The Biggest Time Wasters In Book Publishing

This is a controversial post to write. I’ll get some snarky emails from TikTok experts about how you can do it all and make $1 million dollars in 24 hours from an audiobook. But too many good writers shackle their books through ineffective publishing and marketing techniques and that’s what I’m here to talk about.

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Have you ever wondered how you’ll sell your book if you’re not an “expert” and you don’t have a following?

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Writing a book is not like the movie Field of Dreams. Readers don’t show up on your doorstep the moment you click publish. 

Like the stock market, no one can predict the book market. One of the big five publishing houses turned down The Motivation Manifesto by Brendon Burchard and made him return his $2 million dollar advance because they thought it would flop. He changed publishers and the book went on to spend dozens of weeks on the bestsellers list. 

Even professionals who have spent decades trying to understand the book industry get it wrong because there are many uncontrollable market whims. 

Because there are issues outside of our control, it’s tempting to hit publish and give up hope. But if there is one thing I’ve learned after helping 255+ authors turn their dream book into a reality it’s this: there’s a lot you can control. 

And the number one thing you can control is your focus. Where you focus your money, your attention, and your time. 

To have a successful book launch, you should expect to spend at least as much time on publishing and marketing your book as you spent writing it. How you spend your marketing/publishing hours is one of the most important decisions you will make. 

Book marketing and publishing follows the 80/20 principle. There are many areas you could focus your attention, but roughly 20% of the steps deliver 80% of the results. That means only 20% of the activities authors do deliver the majority of book sales, book exposure, and book profits.

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So what delivers the most results?

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Don’t just take my word for it, I’ve studied and worked with some of the top authors, including Chip Heath whose books have sold over 3 million copies. Here’s what I’ve learned: ​

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Marketing Multipliers 
Focus On These:

• Email Newsletters 
  
• Blogs/podcasts 
• Ebooks
• Paperbacks

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Time Wasters
​Don’t Focus On These:

• Hard covers
• Book Endorsements
• Audiobooks 
• Book Signings

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Let’s tackle these one by one.

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Marketing Multipliers

Email Newsletters

Full disclosure, I sat at my kitchen table and cried the first time I learned it was important to have an email newsletter. If you don’t come from a marketing background, starting a newsletter can sound intimidating. I thought, I’m a writer, not a marketer. I don’t even know what to put into an email newsletter. And the scariest thought of all: what if no one signs up? 

And you know what? That first week, only two people signed up. But I researched newsletters by favorite authors and speakers, so I could learn how they do it. Then I experimented with my style and sent out my favorite. 

Emails are the most valuable asset of an author’s career. More than the perfect publisher or agent. More than social media followers. On social media, you don’t really have direct access to your audience. You and your audience are separated by an algorithm. One day 900 people might see your posts, then the algorithm changes and only 70 people see your posts. Book launches through email newsletters far outperform launches on social media. 

Of course, social media is still an important tool. Social media is a way to introduce yourself. Emails are the way to invite someone into your inner circle. 

If you haven’t already, I recommend you start an email newsletter six months before your book launch. A majority of your sales and reviews in the first 48 hours will come from people who are on your mailing list. However, if you are closer to launch or you’ve already launched, it’s never too late to start. 

Before the book launches is not the only time to collect reader’s emails. Many authors do a two-stage book launch. For the first several months, they promote their book on Amazon to collect all of the reviews in one location. Then, they switch to promoting book sales on their own website. Their book is listed on Amazon, but they’re directing readers to their website because every time a reader purchases a book on their website they get to collect that reader’s email. 

In fact, many NYTimes bestselling authors (e.g. Tony Robbins, Brendon Burchard) do promotions on their websites where they give away their book for free — the reader just pays shipping. Even though they lose money on these promotions, they believe having a reader’s email is more valuable than having the full-priced book sale.  

You wrote this book because you believe in your message. An email newsletter is really just a blog post delivered directly to someone’s inbox. Most importantly, it’s another way to share your message.

Blogs/Podcasts

The increase of silos might be bad for politics, but it’s great for book sales. A silo is a group of people who only talk to each other and are all obsessed with the same topic. 

The central pillar of modern book marketing is to identify your main silo and find the blogs, podcasts, and newsletters that dominate that silo. 

That sentence sounds way more intimidating than it is. It’s actually simple: if you are writing a memoir about childhood abuse, find out what blogs and podcasts people who are healing from childhood abuse already follow. Then, research strategies for how to have your material featured on those blogs and podcasts.

Tim Ferriss used this strategy almost exclusively to launch his first book The 4-Hour Workweek that spent years on the NYTimes bestsellers list. He had no following and no fame when he started writing his book. He identified this strategy after interviewing multiple NYTimes bestselling authors and asking them what to focus on and what to ignore in his book launch. Almost all of them said to ignore national media (e.g. the NYTimes, Good Morning America) and focus on blogs and newsletters (podcasts didn’t exist then). The silo he chose was tech-savvy males in their thirties and forties who lived in NYC and the Bay area. 

After researching the blogs that his target audience followed, he bought tickets to the conferences that these bloggers attended because he believed it would be more effective to introduce himself in person than over email. After successfully meeting these bloggers and having his book featured on their blogs, his book hit the bestsellers list. In subsequent book launches, he ignored national media, book tours, and book signings and only focused on blogs and podcasts.

Ebooks

No surprises here. Like my wife, there are readers who almost exclusively read ebooks, so having a digital copy is essential. ​

Paperbacks

If they tell you print is dead, don’t listen. Like my wife’s Mom, there are readers who still exclusively read paperbacks, do their banking in person, and call it “the Facebook.” If you publish your book as a paperback and an ebook, your message is accessible to the majority of readers and not losing out on book sales. ​

Time Wasters ​

Hard Covers

Hard covers can add another $300-$800 (or more) to publishing costs because you often have to reformat the front cover and book layout. While there are readers who will not buy a book if it’s not in a digital format and there are readers who will not buy a book if it’s not in a print format, in ten years working with authors I have never heard of a reader who will not buy a book because it’s not available in a hard cover. 

Adding a hard cover does not expand your audience, so you should not use your book budget here. Take that money and put it toward your marketing budget instead. If your book sales are steady after launch, then consider launching a hard cover version on the one year anniversary.

Audiobooks

Whether you read them yourself or hire someone else to read them, audiobooks will cost you an additional $2,000-$7,000. Unlike hard covers, adding an audiobook does expand your audience. Increasingly, there are “readers” who will only listen to books and no longer read them. 

However, before spending an extra five thousand, it’s worth finding out if readers connect with your book in the first place. I recommend waiting at least one year after the first publication of your book to launch an audiobook. Many successful authors, such as Ryan Holiday and Rolf Potts, launched their first books without audio versions and added audio versions later, once they knew readers connected with the book. In this way, the book sales paid for the audiobook.

Audiobook sales are not counted toward the NYTimes bestsellers list, so it doesn’t decrease (and can even hurt) your ability to land on the list. Every time a reader purchases an audiobook instead of an ebook or print version, you lose one more sale that would count toward lists like the NYTimes bestsellers list. 

Book Endorsements

Book endorsements are the quotes you see on books by other authors or people in the field. When Tim Ferriss surveyed bestselling authors on the biggest time wasters, wrangling book endorsements was on the list. 

Having your book featured in a blog on your topic will go a lot further than a quote by someone no one has heard of. Getting the right book endorsements is surprisingly time consuming, so it’s better to dedicate that effort to blogs, podcasts, and newsletters.

Book Signings

Blogs and podcasts are so effective at book promotion because they are targeted and scalable. A book signing at your local bookshop is not scalable. You can only reach the number of people who are in the room and, if they really like your book, a few of their friends. Blogs and podcasts are essentially timeless. I’ve known readers who purchased a book after listening to a podcast episode that was 7 years old! 

This is not groundbreaking news, but a lot of authors are still using old methods to promote their book. If you have a good book and the market is ready to receive it, then you are trying to create a groundswell, word-of-mouth movement around your book. You should prioritize digital promotion over in-person promotion because the fastest word of mouth travels digitally. 

There are two main exceptions to this rule: 

1. If you are trying to make a living from your speaking career, then doing an in-person book tour is a great investment toward your speaking career, even if it’s not the most efficient time investment for your book promotion.
2. There’s a reason a lot of people talk about writing a book and very few people actually do it. It takes a lot of discipline and hard work and guts to put yourself out there. Why not celebrate those milestones? So, if you want to have one book launch bash in your hometown with friends, champagne, and a seven-foot poster of your book cover, knock yourself out! Just think of this as your personal celebration budget and not as an effective use of your marketing budget. ​

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Many of you are thinking, just writing this book has taken everything I’ve got. I can’t learn all of this at once! 

Being an author is a series of skills. It’s the skill of writing, managing your schedule so that you have time to write, revising, talking about your book to friends, overcoming self-doubt, and understanding your weaknesses as a writer. It’s also the skill of writing a newsletter, talking about your book on podcasts, managing multiple moving pieces at once, and learning how to connect with other bloggers or writers in your genre. 

You won’t master every skill this week and you won’t even master every skill by your book launch date. 

The most important skill is dedication: the willingness to do whatever it takes to get your message to readers because you believe it can change their lives in lasting and profound ways. 

Just finishing the first draft of your book means you already have more dedication than most people. There’s a reason so many people talk about writing a book and 99% of them don’t finish half of a manuscript. It takes a lot of hard work just to reach this point. If you have the dedication to make it this far, the rest will follow!

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Is self-publishing for amateurs?

Check out the video where my wife and I break down the 5 publishing myths, including why a NYTimes bestselling author went from traditional publishing back to self-publishing and how Brene Brown started in self-publishing and has gone on to keynote blockbuster conferences and interview two presidents.

The 5 Publishing Myths