How We Pre-Sold a Print Book (and Made $8,268.54 in 7 Days)

In January 2019, the Sleeknote marketing team set an ambitious goal: to write, edit, and publish a print book by the end of Q2 2019.

By the end of March, we had a proofread manuscript, a cover, and, most importantly, a proof copy of our book from the printer. 

Having never published a book, we did what most people do and turned to Google. 

But after reading one too many articles telling us to “email our subscribers” and “promote with paid ads,” we devised our own strategy.

A few months later, we took pre-orders, and to our surprise, we made $8,268.54 in pre-orders in the first 7-days of our launch.

In this blog post, I’ll share the launch strategy for our book, Built to Scale.

I’ll also include comments from my co-authors, Rikke Berg Thomsen and Seray Keskin, sharing their and my biggest learnings and what we would change if we were to launch a book again. 

Table of Contents

• Should You Even Write a Book?
• Strategy #1: Create World-Class Pre-Launch Bonuses
• Strategy #2: Market Where Your Audience Hangs Out
• Strategy #3: Write a Pre-Launch Email Sequence

Should You Even Write a Book?

Before sharing how we launched our book, I want to explain our decision to write a book in the first place, as our goal greatly informed our launch strategy.

Despite the earnings mentioned above, our primary goal with Built to Scale was neither making money nor publishing a bestseller. 

We wanted to write a book that would be the go-to marketing resource for e-commerce marketers, a resource marketers would reference and refer to repeatedly in the future. 

Moreover, from a business perspective, we wanted to write a book that would:

• Reduce our business’ churn;
• Win back customers;
• Position Sleeknote as an authority in our vertical;
• Reward customer and partner loyalty;
• Upsell new and existing customers to an annual subscription;
• Warm marketing and sales qualified leads for Managed Solution, our in-house agency; and
• Warm marketing and sales qualified leads for our software.  

Now that you know our motivation behind writing the book, let’s discuss the three strategies we used to pre-sell it.

Strategy #1: Create World-Class Pre-Launch Bonuses

Launching a book used to be on the publisher. Today, the author’s responsible for getting the word out about their work and creating as much buzz as possible (especially in self-publishing).

One way to build anticipation before and during a launch is to offer pre-launch bonuses.

Here’s how the strategy works:

To incentivize orders before the book goes live, you offer several time-sensitive bonuses that go away by a specific date (which often ties in with the end of the pre-launch campaign). 

For instance, if a customer buys the book directly from you, you redirect them to a dedicated landing page where they can access their bonuses.

Here’s an example from Brian Kurtz’s launch for his book, Overdeliver:

Alternatively, if the book is only available from an online retailer like Amazon, the customer forwards their receipt to the seller to claim the bonuses. 

When Michael Hyatt launched his book Living Forward, he offered $360 worth of bonuses if the buyer forwarded their receipt.

Even though our goal wasn’t to launch a bestseller for the reasons mentioned above, we decided on the latter approach as it gave us greater control over our launch.

How to Create World-Class Book Pre-Launch Bonuses

During our brainstorming sessions, we considered several ideas, but not all were viable. 

For instance, one idea we had was to record an audio version of the book with all three authors reading their respective chapters. 

But after factoring in recording and editing time, not to mention the book’s length (500+ pages), we shelved it and returned to the drawing board. 

It’s important to mention here that we wanted to create bonuses that were as good as the book. We didn’t want to cobble something together at the last minute. 

Instead, we wanted to create bonuses that complemented the book. Much like the content upgrades on our blog, we wanted to make something that invited readers to refer to the resources frequently.

After much back and forth, we finally settled on five pre-launch bonuses we felt proud of, including:

• A 30-day free Sleeknote trial (including all our products and features);
• An eBook with plug-and-play copy formulas for popup campaigns;    
• A swipe file of ecommerce email templates;
• An activation guide to help readers take action on the key insights and takeaways from the book; and
• A bonus chapter.

But that’s not all.

We didn’t want to direct customers to Google Docs bonuses after purchase. So, instead, we sent them to our designer, Damien, to ensure that they matched the book’s design, look and feel. 

Again, we didn’t want to give the impression that we threw something together at the last minute. After all, “We go the extra mile” is one of our company values—a value we take seriously. Our goal was to convey that value with the book and the bonuses.

Should You Add a Value to Your Bonuses?

One practice we followed for our bonuses was adding a monetary value to each resource. 

For example, instead of writing a bonus as “Built to Scale: The Activation Guide,” you would write it as “Built to Scale: The Activation Guide (Value: $49).”

We added monetary values to our bonuses for two reasons:

• To increase the bonuses’ perceived value. It’s easy to overlook the value of something when you’re getting it for free. In one study, Dan Ariely found that when candies were offered for 1 cent, students took an average of 3.5 candies. But when candies were free, they took 1.1 candies. To increase the perceived value of each resource, we added monetary values to remind potential buyers how much they would pay if they were to buy the bonuses individually.

• To create a price anchor for the book. We knew we would retail the book at an above-average price of €97. But we also knew that many potential buyers would feel €97 would be too much for a book. To offset that cost, we anchored the book against the bonuses’ combined value of €314. Moreover, we positioned that book so that implementing even one of the book’s strategies would deliver a return on the reader’s investment.  

If you plan to add bonuses to a book launch, consider creating new bonuses rather than repurposing content (i.e., eBooks, etc.) and adding an arbitrary price tag. 

Not only does using existing resources potentially devalue the resources because the reader knows they’re normally free—it creates mistrust between you and potential customers. 

The Essential Elements of a Book Launch Landing Page

We based our landing page’s design on best practices for other book launches, including sections promoting the bonuses…

Details on how to claim the bonuses…

And information about the authors, Rikke, Seray, and myself.

We built the landing page in such a way so that, at the end of our pre-launch campaign, we could easily remove all mention of the bonuses and ensure the landing page stayed evergreen for future readers.

Strategy #2: Market Where Your Audience Hangs Out

Given we were self-publishing the book, we needed to gauge initial interest, as doing so would inform us of the number of books we needed to order. 

One way we gauged that interest was by announcing the book’s upcoming launch on LinkedIn. 

While LinkedIn wasn’t a common marketing channel for us, it did give us greater reach due to the potential virality of publishing posts. (If you publish a post and it’s visible to the public, not only does your network see it, but their network and beyond.) 

We experimented with two approaches to promoting the book on LinkedIn:

1. Hosting a competition; and
2. Promoting our pre-launch bonuses.

1. Hosting a Competition

To celebrate the launch of Built to Scale, we offered five readers a chance to win a free copy of the book. 

Here’s an excerpt from Rikke’s LinkedIn post:

We also added a GIF to show the book in physical form. 

Following Rikke, our CMO, Emil, offered ten readers a chance to win a copy of the book. 

But he added a twist: in addition to giving away ten free copies, he offered to give commenters a 30% early bird discount.

And the results were astounding:

We got more than 1,274 comments.

Granted, Emil has a big following in Denmark, so the above results aren’t typical.

But if you’re rubbing shoulders with the who’s who in your industry, it’s a great way to gauge initial interest in a product or service.

2. Promoting the Prelaunch Bonuses

Since my LinkedIn network at the time wasn’t as extensive as my colleagues’ networks, I tried a different strategy: promoting the launch bonuses.

Here’s how it worked. 

First, I explained how to claim the bonuses.

Then, when readers replied, I contacted them privately and gave them the discount.

Here’s the template I used:

Finally, to drive as many people to the post as possible, I sent two emails:

1. To subscribers on my personal email list; and
2. Anyone who clicked through to the post but didn’t reply.

The Results

To track the results of each approach, we created a coupon for each team member in Selz, our ecommerce software. 

As you can see, hosting a giveaway outperformed promoting the pre-launch bonuses.

The above isn’t conclusive, of course. (Emil, for instance, has a larger LinkedIn network than me, Rikke, and Seray). 

But if you’re hedging your bets, you can’t go wrong with organizing a giveaway.

Strategy #3: Write a Pre-Launch Email Sequence

If you’ve ever launched a product, you’ve likely asked yourself:

• How many emails should I send?
• When should I send them?
• What should I write about?

We asked ourselves that, too.

After brainstorming, we outlined five emails, one for each day of the working week and with a specific goal.

Here’s a brief overview of how it looked:

1. Email #1: Introduce the Offer
2. Email #2: Incentivize Orders
3. Email #3: Overcome Objections
4. Email #4: Use Social Proof
5. Email #5: Help Prospects Make a Decision

Let’s look at each in more detail.

Email #1. Introduce the Offer

One week before our pre-launch campaign, we teased the book’s announcement in the P.S. of our weekly newsletter.

Then, on day one of our pre-launch campaign, we mailed our list to:

• Introduce the book;
• Set expectations for the coming week (“We’re going to email you every day this week”); and
• Tease the bonuses (more on that later).

We got a lot of positive feedback, and many readers replied that they were looking forward to buying the book. 

Email #2. Incentivize Orders

In this email, we incentivized orders by introducing the bonuses I wrote about above. 

We also reminded readers that access to the bonuses was limited and that we would remove them at the end of the week.

While it’s hard to say for sure, we suspect introducing bonuses greatly impacted our number of orders, given that this email was the best-performing of the series in terms of driving orders.

Email #3: Overcome Objections

You can’t handle every objection in advance. 

But you can address the biggest barriers to making a purchase by offering a satisfaction guarantee, clarifying whether you ship internationally, and addressing other common concerns that will likely arise during the launch.

That’s exactly what we did in email #3: 

Email #4: Use Social Proof

Given that the book wasn’t available on Amazon during our pre-launch campaign, we didn’t have the luxury of showing the number of reviews our book had. 

But we did have testimonials from Danish ecommerce influencers who had read parts of the book. 

So, we included the best testimonials in the email to assure readers the book was a worthwhile investment.

Email #5: Help Prospects Make a Decision

We all tend to procrastinate. It’s why promotions have deadlines and influencers like Jeff Walker say mailing at least twice on the last launch day. 

We didn’t go that far, but we did remind readers that it was their last chance to get the bonuses before they went away forever. 

Unsurprisingly, the email converted well, albeit not as well as email #2.

Conclusion

Writing a book, or even co-writing a book, for that matter, is an arduous and, at times, extremely challenging process. 

But like any worthwhile goal, it’s also a rewarding experience—if you follow it through.

We wanted to write the go-to marketing resource for ecommerce marketers to reference and refer to repeatedly for a long time.

We hope we’ve done that.

Our new book, Built to Scale, is available on our website now. Learn more about the book here.