You are not the person you were a year ago.

Nor will you be the same in a year.

For that change to be significant and positive, you must deliberate in the moment. Every scroll on TikTok is a word lost in your quota for the day. Whether positive or negative, large or small, what you do now compounds.

We focus too much on the extraordinary—the big moments, not the common moments. But we get more of them, and they compound faster. It’s not who you marry that makes for a happy marriage; it’s how you treat them daily.

If you read this season’s bridge posts, the sequence was from your future self contacting you and thanking you for signing up for this season. Your future self was reflecting on the work you had done to get yourself to a new place.

Now, we close the circle and communicate with our future selves.

Looking ahead to next year

One final assignment.

Go to your calendar and mark one year from now with the following task: Make a note to email Joe.

Next, write a letter from your future self about all the changes that will have taken place in you and your business. I know this is a bit woo-woo, but trust me.

Imagine what you and your business will look like a year from now.

Define the outcome and the action you took to make it a reality.

If this is a repetitive action, then define the time interval. Here is an example.

“I’m grateful for the weekly work you did to write bonus material to offer between each book so I could build a read-through sequence for our top series. That has resulted in a 10% increase in read-through and three to five email replies from fans who thank me for the bonus content.”

Go back over this season and review some of the work we discussed on calming your mind to be a better practitioner of your craft and ways to have a deeper devotion to treating your writing like a business.

Make sure at least one of the items is about improving your craft. Your first book someone reads sells them on all your future work. Don’t think ads or marketing will ever be as powerful as a reader’s connection to your story experience.

Now, you could just blow this off. Some will, and they will get the corresponding results because how you do one thing is how you do everything.

Those who embrace this final assignment and think deeply will get the best results. Don’t overachieve, but do push yourself into the uncomfortable zone. Nothing happens when you’re complacent.

Email me the email you write to your future self. I promise I will read it and won’t share what you write.

When that calendar alert pops up a year from now, open the email you sent and review it. Write only the things that you did well and the results. Don’t write excuses or tell stories. If you chose to change priorities, review why and what important information came to light that helped you decide to change your plans. Did it come together better than you planned?

If you want a reply to this future email, ask for it in the subject line. I will read it and give you my thoughts.

When you reflect on your journey a year from now, you will be pleasantly surprised by the incredible progress you have made. While it’s unrealistic to expect that you will have accomplished everything you set out to do, you will undoubtedly be amazed by the vast array of achievements you have attained.

And with this work, you’ve graduated, and we have scheduled your one-year class reunion.

We will reconvene in January with Season Four: A Browse Through My Bookshelf.

Class dismissed.

Wrapping up Season 3: Academy of Wayward Authors

This is the second to last article in this season.

I have a request to make: Email me about one business, craft, or mindset book that changed your life.

I’m interested in building my library and helping you to do the same. This also ties into season four.

For the next season, I’ll share my library and what I’ve learned from the various books. There will be a practical application as I share how I go about my newest creative endeavor, Author Nation.

When you read this article, I will have already taken over the show Craig Martelle used to run.

This will be one of the best seasons because I’ll share how I change a business. Author Nation is a complex system with many moving parts, and you’ll get exposure to my planning and organization process and see where I got the ideas.

That’s all to come. This article is meant to recap and reassess where you are now as someone who has made it through the Academy. This is the first of two parts.

Maybe you didn’t do all the exercises or find everything I shared right for you. That’s OK. I bet even if you didn’t do everything you planned to, you still have seen some change.

Almost a year has passed. What has changed for you? Has the future that you imagine begun to manifest?

We started with a focus on finding the future you. We looked at tools to help you quiet your monkey mind and become purposeful in your craft. We talked about the Default Mode Network (DMN), which makes us react and traps us in emotion, ego, and the routines of the status quo. We also covered that earning a living as a writer is a symptom of your devotion to creating a story.

I introduced you to the FitMind tool and shared how the one thing that could hold you back was yourself, and if there wasn’t personal progress, there wouldn’t be professional progress.

You may need to change your beliefs, perceptions, the stories you tell yourself, and all the parts of your identity holding you back.

We then discussed business systems and how to break down work, prioritize important tasks, and execute them. A lot of the discussion was about not getting distracted by doing more things rather than doing the vital few better and better.

We take the rocks and make them into gems. We do repeated work on the big things that matter—polishing the rocks into precious gems, not chasing butterflies. Did you figure out what the rocks are for you in the coming twelve months?

I then shifted to marketing, or as I think of it, building the asset of attention. Authors love this topic, which gets them into trouble if they don’t think through the attention they seek.

I reached back in time to tap into the legends of direct advertising and worked to make it relevant for publishing today. There is a long tradition of using emotion and story in promotion that we can learn from and apply in ways that align with our brand. Most authors fail because they never take the time to determine their brand promise. Your marketing needs that coherent message.

We also discussed how topics like direct sales and AI will influence marketing. While these topics raise fears and emotions, they are just the latest bugaboos.

There was a time in this country when whaling was a vital industry, and people fought to keep it in the status quo. Sailors took labor action to improve the conditions and pay of those working in the industry and resisted the disruption of kerosene and electricity.

But how many amazing things were invented by those who now had a few more hours in the day to read at night with a cheaper and more reliable light source? What industries and tools were offshoots?

When you are in a place where you can detach from the fear of the unknown and uncertainty to apply a bit of clear thinking, you can get closer to that future. You see, change only happens in discomfort and stress. If your thinking and business practices only work in the status quo, it’s only a matter of time before you’re out of business.

My greatest hope is that if you find yourself in an unsatisfactory status quo, your plan isn’t just to get away from whatever it is but instead to see that you have the tools to identify where you want to go and get there in a deliberate way.

Leaving KU just because you don’t like the payout rate isn’t a plan. A plan is starting a new series with a wide or direct strategy with thoughtfulness around what unmet market desire you’ll serve and how your brand promise is the obvious choice.

Both result in you leaving KU, but only one is more likely to be a sustainable business.

Next week is our final exam from the Academy. Let’s see if you’re ready to graduate.

Read: A Year of Transformation and a Final Assignment

Brand building in the age of AI

Let’s talk more about AI.

It is not about whether you should use it, what constitutes its use, or when it will become ubiquitous, but how it will level the playing field and eventually make it easier for you to stand out. We will also talk about your ultimate defense against it—your brand.

Here’s the thing: it won’t be how you think it will be. The full impact of AI on publishing will not be its use in content creation. The effect will be how it is used in running your publishing business.

When a technology becomes ubiquitous, it loses its competitive advantage and becomes the new norm. It’s not a matter of whether you use it, but rather that it is impossible not to use it.

You’ll need to automate and sift through massive amounts of data to find your audience and make your books visible. Running advertising will be akin to high-frequency trading. A human won’t be able to manage these amounts of data, make choices, and write books simultaneously.

The British Navy faced a grave concern as it adopted steam technology.

Britain was the Saudi Arabia of coal at the advent of the Industrial Revolution, and a steam engine vastly outperformed sailing ships. The Admiralty was concerned that coal would run out. Experts said that steam engines would become more efficient in burning coal, making coal last longer.

This didn’t solve the problem for the Admiralty because they were concerned that as steam engines became more efficient, they also became cheaper and more accessible, thereby increasing overall coal demand.

Eventually, better fuels, diesel and nuclear, were developed, but the steam engine was still the dominant method for powering large sea-going vessels.

Any modern navy needs steam-powered vessels. They are ubiquitous.

AI will be the engine below the deck of every business. So, I’m not expending energy in fighting progress. Instead, I look to stay at the tip of the spear.

Someone reading this article (I hope it’s you) will dominate their genre by following what they will read next.

This person will not just understand what’s below but will build their entire strategy around these principles.

For others, the rest of this article may seem harsh and too focused on competition.

Just recognize that as harsh as it may feel, the complex self-organizing system we call the publishing market is far harsher and cares even less about how you feel about fairness. It rewards authors who are willing to embrace competition by giving them further advantage.

Understanding costs and timeframe

Do you understand your costs better than other authors?

You win by embracing business practices like cost accounting and working to produce and sell your product for less than others. You will accumulate more profits to reinvest to improve even more. Applying AI in this area could result in better operations than you currently have.

The author who understands precisely what it costs to acquire and retain a reader compared to the lifetime value of that reader will dominate the genre.

I’m not talking about your CPC or what you pay for covers. Those tactical costs matter, but if you don’t understand how they combine into the bigger process of attention acquisition, you’ll never see the whole picture.

I win if I can acquire a customer with a larger spread between the acquisition cost and lifetime value. This isn’t new. It’s what Jeff Bezos identified when he said your gross margin is my market.

When it comes to time, there is a short time frame and a longer timeframe.

Most authors focus on the next book they launch next. Sell more books and get as many customers as possible this launch.

The focus tends to be on writing faster. From a production perspective, the author’s production cycle contains enormous waste. I don’t seek to run in that race.

What if you played the long game and thought out how to build a brand that makes it obvious to a reader why they should come back?

I’ve seen this play out in multiple genres where early entrants have a successful series and then coast. I’m not suggesting this is about going all out and never relaxing. I’m suggesting that the winners were the authors who took the long-term approach to building an audience. They looked at the whole experience (each book, the series, and the customer engagement), and if they became the obvious choice in the genre, they eventually would dominate the category.

It all boils down to positioning yourself as the obvious choice when readers are asked about their favorite author.

You achieve this by offering a unique brand promise and delivering on it.

This is where AI falls short. Those who blindly rely on it will produce similar results to others and fade into the background noise.

Only a human can grasp the nuances of emotion and understand how brand choice resonates with a reader’s identity. It’s a complex, emotional human aspect that robots can describe but not replicate.

You’ll be left behind if you believe your marketing and brand management can be solely accomplished by using copy from ChatGPT. It’s a tool, and the way it’s used determines its effectiveness.

I encourage everyone to embrace AI for writing copy and blurbs. It provides a valuable leverage point in the market to exploit. The more you make your readers feel seen and heard in the disconnected realm of 21st-century social interaction, the more they will desire to be a part of your brand.

In the long run, the timeless art of storytelling and the power of emotional connection will prevail. Are you building your brand to win that race?

Read: A Comprehensive Review of Your Time At the Academy

How identification and transportation will elevate your marketing 

I don’t claim to be a fiction writer, but I use narrative because it helps me learn, and I naturally use my experiences to teach others.

I’ve always believed that narrative is superior to other persuasive techniques, and some data supports this claim.

Recently, I’ve been studying Jonathan Cohen’s research on the effectiveness of narratives compared to expository messaging. Most of the studies show that narratives in media are more effective in promoting ideas and message adoption.

Your craft can play a magical role in marketing. As an author, you aim to persuade readers to invest in your fiction regularly. You don’t have to be the best storyteller, just their favorite.

Thousands of great authors struggle financially while mediocre ones thrive. This is the difference between being the best and being someone’s favorite. The favorite will always win.

So, how do we achieve this?

By incorporating identification and transportation in your story and applying the same in your marketing.

Let’s start with some definitions:

Identification occurs when readers see themselves as the characters. They believe they would act the same way, make the same decisions, and share the same beliefs.

Identification is different from a parasocial relationship, where fans create a social connection with a character. Both are powerful tools, but identification is more persuasive.

Transportation is the ability to pull readers into the story, giving them the sensation and feelings of being immersed. It goes beyond world-building.

When identification and transportation are successfully combined, research shows that readers can be influenced to change their beliefs.

If you excel at this in your story, readers will be persuaded. They will believe your story is real, even though they know it’s not, and they will think highly of your storytelling compared to others.

What if you applied the ideas of transportation and identification to your marketing? This is essentially what David Ogilvy aimed to do. When his advertisement for Rolls-Royce stated that at sixty miles per hour, the loudest noise in the car is the ticking of the electric clock, he immersed you in a story.

You can imagine yourself in a fancy Rolls, racing down the road, only hearing the clock ticking.

Legend has it that when the engineers at Rolls saw this ad, they also ensured the clock didn’t make any noise.

This concept is not new. Susan Rice’s “Tiny Thunder: Irresistible Messaging for an Overwhelmed World” discusses metaphoric storytelling as a way to convey a message.

Let me give you an example.

Drop your audience into the story. Instead of selling a product directly, the ads and blurbs you create serve as on-ramps into the story world. The same applies to your emails. Intentionally use identification and transportation to immerse your readers into your story world at first contact. Let curiosity drive them deeper. While others willingly turn over their messaging to AI, you differentiate and dominate by going in the direction of story.

Can you see it in the emails and content I create?

While reading this season, did you ever feel like a student at an old academy, walking down the halls from class to class, curious about your next teacher?

Was it me presenting the subject? Or was David Ogilvy, sitting cross-legged and smoking an unfiltered cigarette, giving the lecture?

Did you feel more immersed in previous seasons when I shared my real-life experiences in Las Vegas or stories I had heard from my Dad?

Did you gain insights from the old con men I introduced you to, like Amarillo Slim or the Yellow Kid?

Do you hear the words you read in my voice or your own?

Do you have a more profound experience when I asked you questions?

Take these examples as inspiration to move your reader through identification and transportation into a space where they deepen their relationship with your brand and what it has to offer.

Read: Why Your Brand Is the Ultimate Defense Against AI

The power of belonging

To what do you feel that you belong?

A family, a church, a civic group, this newsletter, a Facebook community…

Why do you belong?

The choice was made for us in some cases, like our nationality or religion. We accept it as our identity and continue as if there was no choice.

Think about the groups you chose to join.

How does that define your identity?

Why do you think the group benefits you?

Is it financial, emotional, or for fellowship?

Now, think how much of this was consciously your decision.

Keeping all of this in mind, let’s look at the group you have created or are looking to create. The one where you hope readers will assemble and you can activate when it comes time to sell them something.

Does your group have any of the compelling reasons to belong?

You can lure people into joining, but they don’t belong to your community. They are looking for a reason to stick around, and the attention clock is ticking. They are only a name on a list. You have to get them to believe your brand matters for them to act like it matters.

When you create a group for your readers, consider why would they choose to belong. It’s not to be sold something.

If your brand delivers the experience they desire, they will be waiting to buy from you, but there needs to be a reason for them to stay, and that reason needs to stand on its own.

I’ve touched on fellowship. This emotional framework is self-sustaining. We feel we get some emotional support and reciprocate by supporting the community.

You may ask, “Why?”

This seems so far from being an author and just another thing to do.

It’s not.

Cultivating community for your readers

We are a culture driven by experience, and you are in the experience business. It just so happens that you deliver those experiences via words. If you dream of having your stories adapted into film, you also seek to deliver experiences via a visual medium.

I suggest you have a community experience medium that can drive your business further and faster than advertising ever will.

Sure, ads can get you quick discovery, but what sells them a book?

That’s a vicious cycle.

A community of brand enthusiasts will use word of mouth to advocate for your brand, which will, in turn, build other enthusiasts.

That means you must define why a reader wants to belong to the community. The significant part is that it has way more to do with emotion and how people frame their identity than with a financial reward.

Think about the groups you tie your identity to and explain why. Start with the groups you chose to join, not the ones determined by who your parents were or what country you were born in.

How do they make you feel and why?

Your community will be your competitive advantage in the future. While others worry about artificial intelligence and ads, you will have a brand cult of readers who find sanctuary in your story.

You have a minimum viable community if one fan contacts you. If you have three to five super fans, you have all it will take to scale. The problem is patience.

You want it now.

For a community to build, members must build bonds beyond you and your characters—they need to connect with others and see that what is shared is your brand.

Read: Using Identification and Transportation to Captivate Your Readers

Advertising with Meta and Amazon

I get the emails just like you.

Emails declaring the machine god will do a better job than me regarding audience acquisition.

Could it be that easy?

After spending this much time at the Academy, I hope you question what you read. Here and elsewhere.

Despite your doubts, the writer seems confident in what they say. Additionally, author clients attest to the astounding results, claiming that nothing worked until now.

It is the latest craze, amplified by the buzz around AI. However, with so much noise and uncertainty, desperate people may be tempted to buy into something that seems like magic beans.

I’m going to call bullshit.

It doesn’t matter which platform we’re talking about. They simply optimize what you identify as important. These platforms act as amplifiers that will do your bidding if they see a profit, but the payoff is for them, not you.

Let me explain this further.

First, this all falls apart if someone reads your book and finds it uninteresting. Therefore, most advertising programs collapse.

Next, your advertising account has discrete information, such as your pixel and various ads. For Amazon, there is your author name, ASIN, and various ads.

Behind the scenes, data is being attached to each of these items, and when you look at this as an algorithm, we see that these are optimization loops. The system looks to get you more of something—impressions, clicks, and conversions.

Machine learning only looks to optimize. It will be better and faster in future iterations, but it’s working from the constraint of what it has learned. Garbage in, garbage out. Let me give you an example.

One of the prevailing methods of direct sales marketing suggests you run ads for a free book. Then, after the sign-up that gets you this prospect, you immediately offer a one-time discount on a book bundle.

The money from the bundle sale should then be invested back into ads to scale up.

Sounds good, right?

Since this is a direct model, you can use sales-based conversion that allows Meta to collect data and optimize the sales conversion. This is a powerful tool, and when done right, it can optimize well. Here’s the problem…

What are you optimizing for?

If you just let Meta find people on its own, it will optimize on people who will buy quickly when offered a discount. You further optimize by spending more on those ads that attract those conversions.

They post: I made $50,000 this month selling directly. I’ve never had such success! They forgot to mention that they spent $30,000 on ads.

Did they attract their ideal client?

No.

They are training the machine to find one-click bargain buyers and are building a list of such people. Can we nurture them to buy books directly at full price?

What if you start with your ideal client? Figure out who they are, what they like, and where they hang out.

“But Joe, I don’t know where to find them.”

Exactly. If you don’t, why would Amazon or Meta be able to do it? Maybe they don’t exist on those platforms.

This is where you can flip the script with a nurturing and retention system. If you are trying to build a direct store of readers who buy books at full price upon release, you can design your system to reward and highlight that behavior.

You should also end up with other segments of customers, like those who don’t pay full price. You can sell to them later when you decide to discount.

Now that you have customers who behave in a certain way, you can activate them and build look-alike audiences that you know are like the customers you seek.

Another approach is to use an existing segment as a seed audience. If you already have a list and can segment a small group that represents what you are seeking, however small, you can build on this base. This is best done through repeated launches, where you can drive that audience’s behavior into the purchasing systems of platforms without the clutter and confusion of other traffic.

Are you using the sale of a full-priced book as that key performance indicator or a sale that is easier to convert? Whatever you tell these systems to optimize, they will.

Here’s the big takeaway: There will always be hacks for quick sales. I don’t want hacks; I want to keep tipping cumulative advantage towards me. I haven’t found anything with the reliability or repeatability of identifying the ideal audience and deliberately nurturing them to know, like, and trust a good author.

Once I have that, I can use the market to amplify the results.

P.S. The answer to the opening question is that I don’t trust them, but I do let them optimize my objectives. When you know what you want, they can be great at finding more readers like the ones I seek.

Read: What Does It Mean to Belong? Why Community Is the Backbone of Your Business

I’ve been saying since 2019 that the reader-writer relationship drives the entire publishing industry—everything.

In its best form, it exists when you have first-party data from an emotionally engaged customer.

Let me explain…

Transitioning readers from third-party platforms to your own

The best representation of this relationship in your business is through first-party data. This is data given to you directly by the customer, not through a third party like Meta or Amazon. The second part is that data represents someone emotionally engaging with your brand.

Simply put, they care enough to share.

They share their email address, location, and other information to complete a transaction.

The big question is: how do you get that data?

Social media is rented land. It’s a short-term, expensive tract presented as your stake in a new gold rush.

Like all prior rushes or bubbles, this gold rush is great for early entrants to exploit the market, but it will eventually collapse. Most will be too late to get the full benefit of the boom. Then we all rush to the next one, never building up ownership of our own audience.

The idea I want you to consider is how to rent to own.

I’m not suggesting you leave your plot, especially if it works. I’m suggesting you redefine what working means.

If you have had great success driving sales on Amazon through your social media or influencers’ posts, then all you have is the sale. Sure, money is great, but with every transaction, you become more dependent on others for your order flow, and they will want their cut.

So, rather than focusing on the quick return of a sale on Amazon. Look to use social media to move people to your platform.

The fundamental objective is to win enough trust to get some first-person data—at least an email.

At a bare minimum, you can pixel them and use that information to retarget them.

Yes, this is a slower, more convoluted process, but it has a much bigger payoff.

It helps you to get visibility on invisible prospects and customers.

This strategy also addresses the much larger (6.5 times) audience of slow-to-adopt readers.

Bring them to your home and treat them like a guest.

Why first-party data matters more than ever before

Why is now the time to act?

There’s something bigger going on, and it may be the end of the end.

I posted an article about how TikTok and Meta will actively limit off-platform links, with a particular focus on those sent to Amazon.

This is different from the typical shift from easy visibility to pay-to-play. Meta and TikTok say they want to compete directly with Amazon for sales. They plan to go after the meat of Amazon’s business.

None of this surprises me. It was inevitable.

This means that links to Amazon will soon be far less effective if not completely stopped.

What would that mean to your business?

The solution is building a system of nurturing and retention to transition people from rented to owned land.

Acting as if the party is already over and using the time remaining to build up your owned land is what I’m focusing on.

How can I get more people to trust me and connect one-on-one?

The people with whom you have a direct connection become the nucleus for building your advantage in future rounds.

They will move with you no matter what changes happen in the market.

Read: Would I Trust Meta or Amazon to Run My Ads? The Limitations of AI-Optimized Technology

Dean Jackson is considered a leader in the third wave of direct marketers. He is behind the nine-word email and other marketing standards. He also coined the concept of SPEAR:

Short Personal Expecting a Reply.

Dean was an early adopter of using lead magnets. Way before the Internet, he was doing it with direct mail. He continues using direct mail and digital methods to run some of the most successful advertising campaigns. Dean is also the guy behind the idea of having a system that addresses customers who take longer to buy.

Tip of the SPEAR

His classic application of SPEAR inspired me to attend a three-day small group in Celebration, Florida.

Hey Joe,

A few of us are getting together next month for a three-day intensive work group on the eight profit activators. If you are interested in joining us, just hit reply and let me know.

Dean

That was it.

After I replied, he said he had me on the list and that his assistant would follow up with the event details and the hotel: no sales page or fancy automation.

A real live person emailed me to help me get my reservation and pay for the event.

At the event, we discussed this tactic.

Dean believes that this method gets better results.

Why?

You start with a simple ask. Am I interested?

“Yes, I am.”

“Good, I’ve got you down to be there.”

Incremental commitment. Nothing huge. No credit card needed to come out of my wallet.

Now his assistant emails and makes booking the room and paying for the session super easy.

I was told the event would be a laid-back environment with six to ten people talking through Dean’s eight profit activators. However, it ended up being an amazing event with eight people. I met peers with whom I continued to meet and developed a personal relationship with Dean.

Now, the question is, can you have this level of attention when selling a big-ticket item? The summit cost $5,000 plus travel.

But what about when selling a $3.99 ebook?

This is a good question.

Frankly, selling a single book cannot justify any customer acquisition in today’s marketing environment.

Most advertising courses use the idea of read-through to make their ROI and CPC palatable. This is because they focus on direct response. They spend X to get Y.

This perpetuates the idea that if you just get your copy right and have good creatives, you can turn your business into a money-making machine.

Instead, if you see that you need to invest in building the asset of an audience, you should focus less on the transaction and more on the relationship. All relationships are based on personal trust and interaction. Therefore, why not focus more on SPEAR?

Whenever possible, send short, personal emails that leave the recipient with an open-ended question that makes them feel they need to reply.

My most common example is your first email to someone who downloaded a reader magnet. You should ask them what they need to finish reading before they start reading your book next.

Recipients will email you back and tell you what they are reading or what is going on in their lives that is getting in the way of reading.

Their answers provide data about comparable authors and a topic to speak with them about if you have also read the book.

Finally, their reply validates your email address with their email provider as someone they want to see emails from.

While this sounds like a lot of work and a distraction from writing, it should not be ignored. This is how you build a wide bridge network and a community that wants to buy your books.

Read: Why You Should Transition Your Audience From Rented to Owned Land

What is Shuhari?

Shuhari is a Japanese concept that describes the stages of learning to mastery. The three stages are:

• Shu (守) – The first stage, where the student follows the teachings of a master without deviation.
• Ha (破) – The second stage, where the student starts to diverge from the teachings of the master and understand the underlying principles.
• Ri (離) – The final stage, where the student has internalized the teachings of the master and has become a master in their own right. Only then does the practitioner go on to create new practices.

The author’s path from learning to mastery

You may think this post is about being a good student.

No, this is about the lack of masters, specifically in marketing. This may be why so many wayward authors seeking a path to follow are misled or never find their master.

Let’s have some further clarification. When I say masters, I’m not referring to the self-proclaimed or flavor-of-the-month gurus that continue to pop up. How many seek mastery for themselves as a practice?

How many marketers profess to know the way yet haven’t demonstrated their journey of Shuhari?

So, what’s the solution?

If you wish to follow the Shuhari model, I can give you a different option instead of hiring a marketing expert.

Find a successful author in your genre to mentor you in your craft.

Forget about learning Facebook ads or making TikTok videos.

Focus solely on the practice of writing and producing works of fiction. A well-written story is the best marketing. Your writing sells future writing. The improvements from this process will be easier to see and measure.

Highly successful authors will nod their heads in agreement with what you are about to read next.

The main reason for the failure of a mentee is that they simply don’t do the work.

They either don’t do it or decide to argue with their mentor about the method. They want the result but are unwilling to do what it takes.

This is why, after a while, authors who used to be helpful to others quit helping. They often explain the plan, only to find themselves being ignored.

Future students suffer because the mentors choose to go into seclusion. Therefore, be a good disciple if you can get an author to mentor you and do the work when and how they dictate.

I’m currently working with a strength and flexibility coach. There are times when modifications are needed because I’m not strong or flexible enough. That’s different from not trying.

She could design the perfect program for me to go from zero to hero, but her mastery goes unused if I don’t do the work.

I have to act like the CEO of my body. Sometimes, that means motivating my present self to create my future self.

Maybe you can find a good marketing mentor. The rules of Shuhari still apply. My point is that if you want to practice Shuhari, the most effective way in your author career is to put 75% of the time and effort you apply to ads and marketing into your craft. Take joy in the practice and show devotion to improving and practicing your craft so that one day you can be the master.

Read: Adopting the SPEAR Approach in Your Direct Email Marketing

Getting someone to know, like, and trust you

What would you say to a potential reader who approached your table while you were signing books to convince them to buy your book?

Just imagine.

If a reader stuck their head in the door of the room you are in right now and asked, “Your book looks interesting, but is it for me?” what would you say?

Even better, before you open your mouth, what questions would you like answered to help you respond to the question?

Your marketing is no different. You meet someone who doesn’t know or trust you but seems interested in what you offer, so what do you say to them?

If past articles have left you wondering where to start, now you know. Think of your marketing as a series of conversations you would have with a stranger to make them feel comfortable and trust what you say and do.

How would you greet someone? How do you feel when a stranger approaches and tries to sell you something?

We used to go on family vacations to Puerto Vallarta. You were constantly on guard for the next person trying to get you into a timeshare presentation. Hotel bellmen, strangers in the grocery store, cab drivers, waitstaff—it could be anyone. It was funny, but it wasn’t.

Your defenses go up. You expect anyone who says hello will eventually try to see if you are interested in attending a presentation to get some amazing bonus.

Does what you say and your demeanor in your marketing feel like a timeshare salesperson?

Does it look like every other author in your genre?

This is where your deep understanding of your brand promise becomes what differentiates you and makes you find your targets faster.

We can get confused and think that marketing is about appealing to everyone. Indeed, we learned from Gene that you want to position your product to align with an existing market need, but we don’t want to make it so we are trying to appeal to everyone.

This is where marketing and the questions you would ask connect. With your marketing, the line of communication can be garbled. It’s not like conversing with a prospect face to face, where you get immediate feedback, including body language, tone, and facial expressions.

Instead, you only get limited intent, such as a click or a sign-up.

I have worked with authors regularly in the store’s top ten. Most of the time, they come to me because their business profitability has been deteriorating. They typically have high click-through rates and sometimes even solid conversion rates when advertising but see costs rising. The ads serve the purpose of getting sales, but those sales are coming from invisible existing customers, not increasing reach to new customers.

There is nothing wrong with this.

In today’s world, a portion of your advertising needs to be about waking up existing customers. I don’t want you to mistake that for an ad that will work with an invisible, untrusting prospect.

Two things need to happen in a well-designed marketing system. First, we need a process to turn invisible customers into visible customers that we can retain and reactivate at a lower cost than paid advertising. This defends your business from the active measures of Facebook and Amazon, which are trying to keep people on their platforms and charge you for access.

Then, we must build a system for attracting and nurturing invisible prospects into visible customers.

This means making messaging changes throughout the funnel.

Does yours?

Don’t be upset if you dig into your marketing and find that you lack awareness or nurturing phases. Most authors don’t.

The sales and advertising platforms want you to depend on them for customer access. They want you hooked. They are the new gatekeepers in publishing.

I don’t fault them for doing this. This isn’t evil; they are extracting value from the platforms they built.

This is your chance to set yourself apart. The sooner you design a system that answers the question, “Your book looks interesting, but is it for me?” the sooner you make a sale.

It doesn’t have to be in the first advertisement. It works best when it’s a process with steps of micro intent that deliver rewards (see last season). When you answer that question, it’s time to say, “Hey, don’t just go on what I’m saying. Try it out for yourself. I appreciate the time you’ll put into reading this, and then you’ll know for sure.”

Then, the actual selling begins…

Read: Master the Art of Learning With Shuhari