Effortlessly Unleash Powerful Word-of-Mouth Buzz for Maximum Sales with Minimal Work!
By Peter Bowerman
Sound like snake oil? Too good to be true? Typical overblown hype? Classic over-promising with inevitable under-delivering? Actually, no…
Ask any publisher or self-publishing author what’s the most effective strategy to sell more books, and all the answers you get will likely fall under the overarching umbrella of “Marketing.” Lots of review copies. Tons of live appearances. Scads of news releases to mainstream media. A powerful web site. Radio. Ezines. Blogging. Social media. Writing articles. And ideally, a healthy mix of all the above.
All are “bricks in the wall” of a comprehensive book marketing campaign and should be consistently pursued and implemented.
But, what if you could do one thing before any of these that would turbo-charge the effectiveness and yield of all of them? Something that would dramatically simplify your overall marketing job and help you sell far more books with far less effort – not to mention boost sales of your related products and services. And here’s the best part: it’s something you have complete, absolute, 100% control over. What is this amazing tactic? Here’s the answer by way of three mini-stories…
Valuable Validation
Recently, in the space of a week, I had three things happen (it’s always three that get you thinking, isn’t it?) that demonstrated the power of this potent strategy.
The first was a review on Amazon about my book, The Well-Fed Self-Publisher. The woman taught workshops on publishing, came across my book, and the last line of her review read: “His book’s solid advice and well-told experiences have pushed his book to the top of my ‘recommended reads’ list for my workshop attendees.”
A few days later, I got an email from someone who bought one of my books. She thanked me for writing it, adding, “Actually, I should be on your payroll; I’m out there selling you and your books.”
Finally, I got an email from a gentleman who wrote: “I’m really getting a lot of value from The Well-Fed Self-Publisher. It’s a great book. I bought about half a dozen books to get me started on this project, and I have to say yours is the best, which is why I’m contacting you for some mentoring/consulting work.”
(P.S. That consulting work – general self-publishing coaching, book title/subtitle creation and back cover copywriting – totaled over $1300…).
So, these three occurrences, all bunched together, had the light bulb go on, and this deceptively simple, unprofoundly profound epiphany bubbled up. The most powerful book marketing strategy of all is to…
Write a Really Good Book.
Before you roll your eyes, think about it. What do you do when you discover a great restaurant? Or a fabulous movie? Or an amazing vacation spot? You can’t wait to tell your friends about it. Same with a book.
Write a book that readers consider one of the best – or THE best – in its field, one that provides solid high-value information that enhances the quality of their lives or the size of their bank accounts, and does it in a fun and engaging way, and you’ll automatically recruit an army of unofficial salespeople – most of whom you’ll never meet.
They tell others who’ll tell others, and shazam! – you’ll experience the wonderful phenomenon of word-of-mouth advertising. My books have been rich beneficiaries of
W-O-M. Sure, I’ve worked hard to promote them, but most of that effort was on the front end, at their release, and I haven’t come close to making book promotion a full-time job.
In fact, despite working nearly full-time as a freelance copywriter (the subject of my three Well-Fed Writer titles), sales of my books and spinoff products and services have nonetheless provided me with a full-time living for seven-plus years. All with a very part-time marketing effort. I say it’s because, well, frankly, they’re really good books.
What Makes a Good W-O-M Book?
What has people buy a book and then spread the word? As my experience is in “how-to” books, I can only speak authoritatively on that genre. That said, some of my observations below would no doubt apply to other genres as well (especially straight non-fiction).
1) In-Demand Subject Matter: When I wrote The Well-Fed Writer, I was reasonably confident (okay, 100% dead certain) there was a market for a book that offered a step-by-step blueprint for making $75-$100-$125+ an hour as a writer. With only one other book on the market on “commercial” freelancing at the time, there was room for another.
As for The Well-Fed Self-Publisher? With all the authors out there running into brick walls trying to land a publisher OR tired of making no money with one, I knew a book with the no-hype subtitle, “How to Turn One Book Into a Full-Time Living” would find a warm reception out there. I was right. What about yours?
2) Offer Practical Information: Because my books are essentially firsthand accounts of how I (and others) specifically went about the process in question (i.e., starting a lucrative commercial freelancing practice or profitably self-publishing a book), there’s nothing theoretical about them. It’s real-world stuff, written by someone who’s actually done everything a reader would be doing. This authenticity makes it credible and compelling. Related to that is…
3) Provide Nitty-Gritty Detail: Get into a level of detail not found in other books. Readers want you to spell things out. Don’t tell me I need to have a press release. Show me how to create a good one. Don’t just mention buying shipping envelopes for my books. Tell me what kind, the company, the model number, and how to reach them. Don’t just talk about what should go into a press kit; tell me how to craft the different pieces, down to “scissors-and-glue-stick” steps (and I do… no kidding).
Offer specific, proven resources. Give them easy-to-follow game plans. For instance, TWFSP features the Time Line appendix – seven pages detailing every step of the self-publishing path from before writing the book to after printing it, complete with page numbers for each step referring back to the part in the book that provides more detail. Don’t talk generalities. Get micro.
4) Make It Fun and Readable: A book that offers a ton of practical, detailed, in-demand information, and does it in an engaging, accessible way is tough to top. Many of my readers cite my writing style as one of the main strong suits of my books. If you want someone to hang with a book, make it worth their while to do so. Make learning a good time. If you don’t feel you can write in a way that draws readers in and keeps them engaged, consider hiring an editor or ghostwriter who can inject some life and color into your prose. I promise it will pay dividends.
5) Produce It Well: You can release a book containing the most in-demand subject matter going, with tons of practical, real-world detail, written in a fabulously engaging style, but if it looks like the work of an amateur, it won’t come close to reaching its potential. Invest in professional resources to handle editing, cover design, interior layout, indexing and printing. Cutting corners just isn’t worth it. Over the years, countless seasoned book industry folk have commented on how UN-self-published my books look.
Bottom line, write a book that’s better than it has to be. Keep asking: “How can I provide even more value to readers?” Don’t be stingy. The more you share, the more you’ll be seen as a generous author, the more fans you’ll make, the more those fans will talk, the more books you’ll sell, and the more they’ll want to buy anything else you create. Success breeds success. Do all this and you will absolutely make your ongoing marketing job infinitely easier and more fun. You’ll absolutely work less and make more money. I’m living proof it works just like that.
Coaxing the “Word-of-Mouth”
Bonus Tip: Take a look at the testimonials for TWFSP on Amazon (currently about 80+ reviews, mostly five stars. Not too shabby. But part of the reason I have so many five-star reviews is because I do something laughably simple: every time someone emails me to tell me how much they’ve enjoyed the book, I thank them, and ask (using a pre-written cut ‘n paste reply in my email stationery) if they’d mind writing a review on Amazon. And I provide the link to do just that. In virtually every case, they’ll write back, “Of course. Be happy to!” Why wouldn’t they? If they thought enough of my book to email me and tell me so, you can bet they’ll write a five-star review.
But it all starts with a good book. Spend the time to create a superior product on the front end and you’ll dramatically simplify your marketing life on the back end. Works every time.
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Peter Bowerman is a professional copywriter, self-publishing coach, and the self-published author of the award-winning “Well-Fed Writer” titles (52,000 copies in print and a full-time living for more than seven years). He chronicled his self-publishing success in the award-winning 2007 title, The Well-Fed Self-Publisher: How to Turn One Book into a Full-Time Living. For more details, visit www.wellfedsp.com.
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Questions: peter@wellfedsp.com
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Peter,
So it seems all your advice is directed at the “self help”, “wanna be”, “you can do it, if you can think it”, “how to” books. Where is the advice for the novelist? Or is the truth of the matter, as my well published author friend has stated, “Novels are dead. No one is reading novels.” Of course this is after I self-published my novel.
The Most Powerful Book Marketing Strategy Of Them all doesn’t encompass novels.
So where do we all go with novels?
Melissa
Nice article. It makes me want to buy your book!
I think you hit it on the head.
I agree with Melissa that it seems these specific tips work mostly with self-help, which also happens to be HUGE right now… don’t ignore that fact! I think even in the case of WOM as a strategy, there is some element of luck. Not everyone who hears the WOM will feel inspired to go and buy the book in question.
The question certainly *is* “What about novels?” because novels, a lot of the time, are based more on their value as a story or an artistic work, rather than something that directly benefits the reader. And I think there might be too many more variables to give a precise answer for how to market them…
Hi Melissa,
Sorry I’m just now replying to this
To your question, the exact same advice would apply to fiction: Write a Really Good Book. Now, obviously, the subsets of that as I outlined them above wouldn’t apply, but the biggest advantage a novelist has is good writing ability. Good novels enjoy great word of mouth.
And don’t kid yourself (or believe your cynical friend): Tons of people (including this people!) read novels. And obviously, talent varies widely. And the better you write, the better that word-of-mouth will be! Good luck to you!
And thanks Shawn and Kira for the kind words…
PB