Writers, If You Want To Write Books, Then Write Books

Why working on books might be more important than anything else

J.R. HEIMBIGNER
ILLUMINATION
Published in
7 min readMar 2, 2022

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Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

If you want to be an author and write lots of books, write lots of books.

So often get caught up in social media posts or blog posts. We think we need to be everywhere at once trying to grow a following or build our email list. Some of these things have merit, but we keep telling ourselves the same narrative:

“We need to establish an online presence to be able to sell books.”

“Without an email list, we won’t be able to sell books.”

“Book publishing is so crowded, I have to do (insert thing) in order to make it.”

After self-publishing a few books now, I don’t think any of these things are true anymore. They might be helpful. And you might make a crap ton of money early with a huge following or email list, but you don’t NEED these things to sell books and grow a following.

Selling 1,000 books with an email list of sixteen subscribers

Last week I decided to jumpstart my first book, Productivity Success, by updating the keywords categories and free promotion. I got this idea after my most recent book has become so successful with regular purchases daily over the last few months.

Here are three things I learned from my jumpstart experience:

  1. From 2019 when I first published my book until Feb 20 this year, I had just 240 copies shipped.
  2. From Feb 21 to Feb 23, I have had 902 copies shipped. That’s almost 4x as many from the previous two years.
  3. Social media engagement and email list building have grown over this time.

What I learned from my jumpstart experiment is that I don’t need a massive email list to succeed. I can move books by doing the right things. And while book publishing might be crowded, I became a #1 Bestseller in multiple categories.

This has helped me understand that we can take a new direction to write online. It means we can publish our books and grow a following without all the tedious blog posts and social media posts.

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J.R. HEIMBIGNER
ILLUMINATION

Author of 11 books with more on the way. All while working a day job and chasing my dreams with my family. Learn more: http://bio.link/minauthor