Lessons - The Secret Formula To Write A Best-Selling Book | Emily Liebert - 7-Time Bestselling Author

You have six novels out. And have all six hit the best seller list. They have hit best seller list. So what is the formula for a best seller? What what do you need to write? I could tell you that I would have to kill you. I don't know how it happened. I know it happened through sampled. But you have to be you can't just be someone who writes the book. You have to know how to promote yourself. Do PR and marketing. My publishing house does that for me. But I also do it for myself. And I hire a public that's outside of my publishing house. You know, I mean, hard work is amazing. And I work really hard to make sure that everyone knows about my book post on social media. I do giveaways. I send out e-mail. I actually partner with a brand for each of my books, which I don't know any authors outside for myself that do this. So I've partnered with nail polished brands, lipstick brands. I've partnered with general makeup brands. I partnered with Canyon Ranch with perfectly famous. I partnered with Waffle, which is an infinite brand, bras and underwares. And we launched a campaign called the perfect fit, which is your perfect fit book and your perfect fit. That's smart. That's very smart. Very smart. And I saw your Instagram. It's really, like, it's really well done. It's very well done. Yes, for the brand about, you know, being fitted for a bra, and what kind of bra you wear when you're working out and you're getting dressed up. We did one very interesting thing, didn't you, where I was posing in my Waffle brand underwear on my porch at a fun ride with no makeup on. We said, um, my very talented friend Jenny Goldberg with the top of her, she has a private portrait part of her company, which is sort of the duar of the top of her band during the pandemic. She was doing front porch photos at a fun ride. And we decided it would be great to bring this into the Waffle partnership. And so I posed for her series in my Waffle brand underwear. After that, I noticed that a lot of people that were posing for how we're enrolled and nightgowns and pajamas. I told you we're supposed to be on your ride under a competitor. Just how you woke up. No, since I was one of the forever, it was your, you were honest, true self. That's all that matters, right? That is first there. And this is my honest, true self, too. This is zero makeup. This is exactly how I woke up this morning with messy hair and no makeup. So, um, this is me. Take it or leave it. It's, no, it's good. That's, that's how you got to be. And I think that, you know, I've seen every time I speak about just marketing, obviously not just marketing books, but just marketing in general. It's always about being authentic. Lots of people get like, how do you buy into it? It's just real, real, you know? This girl right here who's also me, but that's me with hair and makeup. And, and how did you, I guess, I guess my question is, this is a funny. Okay. So the reason why I'm asking is because I see a lot of people that that sell books or sell products and they, and they don't quite get everything you just mentioned about how to market, how to be personal, how to be authentic, partnerships and all this stuff. And, and you do see it obviously at the upper echelons, but it takes a lot to get there, but you're just sort of taking this on on your own. Where did you learn to do this? Where did you learn to market? How did you sort of understand that this is how you bring a book or product to, and you're doing I, like you're doing Instagram lives, like you're doing everything. Like you're killing it. I think you, I think it's all a progression. It doesn't all come at once, but when I wrote this book, Fairytale, I had a lot of luck getting the blessedity because it was about Facebook. Facebook was exploding in the media. It was sort of this chicken soup for the soul and kind of bucking amazing stories and people affected. We loved hearing about that. And so I, as you read before, I was on the stage show. I was on Rachel Ray Anderson Cooper, and I got so much attention for that book. And when I wrote a novel, I was told immediately, do not expect this kind of publicity for a novel. And I thought to myself, well, that makes sense. You know, there aren't these sort of aspects to it like the Facebook assets. The one was over a bar of gas that did amazing story of that. It's just a blow off that came from my mind. And there are a lot of authors with a lot of novels. So I knew I had to do something to spend myself apart. And somewhere on his brain of mine, I came up with the idea of approaching a nail polish company and seeing if they would make a nail polish grant named after the book and after my characters that we could send to everybody in the press and do giveaways with and I could bring to my event. And it just really worked amazingly. And I got, I worked with a company called Doya, which makes amazing nail polish. And it got the book so much publicity outside of book websites or, you know, in magazines that right out of the gym, like in style magazine and on refinery 29 and in pop sugar and all these places where something just a book might not get attention, but all the fun. There was this nail polish set and the policies are named for my characters. There's cute sort of Italian. So that worked really well. I also knew to hire a publicist outside of my publishing house, because while the publicists at the publishing house are amazing, they have 10, 15 God knows how many books they're working on at the same time. So I stuck with the partnerships after that, the Grand Partnership. And I just knew I had to be really good on social media. I knew that creating good, interesting content was really important because you have to think about what you like to see in other people's content. And I think people want to see the real you and they want to see you talking. And what are you wearing? And what are you eating? And what is your life like outside of writing books? You know, what do you do with your kids? And also like that you're not perfect and you're not that girl on the book, like your hair blown out and your perfect makeup and I don't know the problems with the way I bring those to. Some like, you know, photos of shopping that they do with those pictures. And specifically when I realized which I fortunately realized it very early on during the pandemic that I was not going to be able to do a physical book tour, which I did already have set up. I pivoted and this was, I mean, I knew I knew in April. I think so many people were holding out saying, June's going to be fine. It's still two months away. You're going to be fine. And my husband and I were sitting there saying, there is no way I'm going on book tour in June. And I pivoted and I set up probably, probably close to like 30 of them for myself, different, anything from Zoom events to Instagram live. And I also really tried to mix it up. Like I tried to do summer lives with books to branches. I did some celebrities. I kicked it off with Melissa Jumphart, which was great and we did it pre-publication. I did one with Lindsey Zarnia, who's a sportscaster. And I did some with people who do beauty and books. There were just a lot of interesting, I did one with one of the real housewives, Margaret Joseph. There were a lot of interesting personalities, interesting people. I've done a bunch of podcasts, interviews, magazines, newspapers. You have to factory. You have to make sure people are just seeing the book over and over because as I'm sure you know, in marketing, people don't always buy the book the first time they see it. For the tenth time they see it. They're wondering why I've seen this book ten times. Yeah, it takes quite a bit, it takes quite a bit of exposure before somebody actually makes it. And it obviously depends on what the dollar value of the item is. But for even for something that's only like how much is the book like 20 bucks, 30 bucks at the most? I think the minor 15. No, 15, so even 15. It's going to be, you know, you're so oversaturated. Yeah, you'll have to see that book a few times before you're like, oh wait, who is this? Who is this woman? I see her everywhere. I see this book everywhere. And then eventually. I do not give a way to get more people to follow me, the more people to follow you, the more people you can reach. Yeah. Yeah, that's very, very smart. I post sometimes so that I can reach wider groups of people and cast the net wider. No, but it's very smart. I just, I noticed that I didn't realize that you were doing a lot of the stuff yourself. So just, you know, it's even more impressive because it's really well done. Like I, it's really, really well done. And I think that you're, you're, you're nailing it. And like, I think that's a differentiator that a lot of people that do their own thing could be writing a book, it could be any side hustle. Like the ability to access people through social and being personal and being human and being your authentic self and marketing that can, can drive massive traffic. Even if you aren't, you don't have like a million dollar ad budget, right? And I think that's what you're sort of showcasing here. It's, you're, you're, and you're not a million dollar ad. Well, you do it. You're doing a good job. My money is bigger. It is safe with no makeup. I have, I have just, I have one more question just about about the book and publishing and writing. And then I just have some rapid fire just about insights that you've learned from your life. Just one, one sort of round up question. What's, what's something, or is there something that I should have asked you about writing or publishing that I don't know enough about topic to ask you that you would say people should sort of take note of? I think one thing that people who are looking to write a book need to know about is rejection. I hate to say that there's a lot of rejection in this industry. I think the coming and author is almost like saying, I'm going to become an actress or I'm going to become, I don't know a chef or something where there are a lot of talented people competing and doing the same thing. And I think that you have to develop a tough skin and look at my dog making noises and that. Doesn't matter. This is the new reality. This is the new home. It's not a big thing. I think you have to develop a thick skin and you have to know how to be in a film and rush yourself off and take yourself back up. Another thing is sometimes look, get turned into TV shows or movies. And pretty revenge came out last July with option for a television series. And some fabulous writers were hired. So that is in the work now. Congratulations. That's amazing. Until it is on the air, I don't believe it. But it's always fun to have some and we think that your book could be a television show. Yeah. So that just shows you just do. And then as you're saying with your marketing, you're pivoting and you're learning but you're also opening yourself up to other opportunities that weren't initially presented. So those are two great lessons. And especially the rejection when I think that's very important not from a, you know, like not to not try but just be realistic about expectations.