RYAN HOLIDAY: HOW TO SELL 3 MILLION BOOKS IN 2022

Morning!

How's your week been? It seems like I'm getting progressively busier every week coming... I thought things slowed down coming up to Christmas, what's happened?

Anyway, I've recently been obsessing over modern-day authors. Sounds weird, but I just find it so intriguing that people spend years (sometimes decades) of their lives writing a book.

All that time and dedication put into one product that they hope and pray will be a hit.

It's bonkers to me and I have so much admiration for those who do it.

But the way authors work is changing, and over the last few weeks, my spare time has been spent studying the new age of book writing...

The one where marketing comes first and writing comes second.

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Breaking Down The Strategy

When I first began my marketing career I felt COMPLETELY out of my depth. I was a marketing student who was a tad overconfident and happened to snag himself a job at a start-up.

The celebrations of getting a real-world job quickly turned to panic as I realised that I really had no idea how to market anything. So, I quickly whipped out my Kindle and started buying a bunch of marketing books hoping they'd solve my knowledge gap overnight.

One of those books was 'Growth Hacker Marketing' by Ryan Holiday.

It was a true page-turner (I know, a marketing book that's a page-turner, who would've known!!!) But seriously, I read the book in 1 day whilst travelling from Iowa → Charleston and was honestly blown away.

There were so many marketing gems that I went down this Ryan Holiday rabbit hole.

Who was he?What companies has he worked for?Why was he so good at marketing? Was he a CMO, Founder, CEO?

Who was Ryan Holiday and how can I be l like him? That was the burning question.

Turns out I found a very different answer than what I was expecting. Ryan was no CMO or CEO, he was a lifelong author that wrote heavily about Stoicism (a school of philosophy).

My mind was truly boggled and curiosity went and killed the cat as my investigation continued...

And as the days of incessant stalking continued, one thing about Ryan was becoming more and more clear to me. Ryan was not just an author, but he was a content machine too.

790K subscribers on YouTube1.7m on Daily Stoic Instagram479K on personal Instagram114K on personal TikTok450K on Daily Stoic TikTok540k on personal Twitter450k on his email list

And the majority of these accounts are posting DAILY.

The lightbulb went off in my head.

Ryan is not locking himself away in a cave writing his next novel, he's marketing the shit out of himself ready for it.

And it works so well because of these 3 key components:

1. Audience building

Ryan understands that selling books is hard. REALLY f*cking hard. A lot of very great writers fail, and the big reason for that is that they sell their books in the most classic ways possible.

They'll pay for space at the front of W.H.Smiths and Barnes & Noble, hope to god people buy it and then go on a quick press tour to shill their book as many times as possible.

It works for some and turns into an expensive disaster for others.

Ryan takes a completely different approach. He spent years building a niche audience around the topic he wrote about, then nurtures them daily ready for his next book launch.

He's no longer searching for buyers when he is ready to publish, he already has them at his fingertips.

2. Write once sell twice

Rather than working for years just to have one book, Ryan uses his years of work to produce endless content across platforms. He has a 10 person content team who literally spend all their day taking past work that Ryan has made and distributing it everywhere.

In the past writers were only exposed to those that read their books.

Now, Ryan is exposed to MILLIONS daily.

3. Trail and error

The beauty behind all of this is that Ryan now has a system that means his books physically can't fail.

Like literally, just look at his process:

(ZOOM IN OR CLICK HERE)

Before he even gets close to publishing he has already:

• Planted the seed of the books topic in his audiences head

• Ensured there is interest for the topics he is talking about

• Perfected every single chapter to suit his audiences wants

It's so good it almost feels like he's cheating.

Then after all that he is able to run a marketing campaign to millions of primed audience members who have been being nurtured for months on end.

All he has to do is set the campaigns running and watch book after book sell.

It's genius marketing, absolutely genius.

And just as I said... Ryan is a great author, but he's an even better marketer!

It's great that Ryan Holiday has made millions selling books, but there's one big problem... you're not publishing a book anytime soon.

But, although the direct process Ryan uses can't be mirrored for your business, the core concepts Ryan users are very easily transferable:

1. Building an audience

This is the stepping stone for everything else Ryan does, and you can do the same for your industry. Whether it's through your personal brand or through a company brand like Ryan, building an audience around the industry you work in is invaluable. You'll no longer have to search for leads, instead, you'll throw your offer out to the crowd and watch them fight over who gets it first!2. Write once sell twice

Take your blogs, newsletters and podcasts and chop them into content that fits each platform.

Mid-sized posts → LinkedInShort posts → TwitterQuick clips → YT Shorts, TikTok, IG ReelsLong clips → YouTube

It's content distribution 101 and will 10X the eyes on your company. 3. Trial and error

Of course, you're not trialling concepts of a book, but you can trial concepts of new offers, systems and ideas.

Have a new idea for an approach? Make a tweet and see how people take it.Thinking about adding something to your offer? Ask your audience and see what they think.

It's much better to have a tweet flop than lose a client due to trialling your crazy idea on them!

And that's all for this week!

Full transparency I'm writing this line at 1 am, I'm tired and I'm off to bed. Hopefully, my tired brain was able to whip up something useful here.

Enjoy your Sunday, get some rest and give your body some time to recover before Monday!

Until next week, — Niall

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

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