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As the CEO of Kit, Nathan Barry has a front row seat to what’s working in the most successful creator businesses.
On The Nathan Barry Show, he interviews top creators and dives into the inner workings of their businesses in his live coaching sessions.
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[00:00:00] Nathan: Alright, Tim, we're here to talk today about how to engineer a bestselling book launch. This is personal for me because I have a book coming out next year and I would like it to be a bestselling book.
[00:00:10] Tim: Okay. So these words can mean different things. So when you say bestselling book launch, what do you mean?
[00:00:16] Like, do you have like a goal in mind?
[00:00:18] Nathan: I want to sell a hundred thousand copies of this book.
[00:00:20] Tim: Okay. A hundred thousand copies. Let me borrow that marker. Alright, so your goal is to have a hundred thousand sales. Right.
[00:00:30] Nathan: That's right.
[00:00:31] Tim: Okay. Okay. So we're gonna come back to this and talk about if that's the right goal or not.
[00:00:35] Okay. But let's first talk about what this means. So when you think book launch
[00:00:42] Nathan: mm-hmm.
[00:00:42] Tim: What comes to mind?
[00:00:44] Nathan: Uh, I'm thinking about the. Uh, the week of sales or the, and leading up to that, right. Okay. Of the launch itself. So like
[00:00:51] Tim: pre-orders,
[00:00:52] Nathan: pre-orders, uh, the partnerships, the podcasts that we're doing. Um, yeah, everything else I think about lists, like are we trying to hit a bestseller list?
[00:01:01] Are we,
[00:01:02] Tim: yeah.
[00:01:02] Nathan: Uh, what's the longevity of the book? There's so many things in that.
[00:01:04] Tim: Yeah. So a lot of times when people are thinking about the book launch, they're thinking specifically about. That first week. Okay. Right. So much pressure, especially if you're with like a traditional publisher, they're really looking at that first week.
[00:01:18] So they're looking at all of the pre-orders that lead up to that first week of sales. 'cause any pre-orders count towards that first week of sales. So that's really where people are looking at. But what I've found practically for 99.9% of books. You should extend that book launch window beyond a week.
[00:01:37] Nathan: Okay.
[00:01:38] Tim: You should exp extend it to two years.
[00:01:41] Nathan: Okay. So this launch Yeah. If we're talking about that,
[00:01:44] Tim: yeah.
[00:01:45] Nathan: You're saying two years.
[00:01:46] Tim: Two years now, and now we're getting into like cliche analogies. Right. So it's like, it's the difference of a sprint versus a marathon. Mm-hmm. Right? So if I feel like, okay, I, I gotta make ha everything happen in a week.
[00:02:00] Well, I might like throw everything, like, you know, shut down everything in my life and just focus on it for a week.
[00:02:06] Nathan: Right?
[00:02:07] Tim: Versus if I'm looking at two years, I have to do something that I can sustain for a very long period of time.
[00:02:14] Nathan: Hmm.
[00:02:14] Tim: So that's the first thing is I want people to expand out their view.
[00:02:20] 'cause too many authors come out with their book, try to sell it. It doesn't sell very well in the first week, the first month, and they literally just stop and move on because they're like, well, that one didn't work. Um, and
[00:02:32] Nathan: that one being, that book
[00:02:33] Tim: didn't work, that book didn't work or whatever, and then they're just kind of like, they just move on instead of like, no, like, it takes longer than that.
[00:02:40] And, and also you have to understand like books take a long time to consume. You know, I can watch a movie in two hours. I can listen to a new music album and, and an hour or less or a book. You're talking multiple hours for most books. Yeah. And so. They take a long time to consume. And so what I've found is you don't really see the, and we're gonna get into what it takes to launch the book, but you don't really see real fruits of your labor for about a year.
[00:03:06] Nathan: Okay?
[00:03:07] Tim: So you have to like keep going without seeing a lot of impact for a year before you see a really big impact. So just in general. When we say book launch, we don't mean the first week your book comes out, we're talking the first two years your book comes out and Dan Pink was the first one to teach me this, and he's like, big time New York Times bestselling author.
[00:03:26] And he's like, when I come out with a new book, that's the next two years of my life is promoting that book.
[00:03:30] Nathan: Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. And then let's get into the definition of bestselling.
[00:03:34] Tim: Yeah.
[00:03:34] Nathan: Because this is something else where. What are we going for here?
[00:03:37] Tim: Well, that's a question for you because I feel like there's kind of two things here.
[00:03:41] So a lot of times when people say bestselling, first of all, I don't think most people even understand that there's a very wide, vague definition of what a bestseller, right? So we talking like a New York Times bestselling book
[00:03:54] Nathan: or a category bestseller on
[00:03:56] Tim: Amazon. Yeah. Our category bestseller, which you sometimes you can hit by selling three copies in an hour.
[00:04:01] Um, and so when you think about like 10 years from now, you look back on this book launch, how are you gonna judge success of the book? 'cause you're saying a hundred thousand sales. So like, do you, if all let, let's say all those sales came in the first week
[00:04:17] Nathan: mm-hmm.
[00:04:18] Tim: And then you didn't sell anymore. Like, is that success?
[00:04:21] Like when you think about looking back 10 years from now, what do you want for your book?
[00:04:26] Nathan: I'm looking for a book that has a big impact. Primarily. Yeah. And then a big impact on a lot of people.
[00:04:32] Tim: Yeah.
[00:04:32] Nathan: And so I want it to sell well and then keep selling for a very long time. Right.
[00:04:38] Tim: That's what most authors would like.
[00:04:41] Mm-hmm. But it now that starts to change what you're focused on, right? Mm-hmm. So there are a lot of books that hit the New York Times bestseller list, or when there was a Wall Street Journal bestseller list. Right. Hit that bestseller list or hit the USA Today or LA Times bestseller list and then never sell another thousand copies ever again.
[00:05:00] Nathan: So they have a, a graph that looks like that.
[00:05:03] Tim: Yep. And so they put a lot of effort, a lot of time into engine, and there's all kinds of ways that mm-hmm. A deep dark hole of engineering, a New York Times bestselling book. So let's say you do that and you sell your 10,000 copies. 12,000 copies. Yeah. That's about what it takes.
[00:05:21] 'cause remember the New York Times list and all of these lists, they. They go from Sunday to Saturday, so it's how many sales you get in a week. Mm-hmm. Which is kind of a weird thing to do. Like if you go back to why are their bestseller lists, it's Well, so that I, as a reader will know what I should read because that's the most popular book.
[00:05:41] Right. This is why we look at Rotten Tomatoes for movies like. Well, how many a book sells in a week? Doesn't really matter, I don't think. Right. So we have a mutual friend, Josh Kaufman. Right, right. His book, the personal MBA, has sold over 2 million copies since it came out. It has never once hit the New York Times, wall Street Journal, any of the major lists.
[00:06:03] And yet it has sold whatever that X is, between 10,000 and 2 million. More than many, many, many New York Times bestsellers.
[00:06:12] Nathan: So his graph, maybe there's a little launch. Yeah. Right. But his graph
[00:06:17] Tim: Yes.
[00:06:17] Nathan: Looks like some, some version of that.
[00:06:19] Tim: Yeah. Of like this slow burn. And so, I mean, there were two books that came out at the beginning of this year.
[00:06:26] Mm-hmm. One of them. Sold 10 to 12,000 copies hit the New York Times bestseller list. Hasn't sold one to 2000 since then.
[00:06:34] Nathan: Okay.
[00:06:34] Tim: Okay. There was another book that came out about the same time in a similar category. Did not hit the New York Times list in it, sell very well that first week, but it started finding an audience and now six months later it's sold over 60,000 copies.
[00:06:48] Wow. So who do you want to be? Do you want to be the one that hit the New York Times list but didn't sell a bunch of copies? Long term? Right. Or what we're talking about here, which is a perennial bestseller, which is. A term that, I don't know, I don't think he coined it, but Ryan Holiday's book, perennial Bestseller is a great book on this topic of creating something that lasts a really long time.
[00:07:07] And that's kind of where I'm guessing you want to lean.
[00:07:10] Nathan: Yeah. So what I'm going for is maybe, uh, a third graph in here. That spikes at launch dips somewhat as that market. Yeah, we talked about that. And then just continues to grow up and build from there up.
[00:07:24] Tim: Yeah.
[00:07:25] Nathan: Uh, I mean, it's the biggest cliche in publishing, but I think about Atomic Habits in this case where James put an insane amount into the launch.
[00:07:34] Mm-hmm. And he had a big launch. He hit the New York Times list, but I think within a couple weeks he was off the list.
[00:07:39] Tim: Yeah.
[00:07:40] Nathan: I think it, it fell off pretty quickly and then two weeks later. He was number one on the two weeks, sorry,
[00:07:46] Tim: sorry.
[00:07:46] Nathan: Two years. Two years later.
[00:07:47] Tim: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:07:48] Nathan: He was number one on the New York Times list as it built off and then became this
[00:07:53] Tim: incredible seller and like, um, Jay Papasan co-wrote, you know, we know Jay co-wrote the book, the One Thing mm-hmm.
[00:07:59] With, um,
[00:08:00] Nathan: Gary
[00:08:00] Tim: Keller. Gary Keller. And they had really big platform. That book came out, did really well. I don't know if it hit the list the first week. It might have. I need to find out.
[00:08:09] Nathan: Probably based on the size of their
[00:08:10] Tim: book. Yeah. Like it sold really well. I know it sold really well that first week or two.
[00:08:14] And then Jay and and Gary were out promoting the book. Promoting the book, and over that year, sales kept ticking down.
[00:08:21] Nathan: Mm-hmm.
[00:08:22] Tim: Right. Ticking down. Ticking down.
[00:08:23] Nathan: Which has to be so demoralizing.
[00:08:24] Tim: Yeah. Yeah. And then right at a year. It ticked up and then started taking off, and then the book still sells really well.
[00:08:31] Nathan: Yeah, and there are millions of copies sold
[00:08:33] Tim: at this point.
[00:08:33] Nathan: Yes.
[00:08:33] Tim: Yeah. And so then you're looking at like, okay, so this is where you can, here's how I think about it, is like if I have some version of an existing platform. And a platform can be lots of different things. And the way I think of a platform is just a way I know I can sell books.
[00:08:51] Nathan: Right?
[00:08:51] Tim: Right. Like I know when I come out with my book, I can sell a certain amount of copies because of the direct connections I have. So that's gets you that first spike.
[00:09:00] Nathan: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:01] Tim: But then you have to keep going and doing things so that you get that long tail effect of the book continuing to sell. And that's where we can start looking at a hundred thousand sales of what that means.
[00:09:13] Nathan: Yeah.
[00:09:13] Tim: When we're looking at this, so what we mean now is bestselling doesn't mean it sold a bunch of copies in a week. It means it's a book that finds an audience and keeps selling for a long period of time. So 10 years from now, your book is still selling really well. That's the goal, right?
[00:09:27] Nathan: Yep.
[00:09:27] Tim: Right. So whether it hits a list or not, that's what
[00:09:30] Nathan: we want.
[00:09:30] Yeah, and that's, it's something that I wrestle with a little bit. 'cause on one hand, the driven person in me who wants to get the book in front of as many people as possible is like, okay, I do wanna hit the list I want. That level of goal, you know, I wanted a big spike, so it's in a lot of people's hands, but having watched a bunch of these launches firsthand Yeah.
[00:09:49] Like have a, a front row seat to them, it's like, hi.
[00:09:52] Tim: They're terrible. They're just terrible.
[00:09:55] Nathan: I don't like, I don't want, if you put things truly at odds with each other.
[00:09:59] Tim: Yeah.
[00:09:59] Nathan: I don't want a New York Times bestseller. Over. Yes. A, uh, like a over a perennial seller.
[00:10:07] Tim: It's not always either or. Yeah. But a lot of times it is.
[00:10:09] Mm-hmm. Like it because you have to do things a certain way.
[00:10:13] Nathan: Mm-hmm.
[00:10:13] Tim: To get books to count for the New York Times list. Right. So for instance, if all of your sales are through Amazon, you have a much less likely could of hitting the New York Times bestseller list than if they got bought at Powell's in Portland.
[00:10:26] Nathan: Right.
[00:10:26] Tim: And we could go deep into that hole. Again, that's a whole nother hole. So you start end up having to play games that hurt your overall sales to make sure you get the right sales right to the New York Times list. So what I want to do, just knowing you, knowing what you're trying to accomplish, I wanna set that to the side.
[00:10:44] We do want to get as many people to read the book and buy the book as possible, but we don't care how they buy it. Right. Where they buy it, when they buy it. Mm-hmm. We just want them to buy and read the book and tell somebody else. Mm-hmm.
[00:10:55] Nathan: Right.
[00:10:56] Tim: That's how we start to grow. That's bestselling is a book.
[00:11:00] Mm-hmm. That has sold really well and is still selling 10 years from now. Yeah. That's the goal. And the launch doesn't mean you just throw a lot at the book when it comes out and then move on with your life. It's like, I'm gonna keep promoting this book for two years.
[00:11:11] Nathan: Mm-hmm.
[00:11:11] Tim: So when we say how to engineer bestselling book launch, that's what we're talking about.
[00:11:15] Nathan: I like that.
[00:11:15] Tim: Do you agree with that?
[00:11:16] Nathan: Yes.
[00:11:16] Tim: Okay. So we'll now spend the rest of this time probably talking about the word engineer, right? How do you do this? Sounds
[00:11:23] Nathan: good.
[00:11:23] Tim: So, um, we can kind of come at this from two ways. We can talk about my overall framework for how I think about launches, or we can start with your goal of a hundred thousand.
[00:11:33] What do you want to do?
[00:11:34] Nathan: Uh, let's go to the framework first.
[00:11:35] Tim: Okay.
[00:11:35] Nathan: And then, and then we'll break down the goal.
[00:11:37] Tim: So everything I do when it comes to launching a book can fit into one of three categories.
[00:11:43] Nathan: Okay.
[00:11:44] Tim: Okay. So the first is, um, get Influencers to promote the book.
[00:11:48] Nathan: Okay.
[00:11:49] Tim: Alright. So there's basically two groups of people I'm thinking about.
[00:11:53] I'm thinking about fans and I'm thinking about influencers, and this is how I define those terms. Fans are people who will buy your book. Mm-hmm. So they're people you're directly connected to. So like your mom's your fan, she's gonna go buy a copy of your book and like, I'm a fan, I'm gonna go buy a copy of the book.
[00:12:09] Right? Uh, people on your newsletter are fans of yours. They're gonna go buy a copy of your book. People that follow you on social media, they're gonna go buy a copy. So fans are people who will buy your book. Influencers are people who get other people to buy your book.
[00:12:23] Nathan: Okay?
[00:12:23] Tim: Right. So all of their fans to go buy your book.
[00:12:27] Right? So this is your friends that have podcasts, your friends that have newsletters that will help you. They'll take your book and promote it to their list. So the first one is in Get Influencers to promote. Mm-hmm. The second is get fans to buy.
[00:12:40] Nathan: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:42] Tim: And then the third is get fans to share.
[00:12:45] Nathan: Okay.
[00:12:46] Tim: So literally anything I do to promote a book is going to fall into one of those categories.
[00:12:52] Okay. And you're always thinking about, 'cause the other thing I think people forget about is you just, you have limited amount of time. You have two years. Right. But in any given day, you can't do everything. Right. So, uh, so we start looking at like, okay, leading up to the book, the first day the book is out.
[00:13:11] Mm-hmm. Right. That first week, we do want to do as much as we can. And so, uh, so here's an example. I was working with this author and he was like, I want to go on a hundred podcasts to promote my book. Yeah. I'm like, okay. So I was like, have you made a list of these podcasts? He's like, yeah. I was like, all right, show 'em to me.
[00:13:28] So I'm going through it and like number, like 82 was the Joe Rogan experience, and I was like. Can you get on Joe Rogan's podcast? And he's like, oh yeah, he's a good buddy. He said he'd have me on any time. I go, okay, well you're going to get 10 times more reach off of that one than the other 99 of these combined.
[00:13:49] Combined,
[00:13:49] Nathan: right,
[00:13:49] Tim: right. So let's move him to the top. Yeah. Make sure we nail that one. Mm-hmm. And then we can start working on, if you really wanna do a hundred just to do a hundred podcasts, that's fine. But let's nail that one and then worry about the others after that, because that's where you get the biggest bang for your buck.
[00:14:05] And what I found in book marketing is it's not the 80 20 principle, it's the 95 5 principle. Okay. It's like there's usually like 5% of things compared to everything you could possibly do that will get the biggest bang for your buck. Right. Yeah. So if, when I talk to an author and they have a really big email list, so they have an email list of a hundred thousand, 500,000, a million people, there is nothing else they can do besides like, I don't know, get on Joe Rogan's podcast.
[00:14:36] Then just getting all those people on their email list that it's bigger than that, than than their email list to, to, uh, buy the book. So we put a lot of time and effort into number two, which would be get fans to buy the book because that's gonna be their biggest lever. With you, your overall platform is relatively small.
[00:14:53] Yep. Compar, comparatively, and so, but you have a lot of really big connections in the creator world. You're friends with Ryan Holiday who has a huge email list of people that love to buy books.
[00:15:05] Nathan: Right. His entire thing is around, around books.
[00:15:07] Tim: Yeah. And we can name a bunch of creative that have a really big platform.
[00:15:10] So it's like, oh, well if I'm looking at Nathan's, Nathan's platform, this is what a platform is. Right. His biggest lever is sitting right here, is getting influencers to promote, right? So we need to make sure. We nailed this one. And this will be like a secondary thing because this is not gonna sell as many copies as one email.
[00:15:30] Like getting really hammering your whole platform. Right. Probably won't sell as many copies as one email to Ryan Holiday's book.
[00:15:37] Nathan: So yeah, the example here, I might be trying to do everything. Yes. And like how do I, you know, I have 60,000 customers of Kit. How do I get all of them to promote the ladders of wealth?
[00:15:47] Yeah. When it comes out. But what I hear you saying is, is my. Joe Rogan experience example is Ryan Holiday. James Clear and Sahil Bloom.
[00:15:56] Tim: There you go.
[00:15:57] Nathan: Combined they have 6 million subscribers on their three. Three newsletters.
[00:16:02] Yeah.
[00:16:02] Nathan: James makes up the bulk of that.
[00:16:03] Tim: Yeah,
[00:16:04] Nathan: but how can I engineer the like,
[00:16:08] Tim: because, yeah, because it's like the best
[00:16:08] Nathan: version of
[00:16:09] Tim: that.
[00:16:09] It's every single kit customer buys a copy, right? It won't sell. As well as getting the book promoted to 6 million people. Right.
[00:16:16] Nathan: Yeah.
[00:16:17] Tim: Because if you convert 1% of that, is that six 60,000?
[00:16:21] Nathan: Yeah, it'd
[00:16:21] Tim: be
[00:16:21] Nathan: 6,000.
[00:16:22] Tim: So that's how you've gotta think about it. So I like, you know, years ago I was watching, um, Dave Ramsey.
[00:16:27] Yeah. And he was talking about how to do a budget if you have variable income. Mm-hmm. Right? So if you're a sales person or something like that.
[00:16:33] Nathan: Yep.
[00:16:33] Tim: He's like, so top is your mortgage, you gotta pay your mortgage first, then you gotta pay your light bill. And you just put everything in order of importance.
[00:16:42] And then you just every month get as far down that list as possible. Right.
[00:16:46] Nathan: Okay.
[00:16:46] Tim: So I think of this that way is we're gonna take everything you could do in all of these categories that you think would be interesting. So you might come up with an idea of like, I'm gonna like read a page of my book. Every day is a short on Instagram and I'm gonna do that.
[00:17:00] Great. Write it down. Yeah. But it's gonna be so far down the list. You're never gonna get to it. 'cause that's not gonna sell that many books. Right. Social media does not sell books. Mm. At any kind of like normal scale, right? Right. So if some viral, something happens. Sure. And if you know how to engineer it, congratulations.
[00:17:19] But social media is the 95% of work that gets the 5% of results. So that's always at the bottom. So if you run out of things to do above that, that have higher leverage, sure, go ahead and do whatever you want. What I would do with you is, and we also do that same thing within these, right? Mm-hmm. So it's like, okay, well you're connected to hundreds, maybe thousands of creators.
[00:17:42] Yep. Right? So what I always say is like, who are the top 10? Mm-hmm. Right? So, um, where, and I always say like where if they said Fly to Africa. To meet with me and I'll interview you for my podcast. It's like I would fly to Africa to be on Joe gans, the most Inconvenient 10 podcast. Yeah. Because it's such a big impact.
[00:18:01] It's worth that much work, right? Mm-hmm. So we wanna identify those top tier people. And there's some, there's nuance here, right? So there's a lever of like. That would be really amazing. But I don't know Oprah, so I'm probably not gonna get her to promote my book and hey, I'm actually good friends with this person, but they're not as big as Oprah, but they'll do whatever.
[00:18:21] That's a much higher level state
[00:18:23] Nathan: where their audience might be highly relevant.
[00:18:25] Tim: That too. Yeah, because I've had, um, authors that get on the Today Show and we see no bump in sales. Right, right. But if you have like a recipe book and get on the Today Show, you're gonna see a bump in sales. So it just, yeah, it's audience and uh, and topic of book match as well.
[00:18:40] Mm-hmm. That makes sense. Which your, yours is such a broad ladders of wealth, like mm-hmm. That's a really great category. I know James talks a lot about this. Yeah. Of like, money's just a really great category 'cause everybody worries about money.
[00:18:51] Nathan: Right.
[00:18:51] Tim: Yeah,
[00:18:52] Nathan: that makes sense. Okay, so influencers promoting that is, we're talking newsletters, podcasts.
[00:18:56] Tim: Yeah. It's also, this is the thing influencers promoting takes the longer. Amount of time because it, it's herding cats, right? Hmm. You're trying to get 50 different people to all promote your book at basically the same time.
[00:19:12] Nathan: Yeah.
[00:19:12] Tim: But they have schedules and you gotta fly here to do this one. Mm-hmm. And you've gotta, you know, set up a Zoom call and they're in Singapore, so you gotta figure out the time.
[00:19:21] Like each one is very unique and so most of the time. I encourage an author if they have a lot of influencers they wanna promote, they need to have an assistant that's helping them manage that, get it all planned out. And I like to start like nine months before planning all of this stuff out.
[00:19:37] Nathan: Okay.
[00:19:38] Tim: So if we go to, uh, let me just talk a little bit more about this.
[00:19:41] So influencers promote, so this is. Basically, I mean, we talked about like newsletters, podcasts, um, you know, if Blogging's still a thing, you know, uh, getting interviewed on their YouTube channel or having them promote your book on, it's like anywhere where they have a reach that if they talk about your book, you're gonna sell books Right.
[00:20:01] To to their audience.
[00:20:03] Nathan: Yep.
[00:20:03] Tim: So I really like to stay broad because like one time I was working with this author and she had written this, um, book about how the brain learns. She got connected to this network of email newsletters for, uh, homeschooling parents. Okay. And she sold thousands of copies and most people have never heard.
[00:20:24] Right. 'cause it's this kind of underground thing. Mm-hmm. But man, that was a huge influence when
[00:20:29] Nathan: homeschoolers are always buying curriculum, trying to get the right things in front of their kids.
[00:20:33] Tim: And so, uh, and I have a good friend who's sold over a million copies of his middle grade series, and it was all through, um.
[00:20:41] Uh, homeschool stay at home mom. Influencers on Instagram. Right? And he just did lots of promotion to those influencers. 'cause he knew that's where
[00:20:51] Nathan: Right.
[00:20:52] Tim: He could find his audience. So I really want people, 'cause so many people are like, if I could get on the Tim Ferris podcast, you know, and it's like, sure.
[00:21:00] And probably not gonna happen. Right? But there's probably places that are more likely that will have a huge impact on sales.
[00:21:08] Nathan: Okay. Going to fan, getting fans to buy.
[00:21:09] Tim: Yeah. This is, this is the most straightforward.
[00:21:12] Nathan: Okay.
[00:21:13] Tim: Um, so one of the downsells of launching a book is so, okay, so one of the biggest like triggers to get people to buy something is scarcity, right?
[00:21:22] Mm-hmm. There's only a hundred, or the price is going up. Mm-hmm. Or, you know, whatever. And one thing books don't have is scarcity. Right? Yeah. I know when your book comes out, it's gonna be out forever. I can buy it today
[00:21:34] Nathan: or five years from
[00:21:35] Tim: now and Yeah. And it'll probably, I can get it used in like six months for $4.
[00:21:40] Right, right. So it's like, why should I buy your book now? Mm-hmm. So this is where we do a, um, like a bonus campaign. Like if you pre-order the book by the day it comes out, you send me your receipt, I'm gonna give you all of these extra bonuses. Is, and again, this is much easier to manage because you control everything.
[00:21:59] It's your platform, it's your email list, your YouTube channel, your podcast. Yeah. So you can plan ahead, you can get everything ready. Um, where like, you can't do that on the influencer promotion 'cause it's so every single, um, influencer is unique in the way that you're gonna have to approach them. This is why you have to.
[00:22:17] Put everything in order of most importance. Right? Right. Because again, if you can get those top 10 people on the list, that's gonna get 10 times more people than the other 90. Right here, it's like, well, how do I incentivize people create scarcity around my book launch? Well, the only way to get these bonuses for the book are if you buy the book now.
[00:22:39] Mm-hmm. Not later. And you set that deadline mm-hmm. Of the day the book comes out. Okay. And then it becomes a pretty standard online promotion that a lot of your audiences already, and it's like, Hey, we're gonna send a lot of emails, we're gonna do promotion.
[00:22:55] Nathan: Is there anything that you see work particularly well with bonuses where you're like, these are a huge amount of either cost or time and don't move the needle?
[00:23:03] Like what's the 95 5 or
[00:23:04] Tim: 8 28
[00:23:05] Nathan: bonuses?
[00:23:06] Tim: So I got a good story on this. So, um, when we were doing, I was working with Dan Pink on his launch of to Sell as Human. And he was like, okay. You know, the one thing I've never seen anybody do, now, a lot of people have done this since, but at the time this was pretty unique, was, um, nobody, you never get something in the mail.
[00:23:27] Right. It's always like digital stuff.
[00:23:29] Nathan: Right.
[00:23:29] Tim: So we're gonna print off, uh, he partnered, I think it was with field Notes, and did like a custom to sell his human little notebook. Mm-hmm. He's like, people are gonna love it. They're gonna get this thing in the mail. And it was a logistical nightmare, right? And like he, I remember he sent me a picture of like his kids like packing envelopes at his kitchen table, like trying to get these out.
[00:23:50] And then people couldn't buy it. We could only do it if you were in the US and it was like, it was a legit, legit, but we're like, this is gonna really move the needle. So along with that, we did like a PDF workbook. We did some extra interviews with like some people that he had interviewed for the book. We did the audio interview, and I'll come back to that in a second.
[00:24:06] So after the launch, a few months after the launch, I go back to everybody that had pre-ordered the book and sent in their receipt. We had 'em on a list and we're like, Hey, which of these like were the most important to you to get you to buy the book? Across the board, the PDF workbook. Right. The easiest thing, the bottom tier was the thing, the physical, the notebook, the physical notebook.
[00:24:28] And so I like reached out to a few people that said that, and they're, and the basic idea was people are not like, you know what I need, I'm running out of is more paper to write on. I'm, you know, it was like, oh. The best thing we can do is give them things that will help them get the most out of the book.
[00:24:45] Nathan: Right?
[00:24:46] Tim: Right. So they love the workbook. Mm-hmm. Because then they were able to read the book, then fill out the workbook and get the most out of the book. So what I think about is what other content, what other tools, if we think your book by definition is words written on a page, right. What other mediums could we use?
[00:25:09] And provide to people that buy the book to get even more out of the book. So some of my favorite things are a PDF workbook. Mm-hmm. It's so easy and it seems so ridiculously simple and, but it works. The other thing I've seen, uh, and I've liked this for a couple reasons, is, um. Uh, doing like a four week book club the month after the book comes out.
[00:25:32] Okay. So, hey, you got the book? Yeah, right? You pre-ordered it. We're gonna read, you know, the first three chapters the first week. Then I'm gonna come on and do a little bit of training and q and a to make sure, like, answer your questions about the book, make sure you get the most out of it 'cause. Then they're, you're helping them get more out of the book and they read the book.
[00:25:50] Nathan: Right?
[00:25:50] Tim: Right. And that's really important that we'll, we'll come back to.
[00:25:53] Nathan: Okay.
[00:25:54] Tim: But, um, so I like book clubs to read the book. Um, I like if you interviewed people for the book, so a lot of people you'll interview like experts. And only like little pieces get into the actual book. Well, what if you released the whole like, hour long interview with this Right.
[00:26:09] PhD from Stanford and only like four lines made it in the book, but people would be interested in that. Mm-hmm. So that's a different medium too. It could be audio or video. Right, right. Um, so anything like that, the, the mistake I see people make is. Just throwing a bunch of bonuses, like they just pour more
[00:26:28] Nathan: is not better,
[00:26:29] Tim: more is not better.
[00:26:30] And unrelated content is, is not helpful. Um, so what I think of is like three to five things that you can promote as, hey, you're gonna get the book but you're also gonna gonna get these things that make sure you get the most out of this book. Mm-hmm. That's kind of the framework I come with this.
[00:26:47] Nathan: And how do you think about.
[00:26:49] Numbers of copies that you're trying to get people to buy, right? Mm-hmm. Like some of this, the PDF might be buy one copy.
[00:26:56] Tim: Yeah.
[00:26:56] Nathan: By this date. 'cause we're really trying to get. You know, urgency for sales now.
[00:27:00] Tim: Yeah.
[00:27:00] Nathan: Versus the buy five copies. Buy 10. Yeah. Or we've seen some people do these lunches where it's like, buy a hundred copies or 500 copies and get access in some way.
[00:27:11] Tim: Yeah. In most cases, when people are doing that, they're shooting for the New York Times bestseller list 'cause they're trying to cram as many sales through and we can,
[00:27:18] Nathan: and they don't care that the book might sit in a
[00:27:19] Tim: warehouse or, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like how are those thousand books gonna get out into the world?
[00:27:25] Mm-hmm. If they're just a pallet of books in somebody's, you know, um, I mean this is what Alex EY did is he sold this many books, but most of those books will never end up in anybody's hands. Right. Because of the way that he did it. And so, um, which, you know, not knocking what he did, just saying like, those books are not gonna end up being read most of it.
[00:27:46] Mm-hmm. So you wanna make sure like. My goal is I want people to actually read the book. Also, you have to think about the one sale, three sale, five sale. That's still like, I might buy five copies and give them to friends for Christmas or something. It also greatly increases the complexity, right? So if I know everybody that sends me a receipt, I'm gonna give them these bonuses.
[00:28:07] That's really easy. But now if I'm keeping track of one automation, like, what's that? Yeah. But now I'm keeping track of, well, did you sell one? Did you sell? Did you buy three? Did you buy five? Did you buy 10? Am I confirming that before I send you the other bonuses? Now I'm having to keep track of all that and it can get super con.
[00:28:24] So now we're getting back into that. Where is your time best spent? We're doing the, have the team, the time, time packing the
[00:28:29] Nathan: field notes at the kitchen table
[00:28:31] Tim: version again. Yeah. Yeah. Or the a hundred podcasts. Right? Right. And so are you going, do you have a big enough reach, a big enough impact, and you're also creating another decision point?
[00:28:40] Right. The difference of clicking the button and clicking buy now on Amazon, we now have two clicks where now if I look, it's like, well, do I want one copy? Do I want three copies? And then your wife calls you or your, you know, your friend asks you something and then you're gone and you've lost it.
[00:28:55] Nathan: I got it.
[00:28:55] Right. And with zero copies.
[00:28:57] Tim: Yeah. And so I really like the whole like, just buy a copy. That's all I want you to do is buy a copy and read a copy. That's the main thing.
[00:29:04] Nathan: Okay. Let's talk about fan getting fans to share.
[00:29:06] Tim: Yeah. And so what's nice about, so. I put it number three 'cause it's the third most important, right?
[00:29:12] We don't want to try to get fans to share the book before they bought a copy, right? Mm-hmm. But once they've bought a copy, I would like them to share the book. And I added this one because of the way that we run these campaigns is well, in order for us to confirm they bought and send them their bonuses, they have to send me their receipt, which means I now have their email address.
[00:29:32] Nathan: Right.
[00:29:33] Tim: So I remove them off the, Hey, go buy my book email list or segment. And I put them on the, they've already bought segment. And now I start saying like, Hey, here's three things to post on Twitter or X about my book. Here's, you know, three images. Can you share this on Instagram? Or, Hey, here's an email you could send your friends to tell them, you know, they can get these bonuses if they buy the book right now.
[00:29:55] And this is by far. The least impact. So don't overthink this, don't push too hard on this. Get something
[00:30:02] Nathan: in place and
[00:30:03] Tim: say that's get something in place. I like putting up a page on my website that's like click. Because you can create, you know, click to click to post to X buttons, do like that, do something for Instagram, Facebook, whatever.
[00:30:15] And then just leave it there and then send people there. But don't overthink it. 'cause the other thing is. Like we forget that most people don't know how to promote anything. Yeah. Right. They've never had to promote something. Right. So, 'cause one time I tried to help a author build a, like a launch team, and I found all these people with platforms to join the launch team, but then they didn't know how to promote anything.
[00:30:37] Right. So then I'm like teaching them marketing and I ended up writing emails for like all of their email lists for them. And it was a, again, a logistical nightmare that didn't end up in that many sales. So. So I just don't overthink this, but hey, if I can make it really easy for my fans to share the book, let's do it.
[00:30:55] Mm-hmm.
[00:30:56] Nathan: So what I love about this is that it's simple, right? Yeah. This is the clear things that we, we can do. I can organize everything by our 95 5, what's actually gonna move the needle. I also feel like in this book launch, you gave me permission to just focus on the most important things. Yes. And not try to maximize.
[00:31:10] Tim: Yeah.
[00:31:11] Nathan: So if I do this, is this, is this how I'm gonna drive a hundred thousand sales?
[00:31:16] Tim: Well, okay, so here's the thing about the a hundred thousand sales thing, okay? Okay. So unless you are independently famous, even if you're independently famous mm-hmm. Right? And you come to me and you're like, Tim, I wanna sell a hundred thousand copies when my book comes out.
[00:31:34] How do I do that? Yeah. My answer would be, I don't know. And now again, like I'm one of the best people in the world, right at this thing at book marketing and book launches. I have a long track record on this and I have no idea because here's the thing about books. So the difference between books and maybe another type of product is that books have such a low margin, it's almost impossible to spend money to sell books, okay?
[00:32:00] Unless you're willing to take like a 10 to one loss, right?
[00:32:04] Nathan: So if I come in and say. Look, getting 10,000 or a hundred thousand sales is wildly important to me. I'm willing to spend money to make it happen.
[00:32:12] Tim: Yeah.
[00:32:12] Nathan: Surely we can make a funnel of some kind or all of that, and so that I can spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars on meta ads.
[00:32:20] Tim: Yes.
[00:32:20] Nathan: You're like, it can't be done. And except that in extreme loss.
[00:32:23] Tim: Yeah. Like. Because, um, the typical author with a traditional publishing deal is gonna make about $2 mm-hmm. Per book sale. Um, if you're self-publishing, it's gonna be like five to $7, right? So how do you spend, um, $5 to make a $10 sale,
[00:32:45] Nathan: of which
[00:32:46] Tim: you, you now have to, you have to get 50% of people.
[00:32:50] That click an ad
[00:32:52] Nathan: right
[00:32:52] Tim: to, you know, 50% to buy, right? Which is, I can spend $5, I can spend up to $5 to make a $10 sale. Right? So it's like I that, that's a lot of money. And you can't do it profitably. It's just,
[00:33:06] Nathan: well, in the, the, a lot of people will come back and say like, yes, but that's where you have to have a full funnel.
[00:33:11] Yeah. And you'll make money on the upsell or something like that. Yeah. And I was talking to some people last week Yeah. Who have, were basically saying, these are people who are some of the best in the world at making these funnels. And they're like, look. Ad costs are so high.
[00:33:25] Tim: Yep.
[00:33:25] Nathan: That we're no longer making money on the initial sale.
[00:33:28] We haven't done that in forever.
[00:33:29] Tim: Yeah.
[00:33:30] Nathan: We're no longer making money on the upsell. We're actually only barely touching break even on the upsell to the upsell over a six month period. And even then, it's really, really hard to,
[00:33:39] Tim: and you're talking about a very savvy business person that has a book that's plugged into an entire company.
[00:33:45] Yeah. Like. Wealth ladder, ladders of wealth mm-hmm. Is not plugged into some backend that's gonna like, you're trying to sell like big masterminds and conferences. It's like, it's your book. The book is the thing. The book is the thing. So if you wanna sell a hundred thousand copies of a book and not take a seven figure loss
[00:34:04] Nathan: mm-hmm.
[00:34:04] Tim: We, this is not the goal.
[00:34:06] Nathan: Advertise.
[00:34:06] Tim: Okay. Okay. So I'm going to,
[00:34:09] Nathan: okay.
[00:34:10] Tim: I'm gonna cross this out. Okay. Okay. And I'm gonna put 10,000.
[00:34:15] Nathan: Okay.
[00:34:17] Tim: Now there's a really interesting thing about this 10,000 number. Okay. So this is a pretty well known, um, and I'm gonna change this word sales from now to readers,
[00:34:27] Nathan: okay?
[00:34:27] Tim: Okay.
[00:34:28] Nathan: You're just redefining all aspects of my goal.
[00:34:30] Tim: Yes, yes. Your goal is not 10,000. A hundred thousand sales is 10,000 readers. Okay? And I'm gonna talk about why. So first of all, 10,000 is doable, okay? When we're talking about your platform, and your platform is not just. Your email list and Twitter following or ex following.
[00:34:48] It's also all your influencers.
[00:34:50] Nathan: Yeah.
[00:34:50] Tim: This is doable.
[00:34:52] Nathan: Right?
[00:34:52] Tim: Okay. Also, you have two years to sell 10,000 copies. That's also doable, right? It's really hard to sell books. Mm-hmm. Like people, like famous people that come out with books, sell 20,000 copies right. When the book comes out. Right. So here's what's interesting about the 10,000 number.
[00:35:12] So a mutual friend of ours, Todd Satton. Mm-hmm. Um, went and did like all this research and looked at the numbers and what he found is if you sell 10,000 copies of your book in the first a hundred weeks, that it's out two years.
[00:35:26] Nathan: Okay.
[00:35:27] Tim: You have basically, it's like between a 48 and 52% chance, so let's just say 50 50 chance
[00:35:34] Nathan: mm-hmm.
[00:35:34] Tim: That your book will go on to sell 25,000 copies.
[00:35:38] Nathan: Okay.
[00:35:39] Tim: If your book sells 25,000 copies, it's roughly a 50 50 chance that your book will go on to sell 50,000 copies, and then if you sell 50,000 copies, the odds of your book going on to sell a hundred thousand copies is 50 50.
[00:35:53] Nathan: Okay?
[00:35:54] Tim: So what that means is you have a one in eight chance.
[00:35:59] Which is pretty good.
[00:36:00] Nathan: Yeah.
[00:36:01] Tim: Of selling a hundred thousand copies If you just sell 10,000 and stop. Mm-hmm. The book will go on to sell this by itself. Mm-hmm. Okay.
[00:36:08] Nathan: That's this type of graph. Yes. That Josh Kaufman. Yeah. Plenty of other author friends of ours.
[00:36:13] Tim: Yeah.
[00:36:14] Nathan: Have hit.
[00:36:15] Tim: And then the other thing is, because if you can't buy your way to a hundred thousand mm-hmm.
[00:36:20] The only thing we're worried about now. Is word of mouth.
[00:36:24] Nathan: Okay.
[00:36:25] Tim: Okay. So I wanna pause here and talk about the quality of the book. Okay. So a lot of people over the years wanted me to take their kind of shitty book Yeah. And turn it into like this huge bestseller. Mm-hmm. Now if I have a big enough platform.
[00:36:44] I can shove out a bunch of books right into the marketplace, but it's gonna drop off and never sell. Mm-hmm. Because when people read it, if they read it, they never told anybody about it.
[00:36:55] Nathan: Right.
[00:36:55] Tim: Or they were selling a hundred copies at a time and they're just sitting in boxes in somebody's closet.
[00:37:01] Nathan: Right.
[00:37:01] Tim: This is why you want readers. Mm-hmm. Not sales.
[00:37:05] Nathan: Okay. I got that. Because if you sell a hundred, gonna underline this.
[00:37:07] Tim: Yeah. Readers is what you're going for. So the way my partner, Sean Coin at Story Grid, he's been in publishing forever. He's the one, I first heard this 10,000 rule, and his rule is, I just need 10,000 people to read the first page of the book.
[00:37:22] Nathan: Okay.
[00:37:22] Tim: That's all I care about. Okay. 10,000 people to read the first page of the book. So with the quality of the book, whenever I come in as like the marketing guy or people we're talking about your book, I have to kind of take this stance. That your book's a great book and you've worked really hard to make it a great book, right?
[00:37:41] Because without word of mouth, a book is going to fall off a cliff. Mm-hmm. Even if it sells a ton at the beginning, it's gonna fall off a cliff. 'cause word of mouth is the only way a book spreads. This is why J Pop Isan and Gary Keller's book the one thing. Had a big launch in the beginning, fell off, but then kept selling because as people finally got around to reading this book, they bought during the launch, six months later, like one time for my book, running down a dream.
[00:38:06] All of a sudden, six months after it came out, all these books started selling. And I'm like, what is going on? Well, come to find out, my buddy John Acuff was like, he was reading it and like live tweeting it, right. Of how much he loved it. And then I, I like was texting him and I was like giving him shit.
[00:38:23] 'cause I was like, I gave you that book like nine months ago. He's like, man, it, I just got around to reading it. You know? And that's what happens with books, right? And so you gotta like, keep going. This is that whole like, keep going for one to two years seeding, getting books out into the marketplace. So what I am focused on for your book is I need to get 10,000 people to read the book.
[00:38:44] 'cause I think if they read your book, they're gonna love it so much. They're gonna tell 2, 3, 10 other people about the book. Right. They're gonna post about it on social media, like, this book's amazing. You gotta read it. And that's how 10 years from now, you've not just sold a hundred thousand, you've sold a million copies.
[00:38:59] Right, right. So it doesn't matter, like, um, the book, the War of Art, by Stephen Pressfield. In the whole first year it was out, it only sold like 9,000 copies.
[00:39:08] Nathan: Okay.
[00:39:09] Tim: And then since then, it has sold more copies every year than the year before. And this is like, I think it's approaching 20 years. That book is out.
[00:39:17] Yeah.
[00:39:17] Nathan: It's gotta be there. So you're saying like 9,000 copies? Yeah. And then the next year,
[00:39:20] Tim: the next year sold I think like 20,000 copies.
[00:39:22] Nathan: Okay.
[00:39:23] Tim: It just kept going. And they weren't promoting at all, like, it was Sean, Sean Coin my, my business partner at Story Grid and Steven Pressfield. They, they created the book through Black Irish Publishing and put it out.
[00:39:33] Mm-hmm. They're, they're terrible at marketing, so they're like, I got this thing, and then they just move on. And so they were able to sell 9,000 copies and then the, but the book, everybody talks about the war of art, right? Right. So that's how you think about like, I want to get 10,000 people to read the first page of my book.
[00:39:52] Within the first two years, you've now had a successful launch. And of course, if you can get to 10,000 before two years. Even better. Right? Keep going. Keep promoting the book for two years. Mm-hmm. And then at that point, you've launched the book and it's kind of like your kid turning 18 and leaving the house.
[00:40:08] It's like at that point it's like, it's gonna do what it's gonna do. This is how Sean and I talk about it. It's like at that point it's up to the book, what it wants to do. Mm-hmm. Because. No matter what we talk about here, there are books that just hit at the the right book at the right time that find an audience and they go out into the world and there's other books that don't.
[00:40:25] Mm-hmm. And that's just how it works. So there is magic involved in it, but you have to do this. It, to me, it's like launching of rocket. Right. No matter how big I push at the beginning, if I stop and it's only halfway out of the atmosphere, it's gonna crash every time.
[00:40:39] Nathan: Yep.
[00:40:40] Tim: But if I can get it all the way out of the atmosphere and into orbit mm-hmm.
[00:40:44] And it's, it pretty much just goes on its own. And this is what's great about books is that once they start selling and then they keep selling, it takes zero work. Like people talk about, there's no such thing as real passive income. They've not heard of books then because
[00:40:58] Nathan: Josh Kaufman would strongly disagree.
[00:41:00] Tim: Yeah, yeah. Well, I think the thing I always say is every time somebody buys a copy of the Lord of the Rings. Yeah. His family makes money.
[00:41:06] Nathan: Right.
[00:41:07] Tim: And they didn't do anything for that book. Right. Right. And the publisher, like every 10 years slaps a new cover on it. And that's all the work they do besides printing enough copies to keep it in stock.
[00:41:16] Nathan: Madeline McIntosh, who's the CEO of Authors Equity, was telling me yesterday about a, like deluxe edition of, uh, the Jane Austen books.
[00:41:26] Tim: Yeah.
[00:41:26] Nathan: Right. Yeah. You know, and they, it's a new thing that came out. We were talking about cover design and
[00:41:29] all
[00:41:29] Tim: this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:41:30] Nathan: You know, you're like, wait a second. This is a, this is a public domain,
[00:41:32] Tim: public domains.
[00:41:33] Free. Like, but
[00:41:34] Nathan: they're, they're finding new ways to keep selling
[00:41:36] Tim: Pride and Prejudice sells hundred, sells hundreds of thousands of copies a year.
[00:41:41] Nathan: Right.
[00:41:41] Tim: And it's been out for 200 years. Right. Okay. Like people don't understand and there are books that you have. Okay. My book, your first 1000 copies mm-hmm.
[00:41:51] Makes up over a thousand dollars a month. Mm-hmm. Okay. I wrote it in 2013. This is actually what I get cited about. Right. We can talk about the Lord of the Rings and all the atomic habits. But to me, like what if you write a book that sells like a hundred copies a month?
[00:42:06] Nathan: Mm-hmm.
[00:42:07] Tim: Right. You're now gonna pay your light bill, your water bill
[00:42:11] Nathan: mm-hmm.
[00:42:11] Tim: Off this thing you created,
[00:42:13] Nathan: right?
[00:42:13] Tim: For many, many, many, many years. And then what if you write another one and another one and another one, right? This is what's interesting about books is they take zero effort to keep on the market once they're out in the market.
[00:42:25] Nathan: Right?
[00:42:26] Tim: So if you can write something and get it to this point where it starts selling on its own.
[00:42:31] Nathan: So it's really how do we achieve escape velocity? Yeah. And the, the critical redefinition. Is that we're, we're redefining sales as the goal for escape velocity to readers.
[00:42:40] Tim: Readers, yeah.
[00:42:41] Nathan: Okay. So how do we engineer word of mouth?
[00:42:44] Tim: So we just talked through like these three things and how do we do this? But let's, let's take a couple scenarios here.
[00:42:51] Let's say one, you did this for the launch. Mm-hmm. Right? Um, or let's say you're like normal people and you don't have a platform, right? You don't have any fans, you're not connected to influencers. What do I do?
[00:43:01] Nathan: Mm-hmm.
[00:43:02] Tim: So if I could boil this down to like the one thing
[00:43:06] Nathan: mm-hmm.
[00:43:06] Tim: When your book comes out, that if you want, if you believe you wrote a great book mm-hmm.
[00:43:11] You truly believe that. And you want your book to still be selling in 10 years, it's give away as many copies as possible.
[00:43:19] Nathan: Okay, so that's a critical redefinition, right? Yes. 'cause I'm like sales and you're like readers,
[00:43:25] Tim: right? Because give away, remember it was 10,000 people to read the first page of the book.
[00:43:30] Well, now, according to that definition of success, I don't care if they paid money for it. Mm-hmm. I want them to read the book. And I trust my book to stand on its own. And I trust that if somebody, 'cause the only way to sell a hundred thousand copies or more is to get 10,000 people to read the book and tell their friends, right?
[00:43:54] The barrier to getting people to read the book is often buying the book. So how do I get 10,000 people to read the book? I wanna give as way as many copies as possible, and I am, I do not think there's a limit on this.
[00:44:06] Nathan: Hmm.
[00:44:07] Tim: I really think that. Like if I had a way to give away a hundred thousand copies of my book when it came out, I would do it because that would get me the next 900,000.
[00:44:18] Nathan: Okay.
[00:44:19] Tim: Right, because word of mouth will kick in. If you get a hundred thousand people to read your book and it's a great book, you're gonna sell another 900,000 copies. And so this is actually what we do at Story Grid. Like we have a novel coming out. And I am in the midst of giving away as many copies as I possibly can, but when people sign up to get the free copy, I say, you have to read the book and leave a review on the day that it comes out.
[00:44:43] Okay. I don't really care about the reviews. That's nice. To launch with a bunch of Amazon and Good Reads reviews. What I care about is getting thousands of people to read the book before it comes out, because then they'll start telling their friends, yeah, I trust that our book is so good. They'll tell people, other people about it.
[00:44:58] Nathan: So they're agreeing to read. What else matters?
[00:45:02] Tim: So if I were to wave a map, so this is really hard to get people to do like, because they wanna sell books, right? They, especially if they're traditionally published or they have a publisher who doesn't make a lot of money when you're giving away books. And publishers don't, they don't believe in their products.
[00:45:19] They're just throwing them out into the marketplace to see what happens. So they wanna sell, they don't want to give away 10,000 'cause they don't even think it'll sell 10,000. Mm-hmm. So, but in a perfect world. I would get people to leverage this with their platform
[00:45:33] Nathan: to give
[00:45:33] away,
[00:45:33] Tim: to give away as many copies as possible.
[00:45:35] Nathan: Oh, that's a tough thing to like, that's a tough pill to swallow. 'cause you're like, wait, I have the, you know, my equivalent of the Joe Rogan experience.
[00:45:43] Tim: Yeah.
[00:45:43] Nathan: And you're saying I should go to those hundreds of thousands of of people and say, here's a free copy of the book if you agree to read it.
[00:45:51] Tim: I don't know.
[00:45:51] Do you think your book is good?
[00:45:53] Nathan: I do.
[00:45:53] Tim: Do you think if people will read it, they'll tell somebody else? Yes. Do you think they'll tell one person or multiple people?
[00:45:58] Nathan: Multiple. Right. And so, and the other question that I would say in that is like, what's your time horizon? Right? Are you trying to pull off this?
[00:46:05] Are you trying to pull off this?
[00:46:06] Tim: Yeah. Yeah. I don't care about this huge spike in the beginning and then I don't get any sales. This is the, this one where you have a huge spike in the beginning. So you get people to read the book. Mm-hmm. And then they start telling their friends and you start selling lots of copies.
[00:46:19] Mm-hmm. So what I would do if I were wa and you know, James might get mad at me. Your publisher might get mad at me if I were running your launch and you gave me carte blanche, I could do whatever I wanted. I would put the book up for sale on Amazon and through all the normal things for normal price.
[00:46:33] Right. But behind the scenes. Mm-hmm. On every podcast interview I do, every email I send out, here's a link where you can get a copy of the book for free, for ebook and at cost for print so the publisher's not losing money. So $5 copy or $10 copy of the book and run that campaign as hard as you possibly can and see how many books you can give away.
[00:46:59] As quickly as possible. So I want to tell a quick story that'll kind of bring this home, um, some of this. So, because when I start talking about this, a lot of authors are like, well, where do I give copies away? Right, right. So the obvious ones are your platform, your email list, social media. Influencers, that kind of thing.
[00:47:19] But like there's this great story about, um, the Great Gatsby by f Scott Fitzgerald. That book did not sell well when it came out. Okay. We kind of look at it as like, oh my gosh, this book, you know, it's incredible. Decades later. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I pretty sure he died and it was still not selling well, and here's what happened.
[00:47:37] The army. Wanted to buy a bunch of books and put them on all the bases all over the world. So their, when their sold, when the soldiers weren't killing people, they had something to do. And so one of those was the Great Gatsby. So all of a sudden, all these soldiers, hundreds of thousands of people got exposed to this book for free.
[00:47:58] Nathan: Right.
[00:47:58] Tim: And now The Great Gatsby is still a huge bestseller. Mm-hmm. So. Finding a place. I had a friend who, uh, wrote a book about like surviving divorce. Mm-hmm. And so she thought, well, where do, where do women go? It was a book for women and it was like, where do women go to talk to their friends about divorce?
[00:48:15] Oh, they go to Starbucks. So she started going in a spiraling circle out from where she lived and would just drop 3, 4, 5 copies off at Starbucks and just lay them out on the tables. And she started seeing sales on Amazon go up. And that was pretty much the only marketing she was doing. And so it was getting the book into the hands of readers who will read the book and then tell their friends about it.
[00:48:38] Nathan: Okay, so what do I do? I'm thinking about giving away as many copies as possible and using the Ladders of Wealth as an example.
[00:48:44] Tim: Yeah.
[00:48:45] Nathan: Right. Because this is a, a very broad appeal book.
[00:48:48] Tim: Yes.
[00:48:48] Nathan: And so then we're thinking about, okay, how do we, we we don't have the Army saying, yeah,
[00:48:53] Tim: yeah, yeah.
[00:48:53] Nathan: We're going to, you know, it has to be something within our control.
[00:48:55] Tim: Yeah.
[00:48:56] Nathan: So the coffee shop example is great. Yeah. What are other places? Of getting the book in, in the hands of potential readers.
[00:49:02] Tim: Well, this is where I would come back and start talking about like, where are, so let's step outside of your friends. Mm-hmm. Right? So you have your friends that are gonna promote the book, but most people don't have famous friends.
[00:49:13] Nathan: Right.
[00:49:14] Tim: It's like, okay, well where are people talking about wealth and money and how to start businesses? Where can I go and say like, Hey, I've got this really great book. Um, I'm willing to give away a free copy to everybody on your list if you just send this out to them.
[00:49:30] Nathan: Well, so we're talking, um, every business school.
[00:49:33] Tim: Mm-hmm.
[00:49:34] Nathan: Right? Of like, you know, if they're, if we're, if a marketing class, I'll come speak to that class, give them, you know, uh, give them all copies of the book. Uh, yeah, there's so many.
[00:49:44] Tim: Yeah. So this is, you would start brainstorming right about like, okay, I just think of Venn diagrams. Mm-hmm. Here's Ev, here's what people are interested in that would be interested in my book.
[00:49:54] Where do those people show up? And I would go all the way back to Seth. I would go read Seth Go's tribes, right? Mm-hmm. So it's like you have, you have the big idea. You have the big idea. The tribe leader and the tribe members, right? So if you're interested in starting a small business, like a laundromat.
[00:50:12] You have Who, who do you think of when I say that?
[00:50:17] Nathan: Starting a laundromat. Yeah. Like, uh, Cody Sanchez. Cody Sanchez.
[00:50:20] Tim: Yeah. Right. Yeah. And so it's like, so the idea of starting a small business like a laundromat doesn't belong to Cody Sanchez, but she is the tribe leader that has brought all these people together.
[00:50:31] So it's like you start thinking through where are tribes located? Um. Oh man, I forgot what book it was, but one book blew up because he just started sending free copies to every CrossFit gym because he found that was it. Oh, it was James. Yeah. He found CrossFit. People loved his book, atomic Habits, and so he started promoting it specifically to CrossFit gyms and CrossFitters.
[00:50:55] Yep. And he found this whole like infrastructure around it. Right. So it's figuring out who likes your book. When they read it, where do those people congregate? How can I get
[00:51:06] Nathan: copies? Their, you know, what I thinking about is this might be people who are further on in their journey. Um, but for a book like The Latters of Wealth, I could go to every wealth manager, CFA, all of those people and say, Hey, uh, as a Christmas gift, I would love to give you free copies that you can give to your clients.
[00:51:26] Tim: Yeah,
[00:51:27] Nathan: here's the ebook version or here, you know, whatever. Um, and
[00:51:29] Tim: if you wanna spend money. This is the way to spend money,
[00:51:32] Nathan: right?
[00:51:33] Tim: Buy copies of your own book. If you don't have a traditional publisher, you can usually get copies of your book for like mm-hmm. Three to $6. Right? That's a good way to spend the money is six,
[00:51:45] Nathan: $6,000 gets you a thousand
[00:51:48] Tim: copies, a thousand books that
[00:51:49] Nathan: you can give away of a beautiful book that, yeah.
[00:51:51] I love that. Okay. This is amazing. This is a total reframe for me on how to think about it, and it really comes down to not just the two year, uh, time horizon around launch, but really then the 10 year time horizon around what is this book going to do and not what am I optimizing for in the short term?
[00:52:08] Tim: Well, the point, the biggest point is if I can get 10,000 people to read the book
[00:52:12] Nathan: mm-hmm.
[00:52:13] Tim: In the first 10, two years. Mm-hmm. That is my best shot. Going on to sell a hundred thousand or more copies over the next 10 years.
[00:52:21] Nathan: Yep. I love that. Okay. This is amazing. Uh, Tim, you've shared so much.
[00:52:25] Tim: Yep.
[00:52:26] Nathan: The first thing is, this is not what you do
[00:52:28] Tim: anymore.
[00:52:28] Yeah. Don't hire me. I don't do this anymore. Like, I only do it for my friends, so if you don't know me, I don't want to do it. Yeah. This is, so, I mean, I have a website, uh, book launch.com. I haven't updated in a while, but I got tons of free content there that talks about stuff. And you, you can buy a copy
[00:52:42] Nathan: of your
[00:52:43] Tim: first 1000, your first 1000 copies.
[00:52:44] Go to, uh, YouTube and look up your, or Amazon and look up your first 1000 copies. Buy that book. Um, it's a really great book. Perennial bestseller. Yep. It's been selling for 12 years now. So, and then
[00:52:56] Nathan: also the, the other topic separate from this that you're obsessed with
[00:52:59] Tim: Yeah.
[00:52:59] Nathan: Is how to write great books, how to Write, and you cover that in detail at storygrid.com.
[00:53:03] Tim: At story grid.com.
[00:53:04] Nathan: That's amazing. Thanks so much for coming on.
[00:53:06] Tim: Yeah, thanks for having me.