Authority
by Nathan Barry
Pages: 192
Authority Book Review
Nathan Barry was the entrepreneur that pulled me back into email marketing. Email marketing was something I studied in the early 2000s but let it go by the wayside and presumed it dead. I thought social media would reign supreme but Nathan was able to convince me otherwise through his teachings. Authority isn’t a feel good type of read. It’s one of those reads that reveals you need to put in a ton of work and actually need to follow through.
There is a bunch of useful information for writing, marketing, connecting with your audience, and ultimately selling your book.
Onward to the takeaways
“You can continue to create cutting-edge work and strive to be the best in your industry, but until you start teaching and sharing, your reach and influence will be limited.”
In order to be successful you need to keep learning every day.
“Have an idea for a book? Congratulations! You’ve made it to the same place as 80% of the rest of the population. Turns out, just about everyone wants to write a book. But very few people actually do.”
In order to write your book you need to make consistent progress every day, no matter how small the goal is.
When you teach, your audience comes to you. Give them enough value and they will happily pay you for more.
“You could spend months researching, testing, and installing different software to run your website. Don’t. Just use WordPress.” Note: Holy balls I know what it’s like to sink a bunch of time like this!
“The goal of email marketing, when done right, is to provide immense value to your reader with each email.”
Don’t let your email list die. Providing valuable content every week or every few weeks is enough to not be forgotten. Otherwise you risk more unsubscribes.
There’s a lot of writing required for a book. Expect upwards of 40,000 words for all tasks involved: book, guest posts, launch and update emails, posts on your own site, etc.
Writing a ton is a good thing and not something to be feared.
Communicate clearly and do not put so much emphasis on being clever.
Instead of pricing your book based on what others are doing, price based on value delivered.
Switching media can raise the perceived value of what you’re teaching.
You can’t trust the opinion of your friends and family but you can trust their wallets.
“Instead of bundling your book as a downloadable file (like a PDF or ePub), you can build a website specifically for the contents of the book.”
“All the successful authors I know have taken full responsibility for the promotion of their books as well. And that’s when they have publishers.”
“Pitches from random people don’t convert well. Instead you need to stay in contact with your subscribers.”
Guest posts can come from building relationships slowly. Leave helpful comments on their blog posts and start small conversations on Twitter. Then you can offer relevant content. Eventually you can offer the guest post.
“A great way to get attention for your book is to give away preview copies to friends and influencers.”
Don’t be afraid to ask for testimonials. An easy way to get great testimonials is to write a true statement for someone you know. You can have them sign off on it and even write a higher quality endorsement in the process.
“A good sales page spends the first few seconds getting the visitor interested, then the rest of the time overcoming objections that keep the visitor from making a purchase.”
“When sales drop, keep teaching and giving content away for free in order to reach new people and remind your existing audience about your products.”
Build trust so that you can sell.
When someone mentions mistakes in your book, store them somewhere to work on them all at once so you don’t create a new version every time an issue is found.
As sales die down, look towards other ways to monetize the book such as deal sites and workshops.
A few people will ask for refunds no matter how good your book is.
When self-publishing a book you have creative freedom. It is your project and you don’t have editors or publishers telling you what you can and cannot do. Use this creative freedom to make the best possible book.
Start before you feel ready!