If You Don’t Do This, Your Book Will Bomb

Recently, when traveling, I made a serious culinary mistake.

Here’s what happened: I had just embraced a healthy eating plan and was starving when I arrived. So I asked the guy at the front desk of the hotel where I could get something to eat and he mentioned some place nearby that had the word Tomato in its name.

That sounded healthy enough. There was a vegetable (okay fruit — whatever) in the name, right?

Pizza and Pasta and Creamy Sauces, Oh My!

A bin of lettuce can throw me.

That’s what I learned when I went to this place with Tomato in its name and saw a salad bar at the entry. Famished, I grabbed a plate and filled it with lettuce. The other stuff on the salad bar looked a little wilted but I plunged ahead, throwing down $14 for unlimited access to whatever this place was.

Unfortunately, it was only once I was inside that I saw what I was being granted unlimited access to — namely, vats upon vats of pizza, pasta and creamy carbs.

For the record, I love pizza, pasta and creamy carbs. But I was in the early throws of having committed to a healthy eating plan.

I dashed over to the woman who’d granted me the unlimited access.

“Where’s your protein?” I asked. “Where are your vegetables?”

She pointed at some bacon bits on the salad bar. “Protein,” she answered. Then she pointed to baked potatoes overloaded with sour cream and more bacon bits. “Veggies,” she added.

The Protein and Veggies of Your Book

I tell you this anecdote not so that I can get to the climax, when a crying child spilled milk on me, but to make a point.

Being caught unprepared can be a lot more damaging than just eating pizza and pasta while on a healthy eating plan.

If you’re an author releasing a book, being caught unprepared can mean that all your work writing the book was a waste of time.

Am I Actually Saying That Writing Your Book Was a Waste of Time?

Yes. Yes, I am saying that. And I’m not saying that to be harsh. I’m not saying that because your book isn’t fabulous.

I’m saying it because I, and thousands of other writers out there, have learned the hard way that the real work isn’t writing the book.

The real work is finding an audience for it.

After all, if no one knows about it, you’ve killed yourself for no reason.

If You Just Wanted to Have a Book Out, Ignore Me

Look, there are some people who don’t care how their books do. (Or at least that’s what I surmise when people me — and they do! — “I write whether anyone reads it or not.”)

That’s awesome. You could argue that those people are far more “real” writers than I am.

When I write stuff for no one to read, I call it my journal.

Everything else, I write so that people will read.

And that goes double, or triple or quadruple when it comes to a book.

It Took Me a Long Time to Get It

When HarperCollins released my first book, I figured I was golden. I had passed the Rubicon by selling my book to one of the Big Five! I could sit back and schedule appearances on The View while I figured out how to spend my royalties.

Alas, my publisher was fired in the biggest scandal to hit the industry shortly before my book came out and so her entire imprint was dissolved. A new imprint was created to release the few books of hers that Harper hadn’t cancelled.

It sucked. I’m not going to lie. But I figured that having your imprint go out of business had been some bad luck. It couldn’t happen again.

And while that didn’t happen again — all the imprints and publishing houses I went with after that managed to stay afloat — I never got a bit of support from them.

For a Long Time I Was Bitter

Whether it was my perception or reality or some combination of the two, I felt neglected no matter who my publisher was. Other authors seemed to be getting a lot more attention. My editor, I was convinced, just wasn’t pushing for me enough.

I was certain I was getting screwed.

Here’s what I’ve now learned: 99.9% of writers, even or especially those who are being published traditionally, are getting screwed.

Publishers bank on the biggies. The truly famous authors. The authors to whom they give half a million.

The rest of us? They could give a fuck.

That’s Why We Have to Give a Fuck About Ourselves

The authors I admire have one thing in common.

They aren’t sitting around waiting for the publisher to care; instead they are masterfully prepared to take care of their release themselves.

This doesn’t mean coming up with some tweets and having solid Facebook posts ready. I definitely don’t mean that they hired a publicist. It means that a good three if not six months before their release, these authors have a plan in place.

They don’t sniff at social media. They embrace it. Even Curtis Sittenfeld (who, let’s be clear, is definitely one of the authors her publishers bank on) once wrote, “By not being active on social media, you’re probably shooting yourself in the foot.”

But the folks who really have the book release mastered, those who understand marketing as well as they do publishing, are hardly just relying on social media.

Successful Authors Have Their Hustle On Everywhere

While successful authors employ some of the ideas publishers suggest — coming up with book trailers, doing launch day emails and the like — they’re taking it many steps beyond that.

They’re nurturing relationships with journalists and bookers and podcast hosts so that the gate keepers want to book them and write about them and support them come release time.

But most importantly these authors are nurturing their readers. They’re assembling “street teams” to read and review advanced copies.

They’re providing exclusive excerpts and bonuses.

They’re focusing like crazy on pre-sales (since those count toward first week sales) by arranging special packages for companies or people who order in bulk. They’re providing bonuses worth thousands of dollars (since many of them are marketing mavens, they’ve often figured out bonuses that provide serious value without costing them anything, like webinars and courses and PDFS and ebooks and unreleased chapters).

And they’re doing it with the same passion they used to write their books.

The Focus is on Impact and Not Ego

Plenty of authors obsess over their book parties (I did — um, every time.)

Want to know how much book parties help sell books or make an impact? Zip. Unless you can get big celebrities to show up and even when I was able to do that and the party made People magazine, it didn’t help sell a single copy of my book.

Successful authors I admire may be arranging readings and events but they’re doing it in savvy ways. They’re coming up with ideas that can turn a boring event into one people want to attend, maybe by converting a reading into a “conversation with” someone impressive they know. They’re partnering with organizations that can do bulk orders. They’re booking speaking events where they can sell books.

And they are doubling down on all of it. My friend Ben Hardy even gave away a Tesla as a contest prize for the release of his book!

Take it from someone who learned the hard way: you don’t want to assume readers will just find your book for the same reason that you don’t want to be carb loading like you’re prepping for a wrestling match when you just embraced a healthy eating plan.

You’ve worked too hard for this. Don’t self-sabotage now.

Should You Be Sharing Your Story?

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