I have a best-selling book on Amazon.
#1 in social media– ahead of Gary Vaynerchuk and the usual suspects.
I used the Dollar a Day Strategy to run Amazon ads to force it to #1 in multiple categories so I could take this screenshot below for your amusement.
But how to promote a book is a topic for another day. Today, I want to show you how I “wrote” this book in only a few hours a week over the course of 8 weeks.
I know some people like to pull out the rusty typewriter and go to their cabin in the woods for two weeks to write in solitude.
But I have a life with a hectic travel schedule, so finding blocks of time is hard.
Here’s what I did, instead, which you should consider if you’re struggling to get your book out.
I wrote an outline and then found experts who had already achieved success in each of those areas.
In my case, I wanted to craft the definitive guide to TikTok ads. So I needed to know:
- How to come up with topics to make TikToks on.
- How to film short-form videos. How to edit these videos.
- How to set up Business Center.
- How to set up ad campaigns.How to optimize ad campaigns.
- How to integrate TikTok into my agency’s processes.
- And so forth.
I found an expert who had done each of these things and asked them if they’d like to be interviewed on Zoom for 45 minutes about how awesome they are.
I don’t think one person said no– not even Michael Stelzner, Tom Breeze, Marshal Gillen, Eliot Padfield, or Perry Marshall himself.
I also have a lot of training on Facebook ads, so I was able to adapt that to TikTok readily since TikTok literally copied Facebook in how they do lead ads, the conversion pixel, Business Manager, and so forth.
The net time investment for me to “write” my book was about 20 hours– a dozen interviews on Zoom, some short clips in different places (more on this in a minute) and then some coordination with the team on what book cover I liked, some email copy to promote the book to our list, how much to sell the book for, etc…
The team probably put in 300 hours– since they had the heavy lifting of processing these Zoom calls, turning conversations into proper prose, creating diagrams from key points, taking screenshots from ad campaign walk- throughs, formatting the book, listing it on Amazon KDP, and so forth.
I know you’re probably supposed to record interviews from a professional studio setup.
But I’m on the road and don’t want to wait until I get back to our studio.
So I’m recording from my dentist’s office just 17 minutes after having my wisdom teeth removed.
Or the back of a Jeep, bouncing around dirt roads in Costa Rica. Is that lava from a live volcano behind you? Yes, it is.
And at the gate, where we have 25 minutes before we’re about to begin boarding– so why not pop open the laptop, clip on the mics, and hit record?
But we didn’t finish, so we did the rest on the plane while waiting for other passengers to come on:
Maybe I’m rationalizing, but I’ve found that recording in interesting environments spices up the conversation. While you won’t necessarily know where each segment of the
book was filmed, I’m convinced that when the vibe of the conversation is strong, it translates into a high-quality book.
Plus, since we have the raw videos, we can use not only the transcriptions for the book but as snippets to promote the book.
Seasoned authors know that having written the book is only ⅓ of the way there. You now have to promote it.
But if you’ve recorded these Zooms with figureheads in the industry along the way, you’ve already baked in your promotion– since you can repurpose these videos to get people to buy the book.
I asked Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner and owner of the most trafficked site in social media marketing, most attended the conference, and most popular podcast in this space, what advice he would add.
He said that the difference between free and paid is that a book or course has structure. People pay for that structure. And that’s why YouTube and social media is free.
So the fact that I’m in weird places recording the videos on an iPhone is fine because I’ve taken the time to structure the overall book– from the overall objective (how to drive leads on TikTok, how to open a successful wellness facility, or whatever your topic is) to the experts that share how to achieve each particular goal.
Maybe you’ve been “practicing” your craft for many years but just haven’t got the outline out of your head so that you can fill that structure with expert knowledge.
I hope this article gives you some inspiration and direction on getting your best seller out of your head and into the hands of people who need to hear what you have to share.