Excerpt from Advantage: Look Inside Section

“A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.”

~Mark Twain

Does this book hold the secrets to you dominating the Amazon bookstore? 

The next few moments will determine if you’ll part with your money to purchase this book. Will what I’ve written fulfill your desire to sell more books? You want to succeed as an author so bad, it has driven you to explore the dark arts of marketing and advertising.

You might have heard about this book from another author, or found it through a suggestion from an online bookstore. Now you browse the inside to confirm the recommendation. 

If you buy this book, my job isn’t done until I deliver on its promise. Yes, I’ve achieved a sale, but your trust has yet to be earned. So, what is that promise?

I will show you how to separate yourself from the pack of those seeking the next hack, or marketing gimmick. I’ll show you the way to become the leader of your own pack of fans desperate for your next book.

If you’re like most authors, you’re confounded how some climb the bestseller ranks, getting more popular with each launch, while you seem to be stuck or always one step behind the crowd. This book illuminates the path to you commanding that kind of advantage in the marketplace. While the quality of your books is the prime determinate of success, I can promise that what you’ll learn in Advantage is the easiest way to build your audience.

If your marketing and advertising isn’t working as it used to, the failure isn’t your poor application. Instead, it is the product of thousands of other authors applying the same methods and creating herd immunity in the reader community. Our collective onslaught makes readers tired of hard-sells and calls to action. Your efforts look and smell like all the other digital marketing flooding social media.

If the adage that only six degrees of separation exist between you and any other person on the planet, then why is it so hard to find new readers? 

Maybe it’s not finding them, but getting them to act. 

To complicate matters, research suggests that social media hinder your ability to get a reader to buy and read your book. What if I were to show you that social media platforms that connect more people faster, harm rather than help your cause?

The reason most promotions on social media don’t go viral is that none of the critical groundwork exists. For your marketing to be contagious, it needs to be more than persuasive. You must create the conditions for a complex contagion to spread. Consumers are exposed to millions of these contagions daily, and they have developed a strong resistance to digital marketing. 

Your ideas don’t spread like a virus. Instead, it is closer to a wildfire. Without the right conditions, an ignition source can start a fire, but it won’t create a firestorm. Conversely, the longer the conditions build, the better the results once ignition occurs. Work done this season that doesn’t result in a fire contributes to better results in future seasons.

To make matters worse, as a later entrant into publishing, it feels like others are so far ahead you’ll never catch up. In the end, all the spoils will end up going to a select few because of uncaring market amplified by opaque technology never giving you a fair chance.

Imagine yourself harnessing the same dominant force that drives 64% of the profits into the hands of 2.5% of published authors. 

The publishing market is driven by a market force that leverages past success in future rounds. If you sell genre fiction or are attempting to build a following on YouTube or Instagram, you face this formidable economic influence. The spoils go to a few who become famous. 

This popularity – sometimes called the superstar effect, or cumulative advantage – is the sorting system in arts, sports, and entertainment. Cumulative advantage is the hurricane that can crush your boat or provide an endless supply of wind for your sails.

How do you capture its power?

I work with authors who make six-figure profits. As their business strategist, I’ve observed how they build cumulative advantage to be regularly propelled into the of top 100 bestselling authors in the entire Kindle bookstore. 

While researching this book, I uncovered the underlying principles of successfully accumulating advantage in the publishing market. It’s not how you use a particular social media platform or where you advertise. 

*I want to be clear: this isn’t a marketing book that provides marketing or advertising tactics, although once you understand the principles, I’ll show you how a virtuous marketing cycle becomes your cumulative advantage engine.*

I have determined that not only can cumulative advantage be systematized, but a unique flavor is possible for every author. Best of all, you already possess the key to unlocking its power. You can take control of the monolithic market force of cumulative advantage and bend it to your will. 

It will take unlearning and relearning, but if you are prepared to join me on the journey to where this key is hidden, you will be surprised at how well suited you are to wielding it for the benefit of yourself and your readers.

If you read this entire book, I will introduce you to the concepts of cognitive bias, networks, and crowd behavior. What you learn on these topics will become the foundation for a lasting brand. This book shows you how to construct a unique process to connect with and engage an audience. The system will pass the test of time; even as others adopt learning from this book, your work won’t be diluted, because of the connection between your brand and what your readers desire.

There have been dozens of books written about what makes an idea powerful or the importance of triggering a tipping point for an information cascade. The problem with those books is they never shed light on how to cause that tipping point. 

In this book I’ll show you how to trigger cumulative advantage. You will learn how to get existing readers to trust you and take responsibility to find you new readers. You will learn to build a network – not one built on social media (although you may use it as a tool), but one built on meeting human needs. The system will be reliable and resistant to damage. Messages sent through the network will be trusted and get to the right person. You will create a valuable asset for your business that will adapt to changes in technology and serve you for your entire career. Best of all, this work will fuel the flywheel of cumulative advantage. As time passes, sales will come faster and easier.

In publishing, the disconnect is between what you want versus what the reader wants. Satisfying a reader may seem obvious now that you read it here, but when you look at most author advertising and marketing, it is focused on the transaction. 

Readers don’t want to buy books. They want satisfying entertainment through reading. They will pay money to you if you can deliver. Therefore, your marketing needs to put the desired activity foremost, not the act of buying. Associating your book and brand with the desired result closes the loop. The transaction becomes a small step for the reader to get what they want.

This book offers the why and how of building cumulative advantage.

I can show you how a series of slight changes in how you act and think about book marketing will build into a substantial organic following. 

Now is the time to act. You have to choose to: 

• do nothing, falling further and further behind, 

• follow the crowd and implement this week’s marketing tip until it becomes market noise, 

• or join me on a journey deep into the mind of your reader where your cumulative advantage hides.

I can guide you, just as I’ve guided other authors on this journey to discover their source of cumulative advantage. The journey starts at the lofty heights of the marketplace, where cumulative advantage rules the roost. Together, we will descend deep into the inner workings of this market force to see how a reader’s behavior and feelings drive it. Once you possess this knowledge, you can accumulate a growing organic following that sees you as the leader of their pack, and the pack as part of their own identity.

Are you ready to begin this journey?