These tips are based on my experience as an author of 2 bestselling books, and a publishing company owner, and learning from others who are further ahead in their journey.

1/ Start promoting your book as soon as you can. The earlier you start, the better you do. You can begin as early as 2 years before you start writing your book.

2/ Pay (premium) for a (good) editor.

3/ A non-fiction book is a souvenir. A vessel for your ideas themselves. You want to spread (and not hoard the ideas). Give the ideas away, and make people fall in love with them so much that they want to buy the souvenir.

4/ Start by testing articles ? for the subject matter ? and see what resonates and then expand on it. Treat articles and short posts as your minimum viable product (MVP).

5/ Include thoughts of people who will promote the book in the book. These are players you want to establish a relationship with.

6/ Include the important keywords in the tagline – for maximizing discovery.

7/ Plan publishing a lot of articles to coincide with the launch. Go on podcasts and host AMA for the social media audience.

8/ Build a pre-launch team. This will help facilitate Amazon reviews and word-of-mouth.

9/ Change the CTA of your email signature to ask for the book reviews for the entire launch year.

10/ Add a page right in the middle of the book to ask for people’s help. (not everyone will like it, but results will be net positive).

11/ First market to a subset (of the market) where people can’t live without your book. By doing this, you’ll conserve time, energy, and money.

12/ Don’t invest in PR. Instead invest that money in getting your books in the hands of the above subset.

13/ The cover of your book is more important than you think. If it wasn’t you could have emailed people a PDF. Your cover won’t sell the book, but a bad cover will hinder the sale.

14/ If you have written an excellent book, make time to host and do bookstore signings or a book tour, talking to a small group of people, loyal readers, one at a time. Do it 100 times a year, and you’ll seed the book correctly.

15/ Sell to organizations that buy on behalf of their members.

16/ Almost all of your readers/buyers will discover the book outside a bookstore (Amazon or another). So improve discovery (by writing articles about it or mentioning in places where your ideal buyers hang out) to get more people to get it.

17/ Be smart about getting social proof. If you want to sell to associations, then don’t get blurbs from other authors or consultants. Get them from widely recognized leaders of leading associations. Get as many as you can get.

18/ Don’t pour every iota of time, money, and effort into the launch only to collapse in a heap later and hope for the best. Instead, commit to marketing the book for a year after launch.

19/ Know which metrics to follow. Instead of keeping a sales target, keep a target of getting 100 Amazon reviews. With later in place, sales will take care of it itself.

20/ To add extra value, create permission assets and offer the reader about $100 in additional bonuses. This will help build a list for possible later editions.

21/ Find those who have reviewed similar books and send them copies of the book to get them to review it. About 25% of those who receive the book after confirming they want it will mention it or write about it.

22/ Engage with podcasters, give them a synopsis of the book and a set of questions to ask to make it easy to do a good interview.

23/ Create a landing page with elements of distribution embedded in it.

24/ Produce a book trailer and use YouTube pre-roll ads to drive traffic to this trailer by targeting talks and videos about the book’s topic.

25/ Use a drip campaign to retarget all signups with reminders to review and share the book.

26/Throughout the campaign, identify people already connected with us. Then reach out to them individually with our offer for the book.

27/ Assign a set number of copies to give away.

28/ Write articles where the author talks about what she is doing, and what we are doing as a company, and through it, prove the book’s concepts and bring new people to it.

29/ Keep the sentences short and make revelations big and exciting. This way,  people/readers will leave with important and actionable sound bites. This in turn, will help with recall, shareability, and word of mouth.

30/ Audiobook – In the author’s voice.. Because readers appreciate when the author does the reading and connects with them. They become fans if they like the book.

31/ Write a timeless book (or one that will be relevant for the next 5-10 years at least).

32/ Proper launch is essential. Do that well and keep going past it,

Trade up the chain. Appear on small podcasts and write articles for small niche sites first. 

33/ Use discounting to build your audience and bring new audiences and fans into your work.

34/ Carpet Bomb the internet (of your niche) to make a noise.

35/ The best marketing you can do for your book is to start writing the next one because more great work is the best way to market yourself.