Launch Your Book Like a Pro.

Talking about results can be tricky, because results mean different things to different people.

For example, in 2018, we did a book about marketing for lawyers. It was pretty niche, and only sold a few hundred copies during the book launch. But because the author ran a large legal marketing company and did a lot with the attention we generated, he attributes over $2mm directly to the Book Launch Process.

On the other hand, for some authors, reach and book sales are more important. Typically, we see at least 1 media hit per week over time working together. We also aim our book sales targets at ensuring authors are on track to sell 1,000 copies in their first year, which usually means selling 500+ over the course of our time working together.

No! A lot of authors obsess over pre-sales, and most of them do it only because they see other authors do it. The only people who this makes sense for are those who are trying to hit the NYT Bestseller list, or are trying to impress their publisher so they are taken more seriously.

If you are most concerned with the long term success of the book, it’s much better to focus that attention after launch.

As an example, when was the last time you pre-ordered a book? Probably not recently, if ever, right?

Instead of making an “ask” before launch, losing people, and converting poorly, we’d rather use that time to get people excited and save the ask until after launch when potential readers are more likely to pull the trigger.

We don’t focus on hitting major bestseller lists, as they have become an overpriced game. We find it more effective to focus on marketing that will sell books and increase influence, rather than just trying to get the credential of a bestseller list without real impact.

For more information on how to hit a major bestseller list, you can read this article (written by our 4x NYT bestseller co-founder, Tucker Max).

Categories are an important part of hitting Amazon bestseller. Basically, if you are selling more books than anyone else in your category over a 1-2 day period, you’ll become the #1 book in the category.

To ensure this happens, we wait until the week before launch (when we have a good sense of the competition) and we research all the relevant categories around your topic. We want to make sure they are prominent categories, but you aren’t going head to head with Malcolm Gladwell or anyone who will be impossible to beat.

Once we find the right categories, we add you to them in advance of launch week to maximize your chance of hitting bestseller status during launch week.

You don’t need to do anything you don’t want to do! But consider this…

The long-term success of a book comes from word of mouth, from readers talking about it. So our goal early on in book marketing is to get as many people as possible to read the book, so they can talk about it later.

The $0.99 promotion is powerful because all the people who would regularly be on the fence, or maybe add the book to their “read later” list, decide to take the plunge right away. That gets you more readers early on, and maximizes your chances of bestseller status.

We recommend doing it for all authors, unless book sale revenue is a big factor for them AND they have a big audience that they want to earn that revenue from. Otherwise, the $0.99 discount is a no-brainer to support the book’s long-term success.

This varies by author, because a lot of the advice we give leaves a lot of room to do as much or as little as needed. Most of what we will ask from you has to do with focusing on your relationships and galvanizing them to take action to promote the book. Some authors don’t do this at all, and some dedicate all their time to it leading up to launch.

As estimates for a normal author, you can expect to spend about:

• 60-90 minutes per week leading up to launch
• 60-90 minutes per day during launch week
• 30-60 minutes per week after launch

Like anything that we don’t have complete control over, we can’t make guarantees around media. However, based on the hundreds of authors we’ve worked with in the past, we are confidently able to secure at least twelve media placements over the course of the book launch (often more).

These twelve media hits tend to be a mix of larger Tier 1 outlets (like Inc, Entrepreneur, and Forbes), prestigious book reviewers (like Kirkus or Publishers’ Weekly), book summary sites (like Blinkist and Summary.com), industry publications (like HR.com), as well as a mix of podcasts that speak directly to your target audience.

We do NOT run any bestseller campaigns for major lists.

Getting on a media bestseller list (like the Wall Street Journal or New York Times) is a major endeavor, and from our experience, it usually doesn’t align with the real success of your book.

Each of these lists has their own rules (which we’ve outlined here), but the basic idea is the same: they measure total sales over the course of one week, and they have rules that people use to try to game them.

When authors try to hit the lists, they end up optimizing for these rules—racking up presales to distribute through indie bookstores, for example, or providing bonuses to their audience to bribe them into buying the book.

In our experience, rather than focusing attention on playing games to meet the criteria of a bestseller list, the best thing an author can do is focus on reaching people who genuinely want to read the book. This is a long term activity and not something to try to squeeze into a one-week period.

For more information on how bestseller lists work and why to avoid them, you can read our more in-depth article on the topic.