It’s not as hard as you think to become a best-selling author.
1. Write a book
If you don’t write a book, you can’t sell a book.
And…here’s the kicker…starting a book is not the same as writing a book, except in the context of ‘I am writing a book’. You actually have to finish writing the book so you can say ‘I have written a book’.
You can’t just start it then get distracted by your Twitter feed or that photo on Instagram of that cat that did that thing or that video game where you drive there and shoot that.
Your book needs to have your words in it, not someone else’s words, and should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. You could try leaving out the middle, but more often than not, people prefer to read a book with a middle.
2. Make sure your name is on the cover of your book
If someone else’s name is on the cover of your book, it probably means that you didn’t actually write it and you shouldn’t be passing it off as your own. See Tip #1.
Even if you sell millions of copies of your book, if your name is not on it, people will not believe you when you say you wrote it.
3. Put your book — the one that you’ve written, not the one that you’re writing — somewhere that people can buy it
If your book is:
- In your head — this means you haven’t written it — see Tip #1
- In a notebook and/or in a drawer
- In a file called ‘best-selling book.docx’ on your computer
then people cannot buy your book, hence you cannot fulfil the ‘selling’ part of ‘best-selling author’.
You have to put it somewhere — like Amazon or your website or in a bookshop or on a table at the next local wrestling show — so that people can give you money in exchange for it.
4. Tell people where they can buy your book
If no one can find your book, no one can buy your book. I would have thought this one was obvious.
5. Convince people to buy your book
Look, there are a lot of books out there. And I mean A LOT!
You will need to convince people to buy your book as opposed to the one next to it or the one that appears first when they search for a book on Amazon or no book at all.
Please note: It will be slightly harder to convince strangers to buy your book than to convince your mother to buy it.
6. Bang on about your book at every opportunity
Every spare moment you have, tell people about your book. Tell your family, your friends, your friends friends, your Facebook friends, that one Twitter follower you have, strangers on the street, and strangers on the internet. Tell them all. Some of them will buy your book just to shut you up.
7. Convince other people to bang on about your book
Remember all those people you told about your book it Tip #6? Tell them to tell everyone about it too. Tell them that everyone else is already telling everyone else about your book, so they should too. If people that aren’t you are telling people to buy your book, then it must be good. After all, everyone is talking about it.
8. Tell people that other people are buying your book
If you’ve sold at least one book — even if it’s to your mother — you can tell people that people are buying your book and that other people can’t be wrong. They don’t want to miss out, do they?
9. Sell a lot of copies of your book
This isn’t strictly necessary but you probably should sell at least a couple of copies.
10. Put ‘best-selling author’ in your email signature, on your website, in your profiles, etc.
If your email signature and your website and your profiles, such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, all say you’re a best-selling author, then who can argue with that? It says so. Right there. See?
11. Put ‘best-selling author’ on the cover of your book
This sounds like it might be jumping the gun a bit, but since you know you’re going to be a best-selling author, it makes good business sense to put the words on your book cover at the start. You don’t want to have to change the cover next week and, anyway, your email signature says ‘best-selling author’ so it’s true. You know your mother or aunt or that guy you talk to at the bus stop every morning is going to buy a copy, so you might as well put it there so people know they’re buying a book by a best-selling author.
Hint: If you know any other best-selling authors, such as Dave who sits in the cubicle next to you at work who published his book last week, ask him to provide a quote for the cover too. Endorsements from other best-selling authors can help with sales.
12. Call yourself a best-selling author. Who’s going to actually check?
Who sets the bar? Who decides whether a book is ‘best-selling’ or not? Why shouldn’t it be you?
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
If HD can do it, you can too.
OK, so I gave you 2 extra tips for free. You’re welcome.
P.S. I was going to stop there, but I’ve just realised that just because you’re a best-selling author doesn’t mean that lots of people have bought a book that you’ve written. Maybe you’re best at selling pet accessories or lumps of wood or spider sculptures and you happen to be an author because you’ve written a book about whatever? That would make you a best-selling author, right?
P.P.S. You still have to actually write something to call yourself an ‘author’.
