and I have a critical video for you

self-publishing authors out there,

self-publishing wannabe authors out there.

I'm gonna talk about how you're gonna sell your book

because as much as I would like to believe is the case,

you write a brilliant book, the best book ever,

you still have to find people to read it

unless you're okay just writing a book and that's it.

But unless you're Malcolm Gladwell

and you've got really really deep pockets

and you can afford to spend thousands of dollars per store

to totally blanket the airport stores, right?

I don't know if you've flown in the month of October

but Malcolm Gladwell's new book, David and Goliath,

is everywhere

and you might think it's because Malcolm Gladwell

is a big name now, right?

If you haven't read The Tipping Point

or any of his other books, Outliers, et cetera,

you've probably at least heard of who he is

but he still had to pay for that coveted space.

Now, I'm not clear.

Business Week said that they wouldn't say exactly

how much they paid but the Hudson News

usually sells that space per store

for several thousand dollars.

If you're Malcolm Gladwell,

you can probably fit the bill for that

because you get a couple talks for 50 to 85 thousand dollars

plus proceeds from the book deal, it's probably okay, right,

but most of us aren't Malcolm Gladwell

so we're gonna have to find ways

that don't cost us hundred of thousands of dollars

to get distribution and of course readers

for our fabulous work of book.

So here's five things I did and one that I did

that I don't recommend

but five things I did that got really great results

and you may or may not know

but in my first week of launching my book,

More Than Cash Flow, I got it to number one

overall on Amazon and it stayed there for a couple of days

and it was largely thanks to a couple of these tactics

or strategies if you will

to get your books into readers' hands.

So number one, online presence.

Now, for me, I've been writing a newsletter

for seven years.

I had built up a fantastic base of wonderful folks

who not only bought my book

but told other people when my book came out

so that was critical

but if you are writing your book already

and you haven't spent seven years writing a newsletter,

there's no time like right now.

Yeah, right now, you might even wanna turn off this video

and get to work on it to build an online presence

and ideally get newsletter subscribers

and social media followers and friends.

That's really gonna be a critical component

because that audience are hopefully

gonna be the first folks out there

to grab your book when it comes out.

Number two and this was the second

kind of my secret weapon that I got

with my fabulous readers who thank you, thank you.

I'm still so grateful for you buying books when it came out

and now still and for your Amazon reviews

but my secret weapon that got me to number one,

I think we broke top 10 without friends

but we never would have got to number one

if it weren't for the fabulous support

of some of our friends.

Nick and Tom Karadza of Rockstar Real Estate in particular

sent some really great promotions

out to their fantastic folks

and that really gave us the boost we needed

to get to number one.

So start networking, folks

because it's hard to do it all alone.

Friends referring and recommending you and your book

is gonna be a huge huge help to you.

Number three, I'm sorry,

if you really thought you could just

sit behind your computer and tick away and sell books

but speaking is really really a solid way to sell books.

If you have a short talk,

you can find business networking groups, meetup groups.

If you're a niche like I am with real estate,

there's probably shows and forums that you can speak at

and if you give a good talk,

a big chunk of that room will wanna buy your book.

So you can sell your book right then and there

and that's a great way to sell a lot of books.

Not a great way to make a ton of money by the money

but hey, you didn't write a book to get rich I hope.

Okay, number four, PR

and this is gonna be an entire video unto itself

because getting newspapers and radios

and TVs to cover you and your book and your story,

possible but it's a little bit tricky on your own.

You probably wanna hire help.

So that's an entire video on its own

but for what it's worth,

I think that while TV looks the coolest

and people think it's the coolest,

I actually think that the newspaper articles

and the radio spots I've done

have generated the most results

and I've tried to track it but you can't really tell, right?

You don't really know where your book sales are coming from

but people who come out to my book events

who've heard of me for the first time

are coming from newspaper or radio.

They're not coming from the TV shows.

Number five, promotion.

Now, this is what we did in the launch

to really boost it, right,

and this, this and this all combined together

are what gave us a really really strong start

out of the gate but even now,

if I have a store that has a lot of leftover stock

then I might run a city specific promotion

to help sell books.

So that can be one on one coaching calls.

It can be some of your friends who blog may have eBooks

or other courses or services

that they'll offer to buyers of your book.

So when they send you a receipt

proving they bought your book,

you can then send them or sign them up

for these other services.

Sound good, right?

It helps to sell books.

I know you're selling a 20, 25 dollar book

and you're probably giving hundreds of dollars away

of services and products to do that

but sometimes people just need a little boost

to go get the job done and that works.

It absolutely works to get people to buy the book now.

Now, one thing that doesn't work.

Book store signings kinda suck.

Yeah, really.

Listen, a lot of my friends are like,

oh, I've seen all your book signings.

It looks so cool.

And some of them have been pretty good

but the reality is that

getting people to come out to a book store

to buy a book these days is actually really hard.

We've tried all kinds of promotion.

We've done all kinds of media.

We've had postcards, we've had personal email invites.

We've even called some people

and the turn outs have been really really low

and in speaking with the book stores

'cause I've done six or seven book store signings now,

unless you're a celebrity and even if you're a celebrity,

it's really hard to get people out to the book stores

these days for those events

so I would recommend you set up speaking events

or pursue these other five

versus doing the book signings.

The advantage to the book signings

as a self-published author

is that's how I'm getting book store distribution, right,

so I'm not paying thousands of dollars

but I am spending an hour of my time

to go and sit there at the book store

but that is now getting my book on the shelves of that store

whereas it wasn't that easy to get there before.

So there is an advantage to it

but it doesn't sell a whole lot of books

and it takes up a lot of time and effort and energy

so I would personally recommend you focus on these five

and if you have a great idea for selling books,

let me know 'cause I'm still looking for great ideas.

Please share.

You can tweet me at revnyou

or just go ahead and post a comment

under this video in YouTube

and of course if you like this video

and you want more self-publishing tips from my adventure,

please give me a thumbs up 'cause it makes me happy

and it encourages me to shoot another video

for you in the future.

Good luck with your book sales.

I'd love to hear what's working for you.

Please share and I'll see you on another video.