5 Steps to Success

Level 4: Serious Player

Future Guardian,

In today's article I'm going to reveal a unique 5 step process for getting everything you want in life, by modeling a 5 Step Process for How to Sell 10k+ Self-Published Books in a Year without using social media.

I'm actually breaking down into detail a 5 Step Process from another article (the source is being kept private for what I hope will be obvious reasons).

Don't worry,

If you've no interest in selling a self-published book, I guarantee there's some really useful stuff in here for you still.

And,

Spoiler alert ...

You're gonna want to stick through to the end for the real GOLD.

Like,

I'm gonna shower you with gold.

Prepare yourself

(No really, that's actually step 5)

Here we go,

How to Sell 10k+ Self Published Books in a Year Without Using Social Media:

GIRD YOUR LOINS!!!!

(Seriously. I anticipate exactly 3 of you reading this whole thing, which is a shame. But good on the 3 of you. We each know who you are)

Step 1

Know your market before you start writing.

Ok.

Marketing.

Step 1 ... know your market and … do ... Marketing.

I hope you can already see where this is going. Obviously we have to break this down. How about we start with Research.

Step 1a) Research.

Research for the marketing for the book so that we know what the book is going to be about and who the book is going to be written to, as well as why they are going to buy it, and any and all related ideas around this subject.

Oh my.

I can already tell there are a ton of details that we'll miss in this, but, let's try to unpack this.

The purpose of the research of the marketing is going to be to discover what solutions/problems/desires we might be writing about and/or solving, and those solutions/problems/desires need to be specifically anchored to an individual or type of person so that we can be sure someone is going to have a good reason to buy this book.

So let's start with a single person. Let's make this easier and say that we're going to identify a person we already know. We're going to break down everything we know about that person.

Here we go, a step (heh) further.

Step 1aa - Identify Person

Step 1ab - List out this persons desires, fears, interests, goals

Step 1ac - From those desires, fears, interests, and goals identify the areas that are likely to be stopping them from getting what they want, or are lighting up their fears, or are keeping them from their interests or goals - ideally something that you can write about or to in order to help.

Step 1ad - Identify where they are at with tackling that problem. Do they know what their problem is? Have they started searching for a solution to that problem? Do they know that solutions even exist? Have they found other solutions they have tried? In essence, map out their entire experience up until this point related to the thing you might end up focusing on

Step 1ae - Identify all psychographics and highlight related ones (related behaviors/interests which can inform how you might interact with or speak with this person)

Step 1af - Identify books or other media they consume which are related to the book you are going to produce

Step 1ag - Begin research on all of that similar media to uncover related connections that you can pull on later

There's layers within each of those steps you can go into, but for the sake of brevity (hah), let's call that good.

Next we're going to dig into the desires/problems/solutions and figure out where our writing fits into the picture.

(Step 1b)

Step 1ba - From our individual person market research above, pull out all the desires/problems/solutions that you came across or thought of

Step 1bb - for each desire/problem/solution write about how you might be useful in serving that desire, helping with a problem, or providing a solution

Step 1bc - take all of your previous writing and identify spots of overlap

Step 1bd - look through the related media research to identify spots of overlap and see where people have spent money to serve desires, figure out problems, or enact solutions to those problems.

Step 1be - highlight and/or create lists of specific phrases that your target individual and related individuals use with respect to their desires/problems/solutions ... referencing reviews on amazon can be useful in this regard

Step 1bf - highlight and/or create lists of specific phrases that are used in books which your target individual or related individuals use with respect to the desires/problems/solutions

That step 1b series is where the initial research and initial ideation start to coalesce and help make sure that subsequent ideation and writing are going to serve the person you want to be writing to in a way which is more likely to result in a book that people will buy.

I think I skipped 100 steps in there, but let's just keep the ball rolling, shall we?

Step 2

Create an Amazon Listing that's Perfect for your reader.

Ironically the source for this 5 step process skips right over the writing of the book. It just says "you completed market research" and "the book is written."

Like,

What?

But sure, let's play along.

We still have 4 more steps to sell our 10k+ copies of our book.

So let's just assume the book magically appears in our hands and I guess now we'll continue.

(Perhaps "writing a book that you can sell 10k copies of" is a different 5 step process, my mistake)

Ok step 2 actually starts off by breaking it down into 5 more steps to begin with. We're gonna take each of these and try to break them down even more.

Step 2a - Book Cover

Step 2aa - Since the book is written, we know what it's all about, who we've written it to, the outcome in question, so our task is to take all that we know and come up with a compelling book cover that's likely to get people's attention

Step 2ab - Start by collating all books of a similar subject and/or which are written to the same target (we may have this from step 1af)

Step 2ac - If not done, organize all the 'competition' by sales

Step 2aca - If we want to be thorough, we ought to dig into each of these books to find out how they sold their book, what made it successful to them, because ultimately we're trying to pick a book cover that will appeal to a cold audience, so we might be making a mistake by copying a book from a much much much larger brand that carries different weight than we do

Step 2aca+ - so that's like ... 20 more steps in there to figure out which books are being sold by brands/personalities in a similar boat as us and ranking them by cold selling success on amazon and then seeing what they've done with their book cover

Step 2ad - If not done, get the top 10, 20, 50 books in each category we're aiming for, as we may want to strategies our look to stand in contrast to what the book is most likely to sit amongst

Step 2ad - again, yet another several dozen steps for getting all that together

Step 2ae - Once we have ALL the possible competitor covers we're going to be compared to, why not collect cover examples from completely different markets which we like, as we might find something unusual to our typical market which we really like and which might help stand our book out

Step 2af - Additionally, consider the outcome you're likely trying to help your reader attain and ask yourself if any of the covers you're considering feel like that

Step 2ag - Now it's time to design the cover! Are you going to design it yourself?

Step 2ag+ - if you're going to employ an artist, you'll have to go through another couple dozen steps in order to identify and employ an artist

If you're going to design the cover on your own, it's probably even more steps, especially if you've never made a cover before

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Whew

I'm exhausted writing this. And we're not even halfway through.

And for those of you guessing that there’s a deeper point here,

And wondering if you can skip to the point,

NO

No you can’t.

You have to suffer through this just like I did writing it.

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Step 2b - Book Title and Subtitle

Step 2ba - identify the core ideal outcome your book brings people

Step 2bb - list all the points of curiosity that might bring people to read your book

Step 2bc - list all the points of authority that might bring people to read your book

Step 2bd - list the top 20 most common amazon keywords related to your book

Step 2bd+ - multiple substeps here including researching the keywords your most closely related successful competitors rank for

Step 2be - Take everything you've done so far, everything you know about the book, the person its' being written for, the outcome, the curiosity, the authority, the keywords, the competition and write out 5-10 possible title/subtitle combinations

Step 2bf - Pick one

Hey look, we reduced step 2-2 down to 6 steps! (if you ignore then few dozen substeps of those steps)

Step 2c - Reviews

Step 2ca - get at least 100 reviews

Step 2cb - I need the Captain Picard meme here where he puts a hand to his head in the perfect expression of "I've really had enough of this shit"

Step 2cc - Let's just ... guess ... at how many steps it takes to get 100 reviews

Step 2cd - First, we're going to assume an entire segment of this is going to be taken care of by "step 3" which is "give away 1000 books" - because a lot of what you need to do in order to give away 1000 books are similar steps to what you need to do in order to get 100+ reviews ...

Step 2ce - In other words, you need enough relationship capital to be able to cash in on the effort of enough people in order to garner 100+ reviews (that is assuming you aren't trying to buy/bribe your way to those 100+ reviews)

Step 2cf - So in order to break this down into any kind of steps that make sense, we have to back out to the part where you're actually in a position to clearly get 100+ reviews from people. And that's going to depend entirely on the resources at your disposal.

Step 2cg - Let's assume we're using email. Well, let's assume you have a highly engaged email list of people who really care about you. *If* you plan this far enough in advance and lead people into a state where they are anticipating an opportunity to do something FOR you, you *might* be able to get 100+ reviews from a list of 1000 people. Most people aren't going to be able to get 100+ reviews from a list of 10k people.

Step 2cg+ - So then we have to ask ourselves, what are all the steps necessary in order to get our audience of 1000 email readers to the point where they are primed and excited to participate and put in effort to give you 100+ reviews

OR

What are all the steps necessary to buy or bribe our way to 100+ reviews

(As a note for this article, if you’re actually reading all these steps, I'm not advocating for that, I'm just mapping out this nonsense to prove a point)

20 steps?

What about each of those steps?

Do each of those steps have 20 more steps?

Step 2d - Book Description

Insert 100 more steps here

Step 2e - Supplemental Content

Step 2e100 - This is like a catch all for the final 100+ steps of this subset step 5 of step 2. As the original article puts it, this is basically all the rest of the graphics and copy necessary for promoting the book on amazon including:

Getting editorial reviews

Related content as part of the listing

Video and product reviews from influencers and paying customers

Good god. We're only halfway through now?

Step 3

Give away 100s or 1000s of books

Ooooh boy.

Ok.

I guess we need to break down how to give away books. In this case the author advocates for a book launch.

But to do a book launch you also need an audience.

Or a lot of money to burn on ads.

Like.

A lot.

Let's start with an audience.

So, step by step breakdown of building an audience?

Amusingly the author doesn't indicate any part of this step of *where* you get the attention, they just say give away books and build an email list ... so for the sake of my sanity in writing this absolutely absurd article here today,

Let's just accept that somehow we're magically getting eyeballs.

Because the following steps each have like 100 components I'm not gonna get into.

Step 3a - Build an Email List

Again for sanity lets just say we're gonna do this with paid ads on facebook

Step 3aa - set up facebook ads account (this is at least 10 steps by itself)

Step 3ab - somehow magically know how to make an ad in your facebook ads account

Step 3ac - plan your ad (again, somehow magically knowing how to plan the ad)

Step 3ad - write the ad copy

Step 3ae - edit it down for a written ad and/or record for a video

Step 3af - AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Step 3az - Realize right before launching ad that you need a place for people to sign up to your email list

Step 3aaa - assume you have an email list already, and you just need to create a landing page, make a default landing page and set up with all the appropriate copy (again, like 50 more steps here)

I'm skipping a bunch because this is tedious

Step 3aaz -- finally with landing page hooked up to email list and proper automated emails and follow up pages set up to assure decent interaction for your money spent you're able to turn your ad ON

Step 3aaa - Question my sanity as a writer.

Step 3b - Email the email list both to assure people get the book and to get reviews for the book

Step 3ba - Can I skip this now?

Step 3bb - I'm tired.

Step 3bc - And hungry.

Step 3bd - And I want to go outside.

Step 3c - sell the book

Yea easy. Just, sell the book

It's 1 step.

Sorry, that's 1 step of another step.

Step 4

Drive traffic to your amazon listing

Ok so,

This is basically an extension of the above list which involved some paid advertising the way I set it up, but this one is using Amazon Ads.

I don't know squat about Amazon ads.

So,

Step 4a - learn what the hell Amazon Ads are

Step 4aa - Really this is, learn enough so that I can get in, set up an ad, turn it on, and get some data

Step 4ab - So I need to figure out where I do that

Step 4ac - How I can set up an ad (hopefully its similar to other ad platforms Ive used so i can shortcut some understanding and get to action)

Step 4ad - What I'm allowed to put in an ad so I can then go plan and make the ad

Step 4ae - plan and make the ad

I think my brain is leaking out of my ears now.

I'm actually going to skip step 5 of that article because it's literally "Accept Offers for Promotion."

Like,

You're just gonna have people throwing offers at you to promote your book, so you better be ready to accept all of the gold showering over you.

Getting people to promote your book for you is an entire book in itself ... at least.

Let's Finish This

Our minds love reductionist thinking.

Simplicity.

It sells for a reason.

Because when you take something like the above and break it down into what it actually takes we get super overwhelmed.

We just naturally can't take it.

Heck I got overwhelmed just writing this article. As you can see while I got into it I just went A LITTLE FRIGGEN CRAZY DIDN'T I???

Like I seriously had to take several breaks while writing this absurdity because the actual amount of "steps" it takes to do anything is STUPID.

I ended up writing out 59 steps in those "5 steps" and I skipped over and oversimplified a whole bunch, noting throughout that some steps likely have several dozen if not 100+ actual steps as part of figuring them out.

Which is funny when you think about it because the actual path to writing and publishing a book on Amazon and getting it downloaded, read and paid for by 10k+ people probably has you traversing at least many of those steps.

And if you have every one of those steps clearly labeled,

Shouldn't that be a map to certain success?

Yea well,

That's not how life works.

When we stand back and look at reality it very quickly starts to look like this:

You really don’t want me to have tried drawing this …

Yet we THINK it should look like this

By the time we've gone through it all, our path has ended up looking like one of these:

VASTLY different paths depending on the choices made,

And that static image is unable to take into account that every time you take a step the choices we think are going to show up after that step very well may change completely.

MAYBE

Just maybe,

We can recognize that life is not a series of 5, 10, 59, or 670, or 10000 steps mapped out, but an ever changing path which can evolve with each single step you take in the direction your headed.

Because that's what's really happening.

You've got to be able to understand the steps in front of you so you can take the next best one, but then you also must become adept at adapting to the changes and understanding coming to you.

If you wed yourself to a long complex step by step process, you can easily find by the time you get to the end that you're a completely different person and the place you've ended up is not where you actually want to be.

BUT

On the other side, if you think that what you're doing can be simplified into 5 simple steps to success you don't give credit to all the important little steps which can actually have a profound impact on you as a person - but only if you acknowledge them and take them.

Additionally if we allow ourselves to be seduced by reductionist thinking, then when our path doesn't look like the easy 5 step process, we can so very quickly subvert all of our effort and rob ourselves of the growth and change we actually seek.

So in summary,

We started with a 5 step process to sell 10k+ of a self published book on Amazon.

Those steps were:

1 - Do market research

(Skipping writing the book, that's a separate 5 step list)

2 - Create your perfect Amazon Listing

3 - Give away thousands of free copies

4 - Send traffic to your book

5 - Accept the inevitable paid offers that will come

EASY

So simple.

Why don't you have a book published already?

I mean if you can read this article clearly you can follow those 5 steps.

And if you're sold on the 5 step process to publish a book, I've got a 3 Step process for you to live in the home of your dreams, here's a preview, you can buy my 273 page book I wrote in between writing the Step 1 and 2 Sections:

Step 1: Buy Land

Step 2: Build House

Step 3: Profit

The Next Best Step

In an attempt to make something practical out of this article, I'd like to just point you back to our principled approach of taking "The Next Best Step."¹

Because when you focus on The Next Best Step you put yourself in a position to be receptive to the ever changing landscape of your life and situation.

Take the silly book example above.

Perhaps the best way to begin the "step by step" above is in the category of 'figuring out if people will buy your thing.'

(like, you know, before you write a book see if people want it, or, you know, just write a book if you want and accept that no one may buy it)

The way to do that has a zillion different possibilities.

If you want to know people are interested before you write a book, you could say ... publish articles on a place like Substack and see if people subscribe/pay for that. Much smaller steps. Much lower commitment.

Then if you manage to grow an audience of interested people in a place like this, you could possibly write a book to them. But you might find at that point you don't actually care about writing a book.

OR

You could write the fastest, dirtiest, slimmest down, easiest version of the book and see who gets into it - people who navigate uncertainty in order to get closer to you are your ideal people.

OR

Find a group of people you're already involved with and write a book for them.

OR

blah blah blah

You get the point.

It goes back to that chain of steps that actually unfolds as you take action.

It's In the Action

There's a reason we say Engage the Field.²

Because everything you're doing has 100x as many steps as you think it does and each step you take can reveal information which can change and/or inform the next step.

A step by step process is therefore useless outside of getting you to start Engaging the Field to begin with.

I mean,

Unless you don't want to do your own thinking, have your own personal growth, figure out the best answers to life the universe and everything FOR YOU uniquely....

Then probably don't engage the field and find someone to dictate your life for you.

That's not how I want to live though.

I want to take action, see where that's taken me, and then continue to take action, changing my behavior as I go, having the life I want NOW, while always moving in the direction I want to be moving.

Life's a path, not a recipe. Etc.

I think I've beaten this concept to death here.

Next up,

My 22,000 step process for getting everything you want, every day of your life.

(PS. A cookie for anyone who can tell me what that is in the comments)

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Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson

, CMO The Guardian Academy

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1. The Next Best Step

2. Engage the Field