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Reader,
We’ve been invited to a TikTok shop scaling event this Friday at 4pm PST by one of our partners, Acutrack.
Our team will be in attendance as we get more requests every day on what an effective TikTok strategy looks like so this is a chance for our own learnings!
If you’d like to attend for free as well just let me know by responding here and I’ll add you to the invite.
3 Secrets:
1. MY hot? take on book pricing
After 6 years of watching hundreds of books priced based on the goals of various authors, I’m ready to take a stand!
Oh boy….here we go.
My take:
We’ll call it The 10K rule.
IF you have less than 10,000 subscribers AND have sold less than 10,000 copies of your book to date – your ebook SHOULD be priced at 99¢ on Amazon.
“But I don’t want to cheapen my work”
“My pricing is a value signal for people who want to hire me”
“I want to attract rich people, not 99¢ readers”
Sure! But here’s the ugly truth…
In the words of Tim Grahl, author of Your First 1,000 Copies…
Most would-be readers would rather pay you $10 to NOT have to read your book then to get a copy of your book FOR FREE and told they have to read it.
Honestly, people would rather pay you NOT to read your book THAN get your book for FREE and be forced to read it.
THAT is what you are up against.
The only way your book has a chance at doing what you want, is if REAL people read and recommend it.
Now, IF you’ve got a strong enough brand, lets use email subscribers as a relevant metric, you can charge something more premium.
You’re driving legitimate traffic to your listing and Amazon will reward you for it with sales.
BUT if you’re not. You’re competing against people who are.
You want as LITTLE friction as possible to reach a new reader and if your book is good enough, tell someone else.
I’m not saying give your book away for free (oh wait I do say that too!) but at least on Amazon, 99¢ basically just means you are getting paid a few cents to verify that the reader IS a real person.
Isn’t that great?! You’re actually making a few cents to know you’re getting a verified reader and that’s how you should see it.
Rant over.
If you’re traditionally published, this is obviously not something you have control over but possibly a reason to pursue a different publishing option for your next book.
What do you think? Am I dead wrong?
2. Send a box of books to your top fans:
Enable your biggest fans to spread the word about your book by asking them if they’d like some copies to share with friends, family, and colleagues.
How would you feel if one of your favorite authors offered to send you a box of books to share?
You’d feel pretty special! Enable your fans!
(S/O to Chris Jordan who has been behind the scenes on launches by Dr. Benjamin Hardy, Lewis Howes, Daymond John of Shark Tank, and many more for this tip)
Instead
3. The Wheel of Fortune Method
Did you know Pat Sajak and Vanna White each made around $10 million per year from about four days of work each month? Sounds lovely!
Ten million dollars in four days each month means they made over $200,000 per workday.
They consistently hosted the show from 1981 until 2023—42 years!
They recorded over four days each month, so the production team didn’t have to re-create the studio for each episode.
It also allowed them to go on vacation since all the month’s shows were recorded in four days. What does this mean for you? Batch your marketing content production.
Don’t rely on getting your daily post done each day. Create your posts for the whole month during the first week.
Record a year’s worth of podcast episodes in two weeks and find a way to record two different episodes with each guest.
(For Before The Bestseller podcast, we spend an hour with each author. For the first 30 minutes, we record the first episode about the topic of their book. Then, we spend the last 30 minutes interviewing them about how they marketed it, which gives us two episodes for every interview.)
2 Links
- It took me YEARS to get this weeks guest. After multiple attempts, Michael Bungay Stanier, author of 2 MILLION+ copies sold The Coaching Habit, came on Before The Bestseller to break down how he wrote and marketed THE bestselling coaching book of this CENTURY. Listen in here.
- Google’s NotebookLM is our favorite AI tool for digesting your manuscript fully to give you accurate insights or marketing copy.
1 Quote
“If your stories are all about your products and services, that’s not storytelling. It’s a brochure. Give yourself permission to make the story bigger.”
– Jay Baer
with love and sincere appreciation,
Alex
BeforeTheBestseller | ShelfLife
alex@getshelflife.com
P.S. Know someone who needs help marketing their book? We offer a $500 referral bonus 🙂
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