A Creators Guide to Writing Viral Books That Sell Forever
Earlier authors and researchers laid out the basics of this phenomenon decades ago. The trick is that they aren't all in one place. That's my job - finding the breakthroughs hidden in plain sight.
This is one of these things that hit you when you’re busy doing other things. Life does that, as John Lennon said.
Viral-selling books are like that. Up until now, these haven’t been predictable. And people consider that once you’ve made a huge hit, the next one is going to be disappointing. But that’s because no one has really known how to make a book go viral - until, maybe, just now.
I’ve got a book to release (WriterpreneurOS), and another nearly ready - about copywriting. And they are constantly re-writing themselves in my mind to make them better. So that’s the rub: I need to publish. To publish, you promote before you write. So your marketing is started with your decisions on what and how to write this new book. If you make the right choices, and execute them with the right technical devices, then you should have a book that sells month in and month out, regardless of whether you promote it or not.
The first step would be writing such a perennial-seller. Meaning that the book grabs and enthuses the reader right through to its end - so that the book keeps selling because of readers’ word of mouth. Anyone can run ads and get interviewed on podcasts. And those can give a temporary boost to sales. While we reclusive authors would simply rather be writing, the obvious next step is to improve our craft such that the book starts selling itself after the release.
What about that release? This is basically solved by authors training themselves to write good promotional copy - copywriting. That’s the third leg of a stable writing business. Any good writer can produce in any genre, once they’ve studied up what the audience expects in that genre, and providing they are interested in the story they want to produce. Long or short, it really doesn’t matter, once that professional level of craft is achieved. The great writers could write non-fiction or fiction equally well - but they were also trained as promotion-writers. Meaning: copywriters.
Where authors don’t earn the income that they should is probably because they never took the time to study and practice all the three crafts they need.
And that’s my journey. I’ve churned out hundreds of books and found out that fiction ebooks don’t particularly sell without ads and promotion. But when you get a non-fiction book out there that fills a need in a tight niche, then you can have lasting income. Why? Because that book earns word of mouth.
How to Write a Self-Promoting (Non-Fiction) Book.
I recently researched, wrote, and compiled a business book based on what I’d learned after nearly two decades of writing. Then I took up a review of copywriting, as this was a needed supplement to all I’d researched and tested before. At the end of that second book, my research took me into the possibility of viral copywriting. Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point was the start of this, some two decades ago. His work inspired two more books, Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick and Jonah Berger’s Contagious.
Between those three books, plus covering all about the evergreen elements of copywriting, it became apparent that viral copywriting was a very real possibility. It’s a writing discipline to learn - but a precise discipline. This study gives us an answer to the mystery of what “going viral” really means. That also makes it something that can be reproducible. Every book could be a perennial-seller. Every book.
Now, at the end of that study came a test, and another book - Talk like TED by Carmine Gallo. Of all the videos online, a high percentage of the TED talks out there have that viral quality - millions of views in just a few years, and then continuing on from there. Gallo’s book is partly based on the other three mentioned above, plus he makes his own points about presentation.
In this, Gallo gives us the TED talk parameters which then can describe a typical chapter for a non-fiction (viral-enabled) book. These talks are limited to 18 minutes, because of the science of when audience attention naturally fades. 18 minutes at an average of 150 words per minute, gives us around 3,000 words. The average chapter for today’s books are about 2,000 or 2,500 words, so we are in the ball park.
Now, you take the three act play, and add on the short attention-grabbing intro section, plus a “this is why it’s important to you” section, then followed by three Acts, with a similarly short piece that works as a cliffhanger for the next chapter. Consider this as being 1/2 part plus 3 parts, plus another half-part. The full parts would be about 700 words and the two half parts show up at about 375. The average full-page ad comes in between 500 and 700 words, so that tests out. You’re writing those four parts with the finesse and urgency of a top copywriter. That’s all Walter S. Campbell’s methods modernized.
If you consider each of the three full parts to be an episode or section (with its own subheading) then you can see the rhythm and flow of that piece. It also fits into that old adage of giving a talk or writing a paper that you should
1) tell them what you are going to tell them: A, B, C.
2)Tell them A, B, C.
3) Tell them what you told them: A, B, C.
But that can be boring and tedious.
Unless you also use all the devices known to professional writers and copywriters to wow your audience and set them up to buy at its end.
The Math of A Viral-Selling Book
This math then divides a 200-page textbook into some 16 chapters - a pragmatic amount where you craft these singular chapters and stitch them together as a serial - much like Malcolm Gladwell’s NYT bestselling books. Or consider this a conference of 16 TED speakers on a particular subject.
Of course, the tension and pacing speeds up as you go and builds your theme throughout. Then, finally - the audience satisfied and ready to go out and change the world with your ideas - you then present them with your backlist so they can buy your other books in this and related series.
That’s how you write a book that goes viral. Simple, direct, effective. One chapter at a time. If you write and complete these daily, then it will take under a month to get your book ready for final proofing, marketing, and publishing. Of course, the more you write in such a process, the better you’ll get. And your metrics are how these books continue to sell long after your marketing is complete and you’ve started launching your next book.
Obviously, the bare bones of this are based on popular fiction, and give you the outline of how to build a runaway-selling book. All in addition to your already-mastered craft of characters, conflicts, and settings.
How to Write a Book With Your Newsletters
If you have a content calendar, you can then torque these chapters to fit, according to your book outline. At one newsletter published per week, this then gives you 16 chapters in about a third of a year. At first, it may take you a week to get everything into shape. As you continue to build your chapters, you might get infected with the theme and then flow these out more quickly as you go.
A tip here is to proof and revise each chapter into an engaging and moving TED talk all on its own. And videoing these will then give you 18-minute mini-webinars that you can loose on the unsuspecting public, who then are prompted to get your book through your Kickstarter release. Win-win.
Such a set of videos become both an audiobook as well as a course all by itself. You could publish these as a podcast.
If you want to do this for an existing book, then you may not have to make one video for each chapter, but rather create scripts and video for just the most motivating and captivating parts. Such a course then adds to your Kickstarter campaign as a stretch goal.
As a note, that video doesn’t have to be a monstrous production. It can simply be a recorded Zoom call with a PowerPoint. Your face can be over in the corner of the screen and adds the personal touch with your voice. Then it becomes an art form.
Diversifying Your Books For Sustainable Income
The point is that your book can be transmogrified into many formats and versions. If you want to push for a viral video, that takes different talents than a perennial-selling print book. All different from a ever-popular course. You lay it out, and write it or record it or both. Then you have more resources to launch it via a Kickstarter release - and then ultimately let the ebook distributors send you subscription opt-ins from your ads in the back of these ebooks acting as loss-leader self-liquidating-offers.
It’s a different view of book publishing. One that puts the author in charge of creating their own perennial-selling books, of making a viable living from writing and publishing alone.
The point is to make your creator business more your choice, and your success is based on your quality of production and words, devices.
Build your book however you want - recluse yourself and write, or post it in episodes for audience feedback. Then tweak and refine it as you continue.
The point here is that the core creative devices which help something go viral are known, and have been known for decades. You can use these to improve your own reach, to attract more audience, to close that positive and personal feedback loop that your audience wants. To make a sustainable business that supports the income you expect. To leave a legacy of self-selling books that are always in print.
Just one more choice.
Pre-release beta-version available in ebook - Pay What You Want.