9 UNCOMMON Book Marketing & Promotion Tips (That I've Used to Become a Bestseller)

9 UNCOMMON Book Marketing & Promotion Tips (That I've Used to Become a Bestseller)
- Alright, so you wrote a book or you are about to write a book and you wanna make sure you know how to sell more books. Well, stick around because as a Wall Street Journal best selling author of the self-published book Will It Fly? I'm gonna give you nine of my favorite tips that have helped me sell as many of these things as possible 'cause I want you to sell more books too.
Number one, the promotion of your book doesn't start the moment your book is finished. Actually, it should start the moment you begin to start writing.
With any following that you have on social media, on a website, on a podcast, on your video channel, doesn't matter. Let people know that you are starting the book writing process now. You are seeding these ideas that a book is coming later, and it might come much, much later, but by planting that seed now, you're gonna have much more success down the road. So what does this look like? Well, maybe you write some blog posts or create some podcast episodes talking about your book creation process.
People love to see the behind the scenes on how things are created, they feel a little bit more invested in those things. It's almost like when you go on factory tours, you just have a little bit more afinity toward that thing because you understand the process about how it works. You can do this on blog posts, on videos, on Instagram, Instagram stories, on Twitter, wherever you have an audience. Start sharing some behind the scenes of your creation process. It's gonna get people more excited about this book that you're coming out with later.
A couple examples, Andy Weir, the author of The Martian, he's actually wrote that book publicly building an audience along the way, and by the time the book came out, he had millions of people who were excited to go and purchase that book and support him. And my book Will It Fly? I talked about it on my blog and on my podcast, I was just very open about the book creation process including some of the parts that I really struggled with too.
Alright, tip number two. Build a street team or a launch team to help promote your book when it comes out.
The street team is a small group of people, doesn't have to be very big. But you give them access to the manuscript early, you get them involved in the process because when people are involved, they're invested. And these are people who will, in exchange for early access to these things, they're gonna be there to write a review on the day that your book comes out. They're gonna be there to share your book when it comes out. And it's gonna give you just a little bit of a boost or maybe a big boost on the day you launch or the next time you run a big promotion.
So that you can get some more eyeballs on your book. Daniel Decker who I interviewed in episode 189 of the Smart Passive Income Podcast said the following.
- To me what a launch team is, is really the opportunity just to mobilize your community. So for someone like you, especially who has a little bit of a larger platform, the ability to take people who are already fans and just mobilize them to engage in the content, engage in the process. And just to help you support the book and launch it in an amplified way, but it's not limited just to people with a platform.
Anybody can utilize a launch team. It's really just leveraging that community. - On top of that, I recommend bringing all these people together in something like a Facebook group like you're seeing right now. Where you can show people the different covers that you are coming up, with the ideas that you might have, get feedback along the way and of course, the day your book comes out, or the day that big promotion is running.
Really hit 'em hard and thank them for all the support.
And they're gonna support you back. Number three, build in promotional and sharing mechanisms inside of your book. So what does this look like? So, for example, in my book Will It Fly? I have an exercise that people do where they fold the paper airplane after they've written some things on this piece of paper, and then I instruct them in the book itself, to tweet me and share it using the hashtag #Willitfly of them actually throwing that paper airplane.
Here are a few examples of people doing that. So what does this do? Number one, it gets the person reading the book to be involved in the process. And because they're at tagging me, or they're involving me in the conversation, I can quickly reply and say, you're awesome, or nice job, or keep going. And that just heightens the relationship that I have with the reader which is really important.
It's gonna help me stand out from other books and authors that they might be reading. Additionally, obviously, they're sharing this publicly. So now, people are gonna ask questions, and they're like, oh this is really cool, what is this? Or tell me more about that. Or hey, I saw on your Instagram yesterday, you threw a paper airplane, like, tell me more about that.
Now, my book is getting injected into these conversations because these people are sharing publicly these things that I told them to share in the book. So you might have ways that you can do this too.
Now, if you've already written your book, you can do similar things where you can ask your audience on Twitter, or on Facebook, or whatever to say, hey, take a picture of you reading this book. I just wanna know where you are reading this, and love to see where you're at. And that's a great way to get people to kind of step up and be like, hey I'm reading your book which is social proof, but also, again, building that relationship with your audience too at the same time.
Alright, number four, you can go on a promo circuit. So what is this like? Well, a lot of people, when they come out with books, they go on book tours, right? And you may not have the time, or the money to go on like a national book tour. But you can do this virtually.
You can do it on podcasts, you can do it on other people's video channels by doing Skype calls and things like that. Obviously, utilizing the network that you've built or reaching out to others and asking is gonna be the way to go about it. But you don't have to actually do a moving book tour, you can do a virtual one and it can work out definitely in your favor. I remember when I came out with Will It Fly? I think I had scheduled 20 or 30 podcasts episodes to be recorded within a week that were all gonna hopefully come out in and around the same time.
And for the most part, they did.
 
Which definitely gave me a boost when my book came out. Number five, create a book club. This is a really interesting tactic that kinda of is a more long term play here. So, for example, if you go to patsbookclub.com, you can sign up there and you'll get an email from me every single month with a new book that I'm reading, why I like it, some of the lessons learned, and so forth. But of course, when I come out with a book, I now have this list of people who I know read books, who have taken my recommendations and who are likely gonna be customers of my own book too.
A lot of other people have book clubs in very similar ways. Tim Ferriss, I believe has one. Ryan Holiday, and a few others.
So, by creating a book club, you can share more books that aren't yours with this audience that you're building who are likely also reading books and would be happy to take your recommendations so that by the time your book comes out, I mean, you're gonna be able to promote it. Or if you have a book club already, you can kinda mention it in passing, in your email sequences for your book club, or in your book club page, wherever.
Number six, create a podcast to support your book. One of my best friends Chris Ducker, when he launched his book Virtual Freedom, he created a brand new podcast with a limited number of episodes to support that book. Each episode was about 10 minutes in length and was called the Virtual Freedom podcast.
And he told me that, that definitely gave him a boost when it came to sales in launch day. And the interesting thing, is now, even though that was recorded years ago, it's still getting listens and it is still driving traffic and readers to his book. Now, if that's something you're interested in creating, all you have to do, simply is go to howtostartapodcast.com. My free three day mini course to walk you through that process.
Link's below in the description as well.
Alright, tip number seven, this comes from Jeff Goins, and it's from a podcast episode back in the day when I was launching my first book Let Go and he was giving me some tips. So here's one thing that he said. - I don't know, you might have mixed feelings about it, but what I do is I raise the price. You know, after a certain amount of time, I raise the price.
And so, what I'm really doing is a couple of things. One, you know, there is, you know, in the marketing world, people understand that if you create urgency that, that builds demand. And so, people will buy something now, you know, so that they can save money later. - So to validate what Jeff was saying there, yes, raising the price can help because if you let people know you are going to raise the price, people don't wanna miss out on the opportunity that they have to get it at a lower price. Even just raising your price $1 can go a long way.
You can tell your audience, hey guys, at the end of the month, I'm gonna be increasing the price of my book so get it now while you can at the lowest price point available. And that will get people to move and buy your book. Number eight, on the opposite end of the spectrum, you could actually, for a brief time period, offer your book for free. Now, not your print book, that's something that obviously cost money. Although there are ways that you can utilize giving away free copies to enhance your book.
For example, if you were to give away free copies to people at a conference, that could help you book more clients and those kinds of things. Obviously there's a lot of, you know, business play with a book. But, in terms of offering your kindle version for free. If you are part of Amazon KDP Select, that allows you to, within a certain time period, and only for a few days, allow for your book to be free.
And what that does is that triggers a lot of websites and algorithms such that your book will get a big boost in rankings and a lot of people downloading it.
Now, you're not gonna make more sales, dollars as a result of that. But coming out of that promotion, your book will be that much higher in the rankings and it can, you know, give it a boost and momentum to get you more sales and more income coming in after that. So that's one thing. But number two, often times we write books for other purposes, like I said earlier. Build a part of your business or a lead magnet for your email list or whatever.
By offering it for free every once in a while, that's gonna bring a huge amount of people in there and then you can have your book do its thing that you had built it to do. So, that can work out really well for boosting your sales and at least the number of people who are getting access to that book, by offering your book for free. Number nine, you can create an event with your book.
Now, definitely when you launch your book, you wanna make sure that you make it like an event, right? Like, hey guys, this book is coming out on this date, get ready for it, you might wanna even include some bonuses for people who buy more than one copy, or some special things that people get in that first week.
Really just to drive as many sales as you can within that first time period. That can only happen if you treat it as if it's like an event. But, even if your book is out already, you can create moments where you can create event-like structures and buzz and hype for getting more people to buy your book. For example, one thing I do, is every June 17th, I talk about my book Let Go.
Because that marks the anniversary day of me being told by my boss, when I was in architecture that I was gonna be let go.
I celebrate that day every single year. Actually, we're coming up this year to the 10 year anniversary of that. And we have something very special in place for that. But that becomes a great excuse, if you wanna call it that, to talk about the book again. To talk about why that book was written.
To talk about the meaning behind it. So you can create annual events or quarterly events around your book too. You can have special promotions happening in and around the same time to give it even more of a boost and get more sales during that time period as well. Now, really quick before you go, a couple things. Number one, hook me up with a thumbs up, thank you.
Number two, comment below and tell me which one of these nine strategies seems to be the most interesting to you? Whether you have a book out already or not, tell me which one you're going to make sure you implement because all of these things will work.
I've used all them in some way, shape or form. I wanna know and hear from you. Which one seems to be the one that you're most excited about?
And then really quick, up next, over here on this side, if you haven't written your book yet, watch this video, five tips to write a best seller. If you've already written your book, you have a personal brand, click here to watch me and Chris Ducker teach you how you can monetize it. So, thanks so much. Enjoy. 
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