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How to market your book when you're a nobody

Don't market it.

And instead do this...

Look. I failed miserably at most of my self published books.

Even though all of my books are great...

Ok, not all of them.

Maybe two or three.

Sure, you could listen to some of the folks out there who successfully wrote a best seller.

The folks who want to tell you how to write a best seller.

They will find millions of reasons why it worked for them.

And they might be right.

It worked for them.

But just like it worked for them, it didn't work for hundreds of others.

In most of the cases not even their students.

And not to mention that successfully selling books on Amazon was different four, five years ago.

What worked back then doesn't really work anymore today.

Organic search on Amazon is pretty much dead.

There are just way too many books out there.

And THE most important thing when publishing a book or any other product online is to have an audience.

So if you have an audience already, if you've already made a name for yourself, then you're good.

But if you don't, then you're pretty much screwed.

Either way.

So for whatever reason a lot of people ask me about how they could market their upcoming book.

Here's the truth...

If you're a complete nobody, if you've never written or published a book, if you have no audience, if you don't know people with a huge audience, then just don't market your book. At all. It's a waste of time. And money.

So here's what I'd do instead...

And this is not some crazy mumbo jumbo advice.

I've done this myself a few times in the past already.

Ok. So here's what to do...

Go on a platform that already has an existing audience.

A platform like Medium for example.

Then write and publish (or just publish if you already have it) one piece of your book every single day for 30 days.

Or longer. It doesn't really matter.

And make sure you add a link at the bottom of each part were you say that this is part xyz of your upcoming book.

If people want to pre-order it, let them get it for pay-as-much-as-you-want using Gumroad.

In a worst case scenario people won't pay anything.

But at least you'd get their email address.

And then you can send them updates, blog posts, upsell other products you have, etc.

I got hundreds of emails doing this.

And then every single day after you've published one part, you add hundreds of people on that platform who have liked similar stuff to yours in the past.

Or you add people who follow authors similar to you.

Some of these people will check out your profile, some of them will read your stuff and some of them will follow you back.

BOOOM!

Your audience right there...

And once you're done with the whole book, publish it on Amazon as paperback and Kindle and then go ahead and publish the entire book again as one giant post. On Medium for example.

You can take a look at how I've done it below...

I’m everywhere and nowhere. And I own nothing and everything.

The Art of Being Remarkable: How to get Unstuck, Unf*cked and Unleash your Potential

I also published them again in The Mission here and here...

And when you post the entire book make sure you have a link to the paperback and the Kindle version of that book somewhere in case people want to buy the book.

This is how I got more than 15,000 people to read two of my books on Medium.

That's probably 15,000 more people than downloads from Amazon...

It's ALWAYS a bad idea to put your work behind a gate.

Especially when no one has ever heard your name.

Then people will only pay 99 cents for your ebook.

Or nothing.

And then they won't even read it...

And you know what they say what's the best strategy to market your book?

To write another book.

And then another.

And on and on and on.

And it's true.

The only problem is that Amazon organic search is dead.

There are millions of books out there.

Too many.

Way too many...

So if no one really knows you, if no one knows who the hell you are, then no one will find out about your book.

And if no one will find out about your book, well then no one is going to read it.

And if no one is going to read it, then it won't make any difference if you publish a second, third, fourth or maybe even fifth book.

What worked a while ago doesn't necessarily work anymore today.

Just like Amazon organic search is pretty much dead. 

The same holds true for what I've just said.

When too many people do what I've just told you, it will probably also stop working.

Does it still work today?

I don't know.

I haven't seen too many people do this, yet...

Will it work for you?

I don't know.

It worked for me...

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Over the past 5 years I've written more than 1000 blog posts, published 10 books and more than 3 million people from all over the world read my stuff.

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