The goal of book marketing is to stop needing to do itLearn how to:
Scope your book into the world's best solution for a certain type of readerTest, improve, & iterate your ToC without needing to rewrite anythingDesign a engaging reader experience that makes your book a delight to readDiscover the hidden analytics of boredom & confusion to identify book-killing problems & make the most of beta readersTreat marketing as a temporary activity instead of an ongoing obligation by designing a strong recommendation loopEvaluate which of the four seed marketing options are best-suited for your goals, constraints, & skillsWrite a book that endures & grows for years instead of fading into swift obscurityBoost long-term growth by optimizing your pricing, platforms, & purchase funnelMost books don't workWriting a nonfiction book is a wonderful project, allowing you to preserve & share the most important things you've ever learned. Plus, a successful book will improve your reputation, your career, your earnings, & the lives of your readers.
Up until fairly recently, it was possible to receive at least some of these benefits by writing any book, regardless of its quality. But today, a million new titles are published per year and it's no longer enough to simply join the pile. Instead, you must create something that is able to stand out & succeed. And the most reliable path toward that goal — especially for an unproven author who lacks a pre-existing audience — is to write a book so startlingly useful that readers can't stop talking about it.
This guide proposes a different way of planning, writing, & refining nonfiction, drawn from the hard-won lessons of product designers & entrepreneurs. Applied properly, it leads to books that can grow organically via reader recommendations for many years, without relying on either heavy marketing or a large author platform.
The preconceptions about “writing a book” are so deeply entrenched that most authors don't even ask themselves whether a better way exists. Which is crazy, because the normal approach doesn't work! For example:
The average NYT nonfiction bestseller loses 95% of its peak sales within a year70% of traditionally published titles fail to pay out a single dollar in royaltiesVanishingly few nonfiction books sell even 500 copiesThese are not good results, but it doesn't have to be this way.
By following a more modern approach, my first two books (2013 & 2019) now do more than $150k/year in royalties (and growing). You can do it too. It's not easy, but it is reliable & repeatable. And in the normally hit-driven, feast-or-famine world of writing, there's something to be said for reliability.
What this book is not:This isn't a get-rich-quick scheme. If you want to write a mediocre book the easy way, then you probably want to look elsewhere.
This isn't about prose or creativity. I'm assuming that you know how to write a coherent sentence and are able to do the work. Instead, this guide is about understanding how to design, test, and refine nonfiction that succeeds as a long-lasting, high-impact, and recommendable product.
This isn't a self-publishing guide. I won't walk you through every tool & technicality of formatting, printing, and shipping a book. Our focus is on creating the most useful, and most recommendable book possible.
Still not sure?
Head on over to writeusefulbooks.com to find more resources, samples, and information.
create a book that lasts and grows, the formula is simple: do the best job of solving an important problem for a reader who cares, without anchoring yourself to temporary tools, tactics, or trends.
