What Makes a Bestseller Book?
One of the most important stories on this topic is something that happened to Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad which has sold millions of copies.
I don’t know Robert personally, but I’ve heard him recount this story several times which was that there was, at one point, a member of the media came up to him. She told him, “You know, I don’t understand, Robert, why so many people buy your book. And I just don’t think it’s that great of a book. I don’t think it’s a bad book. I just don’t think it’s very well written.”
And he says to her, “Oh, well, see, you’re completely missing the point. There’s a reason why they don’t call it New York Times best writing author. It’s New York Times bestselling author.”
And in that one sentence to me is like the heartbeat of everything that we’re talking about here at Brand Builders Group.
You have to understand it’s not New York Times best writing author. It is New York Times bestselling author.
There is a fantasy that authors have, and that the world believes, which is that you write a book. It’s really good and it just spreads and goes viral.
And perhaps that’s true for fiction books. I don’t know. I don’t know how much of what we talk about here applies directly to fiction books. But my guess is that it also probably applies in a lot of ways to fiction books. That it is not an accident.
Why? Because excellence is never an accident.
Excellence is never an accident.
It doesn’t just randomly happen.
But especially with publishing. There’s this weird facade that people think that you write a book and the ideas just start like spreading and all of a sudden if it’s in the stars or it is fate that it’ll work out in your favor.
I mean, I think luck certainly plays a part in everything, but it’s one of those things where you can’t leave it up to luck. It’s the reality of the publishing world.
This is just interesting to think about. It’s all in the names in the titles, right?
Think about this.
What do writers do? Writers write. And that’s what they do.
What do editors do? They edit. Editors edit things.
What do publishers do? They publish. They take the manuscript, put it together, print it, and publish the book.
What do distributors do? They distribute the book. They push the book out to different channels across the globe.
And then retailers retail.
This is how the whole chain works. Writers write, editors edit, publishers publish, distributors distribute, and retailers retail.
And nobody sells the book!
Nobody actually does the work of convincing someone they should buy the book.
And guess who that falls back on? That falls back to the author.
And we don’t perhaps like it. Perhaps we didn’t originally sign up for it.
We didn’t think about it, but whether we like it or not, it’s your book, it’s your ideas. It’s your responsibility.
And having a book is like having a baby in a sense it is a massive amount of work and time and preparation.
It’s basically a two-year process, at least between the writing, and then the promotion, and the launching.
And why would you spend so much time doing something and then leave it up to chance about whether or not it’s going to work out?
You don’t want to do that.
You don’t want to leave your business up to chance ever.
So authors end up being the ones to promote.
Now, this becomes part of the problem.
Book Marketing Strategies
Most authors are not a natural marketer or salesperson. They’re stumbling through the process of trying to market and sell.
And then they’re like stumbling around teaching people the things that you could do.
And this creates a lot of distraction and noise. One of the biggest problems with book launches is many people share a lot of things that you could do.
There is no shortage, no lack of noise of things that you could do, but in reality, there are only a few things that you really should do, and these are the things that actually create orders.
What we talk about here at Brand Builders Group isn’t about like creating awareness. It’s not about getting the word out.
It’s about creating sales, like a trend, what needs to happen for a transaction to take place for purchase to actually happen. So of course, a huge part of that is letting people know that it’s there, but it’s very direct and complete.
That’s an important part of what we work through.
The other challenge here is that it’s not just doing the right things. It’s not just about doing the right things in the right way; you must also do them at the right time and in the right order.
And this is true.
And if you’ve been around the Brand Builder Journey for a while, we also say this all the time: You have to know what phase you are in so that you can apply your focus and money to the right things.
It is very possible and it happens a lot where people do the right thing at the wrong time, or they do the right thing in the wrong order.
There’s a sequence to all of this. And half of the battle is just kind of like knowing the sequence, the Brand Builders Journey.
We teach that here at Brand Builders Group.
The Brand Builder Journey, visually, is like a domino effect.
The first domino back at the start is Finding your Brand DNA and Phase One. That’s the heart of your brand- the hardest work to do and then building your audience. The next domino is Phase Two- getting social media followers, getting all your copy done, your website, etc. Then it’s slogging through getting a funnel launched, etc.
All these “dominoes” start to fall. They start to fall faster and faster and faster and faster.
And that is exactly what we are doing right here at Brand Builders Group.
Do you have a book that you authored? Comment below as I love to know.
And if you like a free call to learn more about our Brand Builders Journey, go here.
