How to Get Lasting Sales with Martin Leitner

A great launch can’t rescue a weak book. In this week's episode we go straight at the hard truth: lasting sales come from a book that’s either a joy to read or a precise solution to a real problem—and often both. With guest Martin Leitner of Cavalesso, we map a clear path from concept to momentum, showing how to validate your idea, write with purpose, and seed word of mouth so the book sells itself.

We start by separating pleasure reads from problem-solvers. If you’re writing memoir or fiction, craft is the product: voice, pacing, and emotional payoff. If you’re writing practical nonfiction, usefulness is king. Martin shares how he click tests pain statements and promises on Meta to confirm there’s demand and to capture early leads. Those leads become true beta readers—the exact people who feel the problem—who guide chapter-by-chapter improvements until the book earns a simple verdict: “This solved it.”

Then we dig into promotion that actually compounds. Martin explains “book seeding,” a focused giveaway strategy that puts your book into the right hands at scale. The goal is a viral factor above one: each reader reliably creates more readers through recommendations. Targeted video ads, free ebooks plus optional paperbacks, and events where your audience gathers can spark the initial surge that organic growth needs. We also explore when Amazon ads make sense, especially if your book leads to higher-value services, courses, or speaking.

Along the way, we tackle common myths: editors are vital but not a stand-in for your market; constraints amplify creativity; and giving books away can be the smartest path to revenue. If you’re a founder, executive, or first-time author chasing impact, you’ll leave with a playbook: define the reader, test the message, recruit beta readers, and seed deeply. Subscribe, share with an author who needs clear direction, and leave a review telling us which tactic you’ll try first.

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Transcript

Why The Book Must Be Great

SPEAKER_03 0:11

All right. Hi, everybody. Today we are going to be talking about a uh I would say a book and publishing insight that's hiding in plain sight, which is if you want to succeed, your book actually has to be good and really good. At the end of the day, you can't get around that topic. And I can't think of a better person to be speaking about that with than Martin Leitner. He's the, he's the uh, he runs a company called Cavalesso, which has a really innovative approach to promoting books called book seeding, which I think is really neat. Um, my name is Joel Pitney. I'm the host of If I'm Being Honest, straight talk about book publishing

Pleasure Books Vs Problem Solvers

SPEAKER_03 0:45

and promotion. So I'm really excited to have Martin on the show today. Welcome, Martin.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Hi, Joel. Um, thanks for having me on your show. I'm really excited uh to be on your show um because um uh you know we met in in New York at a ghostwriters conference. And uh I uh like you mentioned before, I believe the most important thing uh if you want to successfully publish a book is to write a book uh that's really good. And I think uh finding the right writer, the right ghostwriter is actually the first step and the key to that. So uh I'm really glad to be on your show.

SPEAKER_03 1:26

That's great. And you know, we're gonna obviously we met at a ghostwriting conference because that's something I do also. I run launch my book, and I'm also a ghostwriter. And that's especially for some people who may not be a writer, maybe you're a business person, uh, you know, or or you're a CEO of some organization, you want to write a book. Ghostwriting is often the way that you're gonna get that high-quality product. But there's also a lot of authors out there who may not uh be interested in hiring a ghostwriter. Maybe they're doing fiction or maybe they want to try and write it themselves. And I would say the same rule applies. Um, whether you're hiring someone to get it great for you, or you're gonna go through whatever training or developmental editing or or rounds of review, getting your book uh right and as good as it can possibly be is absolutely the first, probably the first through tenth step of a successful book.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Yeah, I I totally agree. And I actually have a um I have a um kind of a philosophy uh around that. And it's not actually my idea. Uh it's a it's a very well-known um philosophy out there from a guy who wrote a book called uh Write Useful Books. Um, and that is uh most books you can divide into you know two categories. Either it's a pleasure-giving book or it's a problem-solving book. Interesting. And it if it's a pleasure-giving book, like a memoir or novel, or um uh a book that entertains, then then uh you really you you know, you really have to focus on the quality of the writing, period. Okay. And whether you hire a ghostwriter to do that and let them do their thing, or whether you, you know, learn that yourself, uh, you know, uh either way, uh you have to really focus on the quality of the writing.

Craft Alone Isn’t Enough

SPEAKER_01 3:20

But if you're solving a problem, so if you're writing a problem-solving book, um the in my mind, the best way to get to the high, the quality that you need for a book to sell itself by word of mouth is uh a better reader process, right? You have to take uh the production of the book, the writing of the book, and whether you're doing it with a writer or yourself, you have to take it through uh a better reader process where you're constantly getting feedback from the people that you are solving the problem for. It's kind of like a a startup. It's like an a lean startup approach, right? If you're if you're gonna create a product that solves a specific problem for specific people, um, you want to get that product to those people early, get feedback early, make sure that as you're building the product, as you're writing the book, when you when it's finished, all your better readers have told you, yes, that's exactly what I wanted. That's exactly what I needed to solve my problem, right? Um So I I think that's uh it to me there's those are the two things that that are the most important things when you're when you're um um when you're writing a book. A um, you know the the the writing has to be really good, but b, if it is also solving a problem, you gotta make sure that the problem is solved, right?

SPEAKER_03 5:01

Interesting. Yep. So you're so would you so okay, so you know, when we're talking about the writing being good, it's the craft of writing. It's how compelling it is, it is it propulsive, uh, is it an exciting narrative? You know, it does it, you know, is it, is it, is the pacing good, is the character development good? Right. The craft. Right. And that that applies to any genre. And then when you're and then if you're talking about a problem-solving book, which is a very large piece of nonfiction, um I'm what I'm hearing you say is you want both. You want craft, but craft is not enough. You also need beta because you need to know that you that the problem you're solving is important to people and you're solving it in just the right way for them.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Exactly. And so so one of the things that that I um I like to um um instill on my my authors and also their writers is that they are if they are writing a problem-solving book, they should not discount that process and shortcut it. Often writers are very confident with their writing, right? And they they know that they can write very well and they can build a great story and they can create tension and they can create, you know, the what it needs to make it a page turner. Um, but very often both the author and the writer kind of overlook that at the end of the day, if you're writing a problem-solving book, the only thing that counts is did the reader get his problem solved? And in order to do that, you have to test it. There's no way around testing. You have to, it's just like market testing, right? Like, like any startup um in in you know, the tech world or or or or anywhere, you have to get your

Beta Readers As Product Testing

SPEAKER_01 6:55

product out to the customer as fast as possible and see, is it doing its thing, right? Is it solving, you know, is it providing the solution?

SPEAKER_03 7:04

And so when you're when you're developing a problem-solving book in this way and you're doing the beta testing, at what point in the process? Are you talking about first draft of a manuscript that then gets sent out to people? Or are you talking about more taking taking some of the core principles and testing them? How do you, how does that work in your um in your typical universe?

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Yeah, so so uh one of the things that I do, and this is very core to uh you know the the overall process when I commit to promoting a book is I do a lot of click testing out there where in and and I do it on Meta, so where you have uh the ability to select aka Facebook for those who don't know. Facebook and and Instagram, both, right? For the older and the younger generation. Um and and then and Meta allows you to create really targeted audiences. You can go after exactly the target, the ideal target audience of your book. And and so um I actually do uh click testing of the pain statement and the solution of the problem that you're solving before, you know, or as we are even designing and and and planning the book, right? The actual writing of the book.

SPEAKER_03 8:22

Yeah. So that's so in an ideal scenario, you might take that thesis statement, right? The problem and the solution before the book's even fully fleshed out. Maybe it's in concept phase, maybe it's a proposal. Exactly. That's when you're testing to find out so that you can adjust the structure and narrative of the book prior to even getting started.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Because that there's two things, right? So the author says, Well, I want to write a book that solves this problem, right? Right. Um, and then there's two there's two things you have to confirm there. A, are there really a lot of people out there that have that problem and that want it solved? And then so that's one thing. And the other thing is, how do you uh speak to these folks? How you do you describe the problem and the solution so that people, that it resonates with people, right? Those are really important marketing words that uh you need to know um if you're going to uh promote your book, even as you're writing your book, as you're you know, thinking about the chapters and thinking about the structure. You have to know how the reader thinks about this problem and how they think about the the way out of this problem, right? So that's something um that can be very easily actually um click tested for um a relatively small investment on the meta platform. And the the outcome is not only that you confirm what you were writing about, but you actually get leads, and that's the the cool part. Um, as these people are clicking on uh your ads, you can uh get their email addresses, and you're not gonna get a

Click Testing On Meta

SPEAKER_01 10:15

very high volume. You're gonna get maybe five or ten or or fifteen, but those are exactly your target readers. Those are exactly the people that have the problem that you are solving. And then you can individually just approach these uh folks and say, hey, I'm writing a book about this, and I saw you clicked on my ad. And would you uh help me as a better reader? And you'd be surprised how many people would will say, Wow, that's awesome! Yes, I'll be glad to help you. And then you have your, you know, three, four, or five better readers. You don't really need any more. You don't really need more than three, but you you know that those are exactly the people that that you want to write your book for. And then um, and then you start that process at the very beginning. So when you're uh even when you're already creating the outline of the book and the first chapter, obviously these are just readers, they're not publishing experts, they're not authors, they're not uh, you know, editorial experts, they're just readers, so you do have to write something for them. But even if you just have the first chapter, uh that's when I uh start the better reading process saying, okay, let's get this first chapter to these three readers, and and and they already know what problem I'm trying to solve, right? Um, and they can tell, you know, tell me and and and the writer right away, uh, yeah, this is this is a great opening for that kind of book that I would want to read, you know, to solve my problem. Um, and you really should do that with just every chapter as you're writing the book. There's certain things that you you're you're you need to ask your better readers. There's uh um there's a certain um uh process that you would go through, but uh it's really chapter by chapter. You would about you would approach them. If you're writing your book over six months, eight months, you're writing ten chapters, you know, you just go back to them so many times, and you'd be surprised every time you'll get a really great idea from at least one of those three readers, where you say, Wow, yeah, that's how I can make my chapter better, or I forgot this, or I don't need that, or I need to really explain this differently, etc.

SPEAKER_03 12:38

So it's it's almost like I'm you know, I'm thinking about I'm thinking about those. I mean, I've only seen this like on TV shows, but uh where they'll have product testers who go in and taste, you know, a new variety of potato chip or like a new soda or you know, try out a new take on the Q-tip or something. I don't know. And so you're kind of like doing that, but for your but for your problem-solving book.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

Yes, exactly. And it comes from it also comes from the um the startup world, right? I used to be in in tech and

Finding The Right Target Reader

SPEAKER_01 13:10

I used to be in uh uh in a startup myself. Uh and in a startup, you you're gonna kind of uh mock up the product and put it out there and sell it before it's finished, right? And see, you know, what works, uh, as well as going to customers with the unfinished product and asking them questions. Does this work for you? You know, how would you do it? Um and and it just makes a lot of it it makes um um it it is um the most obvious thing you can do when you're writing a book to make sure that the uh book when it's finished is gonna resonate, right? Rather than just doing it uh in in in some back room and and writing the whole thing and then surprise, surprise, here it here it is.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Right.

SPEAKER_03 14:01

No, it's really interesting. It's very it's a very modern approach. I mean, yeah it's it's funny, it's reminding me, I'm sure you've heard of Morgan Housel and and his books. He he wrote The Psychology of Money, which was a massive success. And then uh he's he he wrote a follow-up called The Art of Spending, which came out in October. Um, and I've been listening to it. Um, I like to listen to books when I go for walks.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:25

And and he had this line, because he's a very good writer, and you can tell he loves writing, you know, even though he's a fine, he's a financial guy. Yeah. Um and he has this line in there where that resonated with me. He's like, well, I write for an audience, an audience of one, which is myself. I want to write things that I'm interested in, that I love. I want to write in a way that I like, you know, and there's a part of me, there's a part of me, you know, as a as a writer, as an artist, that really resonates. It's like if you can write for yourself, then then that's gonna be the most authentic kind of thing. Um but it's it's a little bit in contradiction to what you're saying. So I'm I'm curious, I'm curious how you would respond to that.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

I I would say I have plenty of uh um um cases and authors and customers where that is exactly the case, namely, namely, you let's say uh an author wants to uh publish an inspirational book about their life or their business story, right? Because a lot of these authors have truly, I mean, amazing inspirational stories. And in that case, you're not solving someone's problem. You're actually writing uh a book that is read for pleasure, right? Right. And in that case, what exactly what you said is true, the most important thing is to make sure that the author, the client, does not take your wheel and lets you write exactly what you want. And I've had this discussion

Creativity With Clear Constraints

SPEAKER_01 16:05

many, many times in the past, right? Right. Where where the the the ghostwriter comes to me and says, Oh my god, my you know, my client wants me to write this, but it's gonna be awful. This is gonna destroy the whole, you know, story flow and and everything. And then I have to go back to the author and say, You hired a very good writer, yeah, very good money. You gotta let them do their thing. They are the expert, they know what to do. So there are many, right, uh, there are many book genres where what you said is perfectly true. Interesting. You have to let the writer do their magic. Otherwise, you're not gonna get the result. You're not gonna get, you know, what paid for. Right.

SPEAKER_03 16:49

And I and I would say that that Housel, I mean, he's he's a he seems to be a master of both. I mean, especially in that first book, The Psychology of Money. It's definitely a problem-solving book. And he writes it so practically and so usefully, but he's he's pretty tapped in, you know. I don't and who knows, he might have done some beta testing.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

Yeah, so you see, so you'd be surprised, uh um how and and I think this is just because it's so intuitively right and and obvious. So, for example, if you read uh business books like Do You Know Good to Great? Yeah. Yeah. So if you look if you look in the acknowledgments, you'll realize this guy actually wrote the book together with a whole bunch of CEOs. Oh, interesting. So he went back and back and back to the CEOs as he was writing this book. This is not like new or or you know unheard of. It's just that it's kind of the obvious thing to do, but nobody does it. Right. No, it makes sense. I you know, uh and I haven't done it.

SPEAKER_03 17:53

You know, it's it's interesting I I don't think I've ever quite done it like that. I mean, I've worked with editors before, and editors often are a proxy for the audience, but not not just straight beta testing. And it's editors are not a good proxy for the audience. Well, it depends. It depends. It depends. I I feel like I've gotten advice from editors before, you know, uh, you know, acquiring editors, not just go copy editors, but acquiring editors at a publishing house that have improved the product because because they, you know, they they were pitched a book that was one way, and they and they'll be like, well, what if you were to tweak it a little bit like this, and then it ends up being a better product and a little bit more relevant to the audience. Um I'm not sure. I've also had the opposite happen though.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Yeah, I'm not discounting the role of the editor. I think the role of the editor is really important. I'm just saying you cannot um count on the editor to be the better weapon. You're right.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

Not the same thing, right?

SPEAKER_03 18:47

They're often and often I I often find, I mean, get we're talking traditional publishing here, but acquiring editors tend to be pretty, they're pretty in inside. They're ill a they tend to be a bit in a bubble,

Viral Factor And Word Of Mouth

SPEAKER_03 19:00

and things that they think aren't necessarily gonna sell, uh, or angles they have tend to be a little too elite sometimes and too literary, I guess you might say. Whereas readers tend to resonate with broader messages that an editor or publisher might be like, well, that's already been done, that's not sophisticated enough, that kind of thing. Yeah. A reader is just gonna respond with their their heart and their mind and their soul, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:26

I mean, they the reader is gonna tell you straight out, I don't understand this, or it doesn't solve my problem, or this this just you know was boring and uh I I lost interest, etc. Right. And and and it's just you know, um, it's a it's a very uh uh how how shall I say a very powerful way to to uh force you to you know produce a book that um is going to be you know precisely uh written for your ideal target audience. But that only works if you pick better readers that are precisely your target audience. A lot of you know, a lot of authors, like um, let's say entrepreneurs who are you know pitching their services, um, already have this network, right? They have already solved this problem big time for you know 10, 100, 1,000 uh other uh you know uh uh existing clients of theirs. And that's um so that's a very easy uh pool to to tap into when you're looking for ped better readers, right?

SPEAKER_03 20:37

So that's that's no, that's fabulous, right? If you're doing a problem-solving book and you already, you're already a professional in that field or a thought leader in that field, that existing audience is who yeah, that's your yeah. So what do you say, you know, it's always I find this to sometimes it's pretty straightforward to figure out your target audience, sometimes it's not obvious. Um what do you how often do you encounter a situation where you're working on a book where the what the target audience is is not totally clear up front and you need to sort of discover that? How does how does what's your experience there? I think that's the standard situation, right? Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

That happens. So most people come in, they're not like they don't know exactly. They're like, we need to discover this together, kind of yeah, that happens over and over. Well, you know, but it but it it is uh more often than not that authors have a you know like a a hunch of what they want to write about, but it's not clear yet who exactly they're targeting and what, right? And I think that's actually uh also a big uh a huge uh value that the ghostwriter brings to the table, right? Right. Discovering together with the author um you know, why are they writing this book and Who are they helping? Right. Even if it's not a problem-solving book, if even if it's just a a memoir, uh, you know, you have to uh you have

Book Seeding And Free Giveaways

SPEAKER_01 22:10

to at some point figure out why are you writing this book? Right. Who are you helping? And I often do uh um workshops at the beginning of uh a project where uh ideally we get together in person, uh author, ghostwriter, and uh myself to uh you know to uh nail that to get that uh um um you know clarified and and really crisp.

SPEAKER_03 22:42

That's interesting. I when I when I'm first starting out out with uh with a writing client, and you know, whether we're working on the publishing side or if I'm working as a ghostwriter, um I always I there's a metaphor, it's a theological metaphor. It comes from that there's this concept of there being a God-shaped hole in your heart. And it I think it came from Pascal in the 17th century or something like that. And I I always feel like um there's a book-shaped hole in the market or in the universe, right? And so everybody, if you have even if you have an idea, you have a story, you have something, but there's probably quite a few ways to tell it and quite a few ways to shape it. Yeah. And so a lot of what I the more you can do that kind of research up front, that the more it can help your project, as opposed to trying to write a write a square peg and then fit it into the hole later. Um because and you know, so for me, that often takes the form of a book proposal, right? And going out there thinking about target audiences, doing competitive research, trying to figure out, okay, I could maybe write this book in seven or eight different ways. Which one do I think would be the most compelling?

SPEAKER_01 23:51

Yeah, absolutely. You know, that that is, you know, at the end of the day, that's um probably the most important thing that you're gonna do at the outset of your of your journey, because if you cannot figure out your target audience, you have no way to promote the book later, right? It's just you know, you there's no way you can do that. And I actually though the one thing that I that that makes it, how shall I say, specific and and uh and straightforward with my process is um, you know, I start out with validating your um message on Meta, right? Meaning on Facebook and Instagram. That means I have to create a target audience. I cannot do that without creating a target audience. I cannot just send the message to the whole universe. That's not gonna work and it's not going to uh be, it's not gonna be cost effective, right? Uh so in order to, in order to make such a test successful, I have to be able to select an audience on Meta. And in order to select an audience on Meta, you have to tell me who that is. Right. Are we going after these people? You know, what what what demographics, what interests, what uh what kind of uh personality are we going after? And and and if if if we can't do that up front, then clearly we don't know yet who the target is of this book, and we have to be, you know, we have to work it out. We have to figure it out. So so whatever I do, um it it uh the first thing that has to happen is we have to figure out a target audience.

SPEAKER_03 25:44

So this is more of a this is more of like a fill, I guess more of a philosophical question, but um I I love I like doing things sort of in this way. I've never done quite the crowdsourcing way, but but keeping the market in mind and then writing the book strategically, I like. But I remember when I first started doing that, I had to get over something, right? Because I and I think maybe, maybe a lot of people listening to this might feel that way too. That somehow that diminishes your creativity. If you're writing the book in a certain way or trying to write it for a market,

Monetization Paths And Ads

SPEAKER_03 26:20

uh it limits you, and creativity is something that's unlimited and it comes from your heart. Um I'm curious, and and I've had plenty of experiences that completely contradict that, so I don't feel that way anymore. But I'm curious if you encounter that ever. People sort of feeling like, well, you know, that's cool and all, and I bet it works, but that's not how I want to do it because that's not my creative thing.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

Yeah, and and I absolutely uh so for example, um if if we're doing a better reader process, that is often uh something that a writer who has never done it before is gonna be very um suspicious of. Like, what you're gonna have some guy out there, somebody out there who doesn't know how to write a book. Tell me how to write. So that that uh that is uh um uh a common reaction. I would say that um the creativity is absolutely um you know needed, but you you your creativity is going to be um wasted if you do not uh define the target audience.

SPEAKER_02 27:43

Right?

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Without defining the target audience, your creativity is just gonna go all over the place. Right? I mean, if if if uh and and and I'm sure you know this from you know from from previous uh projects that you've done, you can get an a very excited author um who wants to write a book, but if they cannot figure out who to write it for and why, it's you know, um, you're gonna have a lot of fun writing it. You can have a lot of fun writing it. You can end up with a a result that's totally different from where uh uh you set out, and it can still be a good result, but only if you on that journey figured out who you're writing for and why.

SPEAKER_02 28:35

Right?

SPEAKER_01 28:36

So I'm not I'm not saying you have to follow a uh, you know, you you have to um um inhibit that creativity up front. I've seen cases where authors, you know, maybe took a year or so uh or more to write their book, and their the end result was really good, and they only discovered at the very you know, in the last third of the journey who they're writing it for and why. Interesting. That can happen too. They kind of wrote their way into it. Yes, I've I've seen that happen. Now that's not how I would suggest you

What Marketing Actually Works

SPEAKER_01 29:20

do it or or but but it but it's a perfectly perfectly valid situation and a perfectly valid approach. If someone if someone is writing a book just because, you know, it's it's like planting a tree, it's something that they have uh made, you know, put it uh put on their bucket list and they have the resources to do it, and uh, and that's you know one of their goals, and they're not really sure why uh who they're gonna write for and and why. Um that can be discovered as part of a uh as part of a book project. That's perfectly valid. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. Um I'm I'm uh I'm uh all I'm saying is that might be an approach that's more applicable to books like memoirs, right? The pleasure books. The pleasure books. The pleasure books. But if you are if your goal is to solve a specific problem that certain people have, then obviously that's not the approach you would take. You wouldn't like meander through, you know, creative uh uh uh ways and and and uh arrive at a certain point. You'd be very specific up front. This is you know what I want to do. I want to solve this problem for these people, right? And so uh if you're taking that route, if you if if it if it's that kind of book, um I think your creativity has to be, you know, uh guided uh towards that direction, anyways, right? Well, creativity is often enhanced by limitations.

SPEAKER_02 31:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:02

That's what that's what I find. As long as it as long as you get over that, you know, if you have a false belief about limitations inhibiting, you can it can really accelerate your creativity.

SPEAKER_01 31:12

Yeah.

unknown 31:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:13

Because creativity is mysterious, right? I mean, you kind of if you give, you just it's almost like a river. It's like water. You just need to give it a channel and it'll

Where To Learn More And Closing

SPEAKER_03 31:20

keep going, you know.

SPEAKER_01 31:22

Yeah, I you know, and and uh I think that uh um that is probably the one of the uh big reasons why uh you you want to, you know, you want to make sure you have the right writer for your book. Uh, because uh the writer will bring that creativity and that that uh um energy that that turns your story and your purpose into something that is that is so much more for so many more people than what you you know originally thought when you were gonna you know start this book. And I love it.

SPEAKER_03 32:04

Yeah. That's very cool. So I I want to ask you one more question, but um before that, I just wanted if you know, for those of you are listening, uh feel if you if you enjoy this, please, please like and subscribe on whatever platform you're listening on. Uh you can share this with anybody you think might be relevant. We're here. My mission here is to bring honesty and clarity to the often confusing and deceptive landscape of book publishing and promotion. So that that's what we're here to do. Um and uh so I think I guess kind of the last thing I'm curious about, Martin. How do you how do you what is your thing? How do you operationalize this? I I mean I know that you have a thing called book seeding, um, which I think is very specific, but I how do you go about, aside from the creation of the book, how do you then promote, promote it? Because I know that's your that's kind of your bread and butter, that's your specialty.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

Exactly. Uh um, so um, and thanks for for that question. Um, obviously I love to talk about this, so um, I hope it'll uh it'll be short and sweet. Um, so assuming that we have created an awesome book, right? We had a great writer, um, we've uh we've gone through um a beta reader process, or we have let this uh writer be as brilliant and creative as they can. So now we have this great book, but uh in addition to this book that uh is is uh you know at a quality uh at a uh is is so good that it will sell itself, right? Its readers will promote it. In addition to this great book, we also have a target audience well defined on Meta, right? So we have a hundred thousand millions, whatever the target audience might be, of uh of perfect, perfectly aligned target readers. And the most overlooked, how shall I say, secret in book promotion is the fact that the book needs to promote itself at the end of the day. You can spend a lot of money on marketing, on events, on uh, you know, Amazon ads, on you can just spend an endless amount of money on book promotion. If the book uh doesn't have a a uh I call it a viral factor greater than one, right? So uh if if one person reads your book, you have to have that person uh recommended to at least two more, right? Otherwise, all the money you're investing in promoting a book is not going to, it's not gonna lead to organic growth, right? So if you have a viral factor that's larger than one, which is, you know, which you have done because you, you know, you hired the right writer, and if uh, you know, if applicable, you went through a better reader process. If you have that, all you need to do is you need to get that book out there into enough people's hands, target readers' hands, so it starts to grow by itself. Right? That's that's the you know, the most basic secret of uh of book promotion, right? And and hardly anyone actually, you know, executes on that. So so the execution is very, very simple. Get it out there to your exact target readers, you know, and get a thousand or five thousand or ten thousand copies out there, right? And then if it has a viral factor larger than one, it'll start to grow. I mean, there's it's just basic, you know, uh rule of uh of of um economy here that uh if your book uh generates two more readers and you get it to a thousand people, it's gonna start to grow. If you get it to ten thousand people, it's gonna start to grow faster. Right. And uh, you know, uh the the simple way uh of or the obvious way of getting it out there is if you're a you know, if you wrote a book that that that is for audiences that you can find at specific events, like if you wrote a book and you can go to a conference and get 500 or a thousand copies into the exact target reader's hands at an event, then that's you know one uh basic and very common way that people do this. But the other um overlooked way is that you can use your meta-u-defined audience to run uh fairly uh simple and straightforward video ads where you're giving your book away for free. And those get very good uh uh uh that gets very good response and where you can get your book into the hands of a thousand, even ten thousand uh readers because you have a an ebook version and you promise them a free paperback version if they come back to you with your address. Um it's a fairly straightforward uh process. I call it book seeding, where you can I love that book seeding, it's such a cool term. Yeah, you can get a uh you know, five thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand, whatever your your um uh marketing budget is. And if the book uh indeed creates two more readers or three more or four more for every book that's out there and read, that's it. You know, you have a book that that is selling and growing.

SPEAKER_03 38:08

And and my Martin, I love I mean, just I just want to interject real quick, just because uh I think you and I kind of bonded on this point. I think this is why I originally wanted to talk to you, because I heard you talking about this to somebody else at our c at the conference. But um uh because we do a similar thing to you, but I but probably at a at a lower level, probably a little less targeted. But the the giveaway thing, it it's often counterintuitive for an author to give away their book. And they're like, well, how's that worth it if I'm just giving it away? But um, giving it away is the most effective way to get this initial batch of readers. And like you said, that you're looking for that two to one quotient. And if you really have that, if you really have a good book and you really are at two to one or more, then it's gonna work and it's worth it.

SPEAKER_01 38:57

Absolutely. And that's a that's a hurdle that you often have to overcome with authors who believe that uh books are um profitable per se, right? Books are not profitable per se. It's just books are very uh are the same as any other um any other item that you would sell online. It costs you if you if you uh are if you're if you're selling a book traditionally online with Amazon ads or any other ads, it costs you between 15 or 20 dollars to acquire a new customer, right? Yeah, there's no way you're ever going to make money with a book on that, right? The difference between selling a pizza and selling a book is the book will actually create, will sell itself, right? It'll create two new customers if it is uh written and published uh the right way, right? And and so what you need to do is you need to get your book out there for free so it starts to sell for you. And and that's just you know, that that is uh something that you often need to convince an author of because they feel like, okay, I'm giving my book away for free. How how can that be right? It's uh you know, it's it's kind of a uh it it's a book is a very different uh product than you know selling shirts or it's it's just a very different product, and and that's that's the the um um essence of of getting you know uh successful book sales is to get the book to sell itself and to get the book seeded into your exact target reader's hands. So the the the readers that are gonna uh resonate with the the and even if it's just let's say if it's uh a memoir and it's not solving a specific problem, um people who read memoirs have friends who read memoirs who they you know uh they recommend the best books that they read too, right? So so it doesn't have to be a problem-solving book uh in order to get that viral factor uh that ensures organic sales. And and you know, at the end of the day, you're gonna spend less money on uh on a uh so for example, if you did uh what I do for bookseating, you're gonna spend less money on that than you would uh spend on uh hiring uh you know a hybrid publisher uh that gives you some vanity uh publishing feeling, yeah, but that does all kinds of marketing busyness that doesn't really deliver any results whatsoever, right?

SPEAKER_03 41:58

Yeah, it's it's amazing, Martin. We've yeah, uh having we have I've tried, I feel like I've tried everything under the sun when it comes to book marketing. And the most effective thing of all of those is some version of what you're talking about. Yeah. At the end of the day, with a good book, with a good book that'll sell itself, get giving it away to people. It's the only thing that works. And and and and the book has to be good. And if it is, then you get the two-to-one, like you said, people talk about it. But you also get the other benefits, right? I mean, the other ways to monetize a book would be if you have other books and they're like, ooh, this this was awesome. I'm gonna read the next one. It's like that's what happened with me with Morgan Housel. I read, I read uh the psychology of money, and then when he came out with the art of spending, I I got that one for free, right? And then there's the and then there's also a lot of business people who if if if you solve the problem, uh if that business person has a way to monetize a sale beyond that, right? A course or workshop or consultation or anything, right? But it all starts with the book that sells itself.

SPEAKER_01 43:00

Yeah, even if if you need if you're look if you're using the book as a lead magnet to your service, right? The same thing applies. Obviously, if you're using your book as a lead magnet to your service, I'm not gonna recommend that book to my friends until I've actually used your service. So now there's a combo where your book and your service have to both be convincing and have to solve my problem. But if they do, you know, that that's that's what's gonna happen, right? That the the same thing applies. Yeah. Uh so whether you're using it just as a problem-solving book that that you know um doesn't have a back end service or whether it has a back end service to it, um, it it's gonna be the same thing. And it's kind of very it's the most obvious thing uh where once you explain it, everybody will say, Yeah, well, sure. know obviously my book has to sell itself in order to grow. But it but but you'd you'd be uh amazed by how little um the traditional publishing world or the hybrid publishing world actually uh you know um emphasizes that um yeah they'll take your money and invest it in all kinds of uh things you don't need um and not focus on you know and the cell publishing world also yeah you know there's there's a lot of there's a lot of useless services out there yeah and you know I don't want to uh um I don't want to badmouth things that are absolutely um uh could absolutely be useful uh like if you're if you're um doing a press release that might be useful if it is promoting the SEO of your website if you're doing uh you know um I'm uh having a hard time here to think of things that are truly useful but like giving well run running Amazon ads running Amazon ads if you're able to if you're able to stomach that kind of loss right at $15 to $20 per sale but you have but a sale is is valuable to you in other ways then that can be a piece of the puzzle. Yeah if you're if so so I have um I have customers were uh you know where I uh do that that have a book that's actually a lead magnet to a service that's much more valuable right that's like hundreds or thousands of dollars and that where it makes absolutely sense to run Amazon ads where it costs you twenty dollars or or or thirty dollars to sell a book right uh so so that can that can absolutely be a um a realistic situation excellent well martin this has been an awesome conversation I knew it would be um I really appreciate your perspective it's awesome um so where where can people learn more about your company your services yeah so uh um at my website calvalesso.com I have a link to um my schedule and I'm happy to uh um meet with anyone who's interested uh in learning more I love helping um aspiring authors I love also uh building new uh relationships uh relationships with ghostwriters or with small uh publishing services uh like yours um I actually um I I am surprised how few uh publishing services are out there that offer a uh really comprehensive and good quality publishing at an affordable price like yours right there's only there's only um two or three out there and um I think I know all of them now. And and so uh you know um yeah yeah I I just I just like helping um people create great books and I think that's you know it's just one of the the um best things that has ever happened to me that I came to this you know to this career um actually by by through a ghostwriter I I uh I started my business and uh you know I look forward to many many great books that I'll be promoting over the next you know um coming years.

SPEAKER_03 47:38

Awesome. Well thank thanks Martin thanks everybody for tuning in um again like and subscribe on whatever platform you're on and and please share this episode with people you think uh might find it useful. Have a great day thanks whatever