Read time: 8 minutes You're 6–12 Months From Publishing Your Book. Here Are the Top 3 Things to Focus On In preparation for my program, "Sell Your First 1,000 Books on LinkedIn," I asked VIP participants which topics they wanted to cover in a special call we have before the program. One author asked: "If I'm 6-12 months out from book publication, what are the 3 things I should focus on most?" I loved this question because, as with anything in business, there are a million things we could do,...
13 days ago • 8 min read
Read time: 8 minutes 200 Authors Gathered to Learn About How a Niche Book Became a Breakout Seller (Full Playbook) Every few months, I get on a call with an author who says some version of the same thing: I finished the book. Now what? I understand the instinct behind the question. You just spent a year, maybe two, doing the single hardest creative thing you’ve ever done. There is a reasonable expectation that the hard part is behind you, and the rest is a matter of the book existing in the...
21 days ago • 12 min read
Read time: 8 minutes 80 seats. 80,000 books. Here's my plan for the next three weeks. Two days ago, I announced my most ambitious project yet… An entire rip-and-stick book launch calendar and course to help business and leadership authors sell 1,000 or more books on LinkedIn. Now, 1,000 books sounds like a starter goal. It isn't. BookScan's lead publishing analyst studied every new title released in a year by the ten biggest trade publishers in America — Penguin Random House, HarperCollins,...
28 days ago • 8 min read
Read time: 8 minutes From 1,000 Books to 1,000 Seats: Turning LinkedIn Buzz Into Paid Keynotes (and 250-Book Orders) Sell Your First 1,000 Books on LinkedIn opens Tuesday. The waitlist gets first dibs! Most books — including the ones published by the Big Five (Harper, Penguin, etc)— sell around 250 copies in their entire lifetime, and the majority never cross a thousand. Hit 1k+ sales, and you build an authority platform that keeps compounding into keynotes, corporate training, and a second...
about 1 month ago • 12 min read
Read time: 8 minutes The Complete Guide to Pre-Selling Your Book on LinkedIn Author note: I will be using the terms “pre-sale” and “pre-order” interchangeably throughout this article. They both reference selling advance copies of your book before publication day. The average book published today sells fewer than 300 print copies over its lifetime in U.S. retail channels, according to BookScan data reported by Publishers Weekly — and a recent analysis found that close to 90% of titles from the...
about 1 month ago • 9 min read
Read time: 8 minutes The Four Audiences You Need to Sell 1,000+ Books on LinkedIn The thing is, building a generic social media following doesn’t guarantee book sales (trust me, I’ve been in the rooms where authors have had this very painful reality check). And it also takes time and energy to scale to an audience number that would translate into a measurable uptick in book sales. So stop working harder and work smarter ahead of your book launch. Across all the book campaigns I’ve been hired...
about 2 months ago • 6 min read
Read time: 8 minutes Most Authors Will Never Sell 1,000 Copies. The Ones Who Do Run the Same 5 Phases Seven years, every kind of book campaign you can imagine, and one pattern that never breaks. In 2018, my cousin, a seasoned venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur, called me and pitched an idea. "Help me brand my new cannabis company. It's become legal in Maryland and I'm applying for a license." When I start to tell this story, most people reply, "Wow, what did you tell him?" To which I...
about 2 months ago • 10 min read
Read time: 8 minutes The Real Reason Some Speakers Stay Fully Booked (Hint: It's Not Their Credentials) "The riches are in the niches" is a phrase you've undoubtedly heard from every branding expert’s mouth at some point (mine included). As punchy and true as it is, though, for speakers, authors, and thought leaders, it always brings a very specific wave of discomfort: "Niching feels like leaving money on the table!" "What if I go all-in on one message and the bookings don't follow?" I get...
2 months ago • 10 min read
Read time: 8 minutes The Expert Era of LinkedIn Is Over AI turned expertise into a commodity almost overnight, and if you've ever felt you weren't expert enough to post, that's the best news you'll read this week. Here’s how to capitalize on the shift. Author's note: This is part two of a two-part series. Last week was the internal blocker — visibility shame, the reason you hold yourself back even when you know you should be posting. This week is the external one: the ground underneath the...
3 months ago • 10 min read