🚀 Comin' in hot... The Official Smokin' Hot Book Funnels Substack Newsletter
It's time to ditch those book marketing gimmicks and focus on the only 2 that work: your Amazon listing & podcast touring.
In its first year of release, my book Harvesting Rainwater for Your Homestead in 9 Days or Less sold 10,283 copies. The average self-published book only sells 250 copies in its lifetime. Authors with hundreds of thousands of social media followers may only sell a few thousand copies, even if the book was traditionally published.
So far, this book has been the #1 Amazon bestselling rainwater book since its debut, and it has brought in over $108,000 in sales (and counting).
I was able to do this after years of failure, spending tons of money on learning and experiments, and finally synthesizing what I learned about the robustness of the traditional publishing industry with the agility of the self-publishing movement on Amazon.
I don’t say this to brag.
In fact, I don’t have much to brag about at all. I’m starting this brand and newsletter because book sales themselves don’t count much towards business revenue.
So, if books don’t make that much money, why do Amy Porterfield, Donald Miller, and Tony Robbins write and sell $20 books when they should stay focused on selling $10,000 programs?
If you’re reading this, you probably already know the answer.
Anyone can be an expert. Millions of people spend billions in online courses every year to learn French or milk goats or sew a button from an “expert.” Online learning gives everyone a badge of expertise these days.
But, if you want to be the go-to expert for your field, know this: nothing turns an expert into an authority more than a published book.
Before Robert Kiyosaki was known as an author, he was a no-name real estate investor. The reason entrepreneurs clamor for his endorsement today is due to the calling card he wrote that is now sold in every major bookstore worldwide. His purple book became his brand, his reputation. While there are millions of real estate investors in this country alone, you perk your ears at the one who became known for it.
Before Jessica Zweig wrote and marketed her book, she was running a team of about ten people at her personal branding agency SimpleBe. When she sold 70,000 copies of her book Be. by guesting on 100 podcasts in 12 months, she no longer was just the Internet’s personal branding expert; she was the world’s. Her team more than doubled in size within a year, launching her company onto Inc.’s 5000 list, enabling her to achieve the multi-million-dollar exit of her dreams.
🚀 Authors have authority. (Whether you want it or not.)
The reason I started investigating Robert and Jessica (and others, like MJ DeMarco, Mike Michalowicz, and Jack Canfield) was from my own unexpected experience of becoming a rainwater harvesting influencer overnight, even though I have never personally collected a drop of rainwater in my life. I wrote the book to leverage passive income (which, by the way, selling books on autopilot on Amazon ads is a great way to achieve this), not necessarily to become an expert.
Despite having never harvested rainwater of any kind, nor knew anyone who did, people began reaching out to me for podcast interviews, speaking, translation rights, invitations to Hawai’i, and requests for consultations on their own systems soon after my book went live on Amazon.
Strangers would ask to call me for advice. My friends sent me reels on Instagram about rainwater. I got invited to give talks. Looking back on it, it was such a whirlwind.
It soon dawned on me that writing a book had unlocked something for me that many entrepreneurs and business owners floundering in the depths of obscurity crave: to be known.
I can give you firm testimony that when you’re an author, you’re known. You’re even respected.
The only question that remains is, “What do you want to be known for?”
One of my favorite lessons from book marketing genius Dave Chilton (2M+ copies sold in Canada of the originally self-published The Wealthy Barber) is that authors have a special place in our society. What’s an author but a profession, like a carpenter or a business consultant? But nay, the author, to “us”, globally, is apparently the wisest and most experienced of all professions (even more than professors and teachers in many instances).
Authors have authority.
Books have power.
And business owners with books have the most important power of all — leverage.
🚀 Write your book. But don’t forget to sell it.
When describing the stories of authorpreneurs, such as Robert Kiyosaki, Jessica Zweig, and Jack Canfield, I want to emphasize that while on the surface their occupation includes “author,” what they really excel at is marketing.
They are not just authors. They are Authors.
And if you want to become an Author, you can’t just be a writer. You have to be famous.
Famous writers sell books. Lots of them.
Your life and your business have likely been transformed from the works of great Authors whose book landed in your Amazon shopping cart. But the only reason we even know about their book is because these Authors put in the legwork to sell their book. They didn’t just write. They found niche markets, created customer avatars, and promoted like crazy for years.
Their names became common on our lips due to the number of copies that their books sold. The number of copies that a book sells is directly correlated to how many people read it, Google you, join your email list, and buy your stuff.
However, despite all of these tales of leveraging authority, business owners still struggle with consistently selling their book.
I have met many authors in online business groups who wrote their life’s opus, merged their tumultuous memoir with their proprietary profitable business methodology, spent $10k-$100k on a service that gave them the book, aaaaand… now the book just gathers digital dust.
Despite all the work that went into creating the book, and despite the first few pushes towards launching and selling the book on social media, TV stations, and email, the book sales fizzle out. The Amazon terms became too overwhelming and the promotion strategies got too complicated. They gave up.
It breaks my heart.
Not only does your work, a labor of bleeding onto paper and crying onto keyboards, deserve to be spread far and wide, but lives do not get impacted if your book does not get read.
And your business and brand do not receive the growth they deserve from your book if people do not buy it.
The truth is, cold traffic on the Internet may not be ready to buy your $10,000 program (or even your $2,000 one). But they may be interested in buying your $20 book if you market it well.
🚀 Who this newsletter is for and for who it is not.
This weekly newsletter is a love letter to every business owner, author, wannabe author, business-owner-desperately-wanting-to-be-an-author, and writer who knows there’s a way to get their self-published book into the hands of their ideal market, but just doesn’t know how to yet. You want your book to launch your business and your brand into the next stratosphere.
This newsletter may not be for you if you already have an audience or email list of more than 25,000, you are ready to hire a global PR agency to promote your work, or if you’re not interested in selling your written work.
This newsletter is more of a fit for you if you are a 6-7-figure business owner, a thought-leader or expert, have a nonfiction topic you want to teach, a beautiful story you want to share, and want to publish a book while retaining full rights to your work through self-publishing.
(And if you’re the type of person who invests in their own growth and learning.)
I will be covering concrete, simplified strategies and how-to’s on how to launch your book like Amy Porterfield, how to leverage what Amy Porterfield can’t, and how to sell books on autopilot (and get back to running your business for all the clients who convert after landing in your book funnel.)
🚀 The Smokin’ Hot Book Funnels Philosophy
My philosophy is this: simple, doable strategies that sell books continuously (to the tune of tens of thousands per year) always take priority over flashy, glittery, vanity tactics that sell books in a spike but die off. If it’s another layer of complexity and stress that spins our wheels, it’s not worth our time, attention, or energy.
After studying the book funnels and book launch strategies of the greats (Tim Ferris, Jack Canfield, Jamie Kern Lima, Robert Kiyosaki, Amy Porterfield, Jessica Zweig, Donald Miller, MJ DeMarco…), I have concluded that there are truly only 2 strategies that sell nonfiction/thought-leadership books for busy business owners in 2024 and beyond: your Amazon listing and podcast touring.
(Only after you’ve mastered these can you indulge in the Times Square billboards, but not until you’ve sold thousands of books.)
I will be covering the common pitfalls and mistakes people make with their Amazon listing, Amazon ads, and podcast touring, as well as what I had to do to overcome these common mistakes so that you can leverage my learning too.
Can’t wait to dive in.
More to come very soon.
In the meantime, subscribe to this publication for insights in book marketing, selling books on Amazon, and using strategic podcast guesting to light your ideal audience on fire with your message.
Best,
Renee