In my book Your First 1000 Copies, I outline a proven three-part framework that any author can use to build their platform, connect with readers, and sell more books:

1. Permission – Communicate with your fans in a way that gets their attention and drives them to action.
2. Content – Offer free content and spread it widely and freely.
3. Outreach – Move people from not knowing you exist to knowing you exist.

If you can accomplish these three interconnected levels, you will build a thriving author platform full of fans excited to buy your next book.

But so many things can distract us and get in our way while we're on the road to building our platform. While some of those things are important, most aren’t.

So often, we tell ourselves a task is important, just so we can dodge the real, hard work of what we really need to be doing.

Doing the Right Thing

A while back, an author wrote to me and asked if he should overhaul his website with a new WordPress theme he had found.

I took a look at the website. While it wasn’t the most gorgeous site I’ve ever seen, it was getting the job done. It had an email signup, his books were displayed prominently, he had an author bio and was offering free content.

My question to him: “How much traffic are you getting to your website?”

Another author wrote to ask if she should start buying Facebook ads to get more people to “Like” her Facebook author page.

First, I had her read my post on the myths of social media.

Then I asked, “How many authors have you reached out to in order to create mutually supportive relationships?”

Then there was the author who was agonizing over what he should give away to new website visitors, so they’d sign up for his email list. He kept changing his free ebook—rewriting the hook, uploading new versions, etc.

When he asked me what to do, I asked, “How many podcasts have you pitched, to have you on as a guest?”

There are always tons of things you can spend your time on, but almost all of them – 99.9 percent – are a complete waste of your time.

Creating Long-Term Connections

Another question I received recently:

“It seems like nothing will work without Outreach. So why do you talk so much about Permission and Content first, when none of it matters if new people aren’t finding you?”

Here’s why . . .

Think of your website as a bucket.

For most authors, the bottom of that bucket is full of holes.

People come to your website, check out your books or read a blog post, then immediately leave.

They flow into your bucket all right — but then they drop right out of the bottom.

That’s because you’ve created no connection with them, no way to stay in contact long-term.

Once you figure out how to plug those holes in your bucket, things will start changing for you.

If you make the #1 goal of your website getting people on your email list (Permission) by prominently displaying email signups that include a great offer, you’ll start getting those visitors to sign up.

That gives you long-term access to communicate with them.

Then once your website is set up to get people on your email list, you start putting up compelling Content that gives people something to interact with.

A reason to come to the site in the first place.

You’ll start seeing even more of your site visitors signing up for your email list.

Only then is Outreach useful.

If you do Outreach before plugging the holes of Permission and Content, you’re just pouring more people into a bucket with holes. They’ll drop out of the bottom, and you’ll never see them again!

However, once you have plugged the holes in your website . . . leave it alone!

And focus on Outreach.

Focus on finding groups of people that don’t know you exist and introduce yourself to them.

Solving Obscurity With Outreach

At this point in your platform-building, your #1 problem is Obscurity.

If nobody knows you exist, it’s going to be really hard to sell books.

You could have the most gorgeous, engaging website that gets 100 percent of the people who visit to gladly give you both permission to stay in contact with them AND buy a copy of every book you’ve ever written.

But if nobody knows you exist, it will all be for naught.

Here’s why . . .

Once you have your Permission and Content set up and working – even if it’s not the absolute best it could be – it’s time to move on to Outreach.

Outreach is the scary part. It’s the most ambiguous part.

It’s the part that requires us to reach out and face rejection.

So when it comes time to do it, we often shrink back and distract ourselves with things that aren’t important — like fiddling with our website, fixing the header on our Facebook page, or reading about successful social media marketing.

Here’s the deal — the plan that works, and that will save you months of wasted effort:

1. Get an email list set up with an email service provider, and display your email signup prominently on your website.
2. Regularly put out compelling free content on your website. Then, once that's done:
3. Spend the rest of your time on Outreach and solving your obscurity problem.

Then be honest with yourself, and only do the kinds of Outreach that may actually move the needle.

Doing What Matters

I’ve been working with a friend of mine as he’s been getting his platform off the ground. We’re talking starting from zero.

The first part was pretty straightforward.

He wrote out a series of helpful emails that people get when they sign up for his email list.

Then he used a WordPress theme to get his website up, put an easy-to-spot email signup on it, and started blogging regularly.

While this work wasn’t always easy, it was crystal clear in terms of what needed to be done.

Digging a 50-foot ditch isn’t easy, but how you go about it is pretty straightforward.

And then he hit Outreach. The hard, ambiguous part.

He struggled, pressed into the fear, tried several different things.

He despaired a few times. He wanted to quit.

His first 45 subscribers came in slowly.

Then last week, one of the dozen or so things he’d been trying finally started to work.

Within a couple of days, he’d popped more than 100 new subscribers. Now he’s following up on that by offering more free content, to drive that number even higher.

I’ve seen this pattern before. He’ll be at 500 subscribers within a couple of months.

It takes work. It takes trying and failing. But the reward is worth it.

The end result? Direct connection to a few hundred and then thousands of fans, who aren’t just visiting your website once or twice.

They’re excited to buy your next book.

Just two days ago I spoke to an author that got picked up by the publishing house of her dreams, paid a $15,000 advance, and then… nothing.

Once the book was out, she was on her own.

The dream of getting a publishing deal and sitting back while your publisher takes care of making you a bestseller is dead.

If you want to be a successful author — no matter if you’re self-published or traditionally published — you have to make it happen yourself.

So how do you do that?

Where do you even begin?

What is an author platform?

If you ask six different writers to define “author platform,” you will probably get six different answers.

One might say that it is their website. Another might say it's their social media presence. It could be that they travel around and speak sixty times a year.

If you ever sit down with a publisher that is interested in acquiring your book, they are going to ask about your author platform.

Here's the thing… “author platform” is just code.

When you get asked about your author platform, here's what they are really asking:

“How are you going to sell your book when it comes out?”

Your author platform is however you plan to sell your books.

Whether it's speaking all over the world, a big email list of your fans, or standing in Times Square and New York City and hand-selling your books… your author platform is how you are going to sell books.

In fact, here’s my definition of an Author Platform:

“A direct connection to your audience that allows you to predictably and reliably sell books.”

In order to break-in and succeed in today’s book industry, you must have an author platform.

Let’s break it down a little bit:

“direct connection”

Do you own the connection to your fans?

Or are you relying on a publicist to help you?

Your publisher’s publicist is overworked and sending your book to the same list of bloggers, editors, and producers they send every book to.

If you hire your own publicist, they’re going to put you on an expensive monthly retainer so you pay them every month for their best try, whether they get you any coverage or not. And it’s getting harder and harder to get new coverage.

However, if you are directly connected to your audience, you don’t need anyone to help you find new people. You just talk directly to your fans.

“your audience”

The key here is to find and connect to people that are likely to be interested in your book.

If you write romance, your audience is people that read romance novels.

If you write spiritual self-help, your audience is people that are interested in their spiritual well being.

You want a direct connection to a group of people that are interested in the type of books you write.

“predictably and reliably sell books”

When you publish a new book, you have 3 options:

1. Publish and hope. Put your book out and hope that it some how, some way, finds an audience and sells.
2. Publish and pay. Spend a ton of money on advertising and publicists in hopes that it sells enough copies to make your money back.
3. Publish and know. Since you already have a direct connection to your audience, you know that your book is going to sell on the first day it’s published.

The Goal: Build an Author Platform

This is how authors are winning in today’s publishing marketplace. They have built up an author platform so they have a direct connection to their audience so when they publish a new book they know it will sell.

The next question: how?

How do you build an author platform?

Book marketing can be a huge, disastrously overwhelming topic that includes conversations about Twitter and Instagram and Facebook pages and blogs and podcasts and ads and a hundred other things. In this article, I will help you simplify and organize your plans by teaching you the basics of book marketing with the Connection System.

I’ve been working with authors for over a decade to help them build their platforms, connect with readers, and sell more books. I’ve worked one-on-one with hundreds of authors including New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers like Hugh Howey, Daniel Pink, Barbara Corcoran, Sally Hogshead, Chip and Dan Heath, Robb Wolf, Charles Duhigg, Jean Chatzky, and many many more. I’ve worked across all genres — fiction and non-fiction —, publishers — traditional and indie —, and authors — big bestsellers to just-getting-started.

The advice I give is always based on real-world experience that I have tested across many different authors and platforms. My goal is only to give advice that I know will work for you because I’ve gone out and tried it for myself with my platform and my client’s.

The best way I've found to build an author platform is through the Connection System.

The Connection System: How to Build an Author Platform

As I worked with author after author and studied the authors that were finding success, I started to see a pattern.

I found an overarching system that every successful author was using to get predictable results of book sales. And it could all be boiled down to three simple principles.

So whether the author was active on social media or not, or had a blog or didn’t, or did a ton of speaking or not, or showed up on national media or not, or traditionally published or not… that didn’t matter.

What I saw over and over was they had something working in each of these three categories:

1. Outreach: The act of moving people from not knowing you exist to knowing you exist.
2. Content: Providing a way for people to get to know you and your writing.
3. Permission: A way to stay in contact with people long-term.

This is the Connection System.

What I saw was that if an author was able to solve these three problems, they were able to build a platform that predictably sold books.

Let’s look at each one in more detail:

1. Outreach

The act of moving people from not knowing you exist to knowing you exist.

Your first problem as an author is that enough people don’t know you or your books even exist. How are they supposed to buy something that they don’t know exists?

The first problem you have to solve when you are marketing is how to move people from not knowing you exist, to knowing you exist.

You can do this in literally thousands of ways. Here are a few:

• Be a guest on a nationally televised program.
• Speak at a conference.
• Get interviewed on a podcast.
• Get your book reviewed in the New York Times.
• Have a popular blogger write an extensive post about you.
• Speak at book clubs.
• Post a lot on Reddit.
• Stand on the street in Times Square, New York with a bunch of business cards introducing yourself to random people.

Literally, anything you do that moves people from not knowing you exist to knowing you exist is Outreach. Of course, there are ways to do this that are more effective than others, but right now that is not the point. Unless you have a plan for how you are going to accomplish Outreach, you will never build a successful author platform.

2. Content

Providing a way for people to get to know you and your writing.

Every time I’m looking for a new book to read, I download a sample of it to my Kindle. This gives me a chance to try out the author’s content to see if it’s a good fit for me.

When I listen to a podcast and an author is being interviewed, if I like what she has to say, I often go to her website or check out her new book.

Content is the second step in the Connection System and is how people get to know you and your books and see if you’re a good fit for them. Of course, not everyone — not even most people — will like your work, but that’s ok. Content is how you find your audience.

Your goal is to put out content widely and freely in different channels so people have an opportunity to connect with your work and decide if it’s right for them.

This can also take literally thousands of different forms. Here’s a few:

• Start a blog and post regularly.
• Start a podcast and release episodes regularly.
• Publish new research and studies in your field.
• Release a novella based in your novel’s world.
• Start a YouTube channel and release new episodes regularly.

The goal here is to put out content in as many different places as possible so your audience can find it and connect with you.

Note: Outreach and Content often work hand-in-hand in the Connection System. Getting interviewed on a podcast is both introducing you to people that have never heard of you before and providing content. Getting an author friend to send your free novella to their email list is moving his fans from not knowing you exist to knowing you exist while giving them Content to connect with. Same with YouTube or getting your work published in a professional journal.

3. Permission

A way to stay in contact with people long-term.

Remember that the first step in my definition of marketing is “create long-lasting connections with people.”

If you work really hard to get Outreach opportunities and people enjoy your Content, that’s great. But it does not create a long-lasting connection. Sure, maybe they buy a copy of your book after hearing you on that radio show, but then what? What about your next book?

The problem with relying on Outreach alone to launch a new book is that every time you release a new book you have to do all the same work again to find people to buy your book. You’re starting at zero every time.

That’s not marketing. That’s publicity. Publicity is constantly running around trying to drum up interest in something. Publicity is hard, getting harder, and has a quick rate of diminishing returns.

Marketing is creating long-lasting connections.

You move from Publicity to Marketing when you have Permission.

Permission is what you build when, once you have a connection to someone, you can continue to communicate with them long into the future.

Permission, the third step in the Connection System, is measured by how reliably and predictably you can

1. Get people’s attention, and
2. Drive action.

In Outreach and Content, I said there are thousands of ways to do those effectively.

In Permission, there is only one extremely effective action:

Build an email list.

Of all the tools out there that allow people to connect with you long-term — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Podcasts, Blogs, YouTube channels, etc. — there is only one that has the greatest effect on 1) getting people’s attention and 2) driving action… Email.

I’ve talked extensively about myths of social media marketing for authors and why email marketing is so important.

If John randomly hears you on a podcast and buys a copy of your book, how reliably can you get John’s attention and get him to buy a copy of your next book two years from now? I’d say that number is close to zero.

However, if I get John to join my email list, I’ll be able to sell him a copy of my current book, and then the book I come out with two years from now, and then all my other titles in the future.

The Connection System

If you line up the three parts of the Connection System, you’ll see they work together very well.

Outreach moves people from not knowing you exist to knowing you exist. Now that people know who you are, they engage with your Content so they can see if you’re a good fit for them. Then, you create a long-term connection with them by getting Permission to stay in contact with them long-term by joining your email list.

Every. Single. Author. Has to solve all three of these problems in order to be successful.

Here are a couple of examples…

Hugh Howey, New York Times bestselling author of Wool, started by blogging on his website (Content) and self-publishing his books on Amazon. He was always quick to help anyone that reached out to him (Outreach) and started going to conferences and workshops in the writing world (Outreach). As more people started finding his books, his serialized novel Wool started gaining traction. People began following his blog (Permission), connecting with him on social media (Permission), and signing up for his email list (Permission).

Now, after doing this for years, he has a solid platform with thousands of connections to readers so when he comes out with a new book he can immediately connect with his audience and let them know that it’s available.

Stephen King is, well, Stephen King. He has written sixty books and sold hundreds of millions of copies of his books. He’s been publishing his writing for 50 years (Content), and the success of his writing has made him famous (Outreach). Now, when he comes out with a new book, he doesn’t have an email list, but every bookstore in every town and airport prominently displays his book on the front tables of their store (Permission).

Yes, even the most famous, prolific writers have to solve all three problems in the Connection System!

What’s next?

In this article I gave you a look at book marketing from a higher level. It’s not about figuring out the perfect time of day to post on Twitter or the right word count for your next blog post.

Your goal is to create long-lasting connections with people and then be relentlessly helpful. The way you do that is by creating a reliable system that helps you solve three problems: Outreach, Content, and Permission.

Everything you do should be trying to solve one of those three problems. If you find yourself debating in your mind about the icon to choose for you new Facebook Group, you’ve lost sight of the overarching picture.

Build your Connection System. Spend your time solving the three problems in the Connection System, and you will build a successful author platform that reliably and predictably sells books.

First, Everything is changing.

What used to work doesn’t any more. The traditional publishing industry keeps tightening its grip on the old way of doing things and insisting it still works.

Maybe you’ve sensed it. Maybe you haven’t.

But it’s happening. Quickly. And if you’re going to make it as an author, it’s time to pay attention.

What Used to Work

The old model was pretty straight forward.

1. Write, pitch, get rejected (by agents). Repeat.
2. Eventually persuade an agent to represent you.
3. Write, pitch, get rejected (by publishers). Repeat.
4. Eventually persuade a publisher to pick up your book.
5. From there, they publish the book, and get it stocked in book stores (the only place you could buy books).
6. If it sells, you get another deal. If it doesn’t, you’re out.

Unless you are already a household name and you’re automatically going to get stocked on the front table in every Barnes & Noble and airport bookstore, it’s almost impossible to break in to the marketplace the traditional way.

What Happened?

We could spend a lot of time talking about Amazon.com and how they revolutionized the book industry. But in a real sense, the same thing happened to the book industry that has happened to every industry.

The gatekeepers have lost power. There is no longer one small set of people that decides what gets published, what gets marketed, what gets reviewed, and what gets sold.

The shelf space is unlimited. You don’t have to get your book stocked at the big or indie book stores to be successful. You can publish your book in the same place that most of the copies of the latest Stephen King novel have sold (Amazon).

There is no central recommender. Getting a Kirkus starred review doesn’t sell a bunch of books. Just like winning a major writing award doesn’t translate to selling more books. Now people get recommendations from Amazon’s algorithm, GoodReads recommendations, YouTube channels, blog reviews, and of course the old stand by, word of mouth.

Everything has fractured. One of the upsides of the old model is, if you got in, you would be successful. Now, even if you get into the system, you still don’t have a better chance of success over the indie author who just self-published their novel.

I’ve seen several authors get their book profiled in the New York Times and see no bump in sales.

The power has shifted. Authors are no longer beholden to an agent or a publisher to get their work out into the world. BUT, that power now puts the responsibility on you. In the old model, once your manuscript was with the publisher, you were mostly done. Now, at that point, your job has just started.

This can be scary.

Now it feels like the wild west. You hear stories of authors getting published by their dream publisher, and then the whole thing becoming a disaster. Then you hear about some author that has used Instagram to make their book a best seller. Then you hear about how going on a blog tour works. But then it doesn’t work.

So…

What now? Current Book Industry Trends

Let’s assume for a moment that all of this is a good thing.

What does it mean for you.

Trend #1: Authors are trying new things. You can serialize your novel. You can come up with obscure, crazy genres and give it a try. You can write and publish a new book every month. You can join with other authors to launch a box set and go after a bestseller list. Now, anything you come up with you can just give it a try because you don’t need a big corporation to give permission.

Trend #2: Authors are owning the connection to their audience. With blogging, social media, email lists, etc, the author can now build the 1-on-1 connection with their readers. You don’t have to rely on distribution or advertising campaigns. You can build up your own audience so every time you come out with a new book, you already have a direct connection to your fan base to let them know it’s available.

Trend #3: It is not all or nothing. You don’t have to become a full-time writer to make it worth it. You can start small and build something over time. There are lots of self-published authors that use writing to supplement their income. They’re paying their light bills or taking their family on vacation using the money from book sales. Instead of going big, you can now start small and grow it slowly.

We already know there is a lot of money in the book industry, but with everything changing, how do you break in?

The next step: Author Platform

If you want to take advantage all three of these trends, the answer is to build an Author Platform. The definition of an author platform is:

“A direct connection to your audience that allows you to predictably and reliably sell books.”

This is how you take advantage of all three trends.

An author platform allows you to experiment with new ideas, build the direct connection with your audience, and build something slowly over time.

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Instead of just passively reading what comes across my computer screen, I recently decided to dive in and look at the research and the numbers and figure out what is really going on under the surface.

I took at look at the common beliefs many of us have about social media marketing and lined those up with what the numbers tell us.

What I found staggered me.

In this article I’m going to walk through 3 of the most common beliefs we have about social media marketing and show how each one is a myth. Then I’m going to share with you 3 ways to use social media marketing that have a real impact on growing your authors platform and successfully launching a book.

Let’s get started.

Myth #1: A Big Social Media Audience = Big Book Sales

Awhile back, in an interview specifically for authors, Gary Vaynerchuk, author of Jab Jab Jab, Right Hook and Crushing It made the claim that if a fiction writer started up Twitter and/or Instagram accounts for their book’s characters it would be the difference between selling 200 copies of their book and selling 25,000 copies of their book.

The problem is, there is no evidence to back up a claim like this.

In my work over the last year with dozens of top bestselling authors, many of which of large social media followings, I’ve never heard or seen anything close to this happening. I’d be extremely surprised if there is a single author who could show you even 1000 extra sales by creating Twitter accounts for their book’s characters.

So many social media marketing experts love to talk about the effectiveness of social media marketing for authors yet never back it up with real numbers, experiments, and case studies.

I have personally tested the effectiveness of social media marketing with my clients. These aren’t tests on the scale of my Twitter following of sub–6000. These are tests with people who are connected to hundreds of thousands and even millions of people.

Here are few examples:

• I worked with a client that had over 160,000 Twitter followers. We tracked the sales in promoting his book on the platform and it resulted in less than 400 sales.
• An author friend had someone with well over 1 million Twitter followers promote his book and it resulted in no noticeable bump in book sales.
• In multiple tests across many social media accounts, it’s a normal thing to get well under 1% – more like 0.25% – of your followers or fans to take action on a given update. This is just clicking on a link, much less converting to a sale. (Try it yourself with the service bit.ly to see how many people click on your links.)

Also, not to continue picking on Gary Vaynerchuk, but when his book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook came out, I did a bit of simple arithmetic.

At the time, here were his social media numbers:

• Twitter – 1,016,311
• Facebook – 147,604
• Instagram – 34,563
• LinkedIn – 152,735
• Pinterest – 15,778

Through those five platforms, that was 1,366,991 connections.

(Stop and think about the daunting task of building that kind of following on social media.)

Now consider this: in the first week of sales for Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, Gary sold about 25,000 copies (according to Nielson BookScan). If you take out all the other promotion he did – the dozens of interviews, the appearances on NPR, CNN, Huffington Post, etc – and assume all of the book sales came through social media, that’s still only a 1.82% conversion rate.

That means for every one book sale, he needed 55 connections on social media (again, assuming every single sale came through social media).

Now consider your own social media. Think through how much time you’re spending on it in hopes that it turns into book sales and do the math to see how many book sales are going to result.

It gets worse.

I did some digging around to find out what kind of engagement rate you can expect on the various platforms.

Here’s what I found.

Twitter

• An engagement rate between 0.02% and 0.09% is considered good. That’s 0.2 to 0.9 reactions (I’ll define that shortly) for every 1000 followers. Anything from 0.09% to 0.33% is considered “high”. Anything over 0.33% is considered “very high” and is rare. That would be 3.3 reactions per 1000 followers. [1]
• The engagement rate is calculated by finding the average number of likes, comments, and retweets on a Twitter post and dividing it by the numbers of followers.

Facebook

• An engagement rate between 1% and 2% is considered good for a marketing campaign. That’s when you’re paying to promote your updates. [2]
• The engagement includes clicks, shares, likes, comments, and follows.

Instagram

Instagram is currently the most engaged social media platform.

• Engagement between 1% and 3.5% is considered average/good. Between 3.5% and 6% is high and anything above 6% is a very high engagement rate. [3]
• Engagement includes likes and comments (remember that you can’t directly link to anything in an Instagram post).

What do these numbers mean?

Think about that for a minute. Let it sink in.

The amount of people that may like, comment, follow, retweet, share, etc is much lower than the number of people that will actually click through and buy a book. So if “good” numbers of engagement are around 1% to 3%, what do you think the numbers are for an update on any of your platforms to translate to even a single book sale?

A bit more bad news…

The bigger your following gets, the more your engagement goes down.

If you have less than 1000 followers on Twitter, you may get an interaction rate of 0.18%. But by the time you build that up to 100,000 followers, it will drop to 0.04% and once you break 1,000,000 followers, it will fall to 0.01%. [4]

A similar drop in engagement numbers extends over every social media platform as your audience grows. [4]

A Big Social Media Audience ≠ Book Sales

Consider your own social media. Think through how much time you’re spending on it in hopes that it turns into book sales and do the math to see how many book sales are going to result.

Myth #2: Social Media Will Make You Famous

Take a look at the top 100 people on Twitter by follower count. Now, how many of them are not independently famous outside of Twitter?

Social media marketing is not a way to grow your “fame”, it’s a reflection of your fame. There are, of course, outliers of people that became famous as a result of social media, but these are outliers.

If you think through how you find new followers on social media, it’s rarely because you just happened upon them on social media. You find about them out in the world, and then find them on social media to follow them.

This is the norm, not the exception.

If you’re focusing on growing your social media following, you’re focusing on the wrong thing. It will always grow slowly when you’re running around trying to build your follower and like count.

You should be focusing on your obscurity problem – the fact that not enough people know you exist – and the way to solve that is not social media.

MYTH #3: Social Media Marketing Actually Works, You Just Haven’t Figured Out the Formula Yet

Honestly, this is how I often feel.

I look around at all the advice and “success stories” and think maybe I’m missing something or just doing it wrong. This may be how you’re feeling too.

It’s not true though.

I’ve gotten the chance to pull the curtain back several times, and the truth is always much more mundane than you think. Here’s the common things I’ve seen in “successful” social media campaigns:

• It wasn’t actually successful. This is the most common. We see something bouncing around the social mediaverse and assume it must be selling like hotcakes. Once you get a look behind the scenes though, it’s not usually the case.
• There was something else going on. For the successful campaigns, there was usually something else going on that wasn’t as public. In the book launch examples I give in this article, I was questioned after the fact by several people who assumed our social media campaign was a big hit. The truth is, most of the book sales came from everything but social media. Social media was just the most public thing so people made assumptions about it’s effectiveness. It’s the tip of the iceberg that you can see, but what really drives sales is hidden behind-the-scenes.
• The scale was enormous. I addressed this in Myth #1, but the successes I’ve seen selling things via social media is because the scale was enormous. Your 5k, 10k or 50k followers/fans aren’t going to generate many sales for you.

At this point, I’ve spent a good bit of time pointing out the myths of social media when it comes to marketing. My hope is that it will save you a lot of time and frustration and help you see through a lot of the misinformation that is swirling around out there.

But I don’t want to just leave you with the myths. I want to share with you how you can effectively use social media.

Social media is just another tool in your toolbox. When people try to use it like the above, it’s the equivalent of grabbing a hammer to get a screw into a board. It’ll work a bit, but will mostly waste time and frustrate you.

What I want to show you now is the right way to use social media to build your platform.

Here are 3 truths about social media marketing for authors.

Truth #1: It Is A Great 1-on-1 Connection Tool

When I talk about Outreach and connecting with influencers, it’s often hard to make that first connection. Either the person doesn’t respond to your email, or you’re not even sure what to email them.

This is where social media marketing can be very effective. Even influencers who have teams of people who maintain their email inbox are often maintaining their Twitter or Instagram account themselves. It can be a great way to get past the gatekeepers and introduce yourself for the first time.

This has worked for me several times. I’ve wanted to connect with someone. I emailed them and never heard back, so I reached out with social media and got a response. Then I was able to follow-up with email and got a response.

Social media is not a mass strategy. It’s a 1-to–1 strategy.

Experiment with thinking of social media more as a 1-to–1 tool instead of a way to communicate with a mass of people. You’ll start to see the effectiveness go up, your time wasted go down and your frustration be set free.

As you build your platform, the number of people you are connected to will continue to grow. When you first get started, it’ll seem pretty easy to keep track of everyone. But as the numbers grow and you meet more people, it’s going to be harder to stay connected to everyone.

This is where social media can be extremely helpful.

I’ve been able to stay connected to people who I’ve met at conferences, have emailed me about my book or met in some other way. This is fun on a personal level, but also extremely helpful for building my platform.

Truth #2: It's Easier to Leverage Other People's Followings Than to Build Your Own

Since my book came out, I’ve had a lot of people share the book on Instagram. I went back through everyone who shared the book and added up their followers.

It was over 600,000 people.

By inviting people to share your content on social media, you’ll be able to reach many, many more people than you could with much less time and effort than building your own following.

Here’s the other thing to consider…

Most people don’t have email lists. Most people don’t have a blog. Most people don’t guest contribute to other blogs. The typical person that waits tables or does data input only has one way to share content online… social media. By inviting people to share your content on social media, it allows them to be involved with what you’re doing and help spread the word in the only way they can.

While Myth #3 above still holds true, making your content easy to share and inviting people to do so is a great way to spread your message.

Truth #3: Email Marketing Is Still Far Better Than Social Media Marketing For Authors

According to a recent study, people value email 26x more than they do social media.

Let’s compare engagement rates.

In the case of email marketing, we’ll look at open rates.

MailChimp recently put out a report that shows industry wide open rates for email marketing, and the lowest average number is 15.66%. [5]

Compare that to the engagement rates of social media from above.

You shouldn’t be trying to build your social media following, you should be building an email list.

That is where you will get the most long term engagement in a way that actually drives book sales.

(If you don’t have an email list yet, I wrote a step-by-step guide for you.)

Why are you on social media?

When you’re engaging with social media, it’s important to remember your goals. Are you using it for fun and to stay connected with friends, family and colleagues? Then it’s great. If you are hoping to build a huge following that will turn into big book sales down the road, you are going to find yourself frustrated with a lot of wasted time behind you.

Also, more importantly, be suspect of advice you read online – even this article. Judge it against what you’ve experienced and make sure people are backing their advice up with real world experience instead of anecdotal conjecture.

With all the ideas, tools and tips I share, my goal is to help you get the most impact out of everything you do. You can dig a hole with a spoon, but it’s a lot easier with a shovel. The same goes for social media. Yes, it can have impact on your platform. Yes, it can help you sell books. But if you try to use it for something it’s not built for, you’ll find yourself digging a hole with a spoon.

Footnotes:

1. Mee, Georgia. “What Is a Good Engagement Rate on Twitter?” Blog. Accessed August 24, 2018. .

2.”What’s a Good Facebook Engagement Rate?” Aamplify | Marketing Expertise Outsource Capability. Accessed August 24, 2018.

3. Mee, Georgia. “What Is a Good Engagement Rate on Instagram?” Blog. Accessed August 24, 2018.

4. “Which Social Media Sites Get The Most Engagement?” How Much Should You Budget For Marketing In 2018? Accessed August 24, 2018.

5. “Average Open Rate for Email & Other Email Benchmarks.” MailChimp. June 13, 2018. Accessed August 24, 2018.

But things change. Especially in technology.

Instagram is huge now. Everybody is on Facebook. Except the kids. The kids are on SnapChat and whatever the hell else has come along. There’s YouTube and podcasts and thousands upon thousands of blogs.

So it begs the question…

Does email really still matter?

I ask myself this question all the time.

I get asked this question all the time.

After all, I don’t have any emotional connection to email. There is no email service provider cabal that is paying me to keep promoting email.

All I want is the best way for authors to get people’s attention and drive action.

How can authors build long term connections with their audience that allows them to communicate with their fans and get them to buy more books? That is the foundation of any author platform.

Sure, nothing is perfect. But what’s the best tool?

This weekend I came across a new research paper that gives us a much more up-to-date look at this question.

(this shows you what I do with my spare time)

The economists Erik Brynjolfsson, Felix Eggers, and Avinash Gannamaneni wanted to find out how important these free technologies we use — music, messaging, social media, e-commerce, online video, maps, email, and search engines — really matter to us.

They did a study asking people how much money you would have to pay them to give up each of these technologies.

So what do you think?

What was the most important technology?

Here’s each of them, in order, with the median amount of money you would have to pay people to give up each technology [1]:

1. Messaging – $155
2. Music – $168
3. Social Media (all social media — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc) – $322
4. E-commerce (all online shopping) – $842
5. Online video – $1173
6. Maps, GPS, etc – $3,648
7. Email – $8,414
8. Search engines – $17,530

That puts email at 26 times more important to people than all social media. That’s even 7 times more important than all online video.

Yes, email still matters!

Every time I run a new book launch, this proves to be true. The author’s biggest asset is never their podcast or blog or Twitter following or Instagram following or Facebook page likes.

It is always, 100% of the time, their email list.

Your email list list is your #1 asset when it comes to building your author platform, and now that’s even backed up by new, fancy economic research.

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It includes step-by-step how-to along with templates and example author website designs so you have everything you need.

Download the Author Website Checklist

You've written an amazing book, but now you need a website.

It goes without saying that every writer needs an author website. A web search is the first place people go when looking you up and you want to make sure they find a website that you own and have control over. It allows you to put your stake in the ground and own your own little corner of the internet.

However, as someone who has worked with over 100 authors and gone through at least 1000 author websites, I constantly get a first hand look at how much authors need help getting their website put together.

My goal with this article is to walk you through exactly how you can get your website up and running for very little money and, if you have all the content ready, just about an hour of your time. I’m going to walk you through the best practices I’ve learned over the past ten years of working with authors to build their online platform as well as share a few of my favorite tools for getting it done quickly and affordably.

Table of Contents

• Author Website Goals
• 5 Best Author Website Examples of 2018
• Step-by-Step How to Create an Author Website
• 2 Author Website Templates
• Your Author Website

Your Author Website Goals

It's really easy to get distracted by lots of bells and whistles as you build your author website, so I like to establish at the beginning what we are trying to do.

Here are the author website goals (in order):

1. Sell Books. Don't forget that the whole reason you have a website is so that people will eventually buy yours books. This is more important that social media, the perfect headshot, or even a gorgeous design.
2. Build an Email List. Like I've said before, building an author email list is the most important way to build a long term connection with your audience.

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5 Best Author Website Examples of 2018

Before we dive in and start building your author website, I think it's helpful to take a look at some examples of how authors have done it right.

1. E.L. James

Whatever you may think of her writing, E.L. James gets a lot right with her website.

Some things I love:

• Simple navigation. One of the worst things you can do with your website is get fancy, especially with the navigation. I like that “Home, About, Books, Blog, Shop, Contact” is clear and concise.
• Welcoming feel. In the giant “Welcome” section, it's a nice touch to have a note to visitors and a nice author photo front and center.
• Clean, organized design. There is no clutter on the website. Her books are lined up and easy to find. Connecting with her on social media is easy to find.

Could be better:

• Email list signup could be better. First, I would put it higher on the page. Second, have an invitation that is something other than “Sign up for updates by email:”. It's important to give a great WIIFM (What's In It For Me?).

2. Anthony Horowitz

Things I love:

• Visually appealing design without being distracting or cluttered.
• Newest book front and center. It's hard to miss what his latest book project is.
• Great introduction to himself. I like the byline on the website right under his author photo so you know you're in the right place.
• Next event. It's easy to not only see where he is going to be next, but it invites you to see if he's coming near you soon.

Could be better:

• Too many navigation options. I would cut the forum (it's sparsely populated) and combine some of the others or move them to the footer.
• No email signup.

3. Heather Sunseri

Things I love:

• Email signup front and center. The giant block offering the free series starter is going to email list signups. Also the box directly below that offers good reasons to sign up.
• Easy to find her latest books.

Could be better:

• The social media links at the very top are too cluttered and too many.
• The copyright notice and legal disclaimer should be small links in the footer to their own pages. They take up far too much room where they are.

4. Julie James

Things I love:

• Simple, clear, concise. From the navigation to the content, everything is uncluttered and straightforward.
• Monthly giveaway. This is a great way to build the email list.

Could be better:

• The blog is rarely updated. It would be better to raise the profile of the email list and get rid of the blog.

5. Antony Beaver

Things I love:

• Design. It fits very well with Antony's writing and immediately grounds you in the kind of author he is.
• Simple and clear. This continues to be a theme of what makes an author website good. The design isn't cluttered. The navigations is straight forward and the site flows well.
• Books (with reviews) are front and center.

Could be better:

• No email signup.
• “Titles” should be renamed “Books”.

Download the Author Website Checklist

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Step-by-Step How to Create an Author Website

There are five steps to build your author website:

1. Choose a Domain Name
2. Signup for a Web Host
3. Choose the Right Platform
4. Choose an Author Website Theme
5. Add Your Content
6. Customize with Plugins

1. Choose a Domain Name

The first thing you need before setting up your website is a domain name. That’s the .com, .net, .org, etc that people will type into their browser to go to your website. In order to have a website, you need a domain name.

A lot of authors default to setting up their website under their book title or a book series or a book’s main character. I highly recommend you don’t.

Setup your website under your own name.

You have a long writing career ahead of you. Odds are, your writing is going to change. What you write about today will very likely shift and change over time. While today you can’t imagine writing anything other than this trilogy you’re currently working on, given enough time, you’re going to shift to something new.

The one thing in  life that you can count on staying the same is your name. Build your author platform around your name.

What if your name is taken? What if your name is Mike Smith and mikesmith.com is long gone. Get as close to your name as possible. If you can’t get mikesmith.com, I’d look at buying mikesmithauthor.com, mikesmithbooks.com, michaelsmith.com, mikeericsmith.com (middle name), etc. Something close to your name that will be easily found when searching.

What if you’ve already setup your site under a book title or series? Unless you are planning on riding this book or series for the next decade, I recommend changing now. The sooner the better. One of my clients is Daniel Pink. His first book was Free Agent Nation. He’s since gone on to write books about motivation, sales, right brain thinking, etc. It would be really odd if he had set up everything under a site about freelancing.

What about .net, .org. me, etc domains? Be very careful with these. You’ll always lose some traffic to the main .com domain because that’s the default. However, if your .com is taken and many of the .com’s around your name are taken, it is a viable option. Just choose carefully.

How do you find and buy that perfect domain name?

The tool I recommend is www.domize.com. It is the fastest, easiest way to find domain names. On most websites you have to type in a domain, run a search and then see if it’s available. If it’s not, you have to reload the page and try again. This little tool searches on the fly and lets you know immediately what is available and what is not.

For purchasing domain names, I recommend www.iwantmyname.com. They make it simple and uncomplicated to buy your domain names. I highly recommend you do not use GoDaddy. Besides their abhorrent marketing practices, they will do their best to trick you into buying products and services you don’t need. If you already have domain names with them, you can easily switch them to www.iwantmyname.com.

2. Signup for a Web Host

Now that you have a great domain name, it’s time to get hosting for your website.

If you’re unsure of what web hosting is and how it’s different from your domain name, let me explain briefly. Your domain name is like your address. It let’s people know where you live. However, it’s not your home. Just because you have an address doesn’t mean you have a roof over your head. Your web host is your website's home. It’s where your actual website lives. All of the HTML, CSS, PDF, JPG, etc files have to be on a computer somewhere that people can access. This is where the web host comes in. For a pretty small fee, they will take care of storing all of your website files and making them available to people online. In a little bit I’ll show you how to get your website setup on the host, but for now, just know you have to get a web host.

For your hosting, I recommend BlueHost. It’s a very affordable option that lots of high-profile sites use. They have great support and make it dead simple to install your website and get it up and running.

To get it setup, visit BlueHost.com and click that giant green “Sign Up Now” button. They’ll walk you through the process of getting everything purchased and setup.

3. Choose the Right Platform for your Author Website

Unless you’re planning on hand-coding HTML, PHP, CSS and JavaScript, you’re going to want to use an existing web platform to set up your website. Luckily, there are a lot to choose from.

The one that we strongly recommend is WordPress. Here’s a few of the reasons:

• It is the most popular platform used across the internet.
• There is a powerful community around it. If you ever have major trouble with your website, you can easily find someone to help.
• Thousands of plugins have been developed that you can access for free to add customized functionality to your website. I list a few of my favorite below.
• Thousands of themes have been developed that allow you to customize the design of your website.
• It's what I use for this website.

Another great feature of BlueHost is it allows you to install WordPress with just a few clicks! Once you have signed up for BlueHost, check out this video that will walk you through getting WordPress installed in less than five minutes.

4. Choose an Author Website Theme

WordPress makes it really easy to change the design of your website. There are hundreds of themes available that you can install and customize.

For a walk-through on how to install themes on your website watch this short video:

When it comes to choosing a theme, there are two options.

Free. There are literally thousands of free themes to choose from. I would recommend starting with TwentyThirteen from the creators of WordPress. It's not their newest theme, but it is the easiest to setup based on my advice here. In has a lot of great functionality and offers a lot of customization. If you want to get your website setup and start adding content right away, stick with this default theme.

The downside to free layouts are they are often hard to customize and come with no support.

Premium. Usually for less than $100 you can pickup a premium theme that has a lot more functionality and comes with support, customer forums, and most importantly, documentation on how to get the site setup. Here are my picks.

• Thrive Themes. If I had to pick just one option to recommend, it would be from the company Thrive. Check out their Ignition Theme. Combined with their amazing drag-and-drop Thrive Architect you're able to create a great looking website that is highly customizable. Warning: If you aren't tech savvy, there's a learning curve so be prepared to spend a few hours going through their documentation and learning how to set it up.
• Published: A WordPress Author Theme or Cadmus: A WordPress Theme for Authors – These two themes are much easier to setup. They are also a little cheaper. The only downsides are you don't have as many layout options and having an email signup on the homepage is harder to do. That said, you get a great site that you can setup in less than an hour.

5. Add Your Content

Up until now, most of the advice applies to anyone setting up a new website. This is the part of the article where we dive deep into how you add content to your new WordPress site and what content every author should have on their website.

Before we start adding content to the site, I have two quick videos for you to watch that will teach you how to add pages and content to your website:

• How to create a static page
• How to create a page for your blog posts

What pages should your website have?

What I’m about to share with you is the content and pages that every author website should have. It may be the case that you will have additional content to add, but this is meant to be a jumping off point. It’s also meant to be a checklist to make sure you don’t miss something important. So many author websites I see have many fundamental pieces missing. I’ve seen sites that don’t have buttons to purchase the book, have no way to contact the author or have no descriptions of books. I once had to rebuild a site for an author because you couldn’t even tell there was a book for sale!

These guidelines will help make sure you don’t miss an important aspect of your author website.

Here are the basic pages every author should have on their site as a bare minimum:

• Homepage
• About
• Books
• Contact

Here are three additional pages most authors are going to want as well:

• Events
• Blog
• Resources

I’m going to go through each of these pages and share exactly what content should be on each one. But before I move on, let me touch on one thing.

Email Lists

Your #1 goal in building out your website, and in everything you do to market your books online, is to grow your email list.

If you followed me long – whether through my book Your First 1000 Copies – my focus on email lists won’t be a surprise to you. However, if you’re a little confused around why I say your email list is more important than Twitter, Facebook, blogging, podcasting or anything else you do, then I highly recommend you pick up a copy of my book.

As I step through each of these pages and highlight the content that should be on each one, you’ll see that your email subscription box shows up a lot. Once you understand how powerful having the direct connection to your audience through email is, you won’t be surprised.

Click here if you need help getting your email list setup.

What should I put on each page?

In this section I’m going to step through each page and share exactly what content you should make available on each one. Once again, this is a guideline to make sure you don’t miss anything important, but feel free to make it your own.

Homepage
Your homepage is a portal. Don’t try to cram everything in, but don’t leave off the important things either. Give highlights of your most important things and allow people to click to find out more.

• Latest book – Make your latest book front and center on the site. Show the cover, give a brief description including blurbs and make the links to purchase very prominent. This serves two purposes. First, it makes it easy for your fans to buy your new book. Second, it’s good for branding. If people have read your latest book and land on your website, they’ll immediately know they’re in the right place.
• Email subscription box – As either #1 or #2 call-to-action on the page, invite people to join your email list.
• Headshot and short bio – Have your headshot and a short bio that ends with “read more” and links to your About page. Again, this is good for branding. You want visitors to know they’re in the right place. Pro tip: Use the same headshot everywhere – Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon Author Page, website, etc.
• Excerpts of other content – Show your latest three blog posts or links to your resources page or short stories you have available online. Make it easy for visitors to find additional content online.
• Connect – Highlight where visitors can connect with you online. Social media links, contact page, etc.

About
This page serves two purposes. It allows readers to learn a little bit more about who you are and what you do. It also allows media, bloggers, etc to easily get information and images when needed.

• Headshot – Use the same picture as the homepage. Potentially make it available in hi-res to download if you are planning to do media and interviews.
• Short bio and Long bio – Give two versions of your bio. A two paragraph version that is very straight forward and then a longer version that goes into your background, where you grew up, what led you to being a writer, etc. Again, this is a place for readers to get to know you so don’t be afraid to share your personal story.
• Email subscription box

Books – Overview
Make sure it is easy to find all of the books you’ve written in one place. Especially for fiction writers, your backlist is extremely important. On the books overview page you should have all of your past books showing in reverse chronological order. For each book on this page you should have:

• Book Covers – The most instantly recognizable part of your book. Make it front and center, though if you have a larger backlist, I recommend showing them as thumbnails so people aren’t overwhelmed.
• Title
• Short description
• Links to buy the book
• “Read More” link – Link to the Single page for the book (covered in the next section)
• Email subscription box

If you’d like to see one of these Books – Overview pages in action, the one we did for Hugh Howey is one of my favorites.

Books – Single
For each of your books, you should have an entire page of your website dedicated to it. You can link to it directly when promoting the book, but it is also linked to via the “Read More” links on the Books – Overview page.

• Book Cover
• Title and Subtitle
• Full Description
• Blurbs and Testimonials
• Links to buy the book
• Email subscription box

Books – “What if I don't have a book yet?”
If you're working on your first book, I still recommend you add a Book page to your site.

Add as much to this page as you currently have, and continue updating it until you have all of the pieces listed above.

If all you know is a tentative title and short description, add that. Once you have a cover, add that too.

This is the preview page for your upcoming debut title!

Contact
Make it extremely easy and clear how people can contact and connect with you.

• Email address – I still see people from time-to-time not want to post their email address online for fear of spam. As long as you are using a reputable service such as GMail, you shouldn’t have to worry about this. I’ve been posting my email address all over the internet for years and have basically no trouble with spam.
• Mailing address – If you’re uncomfortable sharing your home address, use your office address or a PO Box. It’s important to make it easy for people to mail you things. I recently received my first handwritten thank you note from a reader and it meant a lot to me.
• Social media links – Share your Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, etc links for everywhere you are active so people can connect with you on these platforms.
• Contact form – While this will merely sends an email to your inbox, it saves an extra step for the visitor so is nice to have.
• Email subscription box

Events (or Speaking)
This is one of the pages that not every author is going to need. However, if you regularly speak (or would like to) or have a book tour coming up, it’s important to have this information on the website.

• Speaking
  • Speaker reel or video – Let event organizers see you in action.
  • Contact – Make it clear who and how to contact to hire you.
  • Topics – List 3–5 topics that you are comfortable speaking on.
  • Social proof – List out logos and venues where you have spoken before.
• Events (or book tour)
  • List of upcoming events including cities and locations.
  • Contact – Make it clear who and how to contact you to set up an event.

Blog
Whether you should blog or not is outside the scope of this article, however there’s a few things you want to have in place if you decide to start blogging.

• Blog posts
  • Author – List your name as the post author, even if it’s your website. You want to make it very clear to new visitors that you are the one writing.
  • Share links – Make it easy for people to share your blog posts through social media.
  • Comments – I recommend starting out by opening comments. You may have problems with people being trolls, but I find for most authors this isn’t an issue. You can always block people or close comments later if it becomes a problem.
• Sidebar – Most blogs have a sidebar and it’s a great place to pull new visitors deeper into the site. Don’t overload it though with word clouds and other miscellanea.
  • Email subscription box
  • Headshot and short bio
  • Latest book
  • Popular posts

Resources
Having a resources page is a great way to share your “evergreen” content – the content that doesn’t get old over time. Use this to share your tips on writing, short stories, white papers, videos, interviews, etc. It’s going to be extremely specific to you and your platform so I don’t have any specific things that have to be on the page except, of course, for an email subscription box.

These are the pages and content that you should consider having on your author website. Overall, you want to make it easy for people to know they’re in the right place, buy your books, sign up for your email list and connect with you through your content.

6. Customize with Plugins

One of the great things about WordPress is the vast array of plugins that are available to help add functionality and customization to your website. However, as of this writing, there are almost 30,000 plugins available in the WordPress Plugin Directory. That’s a lot to wade through! Here’s the ones that we use and recommend:

• Jetpack by WordPress.com – This is a plugin built by the same people who created WordPress. It offers a lot of great functionality including easily embeddable media (YouTube, Vimeo, etc), social media integration and much more.
• Optin Monster – The best popup and slide over tool for email subscriptions. Offers themes, split testing and lots of other options.
• Google Analytics for WordPress – Makes it easy to integration Google Analytics into your website.
• All in One SEO Pack – A great tool to automatically make your site more friendly to search engines such as Google and Bing.
• BackUpWordPress – Keep your website backed up for when disaster strikes.
• Limit Login Attempts – A great little tool that keeps your WordPress site safe from hackers.
• Sumo – Makes it easy to add email signups and social share to your website.

Download the Author Website Checklist

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2 Author Website Templates

Sometimes it's hard to look at an existing website and figure out what should go where. I created these two templates to help you see how best to arrange your website.

Author Website Template #1

This template allows you to highlight your latest book at the top of the page while keeping your bio box and email signup “above the fold.”

Author Website Template #2

This option allows you to have a welcome box at the top of the site while keeping your latest book and email signup front and center.

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Your Author Website

Having the home for your writing career established online is an important step in building your platform and selling a lot of books. It’s the first place people are going to go to find out more information about who you are and what you do.

However, having an incomplete or bad website can hurt you more than help. It doesn’t have to be the most beautifully designed website, but it does need to have the right information and content readily available to visitors.

Make sure your website reaches these four main goals:

1. Let’s people know they’re in the right place (headshot, book covers, etc).
2. It’s easy for people to find and purchase your books.
3. It’s clear that people should sign up for your email list.
4. It’s easy to connect with and/or contact you.

I hope this post has been helpful in getting your website setup and getting the right information up.

Download the Author Website Checklist

And here’s the thing…

It’s growing!

It’s estimated to break through $120-billion by 2020.

That’s a huge amount of money! In fact, it’s so big, it’s hard to really grasp it. So let’s compare it to something.

If you ask the average person, which makes more money… movies or books, they would probably answer “movies.” But they would be wrong.

The global box office revenue for 2016 was a mere $38-billion [2]. That’s only a third of the book industry.

That’s a lot of numbers… what does it mean?

For me, it means a lot.

First off, when my family or friends make snide comments about how nobody reads anymore, I can let them know that my industry makes 3 times the amount of money than the movie industry… including all of those comic books movies!

Second, I don’t have to be huge to do well.

Let’s say you want to make $100,000 a year off your book sales.

That means you only need to a 0.00009% of the market. That’s an incredibly small number!

For every $1,000,000 that is made in the industry, I just need to make $90.

That seems doable.

Which leads to the next question…

Do you need a big time bestseller?

A couple things here…

First, off many of the books that hit the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists don’t go on to sell millions of copies. Many of them gamed the system so much that, once they hit the list, the book never sells another 1000 copies ever. You can read more about this here.

Second, the writers I know making real money on their books are not the ones hitting the big bestseller lists. Instead, they write great books, launch them in a smart way, then continue to promote them long into the future.

It’s much more about building something over a period of time then trying to have a big hit.

The goal is to build an author platform that can regularly get you your 0.00009% of a $113-billion dollar pie.

How to win in the book industry.

1. Keep writing. Continue to hone your craft, keep writing, and keep publishing. The best marketing can’t help a book that was never written.
2. Learn book marketing. Dive into the basics. Look at all the options. Take the time to build a platform that will support your entire writing career.

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In this article, I want to dive into the Content portion of the system and help you decide the right ways to create Content and the types of things you need to consider.

Too often authors immediately start asking questions like, “Should I start a blog?” or “Should I put my book up for free?”, but those are the wrong places to start.

There are four questions to get you started in creating great content for your platform:

1. Who are you trying to reach?
2. How are they currently consuming content?
3. What content do you feel comfortable creating?
4. What channel are you going to use to distribute your content?

Let’s get started…

1. Who are you trying to reach?

I’ve seen it so much… an author works hard to build an audience that is different from the types of books they write. The biggest trap I see authors fall into is publishing content about writing and publishing. The problem is, if it works, you’ll build a fan base on a subject that is not your books!

If you write science fiction, a big fan base of writers won’t really help you that much.

You need to focus on attracting an audience that would be interested in reading your books. If you write science fiction, you need an audience of people that like science fiction. If you write books on productivity, you need an audience of people that are trying to be more productive.

If you could wave your magic wand and have easy and direct access to an audience that is perfect for your book, who would they be?

2. How are they currently consuming content?

Those people from question #1, what are they already doing? Are they watching videos? Reading blogs? Active on Reddit? Listening to podcasts?

And where are they doing this? Who do they subscribe to on YouTube? Who do they go to for book reviews? What podcasts do they subscribe to?

Create a full persona for each of the types of people you came up with in the first question.

Don’t think specifically about books here. Think broader. If you write romance novels, what kinds of movies and TV shows does your audience watch? Are there specific blogs they might subscribe to?

If you don’t know the answers to these questions, here are two ideas on how to find them:

1. Where do *you* go for this information? I’m assuming you read books in the genre that you’re writing, so what else do you consume in your space? Where do you consume it?
2. Ask other people. Text your friends that you share good books with and ask them what else they consume in this area and where they get book recommendations. Get on Facebook and message your friends. Get on GoodReads discussion boards and ask these questions.

These first two questions are designed to help you come up with Personas for your platform.

Who are the types of people that would be a great fit for your books and what kind of content do they already consume?

3. What content do you feel comfortable creating?

What could you create that your audience might also like to consume? Book reviews? Funny videos? Movie reviews?

What unique perspective could you bring to an aspect of your genre that your potential audience might be interested in?

An author I spoke to recently who was writing science fiction and fantasy met a college professor that was a huge science fiction and fantasy nerd and loved talking about the science behind the technology and magic in the various books he was reading. They’re planning on starting a podcast. I would definitely listen to that podcast.

Video? Audio? Written?

Keep in mind that these are all tools in a toolbox. YouTube, blogs, GoodReads giveaways, podcasts, etc. are all just tools. And just like tools, they are really good for some things, but really not good for others.

If I need to put a nail into a board, and I try to use a screwdriver — I’ll mostly just be frustrated. What I need is a hammer to get the job done.

The same goes for the modalities of the Content you’re going to create. There isn't one perfect solution for anyone.

I’m going to go through a few of the popular modalities and show you my pros and cons for each.

Video

Video is a great way to engage your audience and allow them to “get to know you” in a way that can not be accomplished with the written word. Video is also only growing in popularity and gives you access to the enormous YouTube audience while allowing you to publish the content on your own or other platforms as well.

Pros

• Gaining in popularity.
• Once you have a system setup, easy and fast to produce.
• Different kind of connection to audience.

Cons

• Hard and, potentially, expensive to produce.
• Requires expensive equipment and editing services.
• Requires you to be comfortable in front of a camera (unless you are doing screen-share only).

Audio

Audio is not often used as stand-alone content, though I have seen it done. The best form of publishing audio is to start a podcast. This gives you access to the millions (and growing) of people that listen to podcasts while allowing you to publish the content on your own website.

Pros

• Easy and fast to create.
• Equipment and editing is more affordable than video.
• Different kind of connection to audience.

Cons

• Need transcripts created.

Written

An obvious one for writers, plus the most versatile modality. You can write articles, blog posts, novellas, full books, collection of short stories, white papers, studies, emails, etc.

Pros

• As a writer, you probably feel comfortable writing.
• Versatile.

Cons

• Time-consuming to create.
• Doesn’t offer variety outside of your books.

4. What Channel are you going to use?

I’ve heard it many times…

“I started blogging six months ago, and nobody is reading it. What’s the point?”

Whenever I’m creating Content, I’m not just thinking about what I’m creating; I’m also thinking about how I’m going to get it in front of people.

Content must always have a channel.

It must have a way for people to find it and consume it.

If you create a blog but have no way to bring people to it, then it will sit alone and unread. If you create videos but don’t release them on YouTube, how are people going to find them?

Here are some examples:

1. I wrote this article on my website. This is the Content. But the Channel I use to distribute it is my email list. The odds are good that you found this article because I sent you an email about it OR that somebody that is on my email list told you about it somehow.
2. My friend wanted to start doing bag reviews so he could get free bags and maybe make a little money. He could have written blog posts for his website, but he didn’t have any traffic to his website. He also didn’t have an email list. So he started creating videos and publishing them on YouTube. People searching YouTube for bag reviews started finding him and subscribing. He’s now got a solid following on his YouTube channel.
3. A client of mine wrote an in-depth white paper on an important subject in the Information Technology industry. He didn’t have any kind of platform of his own, but he was well connected to people across lots of different companies. He started reaching out one-by-one offering to send the white paper. He would then follow up to ask if they liked it, and if there was anyone they knew that could help get the word out about the information. He ended up being introduced to a few different associations and companies that had huge email lists in his industry, and they sent out the white paper to everyone on their lists.
4. A friend of mine wanted to build his audience by interviewing smart people in his industry, so he started a podcast. Each week, he interviews someone new and releases that on his podcast which automatically gets distributed to Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and other platforms where people find new podcasts.

If you don’t combine Content with a Channel, it will remain alone and unfound. Always consider the Channel you will use to distribute your Content before you invest the time into creating it.

Start With One

Once you know who you are trying to reach and how they are already consuming content, it helps inform you on what type of content you are going to create and what channel you will use to release it.

However, this can get extremely overwhelming if you decide to start creating three different types of content in six different channels all at once.

I recommend starting with one plan and commit to it for six months.

This will allow you to focus and do it well, along with giving it enough time to see if it is working for you. You can always tweak your plan later or try something completely new, but don’t try to do too much at one time or give up before it has a chance to work.

If you decide to start a blog with a new article every week (Content) on Medium (Channel), then commit to that for six months.

If you decide to release a bi-weekly podcast episode (Content) on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and the other outlets (Channels), then commit to it for six months.

If you decided to release daily five-minute book review videos (Content) on YouTube and your blog (Channels), then stick to it for six months.

Building an author platform is never about doing “all the things.” Don’t let your fear of missing out cause you to constantly jump to new opportunities. Focus on one form of content that you can release in a good channel and do that well.

In my book Your First 1000 Copies, I worked to redefine marketing.

I said that marketing is:

1. The act of creating long lasting connections with people, and
2. Being relentlessly helpful.

I then went on to talk about how the first thing every author should do is build an email list.

Over the last few years since I first published the book, I have had a lot of push back from authors who are resisting setting up an email list for themselves.

In this article I want to combat the five most prominent myths that authors have when it comes to building an email list.

Let’s start here:

Myth #1: I’m annoying people

This is probably the most pervasive lie that people believe about email marketing for authors.

I want to come at this from two angles.

First of all, it is extremely patronizing for you to believe that you are annoying people with your emails.

The first thing that people have to do in order to join your list is to opt-in. They have to put their email address in a form somewhere or give you permission to add them to your list.

So they choose to be on your list.

Also, at the bottom of every email you send there is an unsubscribe link. So that means at any time they can click a button and unsubscribe from your email list.

People signup for your email list by their own choice and then, with each email you send, they have a new choice to unsubscribe with a single click.

I trust people to know what is best for them and to make good decisions for themselves. If they don’t want to be on my list, they can self select off.

Second, you are working to provide valuable, useful, and entertaining content.

Of course, not everyone will appreciate your content and may unsubscribe (see the above point). However the people that stay on my email list, I’m assuming, are getting value out of being on my email list because that is what I am working to provide.

You are not annoying people. And the minority of people that may get annoyed can easily self select off of your list and never hear from you again.

Trust people to make the best decisions for themselves.

Myth #2: I don’t have anything to say.

This is an interesting one because it highlights something on a deeper level.

You are a writer, yet you think you can’t come up with anything that people will want to read.

I was stuck in this position.

I had grown my email list to a few hundred people, but I was never sending them anything. I would sit down to write an email and then get stuck on what to write and quit.

It was really frustrating, especially since I was trying to tell authors that they should be doing this.

I kept worrying about what people would think and who would want to read this and was my stuff good enough and will people think I’m dumb and on and on.

And then one day I finally flipped a switch.

I had just gotten off the phone with Marilee.

She was an author of several books and was struggling with a few aspects of building her author platform. We talked for 45 minutes and I was able to help her move past her blocks and actually start working.

And it hit me.

I wasn’t writing for everybody on the internet. And I didn’t need to worry about if some people thought I was dumb or my writing was amateur.

I wasn’t writing for everybody.

I was writing for Marilee.

(And, of course, all the authors like Marilee).

So I went to Marilee’s website, printed off a picture of her, cut it out, and taped it to my monitor. Then, every time I sat down to write something new to my email list, I began it with “Dear Marilee,” and I would do my best to write something that she would find useful.

Then I would just switch out the name and send it to everyone on my list.

If you think you don’t have anything to say, it is not because you don’t have anything useful or entertaining to say. It’s because you don’t know who you are trying to say it to.

Are you writing for fantasy nerds looking for new books? Are you writing for the thirty-something stay-at-home-mom that needs to lose some weight?

Who are you writing for?

Picture them and then work hard to add value to their lives.

You have plenty to say!

Myth #3: I don’t need an email list.

This is usually where an author lists off some famous or semi-famous author and how successful they are and they don’t have an email list so why do I need one?

So let’s start with the famous authors.

If your name is Nora Roberts or Stephen King or John Grisham, you don’t need any email list. The publisher has paid you some enormous advance and they are going to put you in every book store and run every promotion and advertisement they can to get the book out into the world. Not to mention the millions of fans the author has already built up over decades of writing.

However, if you’re not one of those authors, you need some way to notify your potential and current fans that you have a new book coming out when it’s time to launch.

How do you plan on doing this without an email list?

You can buy advertising, but it’s expensive and unpredictable. Also, you’ll find that over time you have to pay more money for fewer and fewer results.

There is social media, but it is extremely unreliable and does not sell books well.

Right now, if you look out at the digital landscape, the tool that will sell your book the best is an email list.

Do you have to have one? Of course not.

I don’t have to have a lawn mower to cut my grass. I have a perfectly good pair of scissors that will cut the grass just fine. I would just be opting for an extremely inefficient way of going about the job.

You don’t have to use email marketing for authors.

You can go with buying advertising or building a Facebook page or getting more Twitter and Instagram followers. Just know you’re going about it in a less efficient way.

Myth #4: It’s just too overwhelming.

On the surface, it’s easy for me to say “start an email list!”, but the ramifications of email marketing for authors can be big.

What do I write? When do I write? When do I send? What do I send to my email list vs post on my blog vs put in my book vs put on my podcast vs put in guest blog posts? How does all of my content — book, blog, YouTube channel, emails — all fit and work together?

<shakily pours oneself another drink>

You are believing the lie that you have to have all of this figured out before you can start. Or the lie that everyone else has this all figured out. Or the lie that whatever decision I make today has to be the “right” decision. Or the lie that there is some perfect system and, once you find it, you’ll start.

Here’s the thing…

The only way you can figure this stuff out is to start. And to start small. And to experiment and try new stuff.

Do. Not. Overthink. It.

If you are stuck and don’t know where to start, here is my recommendation:

1. Send two emails a month. Send them on the first and third Tuesday of every month at 3pm in your timezone.
2. Send one author update. The first email of the month (sent on the first Tuesday of the month) should be an author update. Let everyone know what you are currently working on, when your next book is coming out, where you are signing books or speaking in the next month, what podcasts you’ve been on, and any new content you’ve published.
3. Send one new piece of content. The second email of the month (sent on the third Tuesday of the month) should be some new piece of content you’ve created. You could write a blog post and send a link to your list. Or publish a new video and send it out. Or write a new review for a book you’ve recently read and loved. Or talk about the best six new novels released this year that everyone should read.

That’s it. Your subscribers will hear from you twice a month and you’ll only have to create twelve new original pieces of content a year.

Start there and see how it goes. If later you want to scale up or scale back or create something new, that’s great. The important thing is to get started and tweak your plan as you go.

Myth #5: The technology is too hard.

Ok, so I have to be honest here.

It’s not necessarily easy to get your email list setup. It involves an ESP (email service provider) and web forms and WYSIWYGs and other scary technological things.

However, you can do it.

It’s now easier than ever as more tools have hit the market, and I have a step-by-step walkthrough on how to go from no email list to an email list all setup with your first 100 subscribers.

Don’t be afraid. You can do it!

Jump in!

If you’ve never setup an email list or, you have but never actually tried to get subscribers, it’s time to jump in!

Now is always better than tomorrow! Don’t believe the myths. That’s just resistance holding you back.

Start building your email list and start being relentlessly helpful.

If you’ve read my previous article on social media, you’ll know that my advice goes against conventional wisdom.

In this article, I want to dig into Twitter—what it’s good for, and what it’s not good for—and how you can avoid the common time sinks and pitfalls most authors run into.

Let’s start here:

Strategy vs. Tools

Never, ever assume that you have to use any one platform or tool to be a successful author, even when it's my advice you're reading.

Every single activity that gets your non-writing time should be required to make its case for why you’re using it.

Just like Facebook, email lists, blogs, GoodReads, and Amazon… Twitter is just one more tool in your marketing toolbox.

You only should use it when it makes sense for you, and don't when it doesn’t.

Let’s start with an example I’ve used before …

Imagine me having this conversation with my wife:

Her: “I need you to build something new for the house. I need…”

Me: “Should I use a hammer? What about a screwdriver? I probably, definitely need a saw.”

That's getting a little ahead of myself, isn't it?

Because before I can choose my tools, I first need to know what she needs me to build. Then I need to find the right plan for how to build it.

Only then can I decide what tools are needed for the job.

Using Twitter or any other online marketing tool works the same way. Before you make the decision to use it or not, you have to understand how it fits into your overall author platform.

And you need to know what it does well, and what it doesn't do well.

If you try to use Twitter for something it’s not designed for, you’re just going to get frustrated with the lack of results.

I could try getting a nail into a board by using a screwdriver. I may get it started, but ultimately it’s the wrong tool for that job, and I'm only going to end up frustrated.

The realization that “Twitter is just a tool” is the missing ingredient in so many authors’ blogging efforts [1].

What is Twitter good (and bad) for?

Here are things Twitter is good for:

• Connecting one-on-one with individual people: Because of the way people immediately and openly interact on social media, it’s often easier to connect with them on Twitter than by phone or email. You can also get past a lot of gatekeepers by directly reaching out to someone on Twitter.

Here is what Twitter is Bad for:

• One-to-many communication: You can take a look at your own Twitter analytics here. But be ready to be depressed. I downloaded my stats for the past month, and here's what I found: My average impressions (people who had my tweet show up while scanning their feed) was 10.1%. My average engagement (someone clicking a link, retweeting, liking, etc.) was 1.88%. That means only 10% of the people that follow me even had my tweets show up in their feed. The vast majority of your updates on Twitter don't get seen by the vast majority of people following you on Twitter.

If you can build up 10,000 followers on Twitter, roughly 1,000 of them might see an update. And less than 200 will engage with it in some way.

AYP: Addressing Your Protests

At this point, when I’m talking about Twitter, I usually start getting a lot of pushback.

So let me address several common questions/arguments:

“But I heard a story about Author X doing _____________ on Twitter, and they sold a ton of books!”

We’ve all heard these rumors urban legends lies stories about an author doing something on Twitter and selling a bazillion copies of their book.

I’ve been behind the scenes on these launches and talked to the people running them often enough to know that one of two things happened:

1. It was a complete fluke. They may have done something on Twitter that sold a bunch of books, but they don’t really understand how or why it worked, and it’s completely unrepeatable. Lightning strikes from time to time, but I don’t count on that happening to me.
2. More than likely, the author was doing a lot of other stuff behind the scenes. This idea is something else I point out in my article about social media. In most cases, the social media presence is the visible tip of the iceberg in a book launch. It’s what everyone can see, but it's not what is really selling books.

Posting on Twitter is not the way to sell a lot of books.

Sure, a handful of your connections will buy your book when you announce it. But it is not a one-to-many strategy that will reliably sell thousands of copies of your books.

“But I like Twitter! Why are you telling me to not use it for marketing?”

This is where I encourage you to separate pleasure from work.

I binge-watched the show Patriot last weekend on Amazon Prime. I did that for fun. I didn’t call it “story research” or tell myself that I was getting valuable work done.

If you’re on Twitter for fun, then go for it. I’m not telling you what to do with your free time.

What I am telling you is all of the hours you’re spending scrolling, retweeting, liking, and replying on Twitter is not book marketing.

It’s not helping your long-term game of building a platform that will support a book launch.

“But it seems to work for me!”

My answer to that: “Great! Test it.”

Use a service like Bitly to see how many people are actually clicking links that you post on Twitter. Then track your book sales, to see if people on Twitter are actually buying your book.

It's important that you test your assumptions and get data to make decisions.

Twitter feels like it works because there is immediate feedback and interaction. However, when I've actually tested it, the sales numbers I get are abysmal for the amount of time it takes to build up a big following.

What do I do with all those followers?

I hear this question a lot. What if you’ve already built up a solid following on Twitter? How can you use that in some constructive way?

First, change your strategy. Focus on using Twitter to connect with interesting people one-to-one, not to build up a huge following.

Second, invite people to join your email list. As I’ve said before, building up your email list should be your #1 strategy. Email does work for one-to-many communication.

Come up with a compelling offer—like a blog post that links to your website, which you know a particular group would be interested in, or a giveaway related to your book launch—and post that on Twitter, inviting your followers to join your email list.

Twitter is a useful tool.

It can be a great place to connect one-on-one with people.

But it’s not where you should be spending a large majority of your time building your author platform.

Keep Twitter in perspective.

Understand what that the tool is good for, and use it accordingly.

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