Book Marketing Breakthrough 06 - Learn “Viral” Writing Methods

Well over a decade after Malcolm Gladwell produced his "Tipping Point", three other inspired researchers proved him right - that ideas can spread like viruses. Now, we apply this to book marketing...

Dec 31, 2024

Malcolm Gladwell had a problem. He'd been given over a million and a half dollars as an advance to write his book Tipping Point. But he didn't even have a first draft – he had piles of material on his desk – printouts, studies, moleskin notebooks with cribbed interview notes in them.

And he didn't have the million dollars – nor could he keep it if he didn't keep up his end of the bargain. Instead, they would give chunks of that royalty over time – and then later add in the additional book sales percentages if and when he paid off that signing bonus.

Only he had to produce a first draft out of these piles of material.

Malcolm Gladwell honed his particular style of writing under the tutelage of Tina Brown after she hired him away from the Washington Post paper for her New Yorker magazine. He'd spent his 9 years at the Post honing his skills as a writer on the Science beat there.

This was the style he'd developed – writing “Big Idea” non-fiction. That style marries academic, how-to, and compelling narrative around a central grand argument theme.

The theme of Tipping Point was that word of mouth spread like a virus. The phrase is used variously in science, from physics to epidemiology. And this idea about examining the most effective type of advertising within a science metaphor had been kicking around for 12 years. Hence, the stack of material on his desk.

First, he had to sell the idea as an article and get it published.

He'd already found his voice, honed from years of writing. Even before his stint at the Science desk of the Washington Post, he'd been churning out articles for New Republic and others. In fact, 12 years prior, he'd visited this same subject for the 50,000 readers there. Now he had a million-reader-audience at the New Yorker.

No pressure. Even though Tina had a word-quota system for her writers – and he was way behind for that year.

He had his theme: By concentrating on the little things, we can tip things to the positive.

So he took that and found how Rudy Giuliani had transformed runaway crime statistics of New York, making it safer than Boise Idaho. All Giuliani did was concentrate on the little things – like subway turnstile jumpers. When they organized to start collecting these people, they queued them up publicly, hand-cuffed to each other. Then they were led to a specially-built bus where they were charged, and then immediately brought before a judge and fined.

The trick was, people who were jumping turnstiles usually had other crimes haunting them. Like carrying illegal weapons, or illicit drugs – much less outstanding warrants.

And, along with other actions, the little things started bringing crime down.

Of course, that was only his opening hook. He built it up with other science interviews, and cop-on-the-corner eye witness accounts – and the 4,000 word article was a hit.

After that, we short-cut to getting an agent, who fills in the details of this little-known writer to make publishers interested in this project – and starts a bidding war. All after a lot of lucky coincidences, based on a life of hard work tuning his writing style – plus an innate curiosity and passion about this particular subject.

Now Gladwell sat in his office, having pulled all his notes and research from 12 years out. A desk full. All so he could earn that advance and keep it.

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He wrote it, turned it in, shepherded it through their publishing process and it was delivered to bookstores in 2000.

The book was a success. Around 10 years on the NYT Bestsellers List.

No, it's not good science. Because the book has holes in it. But it is memorable and remarkable – the two points needed to gain word of mouth advertising. It went viral – even before that term gained wide acceptance as it has now.

And that widespread word of mouth got the book read – and so inspired many others, even years later.

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Brothers Chip and Dan Heath discovered they'd been working on researching the same problem for years.

About 10 years, to be exact. At different locations and quite different jobs.

Dan had a passion for education, and founded a start-up publishing company that built textbooks from video and technology instead of just text. This led him to work with some of the greatest teachers – to find out what made them great.

Along that line, Dan found that while each teacher had a unique style, their methodologies in teaching were almost identical.

Chip meanwhile was utilizing his resources as a Stanford University professor and had been asking for about a decade what made certain ideas stick. And it was during this research that Tipping Point came out, with that book's center third just being about “sticky” ideas – which itself stuck as the most appropriate (and sharable) description.

In 2004, they each concluded that while their approaches were different, they were both studying the problem from different angles.

Their book adds to, updates, and clarifies the traits that make ideas sticky, far beyond the scope of Gladwell's book, which was published only seven years earlier.

Comparing notes, the brothers found that sticky ideas shared certain key traits: Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotions, Stories.

In this story, their villain was named as the “Curse of Knowledge”. This means once you know something, it's impossible to unlearn it. So, essentially, you repeat that same model and terminology. Meaning – it was improbable that you could make it sticky enough that people would remember it.

If you take any idea you're working with and run it through those six points as a checklist, then you could defeat that Curse.

And so, looking back on many advertising jingles, fables, and parables, you'll find them cached in those six traits. You'll also find them present in rumors.

In short, you find a creative shortcut in making your marketing memorable.

Without going through their text for specific examples of how this works – take something you remember from childhood and see how it fits under those traits above. You'll find it uncanny how many are present.

Sticky messages are how we best retain lessons. And so is one of the two methods of copywriting in your book marketing that you should upgrade your approach with. Because you want people to remember your book, to go and buy it.

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Sidebar – An auxiliary study in the Heaths' book discovers three types of plots for inspirational stories. A study of the sticky and ultra-popular Chicken Soup for the Soul books found that 80% of them were writing with one or more of these plots: Challenge, Connection, Creativity. These same three plots turned up in the stories of average people ending up in People magazine. These plots contrast with urban legends which tend to reinforce cynical, pessimistic, or paranoid world-views. (See their book for more description of everything above.)

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Jonah Berger started out in college thinking his destiny was to become an environmental engineer. Then he met Dan Heath in grad school.

Berger was always interested in logic puzzles and science. But in his “hard” science classes, he wondered if the same scientific methodology he was being taught could be applied to the “soft” complex social phenomenon. The idea became sorting out social influence and interpersonal communication with the Scientific Method.

Then, among his psychology and sociology courses, his grandmother sent him a clipped review of Tipping Point.

Berger started reading everything he could about word of mouth. He was frustrated by Gladwell’s incomplete theorem, and kept wondering what underlying human behavior caused things to spread virally.

Finishing his PhD and attaining a marketing professorship at Wharton gave him the tools and resources to study this more closely. Plus, he had collaborators to help his research.

Then, he started a marketing course called Contagious – with a premise that you need to understand how to make your products and ideas catch on.

Berger's approach wasn't about making the message itself memorable (sticky), but instead concentrated on how to tweak those messages so they would spread. He worked to find out how to make your messages remarkable.

In researching hundreds of contagious messages, Berger and his collaborators discovered six key principles that cause things to be remarked about: Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value, and Stories. In this, he notes that all these principle don't have to be present – but the more that are, the more likely you'll be able to create viral messages to use in your book marketing.

His book came out in 2013, over a decade after Gladwell's.

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Overlapping Elements and Principles

If you take Heaths' traits and Berger's principles (and probably in that order when you're reworking your message) then you'll find that there are many crossovers between the two.

Again, the Made to Stick traits:

Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotions, and Stories (SUCCES)

The Contagious principles:

Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value, and Stories (STEPPS)

Their crossovers:

Stories are utilized in each as are Emotional elements.
Unexpected elements can be Triggers.
Practical Values are often Concrete.
Credibility often employs a Public figure.

And since we already know what makes a riveting story (scenes and their sequels) we can use these traits and principles as additional technical devices to weave into our storytelling.

Again, we are using storytelling basics as refined by W. S. Campbell and his OU course instructors in the 40’s and 50’s.

Now, make a grid of these traits and principles. Then, first start making your stories memorable, and then – perhaps in a later edit – make them more remarkable.

While Tipping Point itself became a perennial seller, it was more entertaining theory than proved and readily-applied science. With Made to Stick and Contagious, we now have actionable approaches to upgrade our average book blurbs and podcast talking points.

It's not just our marketing. These traits and principles can also be employed in the book writing itself – if not in the first draft, then later editing passes.

Memorable and remarkable can make your books viral. Meaning you have a way to tap into word of mouth to enable your book to become a perennial-selling classic.

Add this also to your study of masterworks to see what traits and principles are present – and how to increase the presence of these through your own writing.

If you're studying inspirational perennial classics (like Think and Grow Rich) consider these stories Hill employed as examples – see if they don't follow one of those Chicken Soup plots.

Now we know how.

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All this, and we haven’t taken up how they fit together. It’s in that third element all successful businesses have - in one form or another…

How This Can Help You

This course evolved while I was wrapping up the first three books in this series - and became part of the fourth book (see below.)

In that fourth book are three mini-courses — this is just the second lesson of the first course in there. The reason for this last book is to give you actionable material to get you started simply. And speed your own progress.

Meanwhile, comment below or DM me with any questions you have. Or get this full book as available below.

And you can always buy me a coffee…