How To (Kinda, Sorta) Share Your Book with 1 Million People
Four days before my book came out on Amazon, I was sitting in a Starbucks in central Florida, busily working.
But…I wasn’t working on my book or marketing my book. Instead, I was actually working. You know, doing my day job.
When I was putting together my book launch plan, there was one huge factor I left out — getting a new job. But that’s exactly what happened just six weeks before my release date…right around the time I was supposed to go hard on book marketing. I couldn’t do both.
That wasn’t part of any “successful” book launch that I had seen. None of the gurus talked about that. I wouldn’t follow the “plan” and “launch a bestseller.”
With four days left, I had two options…
a) delay the book release date or b) just get it done and move on.
Even though I was constrained for time, Option A wasn’t really an option. This book, Taco Jehovah, had already been delayed several times.
No one would’ve cared if I would have delayed it one more time. No one except for me. And I’m the one who cares the most.
That said, I still had one part of my launch plan that I could make happen: Thunderclap.
Thunderclap is kind of like Kickstarter for social media. The general idea is that you get your supporters to sign up and then a social media message will be coordinated to go out across everyone’s account at the same time.
Sounds good. But I needed at least 100 people to share a random message about a book they could care less about (remember, I’m the only one that really cares).
I had one thing going for me…my email list.
So even though I said I hadn’t really been working on launching a book, the truth is, I’ve been working on it for a year or two. Just not in a concentrated-only-about-this-book way. I had a list of people from my website and also a list of people on Medium after starting my own publication.
I could ask for their help.
The people on my lists were supposedly “fans” of my writing, I don’t know many of them. But this was the group that was going to put me over the top.
I would ask them to support me on Thunderclap. This sounded easier than asking them directly to buy my book.
To make sure I hit 100 supporters, I decided to sweeten the deal — and give anyone a free copy of my book who was on my email list and supported me on Thunderclap.
I had a time limit. Soon after sending my email, I had 60 new people signed up for Thunderclap. I thought this was pretty good. A few days later, I emailed my list again and almost hit the final number with a few friends from Facebook and Twitter on there, too.
But a funny thing happened on that email list — someone with more than 1 million followers decided to support my book on Thunderclap.
1 million? That was way more than anyone else who signed up to help with a huge potential to see a tweet about my book.
And it wouldn’t have happened without me at least asking.
It got me thinking — if I had been more strategic with this, and maybe just focused only on this leading up to the book — I may have been able to get more influencers to support the book. And grew that impact. This seemed a lot easier than asking people to buy the book: it was a collective message of support. And people like doing things together.
The results?
You know what, I didn’t sell a million copies. Nowhere close. But I did get more than 100 people to support my book on Thunderclap. I may have indirectly (and that’s a stretch!) reached 1 million people, but I definitely know that I reached 100 people with a message about my book.
Even though a lot of them got a digital copy of the book for free, that was a strategic decision by me. Giving away those copies was worth getting the word out about Taco Jehovah…which will hopefully pay dividends in some way down the road. If not for this book, then maybe the next one.
These weren’t random people who got a free copy…
They were people who agreed to help me. They had some stake in it. To be honest, I know most of the people won’t check out the book or recommend it to a friend. This book may not be for them. That’s okay. Maybe the next one will be. And my content relationship has become stronger with them, making them more likely to help the next time.
To reach a million people, you have to reach 100 first.
I’m Josh Spilker, a writer and author. I blog about the writing process at Create, Make, Write. My new book is called Taco Jehovah. For more like this, follow this publication:
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