3 | Book marketing secrets
1. Mike Michalowicz’s formula for books that keep selling: SOI × DOI × EOI
Most books spike at launch, slide for about six months, and then level off.
Whether a book climbs from there or fades out comes down to three things:
Speed of Impact (SOI) is how fast a reader gets a result.
Degree of Impact (DOI) is how much that result changes their life. (
Ease of Implementation (EOI) is how easy it is to act on.
Mike explains it with weight loss: working out daily for five years to lose 100 pounds is slow, hard work.
A pill that takes the weight off overnight is fast, huge, and easy, and that’s the book everyone tells their friends about.
Word of mouth grows when a book scores high on all three, partly because recommending a book that changed their life makes readers look good to their friends.
As Mike puts it, if you nail the formula, “your book starts to climb faster.”
2. “Why are you trying to build fans of you? Why don’t you become fans of them?”
Mike says that question is “the magic.”
He puts it into practice by printing his OWN email address in his books and asking readers to write to him when they start the journey, with a specific phrase to put in the subject line.
He still gets about 24 emails a day, and he answers them.
Recently a reader said the book had already been transformative, and Mike sent back a quick personal video.
“How many authors do that? Zero,” he says.
That 30-second reply turns a reader into someone who tells friends,
“You’ve got to read his book.”
It only works if it’s genuine, and Mike is open about it.
His assistant briefs him on the emails and sends his replies for him, and the messages say so.
Try it yourself: put your email in your book, ask readers to reach out, and reply to them.
3. Will AI replace authors? Be Picasso
Some well-known authors are asking whether AI means the end of nonfiction.
Mike doesn’t see that in his own numbers.
His sales are holding steady even as readers ask AI for the answer instead of reading every chapter.
“AI sucks at storytelling,” so he’s putting even more story into every book, and he’s studying fiction to get better at it.
He thinks books are going the way of music albums.
Physical copies are becoming souvenirs, and the real value moves to the human connection around them, like speaking and engaging with readers.
His favorite comparison is Pablo Picasso.
When the camera made realistic portraits easy, many said painting was finished.
Picasso used the new technology and went somewhere only a human could go: abstraction.
“The greatest authors of this next generation are going to leverage the shit out of AI,” Mike says. Let AI do the “basic dirty work,” and put your own effort into the stories and connections that only you can make.
