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Reader,
PLEASE NOTE THAT ON OCTOBER 8TH, OUR NEWSLETTER WILL BEGIN TO COME FROM alex@getshelflife.com (INSTEAD OF alex@advancedamazonads.com)
🙂
3 Secrets:
1. A little Goodreads chatGPT hack
We’ve been hard at work curating custom book lists on Goodreads by genre (think: “Top Business Books for Founders,” “Smart Exit Strategies for Entrepreneurs,” etc.). We’re using our team’s internal Goodreads accounts to place our authors’ books next to big-name bestsellers.
Why?
Because platforms like ChatGPT, Google, and other AI engines are increasingly scraping Goodreads to inform their recommendations. If your book is consistently showing up alongside top titles in your niche, you’re future-proofing your visibility.
Want to do this yourself?
Head to Goodreads → Listopia → click “Create New List” (see screenshot below). Title it like your ideal reader would search it on Google. Add your book. Then stack the list with 10–15 other top books in your space.
2. Turning a little into a lot
Early on,
when I had no team,
very little resources,
and even less time,
I learned that I should focus on activities that pay off in multiple ways.
I knew that if I started my podcast, I’d only stick with it if there were enough reasons to keep going, especially when it was pretty much just my Mom and a couple team-members listening. 4 years later and we just crossed 150 episodes and closing in on 400 consistent listeners.
Those 3 reasons that kept the show going?
Opportunity to learn from the best in the world at book marketing by interviewing them.
Opportunity to build relationships with authors who might want to work with us (half of our first 20 podcast guests ended up being clients. We’d spend an hour getting to know each other during the interview and then afterwards they’d ask, “so what is it you guys do”. After answering them they’d often follow up with, “oh, can we actually set aside some time to talk about what that looks like”).
Opportunity to spend more time with people who have never heard of us and our work and maybe even build a following.
We’ve now produced a weekly podcast almost every week since 2021. The math is simple. The bigger the potential positive outcomes are, the more reward you relieve for every second spent on an activity, the higher the likelihood you’ll actually stick with it.
Besides increased desire to keep going, there’s also a higher chance that activity is successful because only one of the 3 opportunities needed to happen for me to find that activity worth it.
If 2-3 of the reasons paid off, then I just multiplied the outcomes of the time I spent doing that activity.
It takes time and consistency to build a platform, so choose the marketing activities that are valuable to you for 3 unique reasons.
3. There’s more to editorial reviews than meets the eyes.
Yes, it feels good to get fancy-pants people to say something nice about your book.
You can be more strategic with these by figuring out who has the same audience as you and focusing your efforts on getting quotes by those people.
Essentially what you’re doing is building a bridge for their followers to walk across and find your material.
Like your friend setting you up on a date.
Thank you Mitch Francis, author of Bad-Ass Solutions for sharing that he sends a copy of his book in an envelope that is clear on one side (window envelope). This allows their assistant to see there’s nothing dangerous in the book and that maybe it’s even from a friend (since there’s a little post it note visible on the clear side) and so should be passed along to their boss.
2 Links
- Just dropped this week: New episode of Before The Bestseller with NYT Bestselling Author Catherine Gildiner (of Good Morning, Monster) shared her guaranteed way of getting more grassroots buzz during your launch.
- n8n.io (make.com on steroids for creating AI-Agents for your book marketing and business work flows. (Thank you to the couple of authors who shared this tool with me last week)
1 Quote
“Nothing is ever as bad as it seems. Nor does it ever last as long as you think.”
– Greg Gutfeld
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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