Podcast: Inside Alex Hormozi’s $100M Book Launch with Tim Grahl
hosted by SUE CAMPBELL
In this episode, book marketing expert Tim Grahl breaks down the strategies behind Alex Hormozi's record-breaking $100 million book launch and shares actionable takeaways for authors at any level. Tim is the founder of Story Grid, author of Your First 1000 Copies and The Shithead, and a marketing consultant who has helped authors hit the NYT bestseller list. Tim also shares insights from his 17+ years helping authors market their books and discusses his work with Story Grid, where he applies deliberate practice principles to help writers improve their craft.
Learn about
The innovative "donation" model that drove massive sales
How Hormozi demonstrated his book's principles through the launch itself
Practical ways authors can scale these strategies to their own level
The power of customer-financed acquisition for growing your reach
Why building genuine relationships is crucial for book marketing success
Specific tactics for both fiction and non-fiction authors
Tim's "Books & Beer" networking strategy that any author can implement
Resources Mentioned
Tim's latest novel: The Shithead
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*Affiliate link — we get a small commission when you purchase, but you don’t pay more.
transcript
Anne Hawley: Hey writers, do you have a book in the works and no idea how to launch it into the world? Well, this one's for you.
Hello and welcome to the Write Anyway Podcast from Pages & Platforms and the Happily Ever Author Club. In today's episode, Sue Talks book Marketing with expert Tim Grahl, who shares his secrets for getting your book off the ground.
Let's listen in.
Sue Campbell: Hey Tim Grahl! Very happy to have you on the Write Anyway Podcast.
Tim Grahl: Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it.
Sue Campbell: So couple of weeks ago, I was sitting in my backyard thinking about this crazy Alex Hormozi book launch that I had just witnessed. And I don't have anyone in my life who I'm super close to who is as big of a marketing nerd as I am. So I'm like. I'm gonna text Tim. We haven't connected in a little while.
I'm just like, Tim's the person who I wanna talk to about this.
Tim Grahl: Yeah. yeah,
Sue Campbell: we were going back and forth a little bit and we landed on, let's have a conversation where we can talk about this launch and help other authors figure out what of this they can use.
Tim Grahl: Yeah. That sounds good.
Sue Campbell: So why don't you start by telling me a little bit about how did you hear about the launch and what were your impressions?
Tim Grahl: So I've actually been following Alex Hormozi now pretty steadily for two years. I run a business called Story Grid, and we were kind of stuck and I was trying to figure out how to grow it and I had seen a couple of his videos pop up, but never watched him. 'cause if you ever look at the guy, he like, what?
Picture the most bro-est bro you've ever seen. And you are picturing Alex Hormozi. And I was like, at some point that guy's gonna try to sell me crypto. I'm not watching that guy's videos. But then a friend of mine sent me one and was like, you gotta watch this. So I was like, all right. And it was like the best video on sales I'd ever seen.
So I just started, like when I get into somebody, I literally went all the way back to the beginning of his YouTube channel and just watched every video he's ever come out with. So I've been following him for a couple years now. Consumed a ton of his content. I have the first two books he came out with.
I actually, my son did a marketing internship with me this summer. The first thing I had him do was do book reports on the first two books. So big fan of his, so I already knew it was coming. So yeah, I, I followed it all the way from the beginning because I follow Alex and because I'm always interested in book marketing stuff.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, same. So I'm on his email list. I've read his first two books and I got the email in July that he was gonna be launching the book. And same thing like you have to be willing to disconnect the message from the messenger sometimes. So even if an Alex isn't your cup of tea, he absolutely knows what he's talking about, and he
is an iterator and he loves sharing with other people. So I would just caution everybody who's listening not to turn off and shut down when you go and see Alex and learn more about him. Because there's a lot to learn there and a lot to glean.
So I got the email. I immediately pre-ordered the book 'cause I'm like, I wanna get on the VIP just from an inside the launch status to be able to see all of his landing pages and the way that he is really putting this together from the VIP perspective. So I did that and then I found out that the day when he was having his launch event, which I expected to be like an hour or a 90 minute webinar, like everybody does. then I had to find out, my husband had to work, so I had to take my kids to the soapbox Derby race in Portland.
I don't normally do this, but I had an earbud in one ear and I was on the YouTube live while I was supposed to be spending quality time with my kids, thinking this was gonna be over any minute. Seven fucking hours.
Tim Grahl: Yeah, I was it was funny because I was actually gonna do a watch party 'cause a couple of my friends are big fans of his too. I was like, oh, you just come over and watch it. I ended up having to help my son move into his apartment at college. So it was the same thing. I got the part I was there to do, which was to lift the heavy things, and then my wife was helping him unpack. I was like, you guys good? I like ran out and was like watching it on my phone in his living room. But yeah, he did what, seven or eight hours on Saturday, another seven or eight hours on Sunday, and then another five on Monday.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, like it was absolutely bonkers. So he had a launch event. He got affiliates to prep the launch event. He spent millions of dollars in ads to drive people to the launch event. Plus used his incredible platform across his email list, YouTube channel, Instagram, all the things, had a million people registered for the event. Got a million people registered on the YouTube live. There were over a hundred thousand people at the high point on live, and it was very teachable.
There was a lot of value just in the conversation. He had guests and he made a pitch, and this is the point where I'm like, oh God. Like really trying hard not to buy everything that he's gonna sell that day. And he starts pitching. And makes the case like starts at $60,000 for the kind of investment or the kind of value you're gonna get from what he is offering you. And, you know, he's in best possible infomercial strategies that you've ever seen. And it's just fascinating to watch and gets down and basically says, I'm not even gonna charge you $5,000. And that was the point where I'm like, yeah, this would probably be worth $5,000.
Tim Grahl: Yeah.
Sue Campbell: And he literally gave that whole pitch that he did away for free.
It was a bundle of courses, the audio book, right? All this stuff. He's everyone who's on the call today, everyone who signed up for the event is getting all of this for free.
Really made the case for it, and then the real sales pitch came.
Tim Grahl: Yeah.
Sue Campbell: What did you think of the real sales pitch?
Tim Grahl: it was super interesting. So it was basically you donate and we'll come back to that, 200 copies of his book. So you gotta buy 200 copies at. 29 95 or whatever. So 30 bucks. And then you get this copy of his playbooks, which are all of these PDFs. There's 12 of them that walk you through.
Well, they weren't PDFs, they were actually physical copies he sent.
In the mail. Yeah. And that we're super high value that walk you through specific to fix specific, specific issues in your business. And again, anybody who's been following Hormozi 100% believes there's a lot of value in those
Sue Campbell: because.
he's been given value for years for free.
Tim Grahl: Yeah, so you pay $6,000 to get the 200 books, which again, I'll come back to in a second. And then these playbooks, so really what people are buying is the playbooks. Oh, and his ai. So he had his own AI built based on a bunch of stuff he's done. And so most people that are gonna buy this they're really buying the playbooks and the ai, because that's
a lot of value right there. The 200 books is what was interesting because the way he did it is you don't get the 200 books shipped to your house. You get one book shipped to your house, and then what you do is you get 199 claim codes that you can give to people and they get the book for free plus shipping.
And what we understand about free Plus shipping is the shipping and handling usually covers the cost of the book as well. Because once you're buying books at scale, you get them pretty cheap. We had a book that was like 700 pages long hard cover with the wrap on it and maps on the inside,
and at the right scale we got it down to $3.50 Right? So for Alex's books, I bet they were down around a dollar to $2 a piece, that he was getting those for maybe a little bit more, but at the scale, I doubt it. So what that means is, and then. On my side, let's say I, I didn't buy the package, but if I did, that's a big extra cost.
So either I have to cover that shipping or the person I'm giving the book to has to cover the shipping. Because what that also means is the vast majority of those books are never going to be claimed. They're like gift cards, right? And what am I gonna do with 200 books? Unless, like a friend of mine runs a training business for business owners. So he's like, I'm just gonna send one to all my 200 best clients. I was like, great. So that's 200 times about 10 bucks. So that's another $2,000 on top of the six that you gotta pay to get them all the books. But that's fine. But most people aren't gonna actually claim those.
So that's what's interesting about it too. And now this gets into the whole. People start to get very uncomfortable when you're selling books, but the book isn't what people want. And we can talk about the ethics of that. But, that was the basic thing was you can buy one copy, just like every, you know, you get on the BIP list or whatever, and then, or you can buy, donate.
'cause that's the other thing is like. Flipping it around as a donation is like a totally different mindset shift, right? I'm not buying them, I'm donating them. So I thought the whole thing was super interesting. In a way he's doing the same thing that authors have been doing for years, which is Hey, limited time bonus, if you buy the book right now, people do bulk orders, right?
If you buy one copy, you get this 10, this a hundred this. And you have to buy it within a certain time period. Otherwise the bonuses go away. And even the way that he did the stacking of like, not only do you get this, and not only do you get this, that's like, that is textbook russell Brunson, like that is exactly how he teaches webinars. What I felt like he did is he took all the best practices and he did them at a hundred x what most people are willing to do. Because I was talking to my buddy and I'm like, first of all, if anybody watches that and they're like, like a buddy of mine got depressed 'cause he's like, I'm never gonna do anything like that.
I'm like, that's 'cause you and I don't wanna put in the work it takes to do that. You know, that's fine.. People don't understand the amount of work that goes into it, but also like I don't have an extra 10 million laying around to spend on ads, plus another 10 million to film the ads and do all the production.
So like what you have to do is start looking at like, well, how do I scale this down to where I'm at and what can I learn from it?
Sue Campbell: Yes, and that's another thing that I wanted to mention is his book is called $100 million Money Models and his launch used all of the principles from the book to make a hundred million dollars in the book launch, which was like three to five days long or something.
Tim Grahl: Yeah. What was it like 3.5 million copies? He ended up selling, he broke the record for one day sales that I
Sue Campbell: 2.9. Yeah, that was like, yeah, the Guinness record for one day sales and then by the end of it, he'd sold like three and half.
that part alone was brilliant of using a nonfiction book where you're demonstrating the principles you teach in the book to validate the premise of the book. That I thought was absolutely beautiful. And also the donations of the book He actually found a way to make them tax deductible by calling them donations.
Tim Grahl: Oh, I didn't even think about
Sue Campbell: Yeah at which it was really interesting. So then for business owners, it would be a write off either way,
Tim Grahl: Yeah, that's what I didn't even consider that 'cause I was thinking on the write off side. Yeah. Yeah. I want people to understand too, he iterated this,
so he did a similar live thing, bunch of promotion for his last book. It was just smaller and then he did one before. And a bunch of things went wrong in the last one with the technology and the streaming and some other things that they were able to overcome. But he has been planning this, like he's, he's been getting better with each one. And I think people don't recognize that either is like. Even if you had the money, even if you had the book and you've never done this before, there's no way you could pull it off.
'cause he's been becoming an expert at advertising and he's been doing all the different things. So it's the iteration too of like starting small, getting better and then scaling up once you figure out how to do it.
Sue Campbell: Yes, exactly. There's one thing I wanna talk about too of, 'cause some people are just like, I totally disconnected from it. There's no way I could implement any of that because he is got a huge budget. Rah rah rah rah rah,
one of things that he taught and that he illustrated in this is customer financed acquisition.
So that's a fancy way of saying, I'm going to make sales as quickly as I can and then turn around and use that money to get more customers. So the customers that I'm getting are financing my acquisition of other customers. So when he started, and again, this is an iteration where he could finally get to this.
Point, but he started with an ad budget of 24 or $30,000 on the first day and then snowballed that to be able to finance the rest.
He didn't wanna just throw in a bunch of his own money 'cause he was trying to demonstrate the principles of the book. So I think that's actually a really good takeaway for a lot of writers is how do you do this so that you're not having to raid your retirement to come up with the ad budget to do something like this.
You are structuring it in a way where you can use the money from your early customers to keep financing to get more.
Tim Grahl: Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of this is very specific to nonfiction because you have to have a business backend, right? So, most business owners writing a book or using the book to grow some sort of backend business, whether it's training, workshops, live speaking, whatever, they view the book as like a loss leader.
Like it doesn't matter if that makes any money 'cause it's this is gonna make money over here. And that's clearly what he did as well, which is like, all right, you know, I don't really care about the people buying one book. That's nice, but a percentage of those are gonna give me a lot more money and then I can keep dumping that money back in.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, exactly, and that's why you ended up with a hundred million dollars launch. That wasn't from book sales. That was from that 6,000. You had two price points on the checkout page. It was $6,000 or $30.
Tim Grahl: yeah.
Sue Campbell: And it's okay, I see where this is going. So let's talk about takeaways that, let's talk about nonfiction first, and then I do think there are some things that fiction writers can pull.
But let's talk about takeaways of what people can do because I'll pass it over to you.
Tim Grahl: one of the biggest things, I've been saying this for 17 years now, is like the number one thing a writer can do is build an email list, right? And this is the power of having a platform is that it at least gives you a jumping off point. So if I'm starting and I don't have any email lists, any platform, any connections to anybody, I don't have any friends in the industry.
Something like this is almost impo. I mean, it is impossible, like unless you have just unlimited budget to just buy a ton of traffic. So it always comes back to build a platform of some sort and email list is still the number one way to do this. Do not try to build your platform on any of the social media platforms.
Build an email list. And there's lots and lots of reasons to do that. And then once you have that-- here, I'll just tell you my takeaways. One takeaway is start earlier. I realized oh, I always run a really big webinar in November for Story Grid, and I thought, if I started now promoting it in early September, I could probably get 2,500 people registered for that thing instead of the normal like 7, 8, 900.
Okay, so maybe if I start early and plan ahead. What would that mean? So I think that goes for book launches too, is, and we've talked about this, I wouldn't even work with somebody if I didn't have at least six months. I usually want nine to 12. 'cause it just takes a long time to make it all work.
So start early. And then think big, I really like backing off, setting some huge goal and then working backwards, right? So it's like, all right, the most people, I've ever had come to something live is 500. What if I could get that to a thousand?
What would it take? Okay, well that I means I need 2,500 people registered. Well, how can I get 20? You know, and you just start like working your way backwards and usually you can find a way to do it. So that I think is really good. And then the bonuses thing, it's just like you have to give people, especially with books, like the number one driver of sales is scarcity, like, the price is about to go up. We only have a hundred of these. Some sort of scarcity is the number one trigger to get people to buy. And the one thing that books do not have is scarcity, because your book's gonna come out, and it's gonna be out forever. And in fact, it'll probably be cheaper in the future.
You gotta build a bonus package around it that gives people an incentive to buy right now. And not put it off, put it on their Amazon wishlist with 322 other books they haven't purchased. So those are the first things that come to mind. But everything he did is scalable down, not just up to what he did.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, it, and really think about building that audience early with your email list, but how are you providing value so much value ahead of time and building so much trust ahead of time that people are so excited to watch what you're gonna do with this launch, right? I think that's a big part of it, is like he has been showing his hand right all along and trying to help other people benefit from the things that he's learned in business, and he knows exactly who his audience is.
He'll say like, you know, my audience is 95% men and I'm a gym rat. And he knows exactly who his audience is and how to talk to that audience, which I think is why a lot of authors will be turned off by him because he is got a very specific language and a very specific point of view.
So again, we're not asking you to do exactly what he did in the exact way that he did it. It's more like, how can I adapt pieces of this to break through a ceiling that I was at before?
Tim Grahl: Yeah. That's something we all should be doing is con you know, people doing things in a way or looking at the way that you don't wanna look or, all of that kind. I, I, I never wanna be that salesy. It's like. I also find these things are spectrums. So most authors are so far down on never ever, like, you won't even know they have a book, right?
So like even if you move somewhat down that spectrum, you're not going to be like all the way on the salesy side. One of the biggest issues with the authors is when push comes to shove, they don't really think people should spend money on their book. And so they won't tell people to buy my, buy their book. Like I recommend my book all the time. Like if I talk to somebody, I think they should read it. I'm like, Hey, I think you should read it. I think you should get a copy of my book and read it. Like I just tell them because I actually believe that.
And most authors can't even get to that point. And if you don't have that belief, and I always say like, you know, go pray, go journal, go meditate, whatever you need to do to get to the point where you actually believe it's worth. 10 or $20 to buy your book. And that that's the best way somebody could spend their 10 bucks, is to buy a copy of your book.
Because if you don't believe that, you're not gonna get anybody else to believe it either.
And so that part right there is such a holdup for so many authors that I talked to that they just can't get past that. So they just put the book on Amazon and, oh, I guess nobody's buying it, and it's you didn't even tell anybody,
Sue Campbell: well, this is entirely why I am a mindset coach primarily, right? And marketing comes second because there are so many ways authors will sabotage themselves because of a lack of belief in themselves, or you know, a fear of being seen, or there's just this whole laundry list of things that, because we have human brains, really put up these barriers to us being able to get out into the world and reach the people we need to reach.
The other thing I help, I think, really helps with the sales yuckiness, right? And not being on that end of the spectrum is knowing specifically who you're talking to.
If you're a children's book author and you write about dinosaurs, you're not gonna push your book on like a 37-year-old guy with no kids and no nieces and nephews. That would be super gross and weird. If you meet a parent whose kid is super into dinosaurs, of course you're going be more comfortable saying, oh my God, I love dinosaurs too. I wrote a book about dinosaurs.
Tim Grahl: Yeah. Yeah.
Sue Campbell: Yeah.
Tim Grahl: Yeah. But I do think there's different levels of this and even when we were, you mentioned he had all these affiliates that were promoting the event. It's this is also why you build relationships with other people in your industry so that when you have something to promote, they're more than willing to promote it.
And I always say I was at a conference crafting Commerce back in June, and every year I go, I do a big meetup. And this year I partnered with a friend of mine and we were like, all right, we're gonna have the biggest meetup at the conference. And we actually almost, we had, we started dealing with fire code issues because we had like 150 people show up at a bar, unannounced, basically.
And, um, and there's only 400 people at the conference, so we got, approaching half and like. A bunch of speakers came 'cause I know all these people, I've been in the industry for 17 years and this woman was like, how do you know all these people? Like, how do you know Nathan Berry's here?
This is his conference. You know, this person's here, this person's here. How do you know all these people? I was like. I started going to conferences 17 years ago, and then I would just meet people and try to be as helpful as I could. I was like, I didn't know these would be the people that are successful.
It's just, we're still here, and so I always encourage people like, if you want to be successful in your space, the number one thing you can do is meet other people like you at your level, be as helpful as you possibly can, and then just do that for 10 years and at the end of 10 years, you're gonna be more successful, they're gonna be more successful. It's a rising tide. Lift all ships and then you'll be the one that everybody wants to talk to and everybody wants to know. There's two sides to your platform. There's your relationships with your fans, that's your email list.
But there's relationships with other influencers, and that's other people in your industry that are at your level or higher. And then as you start coming up, you start bringing other people up underneath you as well. We're chatting briefly before we started and I was like, I've been in kind of a hobbit hole for two years trying to rebuild my business and we're kind of out of r and d.
We know what we're doing now and it's starting to really grow and I need to get other people to help me promote the business. And it's super easy 'cause I'm just going to things and then talking to people and then setting up calls and I don't even have to ask. They offer because they like
expect, like I went to this, uh, I went to this author conference, there was like 50 people, and to get in the room, you had to have sold 500,000 copies or more of your books. So this is you've heard of people in this room, right? And at least 10 to 15 of those people had read my book, your first 1000 copies.
So I had Tiago Forte came up to me because he wanted to meet me because he read my book back when his book was coming out. So it's like I wrote that book in 2013.
Sue Campbell: Yeah.
Tim Grahl: So it's been a minute, right? 12 years. And so then we have a call and then Tiago is like, Hey, how can I help you? I'd love to promote Story Grid. Like I don't even have to ask, 'cause I've been around and been being helpful for a long time. And so you also have to build those kind of relationships. They call it networking and everybody thinks networking's bad. And I'm like, all networking is hanging out with people that are nerds about the same thing you are and talking, it's like you're freaking out about Alex's talk.
So you text me 'cause you know I've been pa you don't you, we haven't talked about it. And you're like, I know one person who knows this is going on. And it's me. And so you text me and then you invite me on your podcast, and now people are hearing about me that haven't heard of me before. I'm getting to talk about Story Grid.
I'm getting to talk about my books. It's and how long have we known each other?
Sue Campbell: Yeah. Eight years. Yeah.
Tim Grahl: Okay. I always think of myself as the Sidler in, Seinfeld. You know, like I just keep showing up places and just hanging out and people think I'm supposed to be there, and then they're like, oh yeah, come to this thing. I'm like, okay. You know? It really is just like that kind of consistent kind of thing. And so this is why should go to writer's conferences and you should go to different things that are in person and then just try to meet everybody you can and invite them to dinner.
At Craft and Commerce, I stayed an extra day, so the next day I just went and was hanging out at this one place where I knew people would be, I met this guy that's he's just really successful in this space. And I was like, Hey, you wanna do dinner tonight? He's like, sure.
And then I texted like two other people and we ended up sitting there for two and a half hours. And now I've got a place to stay in France when I go, you know, so it's not rocket science, it's just like hanging out, being helpful, you know, being nice, you know, and, and trying, you know, then I'm thinking of ways I can help him and vice versa.
You get used to it and it's just part of what you do and it's super fun. So yeah. And so again, going back to the Alex Hormozi launch, it's like for years he's been putting out content, building up relationships with people like me. And then for years he's been networking and meeting people so that when he wants to learn how to do a webinar, he calls Russell Brunson and Russell Brunson teaches him and he's the most successful webinar guy ever, probably. You do that long enough and it's this is how people build networks is it's just one person at a time,
Sue Campbell: And for the skeptical writers out there, I just wanna point out, Tim, are you an introvert or an extrovert?
Tim Grahl: Oh, I'm an introvert. Like every time I'm at a party, I end up in the bathroom for like five minutes just on my phone so I can be alone for a little bit, yeah. I'll give everybody, like, I don't, I've given this hack for years. I don't know if anybody's ever actually done it.
Nobody's told me. This is like the easiest thing to do. It's so much fun and it's the cheapest way to network. Okay, so back in the day, in the early days of South by Southwest, so this is like 12, 13, 14 years ago. I was working with people in publishing, right? So I needed clients. And so what I did is before I went to the event, I just got on Google Maps, I don't know, may have been MapQuest back then and like found the event venue and then I just found a bar within walking distance.
And then I made sure they were open and I picked the last night of the conference. So not the last day 'cause people start leaving on the last day. It's the night before the last day. Okay. And then I printed out back then I used, um. Vistaprint, you now would use Canva. Just like little postcards that were invitations and it had the bar name. What time and day on the last day? And then I said first beer is on me. Okay.
And then I bought a roll of those little tear off raffle tickets on Amazon. Okay. So for the whole conference, every time I meet somebody that was in publishing, I would give them two invitations. I'd keep 'em in my pocket and I was like, Hey I'm doing a thing for people in publishing. If you come here, I'll buy you the first beer. Here's two invitations. If you meet somebody else, bring them. You can bring friends. '
And I just did that for the two or three days, and it's super easy. It's giving people free beer, like who would that down, and then when I get there, I'm nervous now I'm more comfortable 'cause this is a long time ago, but back then I was like super nervous, but I'm holding the raffle ticket so people have to come talk to me to get their drink ticket. Right? When people show up, they have to come over and I introduce myself and I get to know them and I give them their drink ticket and they can go turn that in and get their beer, whatever drink they want.
And I think most of the time it cost me somewhere between like a hundred and two hundred bucks. I wouldn't tell the bar I was coming because then they want to do a minimum, but it was usually only like 30, 40 people. And so whatever, 30, 40 times, four bucks, and, then I meet all of these people and I'm the hero because I threw the party and I got to meet everybody.
And then I would get clients like, this is again, to this day, this is like some of my best friends I met like this, right? And so what that turns into is fast forward to today, and now when I throw that party, 150 people show up right? And costs me $900. but but that's like, it's so simple and like nobody ever does it.
And it's such an easy way. If you went to a writer's conference and just walked around and everybody that you wanted to spend time with, you offered to buy them a beer. If they show up at this bar, half the people are gonna show up. You're gonna meet all these people. You're gonna then become friends.
You're gonna trade phone numbers. You're gonna stay in contact. You might start a Slack group where 10 of you are helping each other. And then lo and behold, when you have a book come out, all 10 of these people are posting on social media and sending their email. You gotta go buy my friend's book. When people are like, it's not fair that all of these people have all these friends that help promote through. It's like, how the fuck do you think they met these people? Like it wasn't like some like cabal plan. It's like they just bought 'em a beer and they ended up out like nerding out about like, oh my god, you know, writing or whatever you're into.
And then lo and behold, that person starts blowing up. And guess who gets to draft off of them? Because you're friends, I'm good friends with Nathan Berry who runs kit.com, the super successful software, because we've been friends when both of us were nobody. So he knows I'm actually his friend.
I'm not his friend because he runs his software company . And lo and behold, he has me on his podcast twice. I just love this stuff so much. And I just wish more people would understand like, this is how the game is played, is just like show up, meet people, give them a reason to meet you, and then just be normal.
Just be. Which is like a nerd about whatever you're a nerd about. And and that's really all it takes. And then and you can sit in the corner and just hand out drink tickets and, if you have the, if you have the tickets where people get alcohol, they'll always come to you.
Sue Campbell: Or caffeine. Either one of those would
Tim Grahl: yeah.
Yeah. But that one thing helped grow my business in the beginning. Connected me with people. Anyway, we're way off the topic of Alex Hormozi, but like those kind of things is what matters over time and it makes it more fun,
right? It, you're not just sitting alone posting on Twitter, hoping somebody will like it and retweet it. It's like this is how you make it an enjoyable process.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, exactly. And the clients who I have had with book launches who do the best, are the ones who have built relationships over the long term and have been good enough in those relationships where they feel they can draw on that equity. Because they've helped in the past. As well.
And then I've had clients where they have an amazing network and then I find out when it's launch time, they're absolutely afraid to tap into any of those people, or they don't wanna go into the trouble of it. And I'm like, oh, okay. Like you can not do it, but you're not gonna have a good launch. You've gotta be willing also to like put yourself on the line a little bit and ask for the help and people. Want to help. Your friends want to support your things. They're asking how they can help.
Tim Grahl: I always reverse it is if any of them came to me, I would love to be helpful, right? We built up a pretty big, I got 37,000 ish subscribers on YouTube. So now this is a really great way for me to help my friends. So like my buddy Todd coming out with this book in a couple weeks, so we're recording something next week.
I'm like, I'll put it on YouTube. I'll send it out to my email list to 83,000 writers.
And it's just it's super fun for me now. I've built this thing that's valuable to my friends, so I get to help my friends and it's I don't keep a scorecard of like, all right, Todd owes me one.
Like I don't, you don't keep the scorecard. You just be as helpful as you can, and then when you need help, everybody's oh, yeah, just let me know.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, exactly. And I think that's, I think it is on topic for Alex Hormozi. 'cause that's clearly what he's done.
Briefly, I don't wanna leave fiction writers high and dry. So here's what I was thinking about fiction writers. It's if this is your first fiction book, and you haven't built an audience, you're not gonna be able to use much from this, right?
Except maybe some ad strategy stuff. But if you have a series and you're building, you're iterating every launch in the series, and you can use bonuses from your prior books, that's something you could do.
If you have a newsletter already built up, that can help you sell to those people early and then use the money from that to finance ads that can help you get more people to your launch event and things like that.
So even for fiction writers, I feel like there are takeaways that they can use.
Tim Grahl: Yeah, I mean, you have the classic series, so if you're building a series, you know, that's e and then once you get your series to like three to five books, you can start making ads profitable and then it becomes a little bit easier. A friend of mine has sold over a million copies of his middle grade series and he now has, I think seven books and he just sells it as a box set and, uh, does really well and runs Facebook ads. And what's great about, you can run Facebook ads to a set. And make those at least profitable. People will buy them on Amazon too. So he notices, he turns on ads, his Amazon ranking goes up.
'cause I'm that way. If I see an ad for a book, I want, I don't buy it from them, I just get it from Amazon because then I get the two day shipping and blah, blah blah. There's a couple things here I wanna say about, let's say you're coming out with your first book.
Now, if you're, if you're a fiction author that's like, I just wanna write one book and be done, you're kind of screwed. Uh, it's just not gonna work. And so, unless you somehow manage to get like a, a six figure book deal from a major publisher or something, but even they probably won't buy anyway.
Doesn't matter. So, um. But let's say you've got a book coming out. It's just one book. It's your first book, but you're like, I'm gonna write another one, then I'm gonna write another one. You know, this is the next 20 years of my life is I wanna write books for the rest, even if I just come out with one every two years.
Great. Alright, we got a plan. So first of all, I would just come out with the first book. Don't try to do it. If you don't have a platform, just get it up. Get it for sale everywhere. Spend money , design a cover that looks good. And put it on Amazon and everywhere else. Now you're going to use that book to network,
right?
So now what you start doing is finding other authors that are not A list authors, maybe even not B list authors, but C and D list authors selling some books. People are always like, how do you find these? You go on Amazon, you click on the category or the genre, and you look at the top books, and then you just start stalking every author online to see how big their platform is.
If they've got a million followers on Twitter, skip to the next one. If they've got like, less than a hundred thousand, there you go. All right. You reach out to them and say, Hey, I've, I just came out with this book. Because you have to have a book out. Otherwise, they're, they won't think you're serious. Because everybody says they wanna write a book.
You can get around that, but the easiest way is just to have a book. I have this book out and just ask us one simple question. You can DM them. If they don't respond, email them and say like, Hey, I've got this first book coming out. If you were me and you had your first book coming out, what would you do to help promote?
Okay, if they respond, go do what they say and then report back. And just say like, Hey, I went and tried this and here's what happened. They will probably respond and want to help you because everybody in this space, this is what I love about working with authors. They love being helpful. But after you give advice for to a few people who just completely ignore you and never take it, you just stop of like, I'm not gonna waste my time.
But if somebody shows me they're serious. I will get on the phone with them, I will get on Zoom with them. I'm not trying to get paid, I just wanna be helpful, right? Because they're going to end up being successful and then wanna help me, right? So it's like this is how it works. And so it's like just start emailing authors asking for one piece of advice, go do the thing, report back and ask them what to do next. I've had multiple authors that have done this, that the second email, they, so that they go, they report back, the author responds with their cell phone saying, gimme a call anytime, because they actually prove they're willing to do the work.
This is also how you do networking, right? So you use your book, don't worry about selling it, you're gonna use it to start building that network and building up. The other thing is view it as a loss leader. So start running ads against it to give away your book. People hate when I say this, it's the, the number one marketing thing that anybody can do is give the book away because people do not understand like.
Let's say you hate reading fantasy, all right? You hate fantasy. Don't, don't ever wanna read it all right? And then I show you like the latest Brandon Sanderson 600 page, whatever, right? And I was like, all right, you can have a choice. I'll give you this book, but you gotta read the whole thing.
Cover to cover or you just pay me $20 for the book and I'll give you the book, but you don't have to read it. Most people will give you the $20 because my time reading a 500 page book that I hate is not worth, is worth more than the $20. And what you realize pretty quickly is it's actually easier to sell books than to get people to read them.
How many of us have a stack of two reads sitting on our like bedside table, right? Yeah. If you can give somebody a copy of the book and they read it, that is more valuable than getting them to buy it because the only way your book will ever sell is by word of mouth. The only time you ever get word of mouth is if people actually read the book and like it and tell a friend.
So I think like we will give, I will give my book away to anybody that I think will read it. It's totally fine. It's how you seed marketing. And so I think if I was a first time fiction author with no platform, I would be networking to meet other authors and I would be finding any creative way to get my book in the hands of people.
I called those events, books and beer. Those events I used to do at conferences, A box of your books and everybody that comes gets a beer and a copy of your book and they'll ask you to sign it. One I did this one with my last book, the Shithead, and this woman came and found me later because she's like, I took your book to a bar and somebody stole it.
she went to the bathroom, came back and it was gone. The bartender said these, like two drunk girls picked up the book and ran out the door. So I had to give them another copy.
People think it's like, I gotta be on Twitter, I gotta be on Instagram, I gotta be doing all these things. It's just grunt work of meeting people and asking them to read your book over and over and over for years. And if you can find the fun and joy in meeting people that like the same things you do, you're gonna be just fine. You're gonna be just fine, but you just gotta give it time.
Sue Campbell: Exactly.
Tim, it's been a pleasure getting a chance to nerd out with you about book launches. Why don't you tell people where they can learn more about Story Grid and then I'll let you get back to your life.
Tim Grahl: Yeah. Uh, storygrid.com. We've run a program where we apply the science of deliberate practice to actually learning how to write. I know that most of the advice about how to learn how to write is not helpful and doesn't work. You can do it for years and years and years and never get better.
And so we actually took the science of deliberate practice and applied to writing, and we see writers getting way better in a way shorter period of time, we're now starting to publish books from our students. It's really, really exciting. So go to storygrid.com, find out more about us. I have a YouTube channel with hundreds of videos on it.
So go check those out as well. Just put story grid into YouTube. But yeah. And then my book is called The Shithead. Uh, that's my most recent novel, uh, and it's a great novel and I think you should read it.
Sue Campbell: Great. Tim, thank you so much for your time. It was good to see you.
Tim Grahl: Yeah. Good to see you. Thanks, Sue.
Tim's latest book, The Shithead, is available in print and audio wherever you get your books. And if you'd like a weekly dose of writing insight and mindset and marketing tips in your inbox, subscribe to the Write Anyway Newsletter at pagesandplatforms.com/subscribe.
And that's it for this episode of the Write Anyway Podcast. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.