemently, or even
give up as a writer.
But don’t forsake – I can help. Cool, calm and collected, I’m going to lead you through how to
handle criticism, negative reviews and outright vicious attacks. These aren’t sunny positive
thinking messages or wishful sentiments about letting it all go or loving everyone, but tangible
tactics to reframe negative feedback so you’ll actual be confident and sometimes even happy to
deal with it.
First, there are two types of negative feedback:
1. Dissenting opinions and constructive criticism.
Whether you like it or not, some people will find fault with your book or just flat out not care
for it. Their negative reviews will be about your book, not about you, and may contain specific
suggestions about what didn’t go over well with them. Believe me, these are your friends and
you can learn and grow from their feedback.
2. Personal attacks.
And then, there are those people who absolutely rip into you. Every single thing is wrong with
your book – it’s the worst book ever written, offensive, has no redeeming value, and you’re the
worst writer who’s ever lived. They’ll even slander and slam your character, not just the
characters in your book.
Let me share with you my experience with the latter, a vicious and personal 1-star review on
Amazon.com that led me to figure out the surefire strategy to growing a thick skin. This is from
a blog I wrote a couple years ago:
I'm more excited to write this morning than usual because I just received my first 1-star review
for South of Normal. Yes, I do mean I'm excited in a good way, and no, "1-star," is not a typo.
Let me explain why, and offer how 1-star reviews are actually nothing to stress about as an
author.
I checked into my Amazon.com page this morning and saw a new review had been posted.
46
47. That’s usually a good thing, but this particular reader gave the book 1 star.
The review was titled "Horrible on EVERY level," and described me as "meaningless, a
loser, whining, miserable … no wonder your life sucks, addicted to stupidity," and went on to
characterize me as a "meatball" (probably true.) and added that “if typing ‘Dear Diary, today I
washed my underwear’ is what makes one a writer, you are qualified."
I replied, “Thank you for your review,” and left it at that.
Why could I so easily absorb that slap in the face? Here’s the secret:
A bad review just means you successfully identified someone who is NOT in your target
market.
In fact, you did an AWESOME job finding someone who’s an ideal candidate NOT to buy and
read your book. That’s valuable information because it helps you narrow down who IS your
ideal reader. A bad review doesn’t mean your book is bad (just like a 5-star review doesn’t
mean it’s good). All it means is someone REALLY disliked it. Some people love Shakespeare,
some love I Hope they Serve Beer in Hell. Some people love the movie The Notebook, some
The Hangover. Cujo and Lassie were both great movies about dogs, but their viewers
probably had slightly different tastes when it came to entertainment.
No one is going to love everything – that’s impossible (and would make the world damn
boring). That’s not your goal. If you try to please everyone you will be miserable and your
writing will be bland beyond belief. Your job as an author (other than writing the best, most
honest book you can) is to find your specific target market and share your work with them as
much as possible.
I received a lot of great feedback and encouragement on that blog, so I expanded it into a list of
reasons why you shouldn’t stress about bad reviews and attacks. Much of this advice applies
to all artists, not just writers, but also singers, actors, inventors, or anyone who is trying to do
something different and creative in this world. Hopefully these thoughts put things in
perspective so you won't be stunned by a bad review, just motivated to shine on.
Ten reasons why authors should love 1-star reviews.
1. They are right.
I know what you might be thinking. “Say what? No way. My work is better than that, they don’t
know what they’re talking about.”
Realize a review is THEIR forum to express whatever opinion they wish. It belongs one
hundred percent to the reader. You, the author, had two hundred and fifty pages to express your
view of the world, so now they get to cram their whole existence into one hundred and fifty
47
48. words reflecting on your work. So no, they’re never wrong. Their opinion might be short-
sighted, emotional, incomplete, or a little unfair, but that’s cool. It’s their time to talk, so the
author should just clam up and respect that.
2. They may be too close.
When you receive a review that slams you personally, remember it could be from a person in
the book who doesn’t like their portrayal (if it’s nonfiction), someone who has a bee in their
bonnet about the subject matter, someone who thinks they can do it better or are smarter, who
doesn’t like your politics, religion, country or the color of your skin. (It’s sad, but true.)
Someone who’s off their meds, who hasn’t read the whole book (as clearly, this reviewer
didn’t get past the second chapter), or it’s a competing writer trying to slam your book because
it threatens his own. They are way too close to the whole thing for you to consider their words
impartial.
3. There are a lot of angry people out there.
Sadly, the internet has become a cesspool of angry and desperate people expressing their
darkest thoughts while hiding behind the mask of anonymity. When someone feels sad, alone,
angry or fearful, they lash out any way they can, and too often that’s with bullish or hateful
comments on online. The reader still probably didn’t like your book, but the hurtful, attacking
review probably had more to do with their life than it did your book. Let's just give them a big
group hug and not take it personally.
4. At least you’re not boring.
Give me 1-star reviews all day long, but PLEASE don’t give me a 2- or 3-star review – that’s
just blahhh. I write in the introduction to South of Normal that my goal with the book was to
make people think a little bit and feel something. A 1-star review just shows the book stirred
their passion and challenged their belief system, but at least it wasn’t viewed as boring – the
ultimate sin.
5. Crazy loses credibility.
The more crazed and aggressive the reviewer sounds, the more they lose credibility with
anyone who may be reading. Their words will expose them for who they really are, not who
YOU are. When responding to a bad review, ALWAYS be nice, polite and respectful. NEVER
debate them. Agree with them, thank them, and have fun with it.
6. Understand statistical outliers.
Whenever you open up something to mass opinion, there will be outliers, people who go way
off the deep end in either direction. For instance, at the time of writing this, my South of
Normal now has eighty-two 5-star reviews out of one hundred and twenty-three, a seemingly
impressive sixty-seven percent. But we have to take that with a huge grain of salt. A lot of
those reviews are from friends or an established audience, so I almost throw out that number.
The other indicator is it has only four 1-star reviews, a pretty low number for any book, but
still I throw out that number. There will be outliers no matter what statistic or ranking you’re
48
49. looking at, and the truth always lies somewhere in the middle. The more reviews you get, the
larger the sample size, the more a balanced curve will emerge: some 5-star, some 1- and 2-
star, but mostly 3- and 4-star reviews. That’s how it always is, so if you expect all 5-star
reviews, you’re deluding yourself or you haven’t sold nearly enough books.
7. It’s not going to affect sales either way.
You won’t lose significant sales with a 1-star review, nor will people throw money at you
because you have a few good reviews. Selling books is about finding your target market, those
who want or need your content, and then consistently (but tastefully) introducing the subject
matter to them so you may share an experience, and eventually build loyalty. One little blip on
the radar isn’t going to sabotage that process. In fact, you might even attract a few new readers
based on the bad review. I had a reviewer chide me for having the subject matter of sex, drugs
and violence in the book. I shared that review online and a few people told me they bought the
book just for that reason.
8. Everyone gets bad reviews.
It’s amazing, but even the greatest authors and books in history regularly receive 1-star and
negative reviews. I did a quick search on Amazon and Romeo and Juliet has twenty-two 1-star
reviews out of two hundred and sixty-seven total, or an astounding 8.2 percent. The Catcher in
the Rye (one of my all-time favorites) has three hundred and forty-four out of 3,341, or about
ten percent. How about the mega-selling Fifty Shades of Grey? It has more than twenty-seven
percent 1-star reviews. Ouch. Check this out: even the King James Bible has fifty-four out of
six hundred and thirty-three 1-star reviews, or more than 8.5 percent. I rest my case.
9. You’re nobody until somebody hates you.
A long time ago, I gave some advice to my dear friend M.L., a gifted art and music promoter
who put herself out there tirelessly to help others become successful. One time, it backfired
and she received a hurtful comment, so she came to me upset. “Congratulations,” I said. “You
know you’re breaking through and doing your job well when you start getting haters.” Jealousy
and envy are two poisonous emotions, but inevitable if you become worthy.
10. Who cares?
I mean, really… Does it matter? Of course it hurts, it stings, it sucks, but will it change
anything? No. They cannot ruin the experience for you – only YOU can ruin the experience for
you, so don’t allow that to happen. When you zoom out to a year from now, or even a month
from now, you probably won’t even remember the incident, or you may just laugh at it, so keep
an even keel. Keep perspective by focusing on the good things you’re doing and the wonderful
people giving you good, honest (though not always perfect) feedback.
Negativity goes BOOM! but quickly fades, while positivity echoes forever.
Okay, now how do you deal with the angry psychos and haters who attack you personally?
49
50. There is one and only way: Kill them with kindness.
Seriously, when someone rips into you and you try to defend yourself or your book, you lose. If
you lower yourself to their level and try to retaliate, you lose. If you even try to explain your
position, you lose.
Why? Because you’ll look bad to the other people who read the reviews and comments. Think
of yourself like a big, established brand such as Coca-Cola. When someone rips into them, do
they add more fuel to the fire and respond? Or, at best, do they just send back an email or
comment saying, “Thank you for your suggestion. You’re complaint will be taken under
consideration”?
People will pay attention to how you conduct yourself and you can only lose this battle, never
win, unless you’re the consummate rainmaker. It’s not just the words you say but also the
energy you bring, and if you become nasty and negative to combat another nasty, negative
remark, you’ll lose credibility with your real audience. Be like Coca-Cola and no matter what,
write back emotionally cooling, affirmative words.
Also, your sunny disposition will piss the attacker off even more, which is fun. They’ll get
fired up and nasty, while you’ll just sit back and laugh. Give them just enough rope to hang
themselves with their own erratic temperament and THEY’LL show what a screwball they are
– you won’t need to do that work for them.
Humor is an amazing tone to use when writing back, too. Keep it fun and light and show
they’re not getting to you. But combine that humor with positivity – not making fun of them or
attacking them back.
You know what else you’ll find? When you remain neutral and respectful in the presence of a
hater, others will come to your rescue. And they can rip into that person and express a strong
opinion in your defense without making you look bad. But you’ll keep your role of classy,
unflappable mediator, and pretty soon you’ll be defending the attacker against attacks, which
makes you look like a combination of Mother Theresa and a cute newborn puppy.
Here’s an example, from someone who was voraciously opposed to the presence of an ad for
my book South of Normal on Facebook:
50
52. Once I answered simply and affirmatively, he went on and on in a hurtful manner about why the
book was awful and I was even worse. He thought he was being cool and funny (and he’s
probably an all right guy once you unplug his computer), but when I wouldn’t take the bait and
let him reel me in, he grew more desperate with his personal attacks. Then my friends and
other readers I’ve never met stepped in and put him in check. He’s since erased all of his
original comments, not relishing his new role as social media bully. You’ll get people who
lash out at you behind the anonymity online because they are angry, depressed, cowardly, or
hurting inside, but realize that has nothing to do with you or your book so just wish them the
best and ignore it.
Speaking of anonymity, there does come a time when you don’t have to take abuse anymore.
But there is still a clever, humorous way to do it so you’re not just throwing more gas on their
fire.
Check out this blog I wrote exposing a hateful and threatening reviewer.
Hate Mail Can Be Fun!!!
Warning: the language is strong, so don’t read it you’re easily offended.
52
53. Chapter 10
Draft a mission statement, Why I write.
The iconic British writer George Orwell wrote a book called Why I Write. It’s not his best
work, packed with political ranting difficult to place in context for a reader in the next century
and across the big pond, but I still recognize it’s his most personal work. After reading that
book, I clearly and definitively know why George Orwell wrote.
You should define why you write, too. Think of it as a company mission statement, that guiding
set of principles and values that overrides and directs all action. Once you have your own
writing mission statement, you’ll be so much more focused on what you’re trying to
accomplish with your words, the messages you want to send, and to whom you’re talking. This
will also help you string together a common tone and theme in every book you write, as well
as blogs and social media messages you craft.
I recommend you also write a list of what kind of experience you want the reader to have as
they read your book (or blog, ot whatever), and define how you’re different than every other
book and author in your genre. What do you have to say that’s so different, better, new or fresh
that it’s worth adding to the mountain of millions of books in print? What tone do you want
your work to convey? Familiar, casual, authoritative, scholarly, fun, serious? This is your
Brand Directive.
It may seem a little bit rigid to go through these exercises but believe it or not, this structure
will help free you up creatively. Think of your writing as a wild stallion that blazes ahead at
dizzying speeds but can easily veer off course. Your mission statement is the jockey that
harnesses the wild stallion of your writing, making sure it keeps galloping in the right
direction.
This is my mission statement. I’d love to see yours once it’s written, so feel free to email it to
me.
Why I Write:
I write because I see things so fascinating in this world, they need to be documented.
I write to challenge people to think, shaking the branches of intellectual laziness we perch
on.
I write to tell people's stories, to be a witness to their existence so they know they’re not
alone.
53
54. I write to make peoples’ lives better, to help them endure this fleeting time on earth, to
lighten their load.
I write to unite people, to swing a wrecking ball at the false barriers,
contrived differences, and petty fears we construct to protect ourselves but end up
becoming our prisons.
I write to fight for people who cannot fight for themselves.
I write to make people laugh and to give them joy, to make them feel more human.
I write to serve.
-Norm Schriever
54
55. Chapter 11
The essence of social media
Some of you are still trying to figure out how to set the timer on your VCR ten years too late
(like me), while others navigate the social media universe like Captain Kirk. But whether you
have ten thousand Twitter followers or you find yourself asking, “What’s this blog thing I keep
hearing about?” you’ll find some value in this chapter.
To be clear, I’m not a social media expert. A lot of brilliant techies are in the world. I am not
going to educate you about the nuts and bolts of social media – you can easily Google that and
find amazing information. What I will do is break down social media as it pertains to book
marketing for the self-published author.
To start, let’s look at an email I just received this morning. This is from someone I deeply
respect, a well known author who’s published a dozen books with a Big Six Publisher and is
also a highly-touted editor and screenwriter. He’s in the process of going the self-publishing
route for a side project and wants some social media and marketing assistance. Here’s what he
wrote:
“I have a Facebook page for myself and one for my upcoming novel and a Twitter account and
am setting up a blog. What else is there?”
What else is there, indeed? Writing a book and selling a book are two completely different
vocations. That email is from someone who’s a better writer and sold more books than I can
ever hope. A lot of bad books sell well, and even more incredible stories collect dust on the
shelves (or in your garage). But I also wanted to celebrate his genius question.
Let me oversimplify the essence of social media.
Social media is a vehicle for connecting with people and sharing messages, ideas,
entertainment, news, art and, in this case, a book. Think of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and
others as your own TV station. You get to choose all of the programming your viewers will see
and schedule when it’s on.
Everyone wants social media to allow them to sell ten thousand books instantly, but here’s
another secret to book marketing: the way to do that is to sell one book, ten thousand times.
There are no magic shortcuts. If you were a door-to-door salesperson selling encyclopedias
back in the day, you’d have to knock on one door at a time. But the good news is now you can
conduct those ten thousand transactions concurrently and efficiently - via social media.
If social media won’t do the work for you – if it’s only a channel or a vehicle – then how will
55
