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Reader,After getting asked for years if we do fiction, the answer is now YES!We’ve had some great success so far – check out what NYT Bestselling author Marshall Karp has to say about us: If you’re one of the fiction authors who’s been waiting for this, let me know and we can see if it makes sense for us to support you! Today’s 3-2-1 is inspired by a question I got from newsletter reader Dr. Esly: They’re not alone! It’s a question I get often.What are virtual assistants? (VA’s) VAs are…

Reader,Let’s get right to it: 3 Secrets: 1. How Daniel Pink accidentally marketed his book Daniel Pink wrote a book titled The Power of Regret. He had 16,000+ people fill out his survey on regret as research for the book. He included responses throughout the book. Although seemingly just collecting responses for the survey, he was also building an email list to promote the book once it went live. He DID NOT intend for it to work this way but it did. Think how you can bring people along for…

Reader,May I please ask you for a quick favor?If you’ve got a copy of Before The Bestseller laying around, would you be so kind as to leave a review for it here 🙂 You already did?!?! Then these flowers are for YOU! That’s it, now back to you! 3 Secrets: 1. Find your core readers: How the heck do you initially build a small army of readers who will promote your book? Bestselling Author Mike Michalowicz did this accidentally with his book, Profit First. He got the book in the hands of a few…

Reader, G-day! Straight to the meat and potatoes today: ALL (well mostly) ABOUT LinkedIn… 3 Secrets: 1. Use your SSI score to improve your reach: Thanks to Navid Nazemian of Mastering Executive Transitions for this tip. Did you know LinkedIn scores your account? It’s called your Social Selling Index which breaks down how well you’re doing in 4 areas:1. Establish your professional brand. Complete your profile with the customer in mind. Become a thought-leader by publishing meaningful…

I take a photo of my bookshelf I upload that photo to chatGPT I ask chatGPT to tell me what I should read next Is your book on that list? That’s what today is about. BUT FIRST Freshly back from reporting for Uncle duties in Virginia 🫡 Secondly…my good friend Susan Friedmann of the one and only Book Marketing Mentors podcast is hosting Book Marketing Summer Camp. Use code SUMMER50 at checkout for the Basic Bunk level. ($50 OFF) An accountability partner is invaluable so let Susan be that for…

Today is all about going viral thanks to what I learned speaking with Brendan Kane who just released The Guide to Going Viral. Here are the top secrets I pull from our chat. Listen to the full conversation here. 3 Secrets 1. Stop the scroll: Start every video or post with a pattern-disrupting hook that visually or emotionally breaks the scroll. Think weird, bold, contradictory, or highly specific.Kane emphasizes that the first 3 seconds determine whether someone keeps watching. If they don’t…

Want a free private book marketing coach? Specific advice based on how many copies you’ve sold, what your goals are for your book, and what strategy should you be focusing on? We’ve put everything we know into a new feature on our website that has been trained on our combined marketing knowledge.We (of course) appropriately named it BookMark!BookMark is your new book marketing AI coach. I’d love for you to play with him! Just go to www.getshelflife.com and click on the little comment button…

Got my first one star review! “If everyone who wrote a book did this they would all be bestsellers” sounds positive to me! Anyway…Today is all about your Amazon product page (how your book looks to potential readers on Amazon). Thank you Wendy Haan for your question that inspired today’s 3-2-1!Why are we covering this? Whether you’re a traditionally published author with a publisher that handles your listing….. or a self published author in charge of your own publishing…It’s absolutely…

Over 15 years Jim Murphy sold 8,000 copies. That’s 533 copies seeded/year. Last year, during an NFL playoff game, Eagles receiver A.J. Brown was seen reading Inner Excellence on the sideline. Over the next two days that book sold 100,000 copies. This is why we talk about putting yourself in a position to get lucky. Jim Murphy says that when you can’t control exactly when your work will get noticed, so just spend your time continue improving your message and craft. 3 Secrets 1. Undervalued…

I tried writing a nonfiction book about impostor syndrome… …but I wasn’t qualified 3 Secrets 1. A pricing idea: When it comes to book pricing over the long run, your strategy should include where your traffic is coming from. If you’re actively marketing your book on podcasts, blogs, etc., you can expect these buyers to be less price sensitive as they have a connection to you. If a lot of your traffic is coming from Amazon Ads, your readers will be MUCH more price sensitive. In fact, if a book…

Most books are dead on arrival. A new book drops every eight seconds—11,000 a day—but most won’t sell enough books in that first week to cover a celebratory pizza. The average book sells less than 300 print copies in its lifetime. Toss in ebooks and audio? Still under 1,000. That’s not a career. That’s a whisper in a hurricane. Even with the big leagues (Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, all of them) two-thirds of their books don’t sell 1,000 copies in the first year. Only 6.7% cross…

*currently somewhere over the Pacific Ocean* 3 Secrets 1. What sales will look like that first year: Books that sell well forever look like a compound interest chart for the first few years. Before they get their though, most authors will actually see sales decline after they’ve exhausted all of their initial marketing. We all have this notion that our book will either make it or break it in the first year of being on the market. The truth is…the goal that first year is to just seed copies…