Why are we so focused on your book launch at Leaders Press?
It’s because we’ve noticed that the book’s performance at launch has a direct correlation to the book’s performance overtime.
Let me explain.
We’ve learnt that:
- Amazon favors new books;
- Amazon favors books that are increasingly popular;
- Amazon gives more visibility to books that are making Amazon money.
While nobody knows exactly how the Amazon algorithm works, we’ve observed that it’s much easier to launch a new book to best-selling status that to dig out a longtime none-performer and try to resuscitate it.
That’s why we are so focused on orchestrating a structured launch to get our titles to best-seller (so far we have a 100% success rate).
Here’s the helicopter view of what we do:
- We divide our list of more than 20,000 book enthusiasts into segments and mail a different segment on each day of launch week. This way we teach the Amazon algorithm that the book is becoming increasingly popular.
- We leverage partner relationships and mail even more people on the following days.
- We work with reviewers who review the book upon launch to increase social proof.
- We run Amazon ads to leverage the launch and create a long-term bestseller.
How does launching to bestseller influence the market?
- It gets the book to #1 bestseller fast, showing Amazon that the book is popular and makes Amazon money. This way Amazon gives it further visibility and the sales ball starts rolling.
- It gets the attention of foreign publishers. As soon as the book becomes a bestseller we include it in our foreign rights catalog and our foreign rights agent starts notifying foreign publishers around the world that this new bestseller’s licensing rights are available for sale. Often we do such a great job that foreign publishers start knocking on our door before we even officially include the book in our catalog. They simply follow the bestseller lists on Amazon and want what’s hot.
- It gets the attention of librarians. We notify around 10,000 librarians about our new releases and they get very interested in books which achieve bestseller status.
How does launching to bestseller influence your authority?
Apart from more sales, the interest of foreign publishers and librarians, becoming a bestselling author immediately increases your authority and credibility.
If you’re a speaker, you will now be introduced as a bestselling author before you step on stage. If you’ve been speaking for free you can now start charging for your gigs. If you’ve been a paid speaker for a while you can now raise your fees.
Just recently my team was interviewing an expert for a conference we’re putting together and we weren’t convinced about this speaker’s value until we saw that they wrote a book on their subject matter. It wasn’t even a bestseller (which would have increased their authority further in our eyes) but it was proof enough that we were talking with a legitimate expert because they were an author.
You put in a lot of energy into writing a book (even when you do it the easy way by working with us). Why not go the extra mile and launch a best-selling book rather than just a book? The financial rewards can be considerable, the non-financial authority boost, even larger.