Your Book Launch Needs a Marketing Plan

0:08Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantz. My guest today is Alex Strathdee. He is the CEO of Shelf Life, where he helps authors market books. After working with over 1 ,000 books in 50-plus niches, he wanted to know what advice to give authors whose books weren't selling. Clients include Mike Michalowicz, Alan Dibbs, Michael Bungistanier, Tony Fidel, Reid Hoffman. He hosts his own podcast, Before the Best Seller, with authors who have sold over 10 ,000 copies, which include Dan Pink, Kim Scott, and others. But we're going to talk about his book today, Before the Best Seller, Your Proven Path to Book Sales Without Wasting Time and Money.

0:54So Alex, welcome to the show. John, it's a dream come true being here growing up with you as one of the marketing greats. To get to have a chat with you is pretty cool. Oh, I appreciate that. So I know the answer to this, but I'm just going to let you hit it out of the park. When I write a book, doesn't the publisher promote my book? You would think that is why we exist is because Seth Godin, I know has a good statistic that, you know, authors spend 90%, 90 % of the revenue is from their backlist. And they only spend 2 % of their, their budget on actually launching new books, which is a statistic that every author should be listening to and thinking, Oh, so I can't expect my publisher to actually market my book for me.

1:38You know, I've actually published, let's say I self-published one book, six books have been with major publishers. And I can say that not only do they not promote your book, they don't know how, quite frankly. I mean, they're pretty rooted in some ancient approaches. And that's how I came into this industry was actually getting like pretty much scammed by someone who was like, oh, here's what book marketing really is. And I was like, oh, wait, I'm going to be our famous rich, you know, author tomorrow. Wow, that's fantastic. All I have to do is become an Amazon bestseller. Cool. And then you quickly find out that's not how you become an author.

2:14Well, and the other thing, of course, that I'm sure you're experiencing this. My first book came out in 2007. There weren't a lot of nonfiction books, quite frankly, particularly from marketers. Now there's probably been five titles that have come out since we started this show. I mean, it's crazy. There's a marketing book for every niche now. Like there was one, there was one book that I was marketing that is crawl space repair. Like the, the, it's insane. The, the niches that you find these days, but I love niches. I think niches are some of the best places to market. Well, so, so where, where do you find, we'll start with the mistakes.

2:48Where do you find, you know, people making a mistake? I know the biggest one is they write a book and go, okay, now what? I'm probably, but, but, but what are some of the other common mistakes? I'll first start with a piece of education and it's how to think about your book. And it's an analogy that I actually stole from Ricardo Fayette of Readsy. And the book is a ship analogy where essentially your book is a ship. And how good your book is, is how and how the word of mouth will spread for that book, is how light the material of that ship is made of. So if you have a really, really good book, you have a really, I think I was reading your Wikipedia before this as well.

3:24You like your woodworking, so we'll use a nice wood reference here. You know, if you have a really good book, then it's a light piece of wood, right? So, you know, then your book, all that that ship needs is some wind in the sails and it starts to cruise along. If your book is made of lead, meaning it's a terrible book and people don't want to share it, then yeah, you can strap rockets to the side. But the second you turn off those rockets, it's going to sink to the bottom of the ocean. So the first thing is to think about your book as a ship. And so the next question you get is, well, how do I know what my book is made of?

3:55And the answer to that is by product testing it. So it's by committing to, and this is, you know, your question was, where do people actually start with their marketing? The starting point is picking a number. So that is the, and Bill Gladstone, who's the late, former literary agent to people like Eckhart Tolle, Marie Kondo, Jack Canfield. His whole thing is that in order for a book to be commercially successful, you need to seed 20 ,000 copies into the wild. Now, if your book is about crawl space repair, the odds of you seeding 20 ,000 copies is pretty low, right? So you got to realize that there's some nuance in here, depending on the industry that you're a part of.

4:30Rob Fitzpatrick says that number only needs to be 1 ,000. He's an author of Write Useful Books. He focuses more on writing really, really good nonfiction books. And the truth is the number is somewhere between 1 ,000 and 20 ,000. And it's up to the author to figure out what that number is. So, I mean, again, I'm trying to process that comment. So if I've published a book or self-published a book, or I'm thinking about putting a book out, am I now then one of my first tasks is I need to get a thousand people who I think would be interested in this and send them a copy? That is one of the ways. So we call that free reader seating.

5:08But yeah, essentially, once you have your number, what that is, is that's empowering. Because where most authors start in their book marketing is just talking to marketing salespeople of, oh, you need this program, you need this program. You don't really know what you're trying to achieve. You just kind of think that like, oh, well, if I make the New York Times bestseller list, then my book did what it's supposed to do, right? Right. And so just having an understanding of what you're actually trying to achieve with your book is that will solve half of your marketing issues. Because once you have your number, you break that down into, OK, I'm going to move 200 copies through podcasting.

5:41I'm going to move 100 copies through my email list. I'm going to move 200 copies through Amazon ads. Right. And then you actually break that seeding number down into many goals. And those are the different tools of book marketing that I talk about within the book. We've probably all encountered a book that you're like, this is really bad. Why is it selling so many copies? Yeah. Yeah. One of my shocking things, it's kind of like Febreze didn't sell until a marketer figured out how to make it sell, right? Until someone was like, oh, it shouldn't have no smell. It should have a smell because that indicates to people that the room is clean, right?

6:18So at the end of the day, I think you can have a pretty mediocre book. And if you have a really good marketing strategy behind it, it's going to do a whole lot better than a book that has no marketing and is the best book in the world. And that's one of the things I tell authors. I know we have a fellow friend, Mike Michalowicz. He writes in Get Different. You have a responsibility to market if your thing is the best thing on the market. You're being selfish by actually not having a marketing plan behind that book. And there's a lot of authors, would-be best-selling authors, that get stopped because they think that marketing their book is beneath them.

6:54I always make a joke of this. We're seven minutes into the show. I'm going to mention AI for the first time. So how is AI affecting, in your view, both the written word as well as the marketing component of marketing a book? I think what it comes down to is brand. And at the end of the day, you know, there's, and that's one of the big issues on Amazon right now, is there's a lot of people selling courses for like, make a million dollars writing AI created books or whatever. 10 books a day, right, yeah. Yeah, and it's like, you can put those books up there, but you're still going to have the same issue that the regular author has, which is to market those books.

7:34So I think that, I'm not afraid of, you know, I think it comes back to your marketing, right? Like if you have a really good marketer who's empowered by AI, then maybe they'll start moving some AI books. But we're starting to look into using tools like make.com to automate like social media creation and posting based on like best practices in the industry. So I think make.com is a great low code platform for some people who are a little more tech savvy to start looking at. But I mean, there's there's lots of ways, you know, like we use ChatGPT to write our job descriptions. They, you know, like you have someone on your team that takes half a day to write a job description.

8:06Just ask ChatGPT to ask you for a meta ads expert and hire them in the Philippines. Right. So I think there's a lot of things that like from on the surface level, ChatGPT can start to really help authors with, you know, where they don't have to know how to write a full on job description. They can have ChatGPT do that for them. And then on a deeper level, you can start using platforms like make.com to create workflows and go a little bit deeper with the tools. How important do you think it is, particularly we're talking, I'm talking about nonfiction books. So business authors, how important do you believe that it is that most authors should also have a course and a maybe a certification or, you know, a coaching program or something like that, that actually comes from the book?

8:47Yeah. And that's an interesting, you know, because even fiction and nonfiction have entirely different business models that you're working with. Right. And so one of our first steps with authors is always to figure out what is it you're actually trying to achieve with this book? Because someone who has a – and this is also something you have to realize when you're bidding against people on a lot of the ad platforms like Amazon. It's oftentimes, especially in the nonfiction niche, you're bidding against people who aren't trying to make money on book royalties. They're trying to sell a$20 ,000,$100 ,000 course on the back end.

9:19So the days of making money through Amazon ads, it's one of the questions we get a lot. the days of making passive income with Amazon ads is over. Like very few books do that nowadays and very few traditional or self-published authors. And I'm talking about self-published to get, you know, full royalties are actually at that point in their, you know, in their book journey. So, so how does somebody who like in my particular case, by the time I put my first book out, I had a huge email list. you know, I had actually been publishing other stuff online, a blog and a podcast and all that kind of stuff.

9:51So I had a decent audience. How does somebody who, and let's jump to fiction maybe, you know, has no audience and is actually not known for writing Western literature, you know, romance novels, all of a sudden writes one. I mean, how does that person seed some readers? Yeah, that's a really great question. Which means it's a hard question. Which does mean that it's more challenging. So let me try to make this as concise as possible. because I could ramble for the next, how much time you got, John? So when it comes to starting, I mean, you mentioned that the number one thing and the most important thing is always to have a newsletter list.

10:31That's the one traffic you control. You've had plenty of episodes talking about the importance of that, right? So when it comes to your email list, one of the best ways, and I stand on the shoulders of great marketers, so like Tim Grawl, who wrote your first 1 ,000 copies, he has a great way to start your Facebook, or your email list through Facebook. just reaching out to your friends and family one by one and saying, hey, I'm going to start writing about this topic. Would you like to come along for the journey? And if you're running ads to your webpage, you might get a conversion rate of 3 % on your website.

11:05As if you're messaging people one by one on Facebook, start with finding 100 people to put on your email list. Start sending out a valuable newsletter each week and happy to dive into that if you want. But I just start with who are the people you know? and ask them, hey, here's what I'm going to do. It's kind of an experiment. Would you like to join and make that your first 100? So that's the first step. Any questions about the email list side? No, no, no. Yeah, we have, definitely. Already on top of that one. And the other way is I'll actually use an example of a fictional author, John Strelicki.

11:36He's the author of Cafe on the Edge of the World. He's now sold over 8 million books. And he, kid you not, just went to Chamber of Commerce meetings. And his book is somewhat of a fable. If you haven't heard of it. It's kind of like the go givers, sort of that situation that has like a deeper meaning to it that's easy to pick up on short read. And he went to chamber of commerce meetings having one on one conversations with people until he had personally handed out 10 ,000 copies of his book. He has now sold over 8 million copies of his book. Clearly that worked. And so a genuine conversation, you're like finding a local group that you can go to and, you know, hand copies out one by one with a genuine conversation.

12:14Now, there's two, there's a way you can do this the wrong way. And there's a way you can do this the right way. And I'll use an example. I'm out here in San Diego, if you couldn't tell by the mustache and the long hair. And we have a namaste yoga cliffside here on the ocean. You can picture it, a beautiful, beautiful blue sky. You hear the waves breaking and a nice way to relax on a Saturday and Sunday morning. And this woman was walking by handing out post-it notes that just had nice messages on them. Like, you're pretty, or you're smart or whatever. And on the back of those post-it notes was a link and invite to grab her book.

12:50But she was starting with value. She was like, would you like a positive note? And of course, it's also her audience, right? An audience of yogis on a cliffside on a Saturday morning at 10 a.m. is her demographic. And you compare that against, I was hosting a barbecue for a friend here at my apartment complex. And this man, I guess, saw a gathering of us down by the grill. and walked down and began telling people about his AI book that we should all go by and read. Most of the people were service workers, baristas, no interest in learning about AI. And he's forcing AI on everyone. It was the most uncomfortable situation.

13:30So when you're having these conversations, be the first, not the second. Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. So if somebody's... I know there's wide ranges and variances and all kinds of... It depends. But if somebody is getting started with a nonfiction book, they've got a business as well. They're doing a couple of things. What's the team, the system, the approach that kind of like they need to be doing this, this, this, this kind of thing? Yeah. Yeah. And I'm all for systems. Like one of my favorite marketers, Alan Dibb, random acts of marketing don't work. That's like I will sing that from the mountaintops until the day I die.

14:07And so having VAs is great. I have a whole section. I talk a lot about VAs and I know you've covered a lot about VAs as well. But the system is start with your high number, break down into the littler numbers, pick out the tools that you're, you know, whether it's, and I've got, you know, a few of the tools that, you know, we've seen great success with is like free reader seedings, like finding people on LinkedIn. And so having a team member who is actually finding your ideal person on LinkedIn, on Instagram and messaging them one-on-one saying, hey, we've got this free book. would you like a copy of it for free?

14:40And most of the time, a free gift, like, yeah, people are all for, I know you're a fan of Lumpy Mail, like, I love Lumpy Mail. And so that's something that works really well. We're doing that with Dan Heath right now, he just launched Reset. And so for him, that's already led to two additional, one lady wrote back and was like, wow, I'm going to make this my book, for my book club of like 80 people. It's like putting yourself, a lot of the seeding number that you pick is putting yourself in a position to get lucky. But I find that when it comes down to systems, a lot of the research can be outsourced.

15:13So finding those people on LinkedIn, messaging those people on LinkedIn, you don't have the time to be there messaging these people one-on-one. And the great thing is, like you mentioned, these people have businesses. You're essentially sending them your business card at the same time. Yeah, you got to pay for shipping and handling or whatever. Even traditionally published authors will oftentimes be able to get a deal with their publisher for like six bucks Always look at your author copy price if you're a traditionally published author. Well, I would also tell you those books cost them nothing.

15:43I always negotiated a thousand bucks that they gave me. That's great. Yeah, I'm going to start using that. That's really smart. I didn't know you could get away with that. Yeah, having people who are doing the researching and the messaging. I think anytime you're doing cold researching or cold messaging, that's a great opportunity to start bringing in an assistant for that stuff. Yeah. And that kind of thing can be had fairly inexpensively. I want to go back to something you just touched on a little bit, putting yourself in a position to get lucky. I know you spent a lot of time in the book on that.

16:13You've even got a couple examples in the book. Do you want to share any Oprah moments? one of my favorite stories, and a lot of people don't know this, is Robert Kiyosaki. Everyone's heard of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, right? So what a lot of people don't know is how that book became the best-selling personal finance book of all time. And the way it was done was Robert called up his buddy who owned a car wash, and he said, hey, do you mind if I sell some copies of Rich Dad, Poor Dad in your car wash? And his buddy was like, sure, whatever. He is a bookstore of one at that point. There is no other, you know, like the customers are looking over at, you know, at air fresheners to buy while they're waiting for their car to get washed or they're using the unusable bathrooms at, you know, at car washes.

16:58And then they walk, you know, to the, over the cashier and wow, that's this personal finance book. Let me pick that up. I have a little time. Let me read it. And so one of the people who happened to walk through that car wash was one of the founders of Amway. Now I'm not talking about, you know, whether Amway is a good company or what you think about, you know, Rich DeBoss or anything. But the person picked this book up and loved it so much that he then took it to the other executives. And he's like, this is a powerful tool for us to educate and empower our people. And so Amway started to fly Robert Kiyosaki all around the country to speak at events.

17:33And that book quickly became their Bible and he found his micro community. A lot of authors will find their micro community early on, Mike Michalowicz did this with Profit First. He was speaking on college campuses and kids were taking home those books on spring break. And moms were picking up those books and reading and fixing their company's finances or the company business or the family business. And that was his following. And he never meant for the book to find its way to those people. But yeah, I mean, putting yourself in a position to get lucky is what a lot of that picking your number to begin with is doing.

18:04Yeah. And really the seeding probably, I mean, you have no idea who it's going to, I mean, maybe you targeted somebody, but you have no idea who, what their circle of influence is. And I think that's, it just becomes a numbers game at that point as you're, as you're kind of stressing, isn't it? And that's why people will be like, give away my book for free? First of all, a lot of people will put their book up for expensive on launch and it's like, yeah, their mom buys it, their cousin buys it, their son buys it. But at the end of the day, are you actually solving for any of those people? Are you actually solving the problem of any of those people?

18:39And so that's a big part of it is your number has to consist of people whose problem you're actually solving for. Because if you're not, then no one's going to get excited about your book. It was a book that I actually had the author on here. He has since passed away, but called Giftology by John Ruhlman. He did what I thought was a really interesting thing. His book was published by a publisher, but he talked the publisher into letting him create a special edition of the book. It was hardbound, like kind of leather, you know, had, you know, gold lettering on it. And, you know, he sent out like 4 ,000 of those.

19:11and it was in this really incredible package and it just, people couldn't not talk about it. And it just really launched his book because he just got so much word of mouth before anybody had really read it just by the presentation. Packages can be a really fun way to do it. Brian Johnson, who recently released Art and actually sent Giftology, funny enough, like two weeks ago, I had a partnership and I was like, this, like do this. So it's funny that you bring that up. But the, yeah, and he sent, if you're going to send, this is a little like, you know, people love these small little things. If you're going to do t-shirts, John, make them the softest, most comfortable t-shirt you've ever worn so that people actually wear it.

19:48I have, so Brian Johnson sent me two of the literally softest shirts I own and they've become my travel shirt. So I have walked through about like 30 airports wearing these shirts and been a walking billboard for this guy. So that's like, if you're going to do like shirts for your book, make sure the title's on there and make them the softest that you could possibly make them. Love it. Love it. Well, Alex, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Where would you invite people to connect with you and find out more about before the bestseller? Yeah, I'm always up for a conversation.

20:20We pride ourselves in just having very honest conversations with authors and kind of like where they're at. We prefer to work with authors for years. So if we don't think like an engagement is going to work out for more than like a small period of time, then like we'll tell you that. Yeah, reach out to us. Our website's getshelflife.com. feel free to shoot me an email if you have a question about book marketing, alex.getshelflife.com. Yeah, check out our book, Before the Best Seller, on Amazon now. Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by. Hopefully, we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

20:51This is a bucket list item, John. Thanks for having me on.