NICK GRAY: THE 4 MOST SIMPLE WAYS TO SELL THOUSANDS OF BOOKS

Morning!

I’m writing this about to board a flight back to Porto. I spent the last month in South Carolina for a friend’s wedding and honestly, it was one of the most enjoyable months I’ve had in a while.

Anyway, today I have a gem for you.

Over the next 3 minutes you’re about to hear how a millionaire who has:

• Bootstrapped two companies to multi-million $ valuations

• Sold both companies for millions of $

Ended up moving to Austin, Texas to write a book about cocktail parties.

Why in the world should you care about him?

Because the way he is marketing his book is genius.

Let’s get into it!

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Breaking Down The Strategy

Books are notoriously hard to sell. Especially if you don’t have a major publisher or a huge audience to push it to.

So if you’re trying to have a successful book launch without either of those, you really have two options:

1) Attempt to build an audience QUICK time.

2) Find creative ways to get the book in front of your target audience.

The man I am about to introduce you to did both. In fact, he came up with some of the most creative “book marketing” strategies I’ve ever seen.

Meet Nick Gray - author of ‘The 2-hour cocktail party’.

Nick’s life so far is littered with success. In his early years he helped grow his family business - FDS Avionics - to 80+ people and ended up selling it to private equity in 2014.

He then invested a large sum of the money from the sale in Tesla. Which as we now know, was a very (erm… shall we say rewarding?) rewarding move. I.e. it made him a TONNE of money.

In 2019, he then sold his second company - Museum Hack. A multi-million dollar renegade museum tour business that he built.

That’s without mentioning:

- Him selling his first website in 1997.
- His college roommates starting Vimeo.
- And his successful family office Tri Peak Holdings.

As I say, his journey so far is littered with success after success.

But in 2022, he decided to put all of his past experience to the side and write a book on one of his passions – parties.

Not the Saturday night parties that turn into Sunday morning parties, with the bottle service and expensive tabs.

No, no, no.

He wrote a book on cocktails parties.

Over the years Nick realised that there was no better way to meet interesting people than through “Well-run meet-ups where you do interesting things”.

So during his time in NYC, he began working on hosting the best parties possible for himself and all the people he had met. Those parties turned into a Google doc with tips and tricks for others. Which last year he turned into a book - ‘The 2-Hour Cocktail Party’.

So now he has a book.

But how in the world was he going to sell it?

He had:

- No audience
- No distribution
- And no major publisher

Everything you’re “meant” to have when you publish a book was nonexistent.

But he did have one thing, he was great at making friends and meeting new people.

So he leveraged it to create one of the best guerrilla marketing strategies I’ve ever seen.

Here are 4 of the genius growth tactics he used to sell his book:

1) Restaurant Reviews

Nick knew he wasn’t going to sell a million books across all 7 continents - and he wasn’t trying to. All he needed to do was get his book in front of the right people.

In his case “The right people” were those who were open to meeting new people.

And where do people like that hang out? Bars!

So, Nick began going around Austin (where he lives) and leaving reviews on all the bars and restaurants he went to. He’d bring his book with him and include a photo of the book in his photos.

Now, when his target audience looks up reviews for the restaurant, their curiosity is peaked by this photo of a book in one of the reviews.

It’s simple and probably not scalable. But that’s the whole point. He’s not trying to make it scalable. He just wants the right people to see his book.

2) Picked people up from the airport

Networking 101: Give to people more than you can take.

And that’s exactly what Nick does with every single person he comes across.

One of the coolest ways he does this is through his VIP airport pickups.

This is not a business. This is not something he makes money from. It is literally just him picking friends and acquaintances up from the airport.

As you can see from the tweet his only requirement is that they take a photo with him and his book.

Since he’s been doing these airport pick-ups Nick has picked up a bunch of your favourite business people including: Austin Rief, Codie Sanchez, Alex Lieberman and more.

This is genius for a few reasons:

A) Personal social proof - If they are pictured with him you instantly think he is someone worth listening to.

B) They appreciate him - This has led to multiple of them shouting him out including Sam Parr regularly talking about him on My First Million (where I first came across Nick).

C) The photos - He now has a bunch of cool people photographed with his book (well worth a couple of hours out of his day).

3) Promotional growth loop

The whole idea of Nick’s book is to help people host the perfect party. So once people have read the book they often go and - you guessed it - host a party.

This already has quite a cool network effect built-in:

But Nick then adds fuel to the fire by making sure to always promote these people and their parties across his socials.

This means that people who read the book are more encouraged to share a selfie during their party → Which Nick then shares → Which means more people read the book → Which means more people host parties → Which Nick then shares

And the cycle continues.

Again, this isn’t scalable to where millions could host these parties. But it works and my guess is these simple social posts have helped sell a LOT of books.

4) Hosted parties (of course)

Then the simplest, but again super effective, way Nick has marketed his book is by literally doing what the book pushes you to do - host the perfect party.

Across these 2 photos alone are people:

• Worth millions upon millions of $$$

• With hundreds of thousands of followers

• Who are all smiling

There is no better social proof for Nick’s book than this.

He wrote about how to host the perfect party. So he hosts the perfect party. With the coolest people. And showcases just how effective his methods are.

I want to meet 95% of the people in those photos and Nick is telling me that the best way to meet people like that is through hosting a cocktail party.

And if I want to do that… I’ll have to buy his book.

All 4 of these methods seem pretty unscalable. In fact, they are unscalable.

But those 4 unscalable marketing strategies have led Nick to:

• Gaining 70k+ followers across socials

• Getting 380+ 5* reviews on Amazon

• And him becoming the go-to guy when it comes to hosting parties

Right now, it may seem like he’s just selling a book, but if Nick’s track record is anything to go off I could very well see this turning into something much much bigger.

What are your thoughts on Nick’s marketing strategies for selling his book? Fire me a reply to this email, I’d love to know!

Right, that’s all from me. I’m off to recover from the jet lag.

I’ll see you next Sunday!

— Niall

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This has been a breakdown of Nick Gray’s marketing strategy. I hope you have learned something and can implement a similar strategy in your business!

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