How to Put Your Next Book
On The New York Times Best-Seller List
In Eight, Short Days
Dear Business-Builder,
Would it help you to see how a successful marketing plan takes shape? What goes through a veteran marketer’s mind as he approaches a new project?
Yes?
Good thing – because that’s pretty much all I’ve got for you today!
It’s a true story and it began about four weeks ago, at around 5:00 on a Saturday morning …
The great Martin D. Weiss, PhD – legendary founder of Weiss Research – emerged from our guest bedroom and padded across my living room floor in his slippers and jammies.
I was already lounging on the couch in my sweats; pulling long and hard on my customary morning espresso. “Morning.” I managed. “Sleep well?”
But the good doctor was already thinking business: “So how are we going to make my new book a best-seller?”
So much for niceties. Time to work. And the work at hand would clearly be the promotion of The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide – Dr. Weiss’ step-by-step manual for saving your home, income, savings, investments and retirement in these hard times.
Right off the bat, I knew that promoting this book was going to cost me hundreds of hours of hard labor and also hundreds of thousands of dollars in April income.
Ditto for Martin’s company. None of us was going to get rich divvying up the small royalty on a $27.95 book instead of offering a product with multi-million-dollar profit potential.
But Martin didn’t care. He was passionate about this book; about using it to help people get through this crisis and to use it to help them to secure a stream of income and profits.
Plus, we both knew that a public relations tour in support of the book would introduce thousands of people to Martin and his company for the first time. The list-building potential was substantial.
We both also knew from long experience that once folks bond with you by reading your book, they can almost always be counted on to become the most loyal long-term people on your house file.
And this, combined with thousands of new names, was enough to offer hope that going through this exercise could result in greater sales revenues and royalties down the road.
Still, though, hope is no strategy. And for my money, hope that causes you to sacrifice “bird-in-the-hand” revenues …
While counting on there being some indefinite number of birds in some immeasurable number of bushes at some indeterminate point in the future …
… Is the worst kind of marketing insanity.
I’m a direct response guy. Direct response is science. Science means you base crucial decisions like this one on numbers.
If I’m going to accept the certainty of abysmally low revenues for a whole month, I also needed to see it as an investment with an equal certainty of substantial returns at some definite future date – and the sooner, the better.
Because after all – hope and goodwill don’t pay the rent … and they sure won’t pay the mortgages for more than 200 employees who are counting on us.
Give the client what he needs;
not necessarily what he thinks he wants …
So despite the fact that Dr. Weiss wanted to talk about how we were going to make his book a best-seller, I quickly realized that our first order of business needed to be something else entirely.
The critical first question was, “What do we do immediately AFTER The New York Times blessed us with best-seller status?”
How do we leverage the huge success we will surely make of The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide in April to bring even greater value to our customers’ lives in May, June and beyond?
And as always happens in direct response, that question raised three more:
“What is it that our prospects and customers are most intensely desiring … fearing … or frustrated with … right now?”
And … “How can we best help fulfill those desires … allay those fears … and/or ease those frustrations?”
And … “How can this follow-up product do these things so excellently, its price turns out to be the bargain of a lifetime?”
Fortunately, I already had an idea for what I believed was the perfect follow-up product – a product that begins where his book leaves off and that …
- Will bring enormous additional value to our customers’ lives …
- Leverages and amplifies the full month of marketing we’ll be doing for the book and seamlessly takes that messaging to the next level …
- Intensifies and deepens the relationship between Martin and everyone on his list …
- Effortlessly transforms casual book buyers into hyper-loyal advocates for Martin his company, and …
- Will, in all likelihood, more than offset any losses in revenues we will experience in the meantime.
So right off the bat, instead of brainstorming the promotion of this new book, Dr. Weiss and I agreed NOT to view this as a single 30-day book-sales campaign but the first volley in a 60- to 90-day campaign to make an even larger improvement in his customers lives.
That done, it was time to begin mentally processing my client’s original question …
“How do we make
The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide
an instant best-seller?”
Before I began to formulate my answer, I did what I always do in such situations – I silently asked myself three questions …
“Who are the ideal prospects for a book like this one?”
The answer: Ideal prospects for financial books and educational products and investment trading services tend to be fiscally conservative, mature, have hard-earned assets and cash they need to protect and also have money they need to keep growing.
Plus, most are solidly in the “God-helps-those-who-help-themselves” camp; self-helpers who tend to distrust the establishment and insist instead on taking personal responsibility for improving their own lives and securing their own futures.
Fortunately for us, that’s a perfect description of most of the names on our house file – and it’s also a great description of millions of names on potential partners’ files and millions more who use search engines every day of the year.
So the next question followed logically …
“What are these kinds of people thinking and feeling about the world at large right now?”
The answer was instantly obvious to me: A week or so before, CNBC’s Rick Santelli had started a revolution simply by asking floor traders “How many of you are excited about paying your neighbors’ mortgages?”
Plus, public outrage was exploding over news of taxpayer bail-out money being used to give failed executives at dying companies million-dollar bonuses.
Now, hundreds, perhaps thousands of “Taxpayers Tea Parties” were spontaneously springing up from coast-to-coast; all scheduled for tax day – April 15 – which would arrive smack-dab in the middle of our promotion for The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide.
And the folks who were most likely to attend those protests – or at least to wish them well all feel pretty much like I’m feeling right now. They …
FEAR that Washington’s tinkering with the economy and massive deficits will only make matters worse …
ARE FRUSTRATED AS HELL that the guilty CEOs and corporations that caused it are being rewarded with bail-outs while the rest of us pay the bill, and …
DEEPLY DESIRE a more prosperous future for themselves and their children.
So the next question was equally obvious …
“In what ways does the product, my client’s new book, CONNECT with — fulfill or assuage — these dominant resident emotions?”
Now, after thinking about who my prospects are and their dominant emotions, it was time to consider the product itself. And truth be told, Dr. Weiss’ new book dovetailed perfectly with our prospects’ dominant emotions at this point in time.
The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide begins by validating the reader’s fear — describing how this crisis began and why it will inevitably get worse before it gets better.
Next, it allays that fear by giving the reader an extremely detailed, step-by-step plan for insulating his or her income, home, savings, investments and retirement even as this recession intensifies.
Then, it turns that fear into optimism by revealing the investment vehicles and strategies that can be counted on to produce substantial profit and income opportunities at a time like this – investments that fit this environment hand-in-glove.
And it also validates the reader’s frustration with many pages on the futility of Washington’s bail-outs … how they can only make this crisis worse – and more importantly, presents a strategy by which the American people can convince our leaders to end these hand-outs before they bankrupt our nation.
Any copywriter who writes a “book ad”
in a situation like this should be shot at dawn!
There was something much larger … much more important … far more historic than mere self-interest here: Something that was crying out for us to make this much, MUCH MORE than simply an ad campaign.
To my way of thinking, it should be – WOULD be — the centerpiece of a grass-roots national campaign designed to …
- Help the book buyer protect his income, home, savings, investments and retirement from the ravages of this current crisis …
- Help the reader help his family, friends, neighbors and co-workers survive this crisis …
- Help him help save America from bankruptcy by combining his voice with ours in demanding that Washington stop these futile “rich man’s bail-outs” of CEOs and failed companies.
In short, this would not be a sales campaign. It would be the beginning of a NATIONAL MOVEMENT – with Dr. Weiss in the forefront – to save the American Dream for our children and our children’s children.
So with these ideas taking shape in my now-wide-awake brain, I was almost ready to answer Dr. Weiss’ question. Only one question remained …
“Would you be willing to DONATE
100% of the royalties you earn
to charity?”
At this point, I was sure that this campaign couldn’t be about Dr. Weiss or his book. It needed to be about something much larger.
It was absolutely essential that Dr. Weiss’ commitment to help people and to preserve the American Dream for our children be his ONLY motives. That meant we could not be seen as profiting from this campaign. And that meant Martin’s royalties – 100% of them – must be forfeit.
My question clearly took Dr. Weiss a bit off-guard. I’m sure it was the last thing he expected me to ask. But he quickly rose to the bait. “Sure,” he said. “Maybe …”
So I quickly explained my thinking; how much good this kind of campaign would do for our customers and our country.
We talked about how, by engaging our prospects in a national grass-roots movement, we could encourage each one of them to buy multiple copies – for family … friends … neighbors … and co-workers.
We brainstormed the idea of asking buyers to purchase four extra copies — one for his Congressperson … two for his state’s Senators and one for the White House – and to mail them with the simple message, “Stop these insane bail-outs NOW!”
And I mentioned that by donating 100% of our proceeds to charity, our pure motives would make it possible for us to form alliances with news organizations and non-profits on the right as well as on the left – and by doing so, to bring thousands of new people into the Weiss fold.
You should have seen that PhD’s eyes light up!
The Weiss Team Kicked BUTT!
An hour later, the two of us sat in my main office with Michelle O’Halloran — Dr. Weiss’ new VP/Marketing — to talk about the conversation we’d just had.
I don’t think I’d fully gotten the phrase “national grass-roots movement” out of my mouth before the lady was all over it; throwing off more great ideas than Carter’s has little liver pills.
Within a day, Michelle had the whole Weiss team on the job as well as a ton of political action people she knew from her days at Media Research Center.
Long story short …
Twenty-four hours after we introduced The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide to the Weiss house file, Amazon.com declared us a national best-seller.
Not only did we blow away all but one installments of the ultra-popular Twilight series, we hit #3 best-seller overall … the #2 best-selling non-fiction book on the site … and we also hit #1 in three financial sub-categories.
Four days later, The Wall Street Journal added Dr. Weiss’ new book to its Best-Seller List.
Eight days later, the Holy Grail: The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide became an official New York Times Best-Seller.
More importantly, tens-of-thousands of people are now reading Dr. Weiss’ new book and by doing so, discovering the astonishing depth of his foresight and wisdom.
And next week, Dr. Weiss will personally deliver tens-of-thousands of petitions to Congress and the White House – all demanding that Washington stop giving our money to rich CEOs of failed companies.
Not bad so far … right?
Stuff to think about …
First, no house file campaign stands alone. The promotions that went before are the tableau against which each new campaign is played out. The promotions that follow the one you’re working on now need to feel like logical – indeed, seamless — continuations of a larger theme.
That way, the momentum each campaign creates is never wasted when a new campaign begins.
Second, it’s NEVER about the product. Always begin with your prospect. Identify HIS fears, frustrations and desires – the dominant resident emotions that your product fulfills or allays.
Then, find the ways your product addresses those actionable emotions and focus your messaging and your strategy on them. Your prospect will be more than half-way sold before you write your first word of sales copy.
Third, don’t just think outside the box; realize that there IS no box. We could have just done a typical benefit-based promotion for this book. Lord knows, there’s plenty in it to justify the price hundreds of times over.
Instead, we made The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide much more than a book. We made it the centerpiece of a national campaign to save families right now, to help victims of the crisis by donating the author’s royalties to charity and to save the American Dream for future generations.
And by doing so, we elevated it head and shoulders above the hundreds-of-thousands of titles booksellers offer.
So now, it’s your turn: Use the comments below to tell me what you can learn from this process.
Yours for Bigger Winners, More Often,
Clayton Makepeace
Publisher & Editor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE
P.S. Want to see what happens next? OK … Click here and grab a free subscription to Dr. Weiss’ Money and Markets e-letter and read the sales page (maybe snag a copy for your swipe file).
Then buy the book. Then save everything you get from us for the next month or so.
It’ll be like getting a free education in how to do it right.
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18 Comments »
Join the Discussion!
Let us know what you think. Or ask us anything. Or offer your own sage advice.
The only rule: RESPECT THIS HOUSE! Postings that contain abusive language and/or personal attacks will be cheerfully VAPORIZED. One cross word and – POOF! – your well-thought-out post will be gone in a puff of smoke.
– Clayton
Comment by da — April 27, 2009 @ 3:53 pm
I am astonished by this depth of copy and marketing insights.I guess skepticism will have greeted readers if the promotion was not a result of something larger but merely a sales pitch.After all others too claim they can protect hard won incomes of restless and depressed Americans.This is a well from which thirsty folks -marketers and copywriters-alike can draw form.Am i permitted to call you Claude Hopkins II?
Comment by Belinda B. — April 27, 2009 @ 4:33 pm
Clayton,
I’m surprised you don’t have a direct link to Amazon’s product page on Martin’s book. I know this wasn’t a “sales” letter, but you’re making me work to find the book instead of making a potential sale seamless for the reader. Also, after reading this letter, I can’t get the image of Martin in his jammies out of my mind.
All the best,
Belinda
Comment by john — April 27, 2009 @ 5:02 pm
Brilliant Clayton. Martin Weiss should pay you double your already hansome cut of gross! Your a marketing genius. This post will come is very useful for a book I am managing for a client…
I’ts not a book…it’s the centrepeice of a movement!
I look forward to staying in the loop on the Money and Markets list.
John
Comment by John — April 27, 2009 @ 5:18 pm
Papa Bear,
In your info product “Kick It to The Curb”, you reveal the methodology of creating a “whole brain” lead. Hitting emotions with the right, relevant image(s)and letting the benefits tickle the logical side of the brain.
This is revolutionary.
In Direct Response, you have to know how to use visuals- it ain’t about looking pretty.
I like the cover imagery of Dr. Weiss’ new book. The book cover presents a good example of copy and imagery working together to affect the “whole brain” and to cause a sale. Nice work dude.
My background is in airbrush illustration. I’ve moved on to Photoshop for the past year-just to learn it.
Thanks to your teachings, I’m going to be a heavyweight contender in copywriting.
You give us understanding and reasons why this stuff works. Thats what we want. I’m addicted.
Thanks. Keep “it” coming.
Comment by Clayton Makepeace — April 27, 2009 @ 5:24 pm
Belinda, here’s the link to the Amazon page. Just know that by buying it without going through the Weiss process, they won’t know you bought it and you won’t get the follow-up emails.
http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Depression-Survival-Guide-Protect/dp/0470393777/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239098844&sr=8-1
Comment by Bob — April 27, 2009 @ 5:30 pm
Clayton, wonderful insight that can be applied to any product. It’s helped me figure out how better to market a conference. My question: at this point in your career, did you make all these moves instinctively and later figure out the logic? Or did you really think each step through as described without the creative, intuitive jump?
The question of rationale+creative approach versus the creative+rationale jump interests me and maybe others.
Comment by Clayton Makepeace — April 27, 2009 @ 5:38 pm
Hi, Bob — at this point, the questions spring to mind automatically; force of habit. The answers often take some skull sweat.
Hope this helps …
Comment by Clay Schultz — April 27, 2009 @ 6:46 pm
Hmmmm … What have I learned from this post? Several thoughts are swirling through my mind …
The larger theme…or cause of this selfless promotion amplifies Dr. Weiss’ position as an advocate. It builds trust and goodwill galore! That will pay off with bigger winners, more often.
Clayton, I (we) appreciate your help!
Clay
Comment by Rich — April 27, 2009 @ 6:50 pm
Clayton,
You took “the box”, dismantled it, and sent it off for recycling!
Rich
Comment by Daniel Moser — April 27, 2009 @ 7:47 pm
Clayton,
Interesting story. Was wondering if you ran any print ads. We used to run full-page ads in the WSJ and IBD in the old days (1980s) when we came out with a new report by Doug Casey and some other big-name finance guys. Those were always fun. Or was this purely an Internet-only marketing campaign?
Dan Moser
Comment by Clayton Makepeace — April 27, 2009 @ 9:17 pm
Great question, Daniel — I, too did some full page newspaper ads in the 80s.
This time, we began our campaign with the low-hanging fruit — promoting on the low-cost and no-cost Web. The paid offline campaigns come next; over the next few weeks.
BTW: I spoke with Robert Ringer just the other day — the best-selling author and great pioneer of self-publishing and promotion via newspaper ads who helped both Doug Casey and John Puglsey get their books to #1.
Small world …
– Clayton
Comment by Clayton Makepeace — April 27, 2009 @ 9:19 pm
Hey, John! Thanks for the complement but I had almost nothing to do with that cover. The art was done by the publisher, Wiley & Sons under Dr. Weiss’ direction.
– Clayton
Comment by Caleb Osborne — April 27, 2009 @ 10:13 pm
Clayton,
So glad I’ve been stalking your promos on that email list for a while now … attended the online event … bought the book and signed the petition.
I’m SSOOOOOOOO impressed with how you guys are looking to, literally, change the world — instead of making a quick buck — this could be amazing!
Later
Caleb
Comment by Chris Goegan — April 28, 2009 @ 1:17 am
Great story Clayton. Thank you for blessing us with the theory behind the campaign. You are generous with your gifts and talents.
- Chris
Comment by Yoav — April 28, 2009 @ 1:54 am
Hey Clayton,
Thank you. This is an amazing case study. I think that the most amazing thing about it was the revelations you had once you started thinking like the prospect.
The prospect was angry and upset, he felt strongly about the subject and was in desperate need of a champion. And the only thing that stopped Dr. Weiss from becoming a champion was a $27 obstacle. And by removing the $27 obstacle you sold him a champion and a cause and not a book.
Simply amazing. Thank you for sharing this.
Yoav
P.S.
Does one of your books focus on this aspect of marketing? (i.e. thinking like your customer, tapping into the resident emotions, how to know what your prospect really wants, etc…)
P.P.S.
Dr Weiss is very generous if he allows you to share the inner workings of his business in this fashion. If you think its appropriate, please thank him from the readers of the Total Package (I am sure the rest of the readers will agree with me on this)
Comment by Clayton Makepeace — April 28, 2009 @ 5:48 am
Hi, Yoav!
Yes, Dr. Weiss is one of the most generous people I’ve ever met. Not only is he happy that I’m sharing this stuff with you guys, he usually gets on the phone and also tells his competitors what he’s doing — and even answers their questions about how they could do it too!
Why? Because in addition to being generous, Dr. Weiss is also SMART: He knows that in this business, the more successful your competitors are … the larger their lists become … the more names YOU have available to grow your own company.
– Clayton
Comment by George — April 28, 2009 @ 7:24 am
Good day, Clayton,
Dr Weiss did the right thing to agree to your suggestion about the $27. I would have been disappointed if his motive was merely to profit from all the poor souls out there. But that is how great businesses succeed, and direct response copywriters can be really proud that they are part of such an enterprise.
Having said that, this is also a time of great opportunity for many of us to find our hidden strengths and resources and some of us can come out with the right solutions and answers. A man of Dr Weiss’ deport and acumen did act fast to get the book out and Clayton, it must be really satisfying for you to have done your part so thoroughly well.
Let me add that opportunities are there everywhere if only we take some effort to find them. No wonder the internet has spawned search engines that do their job so well and we can never do what they can do. I got to read about Dr Weiss on The Total Package and it is all because of this wonderful world called the web.
So, let us get it right. Even in this gloom and doom scenario, there is always a brighter side to set our eyes on.
Good to talk to you again,
George
Comment by John Forde — April 28, 2009 @ 7:42 am
Hey Clayton,
Well played! For your follow up act, I just want to note we did something similar to help make NY Times Bestsellers out of a couple books that predicted today’s financial wreck… plus another that predicts an even greater wipeout tomorrow.
The latter was the book version of a colleague’s documentary “I.O.U.S.A.” which is all about how the government is auctioning off our future and the futures of our children with unfettered spending and borrowing.
We made a deal with the documentary distributor for copies to give away… and made a deal with the publisher (also Wiley) for copies of the book. Actually, now that I think of it, we had to buy the book ourselves via Amazon to give away.
But it didn’t matter because we were able to write a sales letter rallying customers around the cause — which we firmly believe in, by the way, and I think that’s essential to making this work — in which the offer was to get both the book and the DVD free as part of the subscription package to one of our best value investing newsletters.
In our case, as in yours, it would have been a waste to tick off the “how to” bullet points of the book and DVD and leave it at that. So instead, we built the letter around all the pulpit-pounding, heartfelt rhetoric and supporting proof of the “movement” we wanted to start.
The high response and high number of two-year orders added tens of thousands of new subscribers to the letter, which more than covered the cost of sending out the DVD and even the cost of ordering and sending the book via Amazon. It didn’t hurt our stature on the best-seller charts either, since we had to buy the book to give it away.
Plus it had the added benefit of getting the word out about a cause we feel strongly about and, along with our readers, consider “situation critical.” Especially right now.
As a footnote, I then went and wrote a promotion for another product with a strong feature on an offer… forgetting my own lesson… and it faltered out of the gate. Not wanting to see if flop, I immediately rewrote it… during a 7 hour flight and through much of the next day, which was going to be the first day of a vacation.
The rewrite had much more focus, this time, on what you what call the resident emotions interwoven with our forecast for the months ahead… with the offer being pushed back and introduced only after we’d created that much larger emotional context. It too turned out to be a big success. Last count I saw was around $350K in sales in under 48 hours. And we’ve now got a renewed franchise we can go back to over and over again.
Anyway, all that just to throw a little more evidence toward your excellent post and case study. Keep up the good work.
John F.