When I think about marketing books

Today is the first anniversary of Stripe Press. We launched our new imprint with Elad Gil’s High Growth Handbook and we are just a few weeks away from publishing our sixth book, People & Company’s Get Together. I came to this project at Stripe after publishing my first novel with Harper Collins (and I’ve got a second one on the way). In bringing these books to life, and working alongside many incredible authors, readers, and marketers, I’ve observed and learned a ton.

Overall, marketing books is the same as marketing most other things; it’s about matching a curiosity, interest, or need to your product at the right place and time. I’ve learned that capturing a reader, in particular, requires a constellation of proof points. The constellation must either shine very bright in a couple places near and dear to the reader (“my closest work colleague and my best friend both recommended I read!”) or form of discernible pattern across many points in close-ish proximity (“I keep hearing about this book everywhere!”).

This post covers how I think about creating that constellation, which channels have worked for me in the past, which haven’t, and what I’m curious about experimenting with in the future.

I hope it’s interesting! If you want to talk more about book marketing or publishing more broadly, say hi! I’m at brianna.wolfson@gmail.com.

(I also wrote up this guide to marketing books in a way that feels like you that will likely be more interesting for authors).

Operating principles for marketing books

Here is a set of principles I use to think about how to approach marketing books. These may not be for everyone, but they’ve worked for us!

1. Build with. “Building with” is a tactic that comes from the wonderful team at People & Company. They say that most people try to “build for,” but the magic really comes when you build with. “Building with” means sharing the journey with your followers; posting about milestones in the project, sharing some context and thinking behind decisions, asking for feedback, and more. This will help potential readers not only feel more connected, but also tell the story of the book, themselves. Don’t forget to thank the people who are working on the project with you. Most importantly, it’s the right thing to do. But, even beyond that, it will make them more enthusiastic champions of your work.
2. Share in a way that adds value. I choose engagement over reach any day. I try to get books in front of people I really, really think will love it versus get it in front of lots of people. What does this mean in practice? I’d rather see a community of five discussing the themes of the book than the book on coffee table that dozens of people will walk by.
3. Optimize for time/distribution^engagement. With limited time and resources, I’m always looking for opportunities that are the the highest return (maximum impact of ideas) for the investment (time, $$). The best formula I have for that is time/distribution^engagement. Time/distribution ratio is relatively straightforward. What is the most efficient way to get in front of the broadest engaged audience? A podcast, for example, looks great by this metric. For a podcast with a decent following, an author can do 30 minutes of prep and spend an hour getting interviewed by the host and get ideas in front of 100,000 listeners who have already voted to hear more on the subject matter. A stop on a book tour, on the other hand, does not look so good by this metric. The author will likely have to travel for many hours to an entirely new city to speak to a room of ~50 people on a great turnout day. This is where the ^engagement factor can flip things, though. If an author can get in front of a community that really, really, deeply cares and talk really, really deeply about the ideas in the book, I’ve found that experience can ripple out far and wide.
4. A constellation = a recognizable pattern. Almost every idea will feel like a good one once you start putting pen to paper on your plan. But, tons of activity without coordination is not the path to getting a true constellation of recommendations to form. You want to hit a potential reader many times from different angles so that she can recognize the pattern. That will be a challenge if the proof points are too far apart from one another. It’s important to focus on proof points that will compound and mutually reinforce each other. This principle really helps with prioritization.
5. Form bridges. How can we reach those people that would really love the book that may not come across it through known/typical channels? It’s going to take some research to learn what you don’t know you don’t know is out there.
6. 1 or 2 big swings, but no more. Is there a chance of making something on the “look, ma!” list happen? If you can, be willing to do 1–2 unreasonable things to get there. But, no more than 1–2. Otherwise, you’re going to open yourself up to big distractions and burnout.

What works?

• Author’s direct outreach to family and friends. Sending personalized notes to the people who care about the author, no matter what the book says, is a great place to start. Speaking from personal experience, it is truly heartwarming to have the people you love celebrate a huge personal accomplishment of publishing a book with you.
• Word of mouth! Our research tells us that people get book recommendations from their friends and colleagues. This is difficult to stoke and track but it’s also where we see the benefit of reliably great material plus a set of breadcrumbs (on the internet and IRL) that helps people tell the story of the book really helps. Readers that genuinely love the book are the best marketers.
• Twitter! Twitter is mind-blowingly good at selling books. Single tweets can launch books into the heights of Amazon best seller rankings. Even a flurry of tweets from pockets of people who don’t have large followings stir the conversation up and get readers interested (that’s the constellation).
• Podcasts! The conversation almost always adds value for listeners and can go deeper on the themes of the book in a way that can act as a trailer for those who haven’t read it or complement content for those who have. Plus, super speedy/simple to execute on with potentially very wide reach. Lastly, they’re quite easy to schedule. Hosts are always looking for high-quality content and guests; I found they’re quite likely to have an “author” on because they can trust that someone else already vetted the ideas and their source. Still, some podcasts are better than others and it mostly comes down to whether the host cares about the subject matter/guest more than the reach of the podcast. Hot tip: always ask for questions beforehand. It’s less important for the guest’s prep and more important for assurance that the host has done (and/or is willing to do) their homework!
• Find vocal people that are obsessed with the book. The best marketing comes from other people. Find people who will wholeheartedly and loudly endorse the book and tell other people about it. If you find a glowing review somewhere, get in touch, learn what they love, get them involved, and see if they’ll make noise elsewhere on your behalf. Or (especially for non-fiction), find people that vehemently disagree with the ideas but engage equally loudly, and what channels they are using to do so. To quote Nassim Nicholas Taleb in Antifragile, “Criticism, for a book, is a truthful, unfaked badge of attention, signaling that it’s not boring; and boring is the only very bad thing for a book.”
• Media outlets with very wide distribution. This is all of your classic names (New York Times, New Yorker, The Atlantic, WIRED, NPR) and even some online publications (for our audiences: First Round Review, Ben Thompson’s Stratechery, Hacker News, Slack communities, etc.) This can be a review, an op-ed from an author, or another format, but the broad distribution can capture the attention of the curious. We haven’t completely cracked this yet, but we’re working on it. These take a little more time to nurture, but the distribution payoff can be huge. We haven’t had the privilege of seeing this for ourselves yet, but we learned in our research that a NYT review or NPR segment can sell around 10,000 books.
• Targeted watering holes. Getting the books in front of communities that are likely to really connect over the ideas can really help. The people in these communities can become really impactful champions of the book and will talk about them in other meaningful contexts. Often times, we’ll give books away to these communities and the extra effort to deposit some good will into those communities can go a long way.
• Amazon ads. These are super easy to implement and optimize so you know they pay for themselves.

What doesn’t work?

• Company talks/conferences. While these might appear to be be high value-add to attendees, company talks fall down on the time/distribution^engagement metric. They often take a lot of time to prepare (companies ask for short presentations) and can be lightly attended. Authors tell me they like these because companies/conferences often buy the books in bulk. That said, I’ve seen piles of leftover books stacked up in the corners of events during teardowns and that definitely means the bar has not been cleared on the “adding value” front. I will say that even though we haven’t seen these activities translate into book sales, it does help get the author out there as an expert on the topic. Hot tip: if you want to make these work, we’ve seen that they get infinitely more impactful if there is someone on the other end working really hard to make it interesting and get people to come. See if you can find a personal connection or champion that can be this person!
• Blurbs: A blurb on its own is not enough. Blurb’ers have an incentive to write these without much thought because their name will appear on materials associated with the book that the publisher will promote; good name recognition for them. If writing the blurb doesn’t come with actual, full-throated support of the book, I haven’t found that they add much value.
• Traditional book tours. These are very expensive in time and money and when we experimented with these, we didn’t see results in either sales or drumming up particular enthusiasm in small communities. I often find that authors want to do some version of this even if they intuitively understand the tradeoffs in cost/time.
• Non-Amazon ads. I’ve experimented with these on Twitter, Facebook, and search and haven’t seen success. This could be a personal limitation!

What am I curious about trying

• Virtual discussions. We’re experimenting to see if we can make a “webinar” the new book tour so that we can convene a broader, more diverse group, with less time for travel. We’ve seen some success with AMA’s and I think we can level these up even more.
• Social outside of Twitter. Specifically, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram. We know LinkedIn drives engagement on business writing, so seems like it could potentially be a great fit for selling books. And, Pinterest and Instagram are designed to highlight a beautiful look and feel and pull in passionate communities.
• Video assets. I have a hypothesis that these may help contextualize and humanize the books to drive more interest and engagement.
• Bookshops. It’s really, really exciting to see a book on a real live shelf in a real live store. Doing a few indie shops is low-lift enough to do for the fun of it, but I’m curious if doing a lot more or working deeply with a distributor would really move the needle.
• Pre-order campaigns. When is the right time to start the buzz with pre-orders? What do readers need to know to put their credit card down early? What could make a preorder special?
• Working with global publishers. Local publishers can buy the rights, translate, produce, and distribute globally. There’s lots to learn about about this ecosystem but if it’s done well, it is a great way to expand reach and impact of ideas.