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Reader, We’re stoked to congratulate our very own Joseph Nguyen on coming in at #3 in ALL hardcover non-fiction sold (400K copies) in 2025. I’ve worked with more agencies than I’d like to admit because most of them are rarely ever able to produce the results they promise. Alex and his team are the first agency out of every single one I’ve worked with that has truly under-promised and over-delivered. Within a few months, they have tripled the results of my previous agencies and what I have been able to do myself. They are some of the most thorough and thoughtful people I’ve come across in digital advertising, and they treated my book like their own. I do not personally endorse products or services often, but Alex and his team are the only agency I’ve worked with that I can wholeheartedly recommend. With Love, (If you’re looking for help getting your books in the hands of real people this year (fiction & non-fiction), look no further – apply here! Thank you for letting me self-promote for a moment. Let’s get back to book marketing! 3 Secrets: 1. Inviting your reader to customize their copy IKEA’s approach to customer engagement has been written about extensively. Many attribute part of IKEA’s success to customers’ participation in the building of their new piece of furniture. What one sees as a simple bookshelf, the owner sees as a piece of pride because they assembled it. They participated in the actual building of their new home decor. I was recently rereading The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier (1M+ copies sold) and couldn’t help but notice a few things I can only imagine had an impact on why it’s been one of the most successful leadership books ever. MBS leaves blank lines for the reader to set their new goals and participate in the development of the content while reading the book. Not going to be right for everyone but something to consider when developing your next book. 2. A 200 page – 50 page book The Coaching Habit is around 200 pages long. According to WordsRated, the average New York Times bestseller length has been shrinking, dropping from over 400 pages in the early 2010s to around 386 pages (roughly 90,000-100,000 words) by 2021, with many top books falling into the 250-350 page range. Reader attention spans are decreasing. What’s more empowering than blowing through a book in just 30 minutes? You think, “Wow, this book must be good if I’m blowing through it this quickly”. Dozens of those 200 pages are just quotes blown up to take up an entire page. Many others are additional table of contents pages to keep the reader up to date on where they are in the book. Like a “You Are Here” sticker on a map. Half of millions-of-copies-sold author Alex Hermozi’s books are simple doodles that make it so you could learn from the book and not even know how to read. Both books are inherently designed to be blown through. When we undertake the massive endeavor of writing a new book we think we need it to be an entire manifesto of our teachings but… If the simplest messages resonate the easiest… And the goal of most non-fiction is meant to be empowering anyway… Should we spend much more time simplifying our message down to 50 core pages and using the rest to design a consumer’s experience to be an empowering read? Word count seems to matter much less than ensuring that a reader navigates your book with as little resistance as possible. Bonus quote in today’s 321: 3. Don’t waste your editorial reviews Editorial reviews don’t sell books…by themselves. 2 Links
1 Quote “Not all marketing people are writers, but all writers must learn to be marketers.” – Joanne Kraft with love and sincere appreciation,
Alex P.S. Know someone who needs help marketing their book? We offer a $500 referral bonus 🙂 |