How to Launch Your Book like Tim Ferriss
An Unofficial Report Created by BookBuzzr for the Benefit of its Authors (For Private Circulation Only)
Tim Ferriss launched his book – The Four Hour Body in December 2010. The book quickly rose up the charts to become a top selling book on the New York Times list. It eventually displaced the Guiness Book of World Records at the top of the best seller heap. Tim detailed his book marketing promotions in a blog post, which we analyzed. We found that there are a number of lessons that an author can learn when launching a book in a grand manner and having a reasonable sales rank bump on Amazon. Some of this may seem obvious to you. If this is the case, then simply treat this report as a refresher to help you with your own book launch. 1. Know Your Goals When Tim launched, he knew exactly what he was shooting for: getting to the top of the heap on the New York Times hardcover best seller list. Most authors are not clear as to why they are running a specific promotion. Is it to bring awareness about the book? Is it to get a temporary sales bump on Amazon? Is it to enter the NY Times bestseller list? Is it to reward followers and build goodwill? Perhaps you simply want readers to read your book excerpt and let you know if they would buy the book or not. One way to define your goals clearly is to use the SMART framework below:
Specific – make it clear and unambiguous Measurable – define a clear number (sales rank, number of books sold, etc.)
Attainable – make the goal realistic after an objective evaluation of your circumstances Relevant – ensure that the goal is something that excites you personally Timed – ensure that there is a definite time frame for the goal 2. Sell the Salsa, Not the Burrito Every book buyer has a mild amount of anxiety when deciding to buy a book. Will the book be good enough? Or will it be a waste of time, money and shelf space? The problem is heightened if the book is new and does not have an adequate number of Amazon reviews. Tim’s solution to this problem was to “Sell the salsa, not the burrito.” In other words … Tim did not offer only his book as the prize to contest winners. Instead, he offered a bunch of interesting gifts and prize packages that were complementary to his book or likely to be interesting to his target audience. Examples included a 2 Week Italian Writing and Wellness Retreat, Indie 500 VIP Ticket and a device that helps improve the quality of your sleep. 3. Make Creative Deals Tim’s obviously got a lot of credibility (from the success of his first book) and contacts which allowed him to get several sponsors to give away prizes that were out of this world. However, there is no
reason why the average author should not be able to put together really attractive price packages. The key is to make some creative deals with relevant partners while setting up prize packages. Remember that the prize offered and your book needs to have the loosest of associations. Think about what might be attractive to your target audience. Let’s say you are a romance book author. How about offering specialty chocolates or access to a dating site as prizes? You could probably work out a deal with the chocolate company or dating site where they give you a complimentary or reduced price deal in exchange for exposure on your book launch page. Here are some ideas to get your creative juices flowing: -
Magazine subscriptions iPad and Android applications Ebooks (work out deals with other authors) Audiobooks Online courses Software applications (such as accounting, diet tracking, time management etc.) Time with semi-famous people (either in person or on the phone) Donations to charity Trial experiences at places with low marginal unit costs (such as gyms, spas, salons) Newly introduced products (such as diet foods, beauty aids, anti-ageing potions etc.)
4. Show Prize Values in Dollar Terms While Including Priceless Prizes Supermodel Linda Evangelista famously said, “We don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day”. Most people think that way. It may not be $10,000 but everybody has a dollar figure below which they will not stir into action. If you’re going to be asking your readers to jump through hoops and chase rainbows, you need to let them know that there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Be sure to show a dollar value alongside each of the prizes in your prize package. People need to know a rough but honest estimate of the prices of the prizes. And be sure to throw in a few priceless and invaluable prizes. How do you convert a hundred dollar bottle of wine into something priceless? Simple. Get a famous person to sign on it. In general, anything that is one of a kind that cannot have an ‘apples to apples’ kind of comparison becomes hard to value. Here are some ideas for creating invaluable prizes: - Personal portrait paintings - Bespoke clothing or accessories - Signed-gifts - Copies of out of print books, VHS Tapes, antiques, limited edition articles etc.
5. Reward Early Birds to Create Frenzy Many contests reward skill. Other promotions such as sweepstakes reward luck. Tim’s contest rewarded early birds. Spots were limited for most of the prizes. This created a sense of scarcity and a feeling that people had to get in early in order to get the prizes. Another thing that Tim did was to stick in a countdown clock on the contest details page. This gave people a very real sense of the passage of time and motivated them to take action. 6. Create Social Proof When people are confused about what to do, they usually look at what others are doing. If everybody else wants it and says it is good, chances are that they will also want it. With Tim’s contest being structured to reward early birds, several people jumped in early to say that they had complied with Tim’s request and had purchased his book. This gave other contestants the confidence and proof necessary to go ahead and participate themselves. So when running your own contest or promotion, make it easy for your visitors to show their support for your efforts. Provide a simple Facebook Like button. Or a “Tweet This” button. Over time, this will snowball into a solid display of social proof. 7. Keep it Simple The beauty of Tim’s contest was its simplicity and directness. There was no complicated slogan writing or form filling. The only form you needed to fill was a form to prove that you actually purchased the book. As proof you simply needed to upload a screenshot of the receipt from a seller such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble (Fig 1.) Of course, this would probably have created a bit of work for Tim’s administrative team since they would need to review each of the receipts to ensure that they were authentic. But from the users point of view the entire process was very simple.
Fig. 1 – Form to Upload Order Receipt
8. Be Gracious about Gaffes In any contest or promotion, things are bound to go wrong. A statement that you make can be perceived to be arrogant. Or your technology may not work as intended. In such cases make an effort to be gracious. Let the benefit of doubt flow to your contest participants. During Tim’s contest, there were several situations where contest participants were upset because a prize did not arrive or because of some other technical glitch. A few people found Tim’s “priceless” valuation of time with him (which was one of the prizes) as being arrogant. Tim was personally responding to issues that arose and clarifying where needed. 9. Be Unreasonable in your Expectations and use Pegging Let’s say you are at a shop in Venice. You ask for the price of a modest looking souvenir. The shopkeeper says it’s priced at $500. You balk. Then you look around for something priced lower. You find something that is definitely overpriced for $50 but you still buy it. This happens because of a process that some psychologists refer to as “pegging”. You set expectations up by throwing out some numbers. Tim used this idea in his contest. He had extremely high requirements from his contest participants. They had to purchase multiple copies of his books. Not only that, some of the prize packages required participants to buy 5,000 copies and 10,000 copies! By setting his expectations so high, Tim “pegged” their expectations. Participants then thought that it was not abnormal to purchase 30
copies of his book to give away to friends and family. At the very least, those who would otherwise have purchased only 1 copy went ahead and purchased 3 copies to be able to vie for the slightly advanced prize package. The best tribute for Tim’s marketing genius came from one of the participants who said in the comments section, “You wouldn’t believe how much of the inner-consumer you just brought out in me. And I thought I was good at controlling my spending urges…Can’t wait to read it ;)” 10. Make the Participant Feel Like They are Fighting for a Cause Tim also did a great job of making participants feel like they were part of something historic. Tim started out by saying “Welcome to “The Land Rush,” intended to be the largest book promotion in history…The goal of this post is to offer the prizes of a lifetime, and to help ‘The 4-Hour Body’ beat The Guinness Book of World Records on The New York Times bestseller list.” BHAG’s (Big, Hairy and Audacious Goals) have a tendency to motivate people better than small goals. Obviously, not everybody and every book can vie for the New York Times best seller list. Perhaps your book has too much of a niche audience. But you can do something that is inspirational to your specific target market. For example, you can offer to donate a dollar to a specific, relevant charity for every book purchased. Specify the quantity that you are looking to generate on the contest page. If you fall short, that is fine. At least you tried heroically. Such an approach will also get you some marketing support from the charity. 11. Allow Non-Buyers to Play Not everybody may be interested in purchasing your book. But they may be interested in the free prizes. Your promotional contest mechanism must allow such people to also participate. For example, in Tim’s contest, you could become eligible for some of the prizes simply by doing something promotional for his book. He said on his blog, “If you can’t afford the Superman Showcases listed above, here’s your chance to win whatever isn’t bought: promote The 4-Hour Body like your life depends on selling 50,000 copies (without spamming), and describe what you did in the comments. The same 48-hour deadline applies. Try and measure the impact (clicks, sales, etc.) whenever possible, and put “CONTEST” at the top of your comment.” People got very creative. One participant set up a Google Adwords campaign. Another created a Google Android app. Note that Tim asked them to promote the book and not the contest. The contest ended in 48 hours. But the book sales can go on years after the contest has ended.
12. Have a Minimum Number of Participants for the Contest Ready Tim had an established platform and thousands of adoring blog readers who became the participants for his contest. In contrast, if you’re platform size is limited, it is a good idea to first build up a platform or work with other authors in running a contest by combining two or more author audiences. If you don’t have sufficient numbers to make the contest a grand success, have a way to opt out of the contest. In other words, retain the option to continue with the promotion only if there is a base level of interest. You can even enlist the help of your first few volunteers to help you spread the word about the contest. Thus, your contest process would unfurl like this: 1. Visitor visits your contest page 2. Visitor is given the following: a. Basic details about your book b. Basic details about the contest c. Your goals for the contest d. A countdown contest timer which shows when the contest is going live e. The message that the contest will happen only if there are a specific number of contestants enrolled f. Message that the early birds (i.e. first five or ten or any other number that you decide on people to show interest in the contest) will receive prizes if the base level of interest is achieved g. Email details of visitor so that you can send email to the visitor 3. If a minimum number of interested participants is not achieved, the contest is called off with only the contest seeders being given gifts for their enthusiasm. 4. If the minimum number of interested participants is achieved before contest launch date, then the contest proceeds. The advantage of this system is that if you are unable to muster up interest in the contest prior to the contest launch, you don’t need to give away the more expensive prizes. You can always reschedule and set up a new contest date and work towards getting enough readers interested in the contest on that date. So go out there and think up your own book launch. Good luck! ********************************************** Vikram Narayan is the founder of BookBuzzr Book Marketing Technologies. (Twitter @bookbuzzrCEO )