3 secrets
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3 secrets, 2 links, 1 book Reader, There was so much book marketing wisdom in last week’s Before The Bestseller episode with Mike Michalowicz (listen here), it was bound to overflow into this 3-2-1 edition too. Sorry not sorry 🙂 3 | Book marketing secrets 1. Front Loading Front-load the book. Mike estimates that of 1,000 buyers, only about 200 open the book, about 80% of those finish chapter one, and just 10–20% finish the whole thing. So your best ideas belong in the first chapter or two….

3 secrets, 2 links, 1 book Reader, Countless publishing industry insiders repeat some variation of this line: “It’s the author’s job to sell the first 10,000–20,000 copies, and it’s the book’s job to sell the next million.” The quicker your reader gets to the end of the book or takes something away, the quicker they’ll recommend it. How do you engineer that? That’s what today is about. 3 | Book marketing secrets 1. Mike Michalowicz’s formula for books that keep selling: SOI × DOI × EOI Most…

Reader, Life = Made Not only has John Strelecky sold 6 million copies of The Cafe on the Edge of the World but he also almost went pro in volleyball. Last week I joined him on the South Mission Beach courts here in San Diego for a few hours of doubles volleyball. Safe to say I was humbled… 3 Secrets1. Forget the listeners: connect with the host Malcolm Gladwell, in The Tipping Point, talks about connectors. People who know everyone. If someone hosts an interview-style podcast they probably…

Reader,Today is a big day… 3 Secrets1. Today is a big day…because Amazon just added the ability to directly advertise your audiobook with your Amazon Ads. Before today, if someone clicked on your ad and bought an audiobook, there was no way to know it came from the ad. Now you can send people directly to the audiobook product page. Now you can see exactly how many audiobook orders are coming from those who clicked on your ads. For some authors, audiobook listeners might make up as much as…

September 2026 My team says these need a format upgrade. Let me know what you think! This week on the pod, we had Mark Wolynn talking about how he sold 3 million copies of It Didn’t Start With You. He left us with so many book-marketing gems that it was hard to pick just 3… 3 | Book-marketing secrets 1. “I wrote the book as a manual for my students” “I lived and breathed and sat in the ditches with this material.” Time and time again, this is what I hear from top selling self-help…

Reader,little ShelfLife team co-working in San Diego today 🙂 Left to Right: Founding engineer Reed Kellett, Director of Author Success Steve Sarner, and me! 3 Secrets1. Your book may be eligible for an award. Even if it was published years ago. Everyone and their mom is now a “bestselling author.” Not everyone has award-type accolades for their book There are more than 10,000 quality book awards given to English-language books every year. More than 2,000 of those awards don’t care when your…

Reader, I guess those communal library boxes where people can pick up or leave a book do work… no idea how it got there other than as the result of getting almost 5,000 copies into the wild. “stumbled upon this at a park in Ohio…drop box” 3 Secrets1. Goodreads Giveaways continue to be one of the cheapest ways to seed copies right now to real people. Like clockwork, we’ve been running a standard ebook giveaway every 2 weeks – 200 free ebooks given away every month. At first, I was…

Reader, each year I might be lucky enough to have a top 10 life moment… this past week included at least 3 of the top 10 moments of my entire life. That’s because last week our Chief Marketing Scientist, Laura Russom, and I traveled to Franklin, TN to present about Amazon Ads to many of our lifelong heroes. The requirement to be in that room is to have sold over a million copies of your books. We’re pretty happy just to be at around 4,000 for Before The Bestseller. That said, we HAVE sold…

Reader,Just 3 secrets today 🙂 3 Secrets 1. Just make the ask already! A BIG thank you to world-renowned violinist and newsletter reader Anthea Kreston for sharing her story with me. After mentioning to me that she’d toured with Yo-Yo Ma, I asked her if it was worth asking him for a blurb. She wrote back that she wasn’t sure he’d go for it, but that she’d send him a galley and make the ask anyway. “I took your advice and reached out to Yo-Yo and he gave me a terrific quote for the cover!…

Reader,every year a group of friends gets together on Garbage Beach (the locals call it that to keep people away) in San Diego to play a day-long version of the TV show Survivor. Garbage Beach, San Diego If you don’t know the show, feel free to skip to the secrets. Well, 28 people started at 11 on Saturday morning. 12 hours of puzzles, physical endeavors, and complex social schemes later, I had, for the first time ever, made it to the final 3. For those who know the show, it all comes down to…

Reader,It’s summertime! Let’s make this quick so we can all go hit the beach 🙂 3 Secrets1. Bestselling non-fiction authors read more fiction What makes people keep reading is a good story. Fiction writers are the best storytellers in the world. They know how to start a scene you can’t stop reading and keep you excited all the way to the end. When you read their books, you learn their tricks. Then you can use those same tricks to make your true stories just as fun to read. Now more important…

Reader,Apparently y’all didn’t hate last week’s rant. I’ve never heard from so many readers in one week – thank you! I loved every response I got. Based on what I’m personally seeing in the industry, I’m thinking of ranting about whether AI will kill books or not in an upcoming newsletter. Let me know if you’d like that? 3 Secrets1. What AI doesn’t do well (and can’t replace) Stories to teach. Think about a recent memory of yours. Was it something dull and mundane? Or was there something…