🚀 How to Sell 10,283 Copies of a Self-Published Book in 1 Year (Without Social Media)

No Instagram. No blogging. Just damn good marketing.

This article includes affiliate links to products and courses I love and recommend.

Why do a small minority of self-published authors beam with book sales while others languish?

If you want your book to change lives, build your authority, and grow your business, discover the five steps to take that helped me sell over 10,000 self-published copies of my book in Year 1 (without appearing on a single podcast or making a single Instagram post).

🚀 1. Know your market before you start writing.

Your book is a product.

Products are bought because they create a particular outcome for a particular market.

Too many authors confuse marketing with promotion, but as a business owner, you should already know the difference. This applies to books as well.

Underneath every well-executed promotional campaign is the customer research, targeting, messaging, and product-creation that speaks to the private wants of a particular audience that is craving a particular outcome.

Marketing, at its core, is an intimate relationship with our ideal customer.

Marketing is research. Marketing is buying similar books to the one you want to write and poring over them to find where your message can be uniquely positioned. Marketing is photographing books like yours at Barnes & Noble and noting where you can artfully break the mold. Marketing is DM’s to strangers in Facebook groups and sub-Reddits.

Before you start word-vomiting onto a Word doc (which you still can do, as it may help to call in the Muse), you must know the who and the what.

Who are you writing for? What do they want?

What words do your ideal reader use when they talk about themselves and where they’re headed? What colors, fonts, and pictures will cut through the noise of free blogs, free Youtube, and free Instagram such that your ideal customer would pay $20 to a total stranger (you)? And what’s in your book that they wouldn’t get from your already-amazing content?

Why would they pay to read your book when they have Amy Porterfield, Donald Miller, and Tony Robbins shilling out their New York Times-bestsellers on your favorite Top 1% podcasts?

Here’s your answer.

You must leverage what Amy Porterfield can’t.

Amy Porterfield is famous. She has an audience so large, of so many different types of people in so many different types of niches online, that speaking to a subsection of it does more harm to her growth strategy than help.

It is in her best interest to spread her generic “start-an-online-business-yay!” message as far and wide as possible, but how many struggling Crossfit gym owners looking to implement the Profit First methodology can she truly help?

If you already have a business, you should already know your target market backwards and forwards. You should know how your brand effectively serves your ideal customer in relation to other brands like yours (and how it doesn’t). This is what your book will be about. You can also validate the numbers on your book’s topic on Amazon using an Amazon data scraper tool I recommend called KDSpy (affiliate link).

By choosing this well-crafted niche, knowing the core message that speaks to your ideal customer’s private wants, and crafting a book around that message, you can all but plan to dominate this niche on Amazon.

Expect to.

I once was on a book marketing call with Patty Aubery, one of the leading marketers behind the NYT-bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul brand. I learned that for each book they rolled out, they created a marketing plan for the book before they began writing the book. They sketched out the customer avatar, expanded the avatar into a market, then brainstormed five other markets to eventually promote the book to. Then they started writing.

Marketing informs the book creation process. It informs the outline of the book, the content of the book, the book cover, title, and graphics. Everything.

Start with marketing.

🚀 2. Create an Amazon listing that speaks directly to your ideal reader.

Congratulations, you have completed market research!

You have formulated your ideal customer’s desired outcome into an outline, the book is written, and now you need to create the five things that establish an outstanding Amazon book listing.

1. Book Cover

2. Book Title and Subtitle

3. Reviews

4. Book Description

5. Supplemental Content (Graphics, Videos, Editorial Reviews)

Book covers that sell speak to the ideal outcome of your reader in half a second. Paint the picture. They are seeking a feeling. Give it to them. Are they searching for peace? Validation? Strength?

Book titles and subtitles that sell not only speak to the ideal outcome of your reader, but also they should leverage curiosity and authority. Book titles that don’t sell just describe the content of the book like a textbook. “Principles of Bone Health for Women Over 50.” Barf-a-rama. What about, “Stand Up, Sit Up, Stir It Up: How I Brought Life Back to My Bones and Joints for the Party After Midlife.” Also be sure to include 3-4 commonly-searched Amazon keywords into your title and subtitle to help give your book an organic rankings boost on Amazon. Keywords and search terms can be found using a great tool I recommend called Publisher Rocket. Publisher Rocket is also great for placing your book into low-competition Amazon categories that help you get organically discovered and ranked.

Reviews. You need at least 100. Not 25. Not 50. At least 100. There are too many great books on Amazon with fantastic content, superb titles, and gorgeous covers, but there are only 25 reviews.

When was the last time you bought anything on Amazon with only 25 reviews?

There are many ways to get reviews, and my favorite involves giving away a ton of free copies before launch (see Number 3. Give away 100s, if not 1,000s, of free copies before launch below). Picture reviews and video reviews are also important; value a single picture review as worth 10 written reviews, and video reviews as worth 25.

Book descriptions for self-published books should leverage the power of attention, curiosity, and storytelling to grab your reader’s interest in the next half second after they scan your book cover. Book descriptions should have a killer first line that acts as a hook. Lead them into a story about themselves, then throw in a sentence or two about how you were in their shoes not too long ago. Include bullet points about the key meaty takeaways they can expect to get from your book.

Demonstrate that there are special tidbits in your book that they can’t get anywhere else. Not even in your content.

End with a strong call-to-action to place the book in their cart. Consider referencing other authors or books that your book is similar to to connect readerships.

Supplemental content like A+ content (graphics you see on Amazon listings, like banners and product comparisons), editorial reviews (blurbs from famous authors or your friends), and video reviews (product reviews from influencers and paying customers) jazz up your listing.

Your Amazon book listing is the corner of the Internet where your authority shines.

Use every square inch of it. Send copies to famous people and get their quotes to put here. Leverage your book’s branding and create pretty eye-catching art that drags the customer’s eye down to continue reading the reviews of your book and then hit “Add to Cart.”

If you invest in an Instagram or LinkedIn page, then consider your book’s Amazon listing of similar, if not higher, branding value.

🚀 3. Give away 100s, if not 1,000s, of free copies before launch.

Why?

With the express purpose to achieve hundreds of reviews within the first 30 days of launching your book on Amazon. The faster you get reviews, the better (so says the Amazon algorithm).

Jamie Kern Lima is currently going through a book launch for her second book Worthy, and as soon as I heard her podcast interview on the Cathy Heller Podcast, I jumped over to her Amazon listing and tracked her review rate. She was at 124 within the first few days. Now she’s at 707 reviews within a month.

Aim for 100 reviews within the first 30 days (if not more).

It’s completely doable.

When you get a ton of reviews within the first few days and weeks of launch, you not only get the benefit of social proof for the droves of organic traffic you will be driving to your book, but you also get to ride the Amazon algorithm’s wave that pushes your book to Amazon’s bestseller lists on your behalf. (If you miss out on these first 30 days, you may never get to rank your book in Amazon’s listings again. It’s pretty critical.) Also, too many self-publishers never get past 50 reviews.

Shooting for 100 reviews is the simplest way to stand out from the crowd and make buying your book a no-brainer for the customer.

How do you get hundreds of reviews within the first 30 days? Give away 500-1,000 free digital copies a month or two out from book launch (I like sharing free PDFs to people in Facebook groups).

Expect a 10% review rate (for every 10 PDFs you send, and following up with each person at least 5 times, expect 1 Amazon review).

This is also a great time to build your email list. Email them their digital copy and notify them that you would really appreciate a review of your book on Amazon when it goes live soon.

While I did not utilize pre-orders for my book launch, I do recommend it. I am currently utilizing it for my client Beth who is about to launch her Christian-self-help-and-travel book There’s Wonder Around the Bend. We expect to grow her email list by 300% just in the pre-order phase and achieve at least 100 reviews within the first two weeks.

Traditional publishers used to print physical advance-reader proofs and hand those out, but the digital method is more time-and-cost-efficient.

This is one of the reasons why I love the agility of self-publishing. It works.

🚀 4. Drive traffic to your Amazon listing. Pour gasoline on the fire with Amazon ads.

There are only two things that matter after you hit “Publish” on Amazon:

1. Reviews

2. Sales

As soon as your book goes live, you will start cashing in on reviews from all your advance readers, as well as start a 5-day free promotion campaign on Amazon where anyone can download your eBook for free.

Plus, if you conducted a pre-order campaign, expect to log all the pre-order sales for your launch from Day 1.

At this point, you should be poised to give everyone on your advance reader team (anyone who received an advance free copy) a notification that your book is live and to go leave a review. Expect to follow up with each individual at least 5 times before they actually leave a review (assistants and Excel sheets are useful here). If this sounds taxing, remember why you’re doing this: to grow your audience, influence, and authority. Even Jamie Kern Lima has to work to get reviews.

I would like to experiment with Facebook Messenger automation for following up, but have yet to try it.

Confirm which name they left it under so you can track who left a review and who hasn’t. If they download your book within the 5-day-free promotional campaign, their review will also show up as a “Verified Review” on Amazon (these are trustworthy and coveted ratings for your book). Ask fans to also leave a video or picture review.

Tell everyone on social media and your existing email list that your book is live. It’s free! Download your free eBook today before it goes up to $9.99!

Traffic, traffic, traffic.

Reviews, reviews, reviews.

As soon as you hit 20 reviews, start Amazon ads to pour gasoline on the fire. You will benefit from Amazon’s “Hot New Release” banner and look fresh and new in front of your ideal customers searching for new books like yours. Hot New Release + Amazon ads + tons of reviews = a ton of sales in the first 30 days.

For the first 30 days, I chose to spend $2,000 in Amazon ads with the expectation of investment; you may or may not recoup that within the first month, but the organic ranking, reviews, and momentum will set your book up for success in the long-term. Don’t miss out on it.

Expect to receive the #1 Amazon bestseller tag within the first 30 days.

Screenshot that bad boy, because congratulations, you just became an official #1 bestseller and it was a piece of cake. Now go tell everyone you did it!

When you use Amazon ads, you can target similar books and authors to link similar audiences to your new book. Link common keywords and search terms as well, and be prepared to trim keywords that aren’t converting.

The basic premise of Amazon ads is to drive people searching for books like yours to your Amazon listing. If they land on your listing and they love what they see, they’ll buy your book. If they don’t, you wasted the cost of a click. This is why marketing and optimizing your Amazon listing are so important to do upfront.

Treat Amazon ads as a process, not an outcome.

Similar to losing weight or finding your soul mate, you start the journey with an expectation of an outcome, but the real prize is the information and learning that is extracted from the experience. The longer you run your ads for, the more data your Amazon ads machine can collect, giving you more information to use for ads optimization and expansion.

Amazon ads: start small, optimize for profit, expand targets. Repeat the cycle.

You will eventually collect a basket of search terms that are uncommon and therefore few competitors bid on. Expect to complete $20 sales from ten-cent clicks (jewels in the Amazon ads world, and unheard of with Meta ads). Expect to discover these beautiful, low-competition search terms via your ads data machine, not your imagination.

After 2 years of continuously running Amazon ads, I currently spend about $1,500 in Amazon ads with about a $4,000 return per month (on just book sales alone), and I am always looking for more profitable targets and keywords to expand into. The beauty of Amazon ads is that it’s semi-passive; I spend about 1.5 hours per week optimizing my ads, and I spend the rest of my week working on everything else while the Amazon ads machine sells my book for me. (This skill can also be easily taught to an assistant or employee.)

Keep an eye on your ads’ profitability, and don’t forget to count organic sales not attributed to an ad in your accounting as you analyze your returns from advertising.

The key with staying ranked on Amazon is consistent sales, and you can achieve that in many ways, not just ads. Podcast guesting. Email signatures. A page on your website. Social media.

While I didn’t use podcast guesting for my book, I do recommend podcast guesting if you are in a highly competitive niche (self-help, memoirs, business). Podcast guesting for a book launch must be planned out 4-6 months in advance (to accommodate for podcast booking windows), targeted at Top 10% podcasts, and include a strategy with a strong call-to-action and fast-action bonuses to get listeners to purchase your book and join your email list.

To create a profitable podcast tour, I recommend a course I took called Hell Yes Guest (get 10% off the full course price with my link) that demonstrates the process of creating highly-effective pitches (to the tune of a 50% booking rate), profitable CTAs, and brand-expanding stories to maximize the precious marketing window you have with a book launch.

For a book launch, I recommend picking at minimum 1 and at maximum 2 strategies to deeply focus on as you engage book buyers.

I love Amazon ads and podcast guesting, but you may want to utilize social media alongside podcast guesting. Social media does not replace the marketing prowess of your Amazon listing, however. I do not recommend Facebook or Instagram ads, as I’ve learned that users there do not typically buy books straight from a Meta ad (and ads are more expensive).

My launch period was effectively 30 days, but yours can be for up to a year (especially if you plan to use your book to grow your business and brand).

🚀 5. Accept offers for promotion.

The final step is not guaranteed, but is highly likely.

Amazon is a public platform just like Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, and when your book and book campaign get noticed, you may start receiving inquiries in your inbox for partnerships, collaborations, and promotion.

Some are good, some not so much. You get to choose who you would like to work with.

Naturally go into each collaboration opportunity with reciprocal generosity. Keep track of offers, contracts, or agreements in this period, and be prepared to say no to any offers that don’t feel right.

In Year 1 on Amazon, from June 2022 to June 2023, I distributed 9,813 copies of my book Harvesting Rainwater for Your Homestead in 9 Days or Less, and soon after, I accepted offers for promotion from sites like Permies.com that then further distributed my book for another 470 downloads. This is a total of 10,283 downloads in the book’s first year of release.

Market and promote like hell.

Expect to reap terrific rewards.

If you are launching a business or self-help book, expect to use your book as a magnet to attract business collaborations, speaking engagements, and other opportunities besides just clients.

After all, you’re an author now.

And authors have authority.

✨ What have you tried in the past to market and sell your book? What has been effective and what has not been effective? What strategies with podcast guesting, social media, or ads are not commonly known?

👇🏽 Leave your thoughts below!