05 Opening Locked Doors in Walled Gardens
A failed test of what was supposedly "organic discovery" turned out to be just more failed conventional wisdom. But it turned out to open another fruitful avenue...
Finding the Secret to Which Books Sell
At the beginning of 2018, I had to test some conventional wisdom about book publishing. I'd been told over and over that there was still some “organic discovery” on the book distributors. If you came out with new titles every few weeks, then Amazon would recommend your books and readers would find them.
I also wanted to improve my fiction writing craft, as I'd mainly been publishing the results of my non-fiction research along various lines.
So I took up the methods that pulp fiction writers had employed when they first started writing back in the Depression and earlier. They wrote and published a short story every week for at least a year.
And I ran no ads. This was a pure test. (Plus, I was learning my author craft with each story.)
Regularly, I'd compile those short stories up into collections – by series and subjects. Those collections were long enough to make in to paperbacks.
The short stories themselves were only ebooks, and sold infrequently. The paperbacks sold better, but not anything I could depend on.
As I was having a great deal of joy in writing fiction every week, I kept this up (along with my other non-fiction projects) over some three-plus years.
I did learn how to write prolifically. And how to build a backlist quickly. How to write in series, and serials. All sorts of craft.
Unfortunately, any volume of sales still eluded me.
I eventually quit this test of writing and publishing short stories because it was taking all my time and producing no viable income.
Meanwhile, the few books which had supported me all these years still supported me. All through this, my research was paid for by a select few non-fiction paperbacks. And the value of print books over ebooks was known in that last 2018 Author Earnings report. Certain genres, like non-fiction, sold way more dependably than fiction. And print books are immune to Amazon's limits on royalties, so every sale in print makes me far more income.
We now had a trail of clues to follow...
From Frying Pan Into the Fire
Just after I wound down my fiction writing, I got intrigued and dove into the model of social media marketing. It was eyes wide open, as I was already familiar with the flaws of social media. Still, the reports kept coming in of rapid success there. So I threw my own fat right into the fire. Again, this model was being touted as “the most successful means of expanding audience”.
Since social media required a lot of daily posts, I started up my review project for all my earlier books on publishing to extract the evergreen content. Then posted these as “threads” of about 500 or so words. Again, several times daily. Just like the “guru's” said in their courses.
The idea was to amass followers and then turn these followers into subscribers where you had their email addresses.
And six months later, after posting four times each day gave me these paltry results: 50 more followers and zero subscribers. My content just wasn't getting traction. Twitter/X and LinkedIn had their own tropes to follow.
I did prove that for most, it was nearly impossible to build any sized audience from scratch without investing years in the process. Most of the leaderboarders have spent between 6-8 years building that audience. And with the new algorithm changes, their advice on how to build an audience now simply doesn't work. Anyone who is pushing these types of numbers now is lying, knowingly or not.
I don't care what their false promises are now. Social media is one of the walking dead out of income-earning models. I need improved income and audience now, not years from now.
The only apparent exceptions had a shorter runway, but they were simply promoting courses on how to master that social media on that social media. It as an inbred scene of circular promotion with no real-world application.
Right at the end of that six month test, I caught whiff of authors who quit the rat race. They were gaining subscribers and income outside social media and mainstream book distributors. These led to authors who now were selling high-end print versions of their books. By marketing to their audience directly.
One Marketer Finds an Open Door
In reviewing my aggregated research for this text, I was embarrassed to find that I had a clue, buried on my deep hard drives, which would have saved me a great deal of work and grief – if I'd only believed it and applied it.
One dedicated book marketer did solve the walled garden scene of book marketing. He did this through a lot of tests on his clients and his own books. Cross-comparing their successes and failures gave him simple repeating patterns he could employ. No, his success pattern didn't follow the conventional marketing approaches laid out above.
Tim Grahl has made his mark at a book marketer. More than once he had multiple author-clients on the NYT and USA Today bestseller lists – simultaneously. When he went to publish and market his own books in 2016, he then went back to study what he had done consistently to get results for others.
Boiling everything down, he came up with one single success element that worked in every case:
Mailing to the author's own E-mail lists.
Nothing else came close to those results.
Sure, he did his work in running ads, and social media posts, in-person events – all these. But his core tool that consistently worked well was having authors email their lists and get their readers to buy that author's book in pre-release and after it was released.
Grahl knew this all back in 2014. All without knowing the reason why every one else's marketing approaches didn't work. He only knew what did.
So, if you have no list, are you doomed? How do you build up starting from nothing? Grahl calls this the long haul method, and says it will take years to build up your list and eventually make your book into a top-seller.
His singular approach? It's been used by Content Marketers for decades – find connectors and have them recommend you to their followers and subscribers. Connectors used to be bloggers, but now are mostly podcasters. The term “connectors” is out of Malcolm Gladwell's “Tipping Point”. They are also called “influencers”. You look these guys up by their real audience (not social media followers, but subscribers who paid with email addresses) and then offer those connectors a chance to interview you and pick your brain for their audience's edutainment.
You give their audience a special offer, which they should click on and then subscribe to your own newsletter. You borrow their audience – the one's you've interested.
That's the core of Grahl's approach – build your own list first. And put opt-in offers in the back of your books so people will join your list. Which is what makes low-cost ebooks so effective.
Still, is there anything in addition to emailing to subscriber lists that does work?
This book is available as a beta-reader pre-release - until the Kickstarter launch.
PS. That kickstarter launch is available in its preview format.