Susan Friedmann [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books.Â
Today, my special guest is Alex Strathdee. He's a best-selling author and a niche digital marketing specialist. At 21, Alex convinced 11 colleges to send his book to 40,000 plus students across The US. Now he's the founder of getshelflife.com, where he helps authors get their book into the hands of real people. His latest book is Before the Best Seller, and Alex has represented over a thousand titles, and he's spent more than $10,000,000 in ad spend helping his authors sell books in bulk.Â
Alex, it's a pleasure to welcome you back to the show, and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.
Alex Strathdee [00:01:10]:
Susan, as I said in our last episode together, I grew up on your show. It's always surreal to be a guest here. I really appreciate you having me.
Susan Friedmann [00:01:19]:
My pleasure. And I'm excited for your new adventure, your new get shelf life, and your best selling book. Let's hear a little bit about the new company and the new direction that you're going with authors. Because I know that, like me, you want authors to sell their books in quantities in bulk. We love that word, don't we? Talk to us a little bit about that, and then we'll start getting into the actual marketing journey.
Alex Strathdee [00:01:52]:
Yeah. Absolutely. And you are absolutely the bulk queen. We don't specialize necessarily in in bulk, but what we do specialize is getting books in the hands of real people. Because so many book marketing schemes and different approaches that people take, just due to the lack of knowledge that a lot of authors have coming into the space don't actually accomplish the goal of getting a book in the hands of someone real. Right? It's a lot of, like, vanity, bestseller, whatever. We have grown out of or grown up running a lot of Amazon ads for authors like Lewis Howells and Kim Scott, and, you know, the list goes on. And what we realized is that when you're a hammer, everything is a nail.
Alex Strathdee [00:02:30]:
To go off of this sort of construction analogy, authors need a house. If you wanna compare their book marketing to a house, they don't need just a hammer. They need a hammer. They need a wrench. They might need plywood or they might not need plywood. They might need, like, birch wood or or whatever the best wood is. You know? And they need someone to tell them, like, what is the best wood for their house. And so over time, we realized, well, we can only serve authors so much offering them Amazon ads.
Alex Strathdee [00:02:54]:
And there's a lot of authors that we just couldn't help because Amazon ads just weren't right for them. And so we've rebranded, you know, from we've been advanced to Amazon ads, and now we're entering into the 2025 as, shelf life, which is this new project of being able to build the entire house for an author.
Susan Friedmann [00:03:12]:
I love it. Let's talk about that marketing journey, the book marketing journey, because authors often think that once the manuscript's written, when even the book is published, that, hey, that's the end of the road. And in fact, as you know as well as I, it's just the beginning of a long, long journey. Let's start that journey. And where do we start?
Alex Strathdee [00:03:37]:
As an avid listener of the show, I was listening to your episode with Scott, in the last episode, and something he mentioned that I think we'll start off with that resonated with me is that a lot of times you end up solving the problem that you once had, right, and trying to be that solution for a previous version of yourself. So for me, when I entered into the book marketing industry with my book, Experience Over Degrees, back in 2018 with a coauthor, I trusted an advisor who kinda sold us on this Amazon bestseller package, which, you know, for a lot of authors, that's what they're offered and later realized it's not what they expect. Right? They buy that package and they think, oh, I'm gonna be rich, famous, and all my dreams will come true. And, really, it's just 10 people buying your book and your book being listed in, like, the right Amazon category, which Amazon's cracking down on that, which is good. But that's what kicked off my obsession. And as someone with OCD, it really really is an obsession of trying to figure out I just wanted someone to tell me, like, how do you effectively market a book, especially as a new author. Right? And then moving on, then, you know, once you built up a following, like, at each stage of an authorship, whether you're Stephen King or Kim Scott or the next Nir Eyal who hasn't been discovered yet. Like, what is a methodical, systematized approach to actually doing so? And that's where after doing over a hundred podcast episodes, interviewing some of the top authors in the world and working with some of the top authors, trying to crack that code.
Alex Strathdee [00:05:03]:
And that's what we've come down to the, committing to a number. It's kind of like the starting place that every author should have in their book marketing.
Susan Friedmann [00:05:11]:
When you say that, the number of books that they want to sell, is that what you're saying?
Alex Strathdee [00:05:17]:
Exactly. I'm sure you know, Ricardo Fayette as well of Reedsy, and it was in his book that I read about the book as a ship analogy. And so, basically, your book is a ship, and how good your book is is what your book is made out of. Right? It could be a really light wood if your book is very recommendable, and it's you've done a really good job riding it. So that means that your ship is gonna move a lot quicker along the water. If your ship is bad, it could be made of lead, and, obviously, it sinks. Now the way that that ship moves forward is the book marketing. And so there's different forms of book marketing.
Alex Strathdee [00:05:52]:
Right? Like, doing podcast guesting could be raising the sail on that boat. Running Facebook ads or Amazon ads could be like strapping rockets to the side of your ship. And even a piece of lead is going to move forward if you strap Amazon ads or Meta ads to the sides of it. But once that power is turned off, then how much more does your book float along? And, you know, if your book is made of really light wood, it's gonna keep floating for a while even after you've turned that stuff off because of the recommendability. And, you know, that's how I like authors to start off thinking about their book and how book marketing aligns with how good a book is. So that's the first place. And then once you realize that your book is a ship, it's, okay. I need to find out what my ship is made of.
Alex Strathdee [00:06:33]:
And so the best way to do that is to product test it. And so you're product testing it by deciding, okay. I'm going to get a thousand copies out into the hands of people whose lives that I'm actually trying to improve, or I'm gonna get it into the hands of 10,000 or 20,000. We can talk about, if you want, the different numbers that apply to different people, But it's essentially starting with the end in mind, which is something no one gave me is before your book launches, how many books are you going to get in the hands of real people to then determine if that book is what you want it to be?
Susan Friedmann [00:07:05]:
Talking about getting the book into the hands of real people. It's like, okay, that sounds easier than perhaps it is. How do we even think about going about that? I want to sell a thousand books. I want to sell 20,000 books. What does that mean, and how do you actually do that? Essentially, to
Alex Strathdee [00:07:28]:
get a book to generate the kind of word-of-mouth or to have the impact that you're looking to have, it's important that that book is not just making it into the hands of your friends or family who are happy to support you, but actually into the hands of the people whose problem you're trying to solve. You know, Rob Fitzpatrick talks about this extensively where, you know, he'll go speak at an event and seed 750 or a thousand copies to the exact right person. And I like to use the word seeding, take a step back, seeding the wild. When you're just launching a book, you want to seed the wild to the tune of somewhere between a thousand copies and 10,000 copies. And to decide which number is right for you, If this book is important to you, obviously, you've put a lot of time into it, but it's just kind of like a a passion project or it's a hobby and you don't necessarily wanna make it your life. Well, I think in order to give that book the, you know, at least the minimum amount of book marketing in order for it to do anything is to at least seed a thousand copies. And it's kind of like Bill Gladstone puts it as, like, if you're who's a former literary agent to people like Akritole and Marie Kondo says that if you are going to spend ten thousand hours writing a book, you need to spend at least ten thousand hours marketing that book. And it's shocking to a lot of authors because they think they're the author.
Alex Strathdee [00:08:52]:
They don't realize that the job of marketing, even if you're traditionally published, is really up to you. That's kind of the advice that I wish someone had given me is, okay. What is the North Star you're going for here? When I released my first book, and it's you wanna pick a number of copies you're gonna seed into the wild. And so that's the people who are gonna seed a thousand. People who are gonna seed if this is your lifeblood of your business, this is really important. This is gonna be the rest of your life. It's gonna launch your speaking platform. Then I would set that number more at 20,000 copies, and everyone else is somewhere in between.
Alex Strathdee [00:09:24]:
Does that make sense so far, Susan?
Susan Friedmann [00:09:25]:
Oh, it certainly makes sense. And I love the idea of actually putting a number because most of the time, authors just like, well, yes, let's put it on Amazon, and let's, put it on social media. And as you say, once friends and family have bought the book, and they're not necessarily your target audience, and they're doing it out of kindness, then what?
Alex Strathdee [00:09:49]:
So
Susan Friedmann [00:09:50]:
having a goal and starting to look at, well, who are the real people who need to have the information that I'm sharing in my book?
Alex Strathdee [00:10:01]:
The process usually looks like this. You launch a book, and then you start to think, oh, well, you do your launch. And depending on what package you've signed up with which publisher, which generally speaking publishers are absolutely awful at marketing books, you then have to figure out, well, someone says, oh, try Amazon ads. Okay. Let's throw some money in Amazon ads. Or someone says, oh, you should do podcast speaking. Alright. Let me give that a go.
Alex Strathdee [00:10:24]:
And it's kind of this piecemeal of attempting marketing efforts. And what it really needs to do is start off with this big number. And then once you have your big number of I'm going to commit to moving this many copies, then you know what each of these different tools are actually trying to accomplish. Right? It's like, oh, I'll know I'm successful with Amazon ads, and I should keep going with it if I can move at least a hundred copies a month through Amazon ads for x amount of dollars. Or, okay. Now I wanna see 500 copies through podcast guesting. Okay. Let me get on a couple podcasts.
Alex Strathdee [00:10:52]:
How many copies did that move? Okay. So here's how many podcasts I need to get on. That's the way to break down. You start with this big scary number, and then you want to think about the different tools at your disposal. Those tools are always changing. Right? We have authors who have made their books big on TikTok alone, and that almost wasn't even a thing in The US anymore a month ago. So the marketing landscape really, really is changing, but you essentially wanna decide and commit to then many numbers of, okay. Well, I'm gonna use this tool to move this amount of copies and x amount of tools.
Alex Strathdee [00:11:22]:
And and that's the thing is this knowledge just isn't well known, which is what I've really tried to compile into this book is what are those expectations and what are the best tools.
Susan Friedmann [00:11:30]:
Yeah. And I'd love to delve into some of the best tools because there's no one tool that is like the panacea. Marketing is a very inexact science, as we know. And the fact is, today, as you say, TikTok might be the best thing since sliced bread. However, if TikTok goes away, then what? You don't wanna Exactly. Put all your eggs in one basket.
Alex Strathdee [00:11:57]:
Yeah. You're gonna hear these tools and possibly get overwhelmed or start thinking. When I say you, I mean, the listeners. You're gonna hear somebody be like, well, I I don't like talking on camera or, like, I'm not tech savvy. The point here isn't to do all of these tools or that you need to do all these tools. Some of the top authors only pick three or four of these tools and do them really, really well, and that's all they need to do. Like, this one author, Nick I forget his last name, but he's got this book stop overthinking, and he sold over a million copies of that book. And he doesn't do interviews.
Alex Strathdee [00:12:29]:
He just straight up doesn't. I know this because I tried to interview him. And I got an email from him that was like, hey. Sorry. Love to support you any way I can, but I just don't do interviews. And I think that that's so smart that he really sticks to the things that he does wanna do and doesn't wanna do. As Susan and I go through these tools, don't feel like you need to be doable and just start to hear like, oh, that's something, you know, that might be useful or or whatever have you. Does that make sense, Susan?
Susan Friedmann [00:12:52]:
It does. And I thank you for prefacing that because there are things that authors don't like doing. I know I talk about speaking engagements, and some authors like, I don't wanna do public speaking. Okay. Then there are other things that you can do. So don't feel the pressure. And the fact is that if you don't want to do it or you don't enjoy doing it, chances of you doing it, actually doing it, are pretty slim.
Alex Strathdee [00:13:19]:
Exactly. I covered the tools that I'm aware of based on the top holders that we work with and what they're doing, but I'm sure you have some tools too, Susan. So feel free to jump in, as well at any point if any of this spurs some thoughts on your end. I mean, the first thing is always going to be starting and growing your list. By that, I mean, like, your email list. There's lots of arguments, and I know you're gonna read a lot of experts on email list. I'm not the expert on email list. It's just definitely something every single author, needs to do, and it's why I make it the first one here.
Alex Strathdee [00:13:45]:
And it can be as simple as reaching out to 200 people on Facebook that you're friends with and saying, hey. I'm writing about this topic. Would you be interested in receiving my weekly newsletter? And that's how a lot of lists get started. You know? And you might just being really, really consistent about asking one by one people to get on that list. And then I stole James Clear's three two one format because it makes it really, really easy for the author to sit down at the beginning of the month and put out very quick content. Doesn't take them you know, it's not like sitting down and thinking, oh, I have to write a whole basically book for this week's newsletter. It's like, for our newsletter, for example, our three two one format is three quick marketing tips for authors or marketing secrets, two links that are helpful for authors, and then one quote. Right? So that's what I mean.
Alex Strathdee [00:14:29]:
So come up with your three two one makes it really, really easy to create content that is easy for you to produce and that people also keep coming back and read. One of the top compliments we get all the time is I love reading your newsletter because I know it's only gonna take me three, four minutes of my time. Like, I know it's not a huge time suck. So first tool is all about the newsletter. Anything you wanna add?
Susan Friedmann [00:14:49]:
No. But I absolutely agree with you that building your own email list because so many authors is telling me, or they've got so many fans and followers on Facebook or LinkedIn. And then when I ask them about their own list, it's like, oh, maybe a hundred or so. And I'm like, uh-uh. If LinkedIn if Facebook goes away tomorrow, you have nothing. So build that email list. So I love that it's number one.
Alex Strathdee [00:15:20]:
Yeah. I manually added my five hundredth, six hundredth, and a thousand subscriber. Right? Like, every conversation we have with someone who is an author, at the end of my conversation, I say, hey. All you're getting is an email, but that email is basically them saying, I wanna hear from you for the rest of my life. As long as you're putting out good content. Right? Every single conversation is just so important. My whole team keeps a list because we all speak to 20 to 30 authors each week. You know, every Monday, my whole team sends me a list of the people that they have collected the emails so we can put that into our newsletter list.
Alex Strathdee [00:15:49]:
And that's how we've grown, such a big email list. So that is, being really diligent about it. People that try to think, like, how am I gonna get my first ten thousand? First, focus on getting your first, like, 500. That's a additional piece of advice I have there. The next one I'd say that is really, really working for us right now is, free reader seating. This goes back to Joseph Nguyen who wrote don't believe everything you think, where we talked a little bit about him at the at the beginning. He has gone from a nobody. No one had heard of him.
Alex Strathdee [00:16:18]:
He just was a really smart guy with a couple creative ideas about philosophy to a over a million copies of his book sold within two years. That's unbelievable. Two years and a million copies. Like, that is not just in the top point o 1% of authors that have ever existed, but also to do it in two years is absurd. And the way he did it is he gave away 20 to 30,000 free copies of his book in order to generate that word-of-mouth. There's another book, The Almanac of Naval Ravikant. And that author, Eric Jorgensen, he's the CEO of Scribe now. The ebook is free.
Alex Strathdee [00:16:53]:
People can get the ebook, and he's now sold over a million copies of that book, and that book was released in 2020. So and the way that I would do this is, you know, through either through LinkedIn or Instagram, look for people who are and this one is controversial. So happy to answer any questions you might have about Susan because people aren't oftentimes willing to give away free things. Especially when you're starting out, people aren't just gonna come running from your book, so you need to go out and find them. So, I mean, literally knowing who your ideal reader is and then finding them on Instagram and LinkedIn and messaging them and saying, hey. Can I send you a free copy? If you believe in your book and you think, you know, there's some good word-of-mouth to be generated and you wanna product test it, we count that as a seeded copy. And the great thing too is then you know them, you know, you can follow back up a few weeks later and say, oh, how'd you like the book? And then even potentially get them to leave an Amazon rating as well. We find that to be really effective.
Alex Strathdee [00:17:38]:
Any questions about that one, Susan?
Susan Friedmann [00:17:40]:
I think that makes so much sense. I love it. I'm sure though that listeners are thinking, I'm going to give away 20,000 copies. Yeah. Sort of makes the hair on your arms sort of stand up a little bit. It's like, can I afford to do that? But you don't have to start with 20,000. Start with a hundred.
Alex Strathdee [00:18:00]:
You bring up such a great question. It's a question I actually got pushed back from an author a couple weeks ago. He's like, Alex, if I'm doing the math right, you want me to see 20,000 copies, it cost me around you know, if I'm doing printing through author copies on KDP, if it you know, it's gonna cost me 7 to $8 to print and ship each one of these books. If we do that math, we're looking at a hundred and $40,000. Right? That's absurd. You need to figure out what is your budget. Start off small. If you wanna okay.
Alex Strathdee [00:18:25]:
I'm gonna do free reader seating for 500 people, right, or a hundred people. That's the point. It doesn't have to be the only tool you use, but it can help you break up, okay. If I'm going to commit to seeding a thousand copies, well, I'm gonna do a hundred of those through free reader seeding. And the other thing about this is it just gets you started because I know you and Scott talked about this a lot in the last episode, Susan. You don't know where luck is gonna come from. One of the main things about book marketing is putting yourself in a position to get lucky. The only way you're gonna do that is to seed enough copies into the market.
Alex Strathdee [00:18:56]:
So it just at least gets you started, and then you can see where you go from that. Maybe one of those free reader copies ends up bringing you it. Someone reads it and says, oh, can I get 200 of these books for my church group, or can I get 200 of these for my team? You just gotta get started with a couple things. That's the whole thing. It's, like, based on your budget, your limitations, the time you have commit to, you know, a thousand or 20,000. The other thing is if you don't have a lot of money, there is some tools we're gonna go over here that don't cost a cent. This is one, you know, obviously, with that requires you to pay for printing, shipping, but it's a really effective tool.
Susan Friedmann [00:19:28]:
Excellent. Let's move on to something that maybe is within somebody's budget or it's free to do.
Alex Strathdee [00:19:35]:
That sounds great. So let's move on to, podcast guesting. And, you know, you can pay for an agency to do this for you, but your response rates are always going to be unless they, like, already have an inner or connection, your response rates are going to be abysmal. If you have someone pitching for you, you might get one in a hundred podcast to hit you back, and none of them are gonna be a podcast like this one. Right? Susan has hundreds, if not thousands, of followers. In order to hit those big podcasts, you need to sell yourself, in my opinion. And the way that you can get on those bigger podcasts is a tool called spider webbing. I like to and and I'm even doing this for my book, right now is essentially and, again, I stand on the shoulders of giants, so I've learned all this stuff from people who've come before me.
Alex Strathdee [00:20:18]:
But, essentially, figure out, okay, what are the big podcasts in your space that you wanna get on? Then make a list of all of the guests that they've had on or or at least ones that are are similar within your space. Reach out to those people. That's your list for editorial reviews. And, you know, we can talk a little bit more about editorial reviews. But once you have those editorial reviews from those people and people have cold pitched Barbara Cochran of Shark Tank and gotten an editorial review from her, you can really get editorial reviews from some big people even with cold pitches because you're not asking for much either. Once you get that blurb, you can then reach out to the podcast and say, hey. One, I know here's what you're trying to accomplish on this podcast. Here's why I'm applicable to that mission.
Alex Strathdee [00:20:59]:
And by the way, like, here's what some people that you're connected with say about me. Right? So it's like you're doing your research to figure out who's important to them and who do they listen to by looking at their guest list, and that immediately gives you such a bigger in with that podcast host because of the fact that all of a suddenly you have the, appraisal from someone who they trust. Is that one you've heard of before, Susan?
Susan Friedmann [00:21:22]:
I've not heard of it that way, and I love it. And what's interesting is that, as you and I talked earlier, podcast host came to me and said, what about Alex as a guest? And once I gave my approval, then the podcast host could reach out to you. Talk to us more about this. Is it a tool spider webbing? I've not heard of that one before.
Alex Strathdee [00:21:50]:
Yeah. I mean, that's what I mean. It's free. And so this is if you're an author and this is one of the things I address in the book. Like, there's a lot of authors who have more time than money, and there's a lot of authors who have more money than time. And based on your approach, it needs to be different. If you have more time than money, use this to your advantage. Go spiderweb backwards, find your top podcast, create an Excel spreadsheet.
Alex Strathdee [00:22:11]:
Okay. Of those top podcasts, what are the guests that they've had on? Is there any of those guests that you're connected with? And even if that level is still too high for you, okay, then go a step lower. So then, okay, do any of those guests have their own podcasts that have then had other people on that you can get editorial reviews from. So then you start off at the next tier down of podcast. That's how you kind of tier up your podcasting as you start by you know, I know last episode, which I highly recommend, you know, going and listening to it. I literally sent it to our head of partnerships because it was such a good episode with Scott. The ability to already have some sort of relationship value going into it with some sort of recommendation is huge. Networking your way up tiers through podcasts using spider webbing, it's not something that costs any money.
Alex Strathdee [00:22:57]:
And I also recommend snail mail gets opened. People just don't send physical mail anymore. Like, it doesn't take much energy to send an email. Thomas Umstead junior, has another one of my favorite book marketing podcasts. I'd love to have a chat with him. And he has his address listed on his website. And I'm like, how many people do you think are sending him a letter via snail mail versus just, like, sending submitting a question on his website? I can keep you posted, Susan, if that one works out, but I'd also recommend do the least amount of effort first. Just send an email.
Alex Strathdee [00:23:30]:
But then if within a month that doesn't get read or, you know, you're not getting any reply, then take the next level approach and send something through the snail mail to that person.
Susan Friedmann [00:23:40]:
I like it. And as you said, I'm always surprised when somebody sends me a postcard or
Alex Strathdee [00:23:46]:
a Yeah.
Susan Friedmann [00:23:47]:
Any other kind of real mail, because most of the time, I just go to the mailbox, and it's just full of junk.
Alex Strathdee [00:23:55]:
Right.
Susan Friedmann [00:23:55]:
It hurts me to throw it out, but I don't need it. So yes.
Alex Strathdee [00:24:00]:
If someone was to send me in handwritten a pitch, I'm at the very least going to read it. And then it's up to you how good your pitch is, and that's where you wanna then rely on, like, the fact that you've built a relationship with someone they trust, then you mention that in the pitch. But they can't read your pitch if they don't open it. And so, yeah, highly recommend snail mail for that. Next one, which I know, Susan, you're going to be able to help me out a lot with is corporate and bulk buy. Richard Fenton and Andrea Waltz wrote a book called Go for No, and that book has now sold over half a million copies. And the way that they did it was by finding relevant gatekeepers or team leaders at different companies and literally sending them a package. Again, bulk email gets opened with an order form and a couple of free copies of the book.
Alex Strathdee [00:24:49]:
Now it worked really well for them because their book is, like, seventy, eighty pages. I don't think if you're sending 400, five hundred page novels to people that out of the blue that they're necessarily going to get the gist of it that quickly. But they sent these packages with a letter of who they are, a couple of free copies, and ended up just through that methodology. I kid you not selling half a million copies.
Susan Friedmann [00:25:08]:
I like it. It's a great strategy, an absolutely dynamite strategy.
Alex Strathdee [00:25:14]:
Curious to hear from you because you are the bulk buy queen. What do you recommend your authors do for bulk buy stuff?
Susan Friedmann [00:25:20]:
Is to literally go and look at companies who have the same target audience as you, and find that association, and then pitch them on that idea. And the idea of yeah. Sending them a copy, a letter, even making a little video, sending it through the mail. Yes. I mean, all of these things, if you're different, people take notice of you. If you're the same you just blend into the crowd and nobody knows who you are or what you've written. How can they take any notice? The more you stand out and the more you are very selective about who you're approaching with your ideas.
Alex Strathdee [00:26:06]:
That's That's a great point. It reminds me of, like, John Spolstra. He wrote a book called Marketing Outrageously. To get people to renew their season tickets, he would literally send them rubber chickens in the mail saying don't foul out. Well, obviously, like, a sports reference there. And and, like, that gets people's attention. Or, like, what can you send snail mail wise to get people's attention? The other thing that I think is underrated that a lot of authors don't think about is and this actually goes back to the first step I recommend for any author after they've decided how many copies they're gonna commit to moving is taking inventory. By taking inventory, I mean, write down all of the people you know and have relationships with, close relationships, or just someone who's gonna respond to you, essentially.
Alex Strathdee [00:26:46]:
Write down who has their own podcast. And I started this with the launch of this book. For example, I've become quite friendly with, like, Alan Dib and David Jenens and couple of these other marketing in general type people. And so those are the people that I approach first because that's in my inventory. And even you, Susan. I was lucky enough to get interviewed by you last time, so I was like, alright. Let me see if Susan's up for another chat, and luckily you were. Start with your inventory and what's in your immediate circle.
Alex Strathdee [00:27:12]:
What I mean is, like, also look for connections you have that could leave you editorial reviews. Dave Chesson did a study that is what do people care most about editorial reviews, obviously, besides the strategy that we talked about before, with your editorial reviews. And it came down to people's titles. If they didn't know who that person was, they cared most about, like, MD and CEO and founder. So when you're thinking about who to get editorial reviews from, think about, like, what are their titles that are gonna then pop up on your book and on your book listing. So that was an interesting piece of data that I saw that David collected.
Susan Friedmann [00:27:45]:
That's an interesting one too. And just going back to the idea of coming back to a podcast that you've been interviewed on, I don't know anybody else who's asked me if they can come back on the show. Really? I've invited people back because they've had so much information that we can't fit it into one episode. Sure. So I'll have them back. But I think you're the only person I know in the eight years that I've been doing this that has come back to me and said, could I come back on the show?
Alex Strathdee [00:28:19]:
Cool. I'll take it. I am a hustler. I am so not afraid of embarrassing myself, and for better or for worse. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but very appreciative that you've got a great show. So I was really, really excited to come back and talk through this new framework with you.
Susan Friedmann [00:28:33]:
Let's have one more, and then I'm going to have you share how our authors can get in touch with you.
Alex Strathdee [00:28:39]:
Sure. That would probably be best done by talking in terms of, one more finishing up the one that I was talking about because I realized I I went down a rabbit hole and never actually finished it because I I talked about so taking your inventory, which is related to moonshots. So what I mean by this is there might be a little book you've heard of called Rich Dad Poor Dad. Have you heard of that book, Susan?
Susan Friedmann [00:28:59]:
I certainly have. And I'm So Be surprised if our listeners haven't.
Alex Strathdee [00:29:03]:
Best selling finance book of all time. Robert Kiyosaki, initially, he had a friend who owned a car wash. And so he thought, well, if I'm in Walmart or I'm in a bookstore, it's my book versus, like, a hundred other books. Right? Like, are they gonna choose my book? Probably not. Well, if it's the only book in a car wash and these people are walking through the car wash, you know, you're often times, you know, waiting around for your car to finish getting washed. If it's, like, you're not an automated one, then you're looking at the shelves, you're looking at the air fresheners, you know, you you go use the bathroom that's barely usable because it's so dirty at a car wash. He's like, why don't I sell my book in my friend's car wash? And so he gave him, like, a hundred books. It's a personal finance book, so it's, like, something that anyone can benefit from.
Alex Strathdee [00:29:45]:
And it just so turned out that one of the people who walked through and picked up a copy of that book was one of the leaders in Amway. Now I'm not talking about if you should believe Amway is a good company or not. That's a conversation for a different time. But, basically, he picked it up and shared it with the other executives at Amway. And, you know, this is a a organization that had tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of members. And he shared it with the leadership team, and all of a suddenly, they were flying Robert Kiyosaki around the country to speak at events for them and basically made that book required reading for their organization. So a lot of people don't know, but it's because Robert sold his book in a car wash, which also may put himself in a position to get lucky, right, that we now know of this is the best personal finance bookable time. So it starts with taking inventory.
Alex Strathdee [00:30:35]:
He had a friend who owned a car wash. He sold it there. He got lucky, and now it's reached out, poor dad. So that's one of my favorite stories, and I'll end it with the final tool there that I call moonshots, which is something that's very specific to everyone and their relationships.
Susan Friedmann [00:30:50]:
I love that story. I've not heard it before, and I really like it. I know that many of my speaker colleagues have often said, you're on airplanes a lot. Leave a copy of your book in the pocket. And even a note saying Wow. Please take this I love that. With you.
Susan Friedmann [00:31:07]:
But then that's only one. I love the idea of the car wash. I mean, that's something that people could think about too. Yes.
Alex Strathdee [00:31:14]:
Yeah. It's it's like, do you have friends who own, like, a laundromat? All of us have local laundromats. Like, go ask the laundromat, like, hey, you can take all the proceeds. We'll sell this at whatever price you want, but or even just give them away for free. There's all this creative stuff. You just gotta be willing to put yourself out there.
Susan Friedmann [00:31:28]:
Exactly. And happy ideas. And again, this is going somewhere where others aren't going. That road isn't crowded at all. In fact, you often have it all to yourself. The more you can do what others aren't doing, the better off you're going to be. On that happy note, Alex, let's, have you share with our listeners more about you, your new book, your new service. Take it away.
Alex Strathdee [00:31:58]:
Yeah. I appreciate that. Yeah. I mean, this is why you talk to someone like Susan to help you generate those ideas based on what you have. So I totally appreciate the work you do. You can find us at getshelflife.com. I'm lucky enough to be the dumbest person on my team. I have absolute rock stars that I get to work with, fortunate to work with.
Alex Strathdee [00:32:16]:
Laura Russom, who's our chief marketing scientist. She ran all of paid media for Blackstone Publishing for three years. And Steve Sarner, who's actually a former executive over at Goodreads, that we will now get to work together and and share a passion for helping authors evolve. So if you wanna have a conversation with us, check us out at getshelflife.com. If you wanna get on our that three two one, newsletter format, see what that format's about. You don't just wanna hear me talk about it, you wanna actually see it in action, then you can just go to, getshelflife.com/321, and we'll get you on that newsletter too. But, Susan, I guess, the only one who's pitched you to come back on, and I'm really appreciative that you said yes.
Susan Friedmann [00:32:51]:
Hey. When somebody asks me, it's like, why not? I mean, I enjoyed having you the first time. No reason why I shouldn't enjoy you even more the second time around.
Alex Strathdee [00:33:01]:
I hope that's true. Yes. Very much so.
Susan Friedmann [00:33:04]:
And as you know, we always have our guests leave our listeners with a golden nugget. What's yours?
Alex Strathdee [00:33:11]:
Just pick a number. Know what you're actually trying to accomplish with your book marketing. As you're writing your book, Have that number in mind of, okay. I'm really serious about this. It needs to be 20,000, or I wanna at least give this book a chance. It needs to be 1,000 because it's gonna make all your marketing so much easier.
Susan Friedmann [00:33:28]:
I love that. So listeners, pick a number, and then decide how you're going to make that number happen. So excellent. Well, thank you, Alex, for sharing your wisdom.Â
And listeners, if your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expected it to, lets you and I jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales. Because you've invested a whole lot of time, money and energy, and it's time you got the return you were hoping for. Go to bookmarketingbrainstorm.com to schedule your free call. And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books.
Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.
Here's how to connect with Alex...
Website
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Email Alex for a free copy of his new book "Before The Bestseller"
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