HOW TO SELL A BOOK: MARKETING STRATEGY BREAKDOWN

Morning!

I just cracked open a bottle of my favourite sparkling water. I’ve got shorts and a T-shirt on. I’m out in the sun. Pristine writing conditions.

Here’s what you’ll learn today:

• How to become a best selling author

• 3 great book marketing strategies

• 2 honorable mentions

Let’s get into it!

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO VERSION

BREAKING DOWN THE STRATEGY

I’m currently typing this sitting across from my partner - Grace - who is devouring her new book “Fourth Wing”.

She bought it from a local bookstore here in Porto and after some back and forth of me asking about the book, I started questioning how in the world it got here in the first place.

The author wrote a story → turned it into a series → it became a best-seller → and now you can buy it all over the world.

Pretty incredible, no?

Anyway, it got me thinking about how books go from some author tapping away on a keyboard to becoming best sellers.

Yes, there are the JRR Tolkien’s of the world that write a story so good that it grows through word of mouth.

But what about the other 780 authors that get added to the NYT Best Sellers list every year?

My guess → Some pretty good marketing.

So I did some research, in fact, I did a lot of research… and found 3 awesome strategies that authors used to market their books.

Here they are + the lessons you can learn from them:

1) Hugh Howey: Wool

Most fiction books don’t get bought because they suck. It’s a tough realisation for an author, but it’s the truth.

The author has spent years crafting this story, of course, they are going to think it’s amazing. But the public… they’ve got no interest in it at all.

But Hugh Howey found somewhat of a loophole within Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing that meant this would never happen to him.

Because when you self-publish to Kindle you get built-in distribution with Kindle users.

(Sam Parr and The Hustle wrote a whole article on how you can manipulate this to become a bestseller a few years back - SEE HERE)

So rather than going away and writing a full-fledged, 70,000-word, 5-book series. Howey launched what in business we’d call an “MVP”.

It was a short story called “Wool” and it only cost 99¢.

(Almost like a taster novel.)

When Howey noticed that people were enjoying the book he expanded the story into a series - while upping his prices to industry standards.

He hooked with “Wool”, and then made his money through the series.

It’s almost marketing 101.

He put out an MVP → Tested for product-market fit → Then upsold all his new audience.

Genius. Most wannabee authors should try this. It’s much better than slaving away for 3 years to realise no one cares about your book.

2) Daniel Priestly: Key Person Of Influence

99% of business books are lead magnets and Daniel Priestly’s books definitely fall into that category.

But in this case, we’re going to overlook the awesome ways Priestly uses his books to drive revenue to his business and instead, talk about how he gets his books in people’s hands.

Because what Priestly understands is that books sell like dominos.

If you can get 100 people to read it, they’ll get the next 10

00 too.

But how do you get the first 100 to read it?

Priestly’s solution: Just put it in their hands.

Here’s how he does it: 

Priestly invites a few 100 people from his email list + social platforms to attend a webinar where he’s going to give away the secrets from his book.

He jumps on, drops some gems and delivers some value - but the magic starts when the webinar finishes.

Because that’s when he sends out an email to everyone who attended and offers them a free PHYSICAL copy of his book - they just have to give him their address.

A few days later, the book lands in your post box.

Those 100+ people are his biggest supporters, the ones who would sign up to listen to him for an hour on a webinar.

So you can bet they read that book and you can also bet that they go and tell their friends about it too.

It’s a chain reaction, set off by Priestly himself.

3) E.L. James: Fifty Shades of Grey

Arguably one of the most famous books of the last few decades started as a Twilight fan fiction.

It was called “Masters of The Universe” and the two main characters were Edward and Bella (from Twilight).

This leaned into 2 simple factors that made it a huge success:

1/ Relevance

Twilight had (and probably still has) a diehard fanbase. People loved it, they obsessed over it, and they were connected to the characters.

So when James started writing a fanfic about the characters all of the Twilight fans were instantly hooked.

They already loved the characters, so they were interested to hear the story tangent that James was writing about.

2/ Drip Feed

Because James was publishing the story chapter by chapter in fanfic forums she was getting constant feedback on what the audience liked.

The more she published, the more the audience liked it. By the time the book was ready to publish it was the perfect novel.

(Without mentioning there were thousands of fans biting at the bit to read it.)

Of course, in the end, she switched out the Twilight names and added a slightly different theme - but the bulk of the story remained.

And that story never would have flown off the shelves without the built-in audience from the fanfiction community which catapulted them up the bestseller lists when it was published formally.

*Honorable Mentions*

1/ Nick Gray: The 2-Hour Cocktail Party

6 months ago, I wrote an entire breakdown on Nick’s book marketing strategy. So I didn’t want to repeat myself and add him to this list.

But what he did was genius. Read my thread on it HERE.

2/ Tim Ferris: 4-Hour Workweek

Again, I did an entire breakdown on how Tim made his book a best seller. He was very tactical with it.

Read the full breakdown HERE.

 🌱 THE GREENHOUSE

Things I’ve saved this week that are worth seeing:

• The full PDF of the original Fifty Shades fanfic. (See here)

• An AMA with Hugh Howey. (See here)

• My carousel on how Apple built a cult. (See here)

TL;DR

1/ Launch an MVP
2/ Give your book to those who care
3/ Find a way to make it relevant

One of my bucket list items is to publish a book, and it’s safe to say that I will be coming back to this breakdown when I do.

It’s something that so many people get wrong, yet these 3 got it so right.

That’s all I’ve got for you today. If you enjoyed this, why not forward it to a friend?

Until next Sunday.

— Niall

WAIT… BEFORE YOU GO

If you’ve read this far, why not see how else I can help you:

• Follow me on Twitter for more marketing stuff.

• Connect with me on LinkedIn to follow my business journey.

• Want to work with me? Start HERE.

THAT’S ALL!

This has been a breakdown of How To Sell A Book. I hope you have learned something and can implement a similar strategy in your business!

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