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Reader, Before the Bestseller launched almost a year ago to the day. To date, we’ve seeded 2,266 copies into the wild.
Book marketing spend: After an initial post-launch dip, monthly orders are once again on the rise, indicating more love from Amazon along with increasing word of mouth:
The impact of the book on our business has been significant and more than paid for itself. Here are some examples:
I thought it’d be useful to share 3 of my biggest learnings from this process. 3 Secrets: The two biggest sales days for Before The Bestseller (so far) came from 2 book marketing influencers endorsing my book in their newsletters (Ricardo Fayet and Dave Chesson).
300 sales in one day. $0 in ad spend, $0 admin fees paid, $0 in any type of payment to either of them… In fact I made money that day. Yes, no money was exchanged to make it happen… It was paid for with 5 years of “networking”. NETWORKING – the word alone makes people scrunch up their faces at the thought of fake relationship building. BUT, as you see above, the “value” of networking can’t be overstated… It would have easily cost over a thousand dollars to move those copies, but instead two friends made it happen for free. Okay so what exactly is the secret here? Marnie Stockman (Lead It Like Lasso) calls it her Friday ritual. Let’s call it “The Giving Hour”. It’s your new weekly ritual to un-slime the word networking. Here’s how it works: You pick a day and time each week and just listen. You listen to what the people you want to connect with are posting on their social media profiles. You pay attention to anything you’re uniquely suited to help with or ways to add value to their life based on what they’re saying. Here’s how it worked for Marnie: During her giving hour, Marnie saw that the host of the top Ted Lasso podcast just got the same dog her co-author Nick. She had just finished knitting Nick’s dog a sweater and thought, “I should knit one for him too”. She did, and it was the perfect way to lead with something she knew the host would enjoy. When you put it in perspective, would you rather spend 4 hours a month building genuine relationships or spend AT LEAST $1,000 to market your book. In this case, time is literally money. All we did was come up with a little intro that we put at the start of each chapter (episode).
This worked well to get more audiobook copies seeded and we also get direct feedback on which chapters listeners are most interested in. I see most authors market their book at the beginning or end of each episode but I found this to be a creative way to repurpose the high quality audio recorded. One potential client used the book on our podcast to vet us as a contractor.
3. Send a copy to every new client (for NF) We send an onboarding package to each new author who signs on with us including a little Thank you note from me, a magazine with an overview of our process and team, and a physical copy of Before The Bestseller.
2 Links
1 Quote “As soon as you learn how to do something you have to learn how not to do it”
Alex P.S. Know someone who needs help marketing their book? We offer a $500 referral bonus 🙂 |