Going Direct In Book Marketing - and WriterpreneurOS Introduction
Since this book is nearly ready to be Kickstarted, it only seems logical to give everyone a peak inside while I ramp up for direct sales...
Hi,
I’ve still got tons of articles to repurpose into newsletters, but recently came across a lot of data that’s converging which is probably a follow-up to the WriterpreneurOS book itself. And I wanted to start posting this new book here pre-release so you can see what’s soon to be available exclusively on Kickstarter (for now.)
This week:
Currently Studying - the material on direct sales continues to expand. I’ve got a couple of Wordslinger podcasts that will be interesting to you about using Kickstarter at the beginning of the release marketing process.
WriterpreneurOS - Starting at the Introduction, I plan to get as many excerpts as I can out of this book. I’ve spent just over a year updating and re-testing everything I’ve written about writing-publishing during nearly two decades of working in this field. This week: Introduction and What Makes a Successful Author
My Current Studies
What’s come up while writing/revising/editing this book is an answer to the background study of What Is Effective Book Marketing? Answering that question improved this book and the one that follows next in this series: one on Copywriting.
Since I first self-published in Print on Demand in 2006 (before ebooks were a thing) there have been a lot of changes. And like the old phrase, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Print books have continued to sell more and better than ebooks every single year. And a handful of non-fiction paperbacks have continued to cover my living costs since 2012. (Even during “The Great Shutdown of 2020”, my income went up and I could simply stay on the farm and write while the world continued to turn.)
Digital promotion and supplying physical demand has only gotten better during this time. POD has expanded in quality and service so now any author can self-publish into any market and deliver physical books to nearly any location on the planet (providing you or your reader wants to pay for delivery to Timbuktu or Antarctica.)
Kickstarter and crowdfuning has matured during that time. Now it is the first part of your release marketing. You use it to gauge the response of your market to your offer. It’s also the first level of promotion. Before running any ads per se. And you end up releasing your book via ebook distributors - at the end, not the beginning. Which makes more sense the more I think this through.
The general modern book markleting process:
Write in public, through your newsletter, getting audience feedback as you go.
Set up a Kickstarter once your book is nearly ready to publish - so you can finance all the bits and pieces you’ll need to produce it in all versions.
Produce all the varied editions (ebook, paperback, case-wrapped hardback, deluxe dust-jacketed hardback, Large Format paperback/hardback, audiobook, derivative courses. And, of course, fulfill your Kickstarter promises.
Next, offer these on your own site at slightly below market prices.
While you pre-release them on ebook distributors some 6 months ahead (but send them to your Kickstarter as late pledges for special editions, or your own site if they want these earlier).
Meanwhile, get your next-in-series written/revised/edited and proofed - then organize a Kickstarter for it. Rinse/repeat.
And if you’re more prolific than that? Stockpile them for future Kickstarters.
Oh - and your existing backlist? Time to remarket them with their own Kickstarters.
But there’s more to it - and so, I bring you podcasts from the Wordslinger, J. Kevin Tumlinson where he interviews Johnny B. Truant and Joanna Penn about how they are marketing and their use of Kickstarter as artisan authors:
More next week…
WriterpreneurOS - Introduction Section
Introduction
WHY THIS BOOK?
I always only work on books which interest me. They have to be interesting. They filled a gap of knowledge I had about life. And that's been my driving interest all through life – to find out how things work. Once I did my research, and did my tests, then I'd write up what I found.
This particular book you're reading was an outgrowth of a certain line of research that failed. Of course, nothing fails in research – that work just gives you data which will come in handy later.
Joe Sugarman, who wrote the classic JS&A sales letter catalogue, called them “back-pocket answers”:
“I can remember when I was very young and would fail at something I had tried very hard to accomplish. I’d often say to myself, 'No big loss—it’s in my back pocket. One of these days I’ll use what I’ve just experienced simply by reaching into my back pocket, and presto, I will have the answer just when I need it.'”
That study was in following down the existing conventional wisdom that in order to market books effectively, you needed to build your audience. And that first half of this is true.
The second half was being spread by common consensus that you could successfully build your audience on social media – which turned out to be in reverse. Social media audiences follow existing successes. The research conclusion showed that you could expand your existing audience, but not grow one from scratch – without taking about four years on average to do so. Which matches up with building a business out in the real world – you need to be able to fund your work for five years before you will build a sustainable income.
And I was impatient. Because this didn't match up. I could write a book, publish it, and it would sell right off or not. Meanwhile, I was writing my next book from my ongoing research.
I was already earning income. I already had a successful business based on simply writing and publishing books.
What I was interested in was building an audience I could contact directly to promote my books and influence their sales.
The problem is that social media had become very locked down, much as the book distributors were. They didn't want you assembling a personal audience out of their customers. All sorts of stops were put in your way.
That research route was a dead end.
WHAT I LEARNED FROM THIS FAILURE
But one thing did come out of this failed study. I discovered that every single post from the top of their leaderboards were doing one thing consistently – they wrote all their social posts using copywriting techniques. Every single post was designed to get the viewer to do something. To offer something. To promote something. Every. Single. Post.
So I dug up all my collection of copywriting books and reviewed them. It was true. But I found something else. I'd been doing a parallel study of a set of out-of-print textbooks that were written for a very successful course in training writers. Probably the most successful professional writer training course of all time.
And here, the author (a Rhodes scholar out of Oklahoma named Walter S. Campbell) taught these student writers to study the work of other authors by finding “devices” in their works (much as the old rhetorical devices the Greeks used). And he also taught that both non-fiction and fiction were built on the same 3-act structure – and that they borrowed devices from each other to make their success.
So, this then made my review of copywriting classic texts take on a completely new approach.
One of these top copywriters had recommended Campbell in his own copywriting masterpiece, crediting his text on writing non-fiction with advancing his own skills.
The circle closed at that credit. Copywriting was based on non-fiction, which was structured on the same basics as fiction. Copywriting is a very carefully structured work, usually of a short length called “flash fiction” these days. The best ads were precisely measured against sales results.
In these classic copywriting texts, I found also that they had various devices. And many of these were also borrowed from classic literature, who in turn borrowed from the Greeks.
Copywriting was another form of writing – the third leg of a stool which make both non-fiction and fiction even more effective. And learning this subject improved the quality of all your other writing. Because it dealt, like the other two, with the primary motivations people have always had.
HOW THIS BOOK EVOLVED
What I set out to do was to test the idea that copywriting was built on evergreen, natural principles that were core to humankind's existence. What works in good copywriting has always worked, ever since one caveman marketed his spear as a better weapon to another's blunt club – in exchange for a share of their their food. And so built his business of weapon-making to a level that he himself had no time to enjoy hunting. And as his products were copied by others to create better hunting weapons, the culture itself evolved.
The trick is that it was only the culture that evolved. Humankind still likes its stories in very set patterns. It's been that way since before recorded history. And still is what works in all writing since – be they stories or articles or scripts.
Then a funny thing happened – a crossover.
As I went along with this research into copywriting, I was also testing it again real-world use. For me, it started to answer the question, “How did what I was studying improve my book marketing and sales?”
Modern audience is built by assembling a large email list and mailing to it. One of the continuing ways to attract subscribers has been by getting in front of audiences and giving them an offer. This is the basis of guest blogging and getting podcast interviews. Tony Robbins became famous for his late-night seminars on TV with this same approach. Print magazines all use this format – you can look up the author of each of their contributed articles.
A term kept coming to view in my mind - “connector”. This came from a book by Malcolm Gladwell's “The Tipping Point”. And in that book, he was tracing down how word of mouth spread, likening it to an viral epidemic. Connectors, in theory, connected people with others. Looking up his book again then gave the underlying reason how contributed articles and posts, as well as podcast interviews and webinars all worked. Those magazines and podcasts hosts were acting as connectors.
But then, along that “word of mouth” line of research, brought two more books that were inspired by Gladwell, and took his work further - “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath, and “Contagious” by Jonah Berger.
These two books then brought a new improvement to copywriting. They explained what no one on social media really understood – how to make something “go viral”. And that also then explained how some advertising becomes “sticky” and memorable, and how some print ads are used for decades with only minor updates, still generating sales. This concept then explains how certain literature are still being printed and sold hundreds of years after their authors passed. These are the top-target of any writer – perennial-selling books that are recommended by word of mouth alone.
WHAT THIS BOOK INCLUDES – AND WHAT IT DOESN'T
This book started out with an effort to explain the techniques of copywriting by Eugene Schwartz from his “Breakthrough Advertising”.
But more material was added before and after that core, since this book evolved to embrace the evergreen (repeatedly used and never out of date) principles of copywriting. And those principles were studied and extracted from the earliest texts (from 1905) back up to Schwartz' 1966 book. Only the principles that never repeated again. There have been several successful books written and published after Schwartz. However, they are technically also-rans to the earlier authors who first laid out these basic principles.
That approach limited our books to just a handful, so old that except for Schwartz, they are all in the public domain. Yet, I only excerpted here what was essential, that they don't themselves repeat from any earlier source, except perhaps to amplify or further explain a concept.
What you won't find is someone renaming as principle in order to pitch a certain approach. (Example is the term “U.S.P.” by Rosser Reeves – which was a principle borrowed from Claude C. Hopkins, if not earlier.)
Once you get through the earliest, and then come through Schwartz, then it became obvious that a study of humankind's motivations was needed. There was a need to understand what the “mass desires” were that your headline is supposed to trigger. Inside that section is also a description of the Howe and Strauss' Generations theory and studies which tell that attitude reflecting these mass desires are cyclical through out our own cultural history. So, “what goes around, comes around”.
At the end of this section, we now understand how humankind has continued its cultural and technological evolution without changing their basic wired-in needs and wants.
Only then are we able to take W. S. Campbell's idea of technical devices and reveal how to use these as a copywriter to continually improve your craft through your work. Again, this then parallels the same craft approach which professional non-fiction and fiction writers use.
The last section is probably the first real breakthrough in copywriting since Schwartz 1966 book. Here is the ideal of writing really viral copy that is crafted to become spread by word of mouth. The most expensive form of advertising, because until now it has been the hardest to get. And again, here is simply a collection of the existing texts on the subject – still mostly unknown to marketers and copywriters – which I strongly encourage you to get your own copies, along with the rest of the books referenced here.
OVER TO YOU
At best, this is a field guide to show you what is possible. It also then gives you some inspiration and encouragement for learning and improving your professional craft in this area.
Meanwhile, this material is also for both beginning and veteran authors – since the principles and devices explored here are applicable to any type of writing you do anywhere.
But you're going to have to prove that for yourself. As I've often said in my earlier books: don't believe anyone; test everything for yourself – especially if I said it.
Best of luck in your journey.
Robert C. Worstell
Spring 2024
How to Read and Study This Book
This is a review of classics and modern texts. And so, certain quoted excerpts are included from these authors for comparison.
It is a tool for giving a broad overview of this body of data.
It is a reference book to keep handy – dog-eared, tabbed, highlighted, and underlined. Right next to your ever-growing three-ring binders of collected writing devices.
The most sensible approach here is to present these books chronologically and to then enable cross-comparison with other references.
Each one of these books deserve study on their own. It is my hope that you get these books for ready access in your library. There is only space here for limited excerpts of each as a review of that reference. You will gain far more insight and application in studying each and every book mentioned or quoted within this book you're reading.
None of what is covered here begins to touch the essence of the original volumes. The job here is to create a study guide and review of these materials to forward a thesis that there are evergreen materials through the history of copywriting that only repeat themselves today. And that these source materials point to a novel approach to professional study that will make anyone's copywriting far more effective, even to the point of becoming a viral phenomenon.
It takes studies of the original materials as they were published. And, once more, thorough testing on your own to prove these concepts for yourself.
Sure, the Internet will enable you to quickly find, verify, and test these principles for yourself. And update them to our modern age. Joe Sugarman has produced a long list of such improvements in his own recently-updated handbook.
A list of all of these core books is in the back. That is the beginning of your library. Get copies of these books. And as you study them, then pick up other books on the subject, as well as daily practice of your craft, you may find different phrasings of principle along with more devices. Any book of devices will always be incomplete. That's the nature of hunting – to find the unknown you quarry you still know is out there.
But this little book will get you started along a very profitable line of study.
It's worked for others before you and me. Even those who only manage copywriters, or only hire them.
And to those who have gone before, both known and unknown, this book is dedicated.
Available for beta-readers - pay what you want…