10 weird things authors did to sell their books
Every author wants to know the secret. There isn't one. What there is, if you look at the authors who broke through, is a lot of strange, stubborn, sometimes ridiculous effort.
Here are ten of my favorites that I have found over time.
1. Walt Whitman reviewed his own book. Anonymously. In 1855, Whitman paid to print Leaves of Grass himself. Critics were confused by it, and some were disgusted. So Whitman wrote glowing reviews of his own book and got them printed in newspapers without his name on them. In one he called himself the great American poet the country had been waiting for. Today Leaves of Grass is one of the most important books in American literature. (Don't try this one. More on that below.)
2. Beatrix Potter turned her rabbit into a toy before anyone knew what merch was. Six publishers turned down The Tale of Peter Rabbit. In 1901 Potter printed 250 copies herself and handed them out. They went fast, and a publisher finally picked up the book. Then she did something almost nobody had done. In 1903 she designed a Peter Rabbit doll and registered it at the patent office. Board games, tea sets and wallpaper followed. Peter Rabbit is considered the oldest licensed character in the world.
3. Nikki Giovanni talked her way into a famous jazz club for her book party. In 1968, nobody wanted to publish a young Black woman writing militant poetry. So Giovanni borrowed money from her roommate, started her own company and published the book herself. Then she walked into Birdland, the famous New York jazz club, and convinced the owner to let her throw a Sunday afternoon book party with poetry readings. The book sold 10,000 copies in eight months.
4. Terry McMillan wrote more than 3,000 letters. When her first novel, Mama, came out in 1987, her publisher sent out a press release and review copies and called it done. McMillan didn't accept that. She wrote over 3,000 letters to bookstores, colleges, universities and Black-owned bookstores. In every letter she offered to come do a reading. She built her own book tour and told her publicist where she was going. The first printing sold out. A few years later she wrote Waiting to Exhale.
5. E. Lynn Harris sold books from his trunk at beauty salons. Harris sold computers for IBM for years. Every publisher he sent his novel Invisible Life to said no. So he printed 5,000 copies himself and sold them from the trunk of his car at Black beauty salons and barbershops in Atlanta. Women read it while they got their nails done and told their friends. A Doubleday sales rep eventually got hold of a copy. Harris went on to write ten New York Times bestsellers.
6. Paulo Coelho pirated his own book. In 1999, The Alchemist was selling about 1,000 copies a year in Russia. Coelho found a pirated Russian translation online and did the opposite of what every publisher would tell you. He posted it on his own website for free. Print sales took off. By 2002 he had sold a million copies in Russia. He later ran a site called "Pirate Coelho" that linked to free copies of his books in dozens of languages, and he acted like someone else had built it.
7. Christopher Paolini did 135 events dressed like a medieval knight. Paolini was a homeschooled teenager in Montana when his family self-published his fantasy novel Eragon. He cold-called schools and libraries and did more than 135 presentations, most of them in a red shirt, billowy black pants, lace-up boots and a black cap. On a good day he might sell 40 books in eight hours. Then author Carl Hiaasen's stepson read it. Hiaasen told his publisher, Knopf. You know the rest.
8. Rupi Kaur got censored by Instagram, and it made her career. Kaur self-published Milk and Honey at 21 and had been posting her poems on Instagram. In 2015, for a university photography project, she posted a photo of herself on her period with stains on her clothes and sheets. Instagram deleted it twice. She publicly called them out, the post went viral, and Instagram apologized. A publisher reissued her book. It has sold more than 11 million copies.
9. Haruki Murakami became an advice columnist. Murakami is famously private. In 2015 he opened a website called "Mr. Murakami's Place" and invited readers to ask him anything, from his novels to their love lives to cats. Readers sent in more than 37,000 questions. He personally answered over 3,700 of them. Then he published the answers as an ebook, and it climbed the Kindle charts in Japan.
10. Jennifer Egan published a story one tweet at a time. Egan had already won a Pulitzer. In 2012 she wrote a spy story called "Black Box," handwriting it in a Japanese notebook with eight rectangles on each page, each one tweet long. The New Yorker posted it on Twitter one line per minute, from 8 to 9 p.m., for ten nights. Readers waited for it like a TV show.
Look at the list again. A poet, a children's author, a computer salesman, a teenager in a costume, a Pulitzer winner.
None of them waited for permission.
Every one of them found a way to get in front of real people. A salon chair. A jazz club. A school gym. A phone screen at 8 p.m. The strange part got attention. The showing up is what sold the books.
Here's what you can steal:
Go where your readers already are. Harris didn't wait for bookstores. He went to the salons. Where do your readers spend their time? Their associations, their Facebook groups, their conferences?
Do the boring volume. McMillan wrote 3,000 letters. Paolini did 135 events. You can send 30 podcast pitches this month.
Give something away. Coelho gave away the book. Murakami gave away his time. A free chapter, a live Q&A or a useful post builds trust faster than any ad.
Make it feel like an event. Giovanni didn't hold a book signing. She threw a party at Birdland. Egan turned a short story into a ten-night show. What would make your launch something people show up for?
Let your story be a little weird. Potter sewed a rabbit doll. Kaur posted the photo everyone else was afraid to. The things that make you different are usually the things people remember.
One honest warning about Whitman. Writing fake reviews of your own book is how people got attention in 1855. Today it breaks Amazon's rules and federal FTC rules on fake reviews. Don't do it. Get real reviews from real readers.
I sat down with Patrick Manigault, PhD to talk about his new book, Humanity at Work, which launched on September 22.
We talked about work and what it means to stay human inside it. We also got into what it was like to launch a book, and why he wrote this one now.
Listen to the full episode here
Author X is coming back in February
Next week I'm opening seats for the next Author X Brand Camp session, happening this February.
If you've been thinking about getting clear on your author brand and building content that actually sounds like you, this is the room to do it in. Seats are limited, so keep an eye on your inbox next week. I'll share the details and how to grab your spot then.
What I'm working on
I'm finalizing a guidebook on author marketing. It's everything I wish someone had handed me when I published my first book. I think you're going to love it. More on that in the next few weeks.
Let's bounce some ideas around
If you want help coming up with fun, creative ways to market yourself and your book, let's hop on a call. Bring your book and your weirdest idea. We'll figure out what fits you.
rising-authors.com/schedulemycall
Hussein
