The One Question That Changes Your Book's Fate

Author Marketing Superpowers Bootcamp Day 1: From Story Idea to $1,000 in Book Sales

Unfortunately, I made a big mistake that cost me close to $10,000 out of pocket and tens of thousands of dollars more in lost time.

If I had answered this ONE question about my book series, I could have saved all of my money, stress, and despair.

Before I share with you what it is… first, let me share with you the awesome ride I have in store for you over the next few days.

This is Day 1 of 5 of the Author Marketing Superpowers Bootcamp.

The goal is in <5 minutes a day to help you take a story idea to $1,000 in book sales and beyond with as little stress, time, and money as possible. I created this bootcamp to make the Author Marketing Superpowers even more accessible and easy to use.

Each day is based on one of the five types of marketing superpowers covered inside 50 Author Marketing Superpowers (you can read for free here and get the physical deck with beautiful illustrations here).

Now, let’s get into Day 1 all about the Elemental Powers: Find Your Readers.

Who do you write stories for? This question changes everything…

I know it sounds simple. Almost too basic.

But here’s the thing. I find that the vast majority of writers avoid answering it before writing their books. Instead, we end up writing a story we think people will enjoy, and after it’s written, try and figure out “how the heck do we market this?”.

I did this too.

For my second book series, Conspiracy Chronicles, I wrote three books before even publishing one of them. Rapid release, I thought! After all, everyone kept telling me how important a backlist was. I might as well work on developing that and then market my books.

I ended up publishing 6 books in that series before even trying to market it. Between editing, cover design, and proof copy costs, I was out close to $6,000.

I didn’t have much savings. In fact, I was close to having no money left to publish more books.

So I finally started running Facebook Ads to my series.

It was a young adult dystopian, zombie game-lit mash-up about a secret society at my alma mater (I wrote this before I even applied to college there 🫢).

$1,500+ of money lit on fire from Facebook Ads later, and I realized… this book may not have a market.

Frick….

I never want this to happen to you. Luckily, we can unleash the Elemental Powers to save us from this stress.

Share in a reply to this email (or you can fill this out privately), your answers to the following questions:

Step #1: Write to Community — what shared interest(s) or passion(s) do your target readers have? This can be a genre, a hobby, or a profession. The key is developing a hypothesis about what communities exist that you would enjoy writing stories for.

Step #2: Readernapping – what are your target readers already reading, watching, or listening to? Document what books, movies, podcasts, YouTube channels, and more forms of media that your target readers likely consume. Write down the name of each content and the average viewership or sales ranking. The key is understanding if there are enough people who participate in this community to make a living.

Ensure that where you are “readernapping” from is highly aligned with the interests of your target audience. If you have trouble finding enough media by searching online (think 10 to 20 targeted creators or pieces of media) go back to step #1 and revise your target community.

Step #3: Reader Cities — where do your target readers hang out? Now write down what online communities your readers congregate in and join them. This includes Facebook Groups, Subreddits, Discord communities, and even in-person conferences and events. The key here is for you to identify a few places (~5) that you can join and start to passively gain insights about your readers’ desires through observing different posts and comments.

If you have trouble finding any Reader Cities but have identified content to Readernap from, this is a great sign that a community to host conversations with your target readership needs to exist. You could be the one who creates it 😉.

Step #4: Story Spy – why do your readers enjoy consuming this type of content? Now, actually read, watch, and experience the content you identified in Step #2. Start by reading any online reviews of the content, then dive in and note what you think is working well and what could be done better about the content. The key here is seeing what is resonating with your target readers and finding ways you can innovate and create an even better experience.

Ultimate Goal: Story-Market Fit – all of this is building toward helping you build a strong foundation for Story-Market Fit, when your story can be marketed to a defined group of readers profitably.

However, once you complete Day 1, you still have a ways to go in achieving Story-Market Fit and taking your story idea to $1,000 in sales and beyond. I’ll be back tomorrow with Day 2 of the Author Marketing Superpowers Bootcamp all about how you can now write a story that your target readers will love.

As an extra note, if you haven’t read my article on Smallest Viable Readership that may also be a helpful supplement here 😊.

And that’s it for this one, I’ll be back tomorrow with Day 2 of the Author Marketing Superpowers Bootcamp.

I’m very grateful to have you here with me 💙.

In the meantime, don’t forget…

Together we are boundless,

Michael Evans

The Author Sidekick

P.S. Want to see if your stories are resonating with your target audience by knowing where readers are most and least engaged with your book? I’m creating Reader Meter to help you do just that. You can check it out here.