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Reader,
Why did the author break up with Amazon Ads?
Too many impressions… not enough commitment.
3 Secrets:
1. Get Amazon to recommend your book for free
When I’m reading a book and it references another book, I often don’t skip a beat before buying that one too.
It’s honestly the #1 way I discover my next read and I know I’m not alone.
Funny thing is, there’s more power to this than meets the eye.
Knowing readers are likely to buy additional books recommended in your book, you can use this to your advantage.
For example, in an early chapter of my book, I highly recommend AJ Harpers Write a Must Read for the actual development of your book.
Guess which book shows up first in “Customers who bought this item also bought” section?
You guessed it! Before The Bestseller –
Amazon is marketing my book FOR FREE on AJ’s book because I’m driving readers to also buy her book.
2. Marketing your book = Selfless
Are you selfish to market your book?
There’s a common belief out there by some authors that a great book doesn’t need to be marketed.
Hmm…. Well…doesn’t someone need to read it first so they know it’s good?
Mike Michalowicz writes in Get Different that we have a responsibility to market.
“If you’ve created something better than what’s out there, you’re actually doing a disservice to people by not marketing it.”
This holds back a surprising amount of would-be best-selling authors.
The next time you’re unsure of whether to send your pitch, hand your book to someone, or reach out to influencers, think about the people who will have to settle for something worse or nothing at all.
In some cases, it might be a worse form of entertainment, and in others, it can literally be the difference between life and death.
You’re doing it for them, not yourself. You’re actually being selfish by not sharing what you have to offer.
3. Can’t break in? Niche down.
Are you #1 in the world at something?
No? You haven’t niched down enough!
If you’re finding it difficult to break in as a top author in leadership, business, marketing, health, technology, AI, etc., the problem might be that you’re competing at too high a level out of the gates.
This is even true for fiction and partly why we’re seeing an explosion in subgenres for fiction like Solarpunk and Bizarro.
When you’re getting started, figure out what you want to be the best at and then niche down to apply whatever that thing is to a specific product, sub-niche, or topic.
For example, early on it was impossible to launch ourselves as the best in the world at marketing.
So we niched down to a specific product: marketing for books.
BUT that still wasn’t specific enough to be able to say we were the #1 in the world so we went further…
#1 in the world at marketing for non-fiction books.
bottom line:
Your marketing and messaging to the market will be SO much easier if you niche down when starting out.
A side effect of this is that you actually become valuable to the top people in the overall niche.
Instead of directly competing with the current #1 in that niche, you become a contributor and even complementary to the top people in your space.
You become a collaborator and someone the top voices in your niche can learn from.
Marketing not working? Niche down.
2 Links
- Before The Bestseller Podcast Update: New episodes airing next week! Including new guests like Eric Ries of the Lean Startup and welcoming back some old guests too, like Nir Eyal talking about his new book, Beyond Belief. In the meantime, here’s our 4th most popular episode ever: BTB147: Mastering Executive Transitions: Leadership, LinkedIn, and the $1M Book with Navid Nazemian. Listen here.
- Book rank calculator to see what your current book rank means in terms of book sales.
1 Quote
“Networking is more about farming than it is about hunting. It’s about cultivating relationships.”
– Ivan Misner
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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