- Are you wondering how to
become a bestselling author
without those creepy
gimmicks that game the system
but don't get you real readers?
There are many, many ways to
become a bestselling author
and sell a lot of books.
(cash register ding)
But there are consistently
three ways that we see working.
If you want to know how to sell books,
then this video is for you.
(intense music)
Hey there, I'm Julie the book
broad from Book Launchers.
We're your professional
self-publishing team
helping you write, publish,
and promote a non-fiction book
that will impact your reader,
grow your business, and make you money.
Our superpower is caring
more about and your book,
and what we do differently
is we work incredibly hard
to get your book into
reader's hands when it's done,
and the best part, you keep
all rights and royalties
and have full control over your book.
Judging by the popularity
of the video I put out
called Bestselling Book
Guaranteed, this is a hot subject.
You want to know how
to become a bestseller.
Well, first you have to define
bestseller for yourself,
because if you're talking
New York Times Bestseller,
you need to know the rules of the game
and know that the rules of the game
are more based on curation
than actual sales.
In other words, you need to
be selected to be on that list
as much as you need to
sell a lot of books.
So as a self-publishing author
you should probably not spend your time
focusing on becoming a
New York Times Bestseller
because it's extremely rare.
Now Wall Street Journal
Bestseller, that can happen.
An Amazon Bestseller, certainly.
The Wall Street Journal
uses the Nielsen Book Scan.
Nielsen Book Scan is a data provider
for the book publishing industry
owned by the Nielsen company.
Book Scan compiles point-of-sale
data for book sales.
This is confusing, so I
want to be even more clear.
It's print sales, Amazon print sales,
but only if you publish with Ingram
because Ingram reports
back to Nielsen Book Scan.
If you self-publish through Amazon
this is likely not included.
So if you're going for
the Wall Street Journal
you need to be set up with Ingram Spark
for your Amazon print book sales, got it?
Barnes and Noble, Hastings,
Target, Walmart, Costco,
these are all places that report
back to Nielsen Book Scan.
To qualify for the Wall
Street Journal list
you'll likely need to shoot for
selling at least 5,000 books in a week,
but some authors have reported
hitting it with 3,000,
so you might be able to do it for less
and or it might take
more depending on what
hot titles you're up
against in any given week.
USA Today ranks all print and ebook sales
from select groups of
booksellers in one massive list.
And Amazon updates their list,
which they have two different lists,
and they update them every hour
based on realtime sales on their site.
But here's the thing,
those are all retail sales.
They're not bulk.
They also each have their own nuances
and things that are not included.
So it's really a game
if you want to pursue
any bestseller status
on any specific list,
so that's why I say
first you have to define
what being a bestseller is for you.
And frankly you should have your own list,
and that should be how many copies total
you're selling to your ideal audience,
and if you make someone else's
list while you're selling
a lot of books to the
right people, that's cool.
With that in mind,
here's three ways you're
gonna sell a lot of books
and be most likely to
hit a bestseller list.
Number one, your author platform.
I was chatting with author Rachel Miller,
and she said she sold more
than 100,000 copies of her book
and she said it was
totally to her platform,
her current audience.
Now she's got a seven-figure audience,
so makes sense that she
sold 100,000 books to them,
but I've said this before,
your author platform is
the number one reason
a traditional publisher
will give you a book deal
because they know your audience
is going to buy from you.
Even a small but engaged audience
can lead to a lot of book sales
like I talked about when I featured
Gillian Goertzen in this video.
Your author platform includes
your newsletter list,
your social media
audience, YouTube, podcast,
and even a speaking
platform if you have it.
Do you wait until you have a
platform before you publish?
If you don't have one already,
I wouldn't let that hold you back
because a book is also a
great way to grow a platform
and building a platform takes
a lot of time and a lot of effort,
so you could be waiting for years
to actually launch your book.
Now how big does your platform have to be?
That really depends on
how engaged they are.
Newsletter subscribers are definitely
more engaged than social media followers,
but people who attend a talk you give
are almost always the most likely to buy.
So as a rule of thumb
I would say you can expect less than 0.5%
of your social media
followers to buy your book,
5% of your newsletter
subscribers to buy your book,
and maybe 30% of any of the live audiences
that you're in front of.
The second best way is using
the platform of others,
and this is how a lot of
people make the big lists.
They get their influential friends,
coworkers, colleagues,
whoever they've met,
to promote their book
all at the same week.
Often there's an incentive
for buying the book in that week as well,
or buying two or three
copies in that week,
and there's absolutely nothing
wrong with this strategy.
In fact, it's a great
way to reward the folks
in the audience of your
influential friends
by giving them something
that's so valuable
they otherwise would've paid for it,
and giving it to them as a bonus
for buying your book during
a certain period time.
If you don't have any influential friends
and you don't have a platform of your own,
then number three.
(water drip)
You're probably gonna have
to buy your way onto a list.
Now this can literally be
done by hiring a company
that has an army of people
all over the country
that will go into the
stores and buy your book.
Rumor has it, as the
article in Forbes says,
which I'll link to in
the description below,
the cost of buying your way
onto the New York Times Bestselling List
or the Wall Street Journal
in 2013 was $100,000.
And it's been known that some
authors with deep pockets
and the desire to be
number one have done this.
But you can also do this by buying
your way there with a
lot of paid promotions;
Facebook, Google, Amazon,
BookBub, Banners, and more.
If you have a smart marketing
mind and a juicy budget
you can get those ads flowing
and ramped up to cause enough
sales to happen in a week
so you can nail one of
those bestseller lists.
The big thing with the lists
is coordinated timing of sales.
Most of us will need to
provide some sort of incentive
to drive people to buy
during a period of time
in order to hit these lists.
This takes a lot of effort
and it's why most people hire
a book launch coordinator
if they're really serious about
making one of these lists,
and it's why I think you should focus on
selling books to your ideal reader
and worry more about that
and creating an awesome plan to do that
and reach your ideal reader
than worrying about
these bestseller lists.
But I know it sure can
be fun to top the charts.
Have you ever made one
of these major lists?
What worked for you?
Or maybe you know someone
who made one of these lists.
What worked for them?
Let's chat about it in the comments below,
and when you comment the
day a video is released
you'll be entered to win...
Where's my swag?
Thank you.
Some sweet hashtag no boring books swag
like this mug or this oh-so-soft journal.
New videos every Tuesday and Friday,
so make sure you're the
first to know about them
by subscribing to the channel
and turning the notifications on.
You're fun. (chuckling)
Let's hang out more, shall we?
Here's my take on why social media
doesn't actually sell books,
and if that's not your jam
then you should watch this
one with Gillian Goertzen
on how to sell a lot of
books with a small audience.
All right, I'm waiting for you.
I'll see you there.
(intense music)
