Podcast: Unlock Your Book’s Viral Potential Using Digital Marketing Strategies with Alex Strathdee
hosted by Sue Campbell
What if your book could start marketing itself? In this week’s episode, digital marketing strategist Alex Strathdee breaks down the “viral coefficient” for authors—why some books compound through word of mouth while others stall—and how to engineer the former. If you’ve ever launched hard and watched nothing happen, this conversation gives you a concrete path to traction—and permission to play the long game.
you’ll learn
How to find (and write for) the readers who tell 1.1+ more people about your book
A simple mindset reframe that makes asking for reviews and referrals feel generous, not gross
The fastest way to stop “random acts of marketing” and start building systems (hello, VAs)
How to “steal” momentum from existing audiences and gatekeepers—ethically and effectively
The Author Twin method: reverse-engineer your launch by studying the right comparables
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transcript
Anne Hawley: Have you felt lost about how to get your book to a wider readership and sell more copies? Then this one's for you.
Hello and welcome to the Write Anyway podcast from pages and platforms and the happily Ever Author Club. In today's episode, Sue picks the brain of digital marketing expert Alex Strathdee about the viral coefficient and growing your readership.
Let's listen in.
Sue Campbell: Alex, welcome so much to the Write Anyway Podcast. I'm so excited to talk to you today.
Alex Strathdee: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me on. I was just listening to your episode with Tim Grahl and excited to write a whole newsletter about it next week. I think it's a fantastic show, so thanks for providing the insights that you do.
Sue Campbell: Oh, thank you so much. Well, that's, I kind of wanna just nerd out with you like I did with Tim on talking about marketing. I think a lot of the people who listen to the show and who we work with at Pages & Platforms, marketing is the thing that they shy away from the most. And I feel like mindset helps, but also just knowing what it's all about so that they have a grounded understanding of the strategy and the concepts, gives people that comfort level where they can start to wade into it a little bit.
So that's part of my goal for our conversation.
So who do you think if you're, you and I are talking today, who do you want to hear this information? What kind of author are you trying to reach to get them information about marketing?
Alex Strathdee: Yeah, any author who doesn't know how to get their book in the hands of real people I mean, really anyone who's trying to actually have a marketing plan that's going to result in what they hope to achieve with their book. So I'm definitely more of the knowledgeable person on our nonfiction side. If you want, you can have a whole nother conversation with Laura Russam who came to us from Blackstone Publishing, and she kind of handles our fiction side of things.
But obviously there's some tactics and strategies that work well for both, but really just anyone who's actually focused on a book launch that's gonna do things for them and not just a flash in the pan.
Sue Campbell: Yeah. Beautiful. Okay, so one of the things you and I talked about before we started recording is the idea of a viral coefficient, which I think is absolutely brilliant. Let's kick off with that. Explain what a viral coefficient is.
Alex Strathdee: Yeah. The concept of what makes a book spread fascinates me, right? Like, why can one author get a thousand books in the hands of real people? And then, a few years later they're in New York Times bestseller, versus another author who gets a hundred thousand copies out into the world and nothing really happens.
And it's kind of this sustainable engine, which. I just I'm coming up gonna be interviewing, we're preparing for our season 20 season 2026 of of our show. And Eric Rees is one of the first people we're having back on themselves, re reiv into his book, the Lean Startup. And all of a suddenly I realized, oh my God, it's right there.
He actually writes about this, but on the startup side where it's, if you can bring on one customer or, in, in our world, one reader, and if they tell greater than one person, obviously you can't have half a person, but you know, statistically speaking, if as long as they tell 1.1 people, then that's a growth trajectory for your book. And so that is in order for you to reach that person with that kind of coefficient, they need to be your ideal reader, right? Like your mom, your best friend, is not your ideal reader, and so you're not gonna get that viral coefficient with 'em. And so, you gotta find the person who's going to tell more than one person about your book in order for your book marketing to be exponential.
And if you have a business or a backend to your book, or you're a fiction author with 16 books, or you have a consulting business as a nonfiction author. You can invest even if the coefficient's lower than one.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, it's harder on you when you're an author and you're marketing and you're trying to find one reader at a time, and it's your job to find every single reader. So I try to impart to people like the goal of good marketing is that you get to do less marketing, right? If you give your good enough launch and you've got something that's shareable and that people want to talk about, that's gonna do a lot of your marketing for you once you really get the ball rolling.
Alex Strathdee: Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly it.
Sue Campbell: Well, I know, tell me a little bit more about the lean startup idea. 'cause I know you mentioned a moment ago that all of these concepts for authors, we can grab stuff from startups, right, which might spook people, but you can grab some concepts of how startups work and use them in your author career as well.
Alex Strathdee: Yeah. One of my favorite entrepreneurs is Sarah Blakely of Spanx. For those of you that might've heard of her, she says she loves stealing ideas from other industries, and I do too. Because that's where you get the new ideas that don't, aren't implemented, right. Well, the second everyone starts doing something and the tactic or strategy becomes well known, then all of a sudden it's no longer makes you stick out. Right? It's kinda like a social media hack. If you figure out what's really eye catching on social media right now and you employ it once everyone's employing it all of a suddenly, no one's really interested.
Right? So, that's where, reading books in other industries, if you're a writer, you should be a reader. And like for example, startups have a lot of similarity with books, right? Like your book is a startup. And so, reading about how startups launch and form can be really useful.
There's some things that can be applied and some things that can't. But the difference of, if you look at getting your book into, and I know like Rob Fitzpatrick with write useful books,
Sue Campbell: love that.
Alex Strathdee: a.
Right. He, you know what he did? He just got 700 copies out at a conference and then like another 300 copies out blogging. Right. And it was to his ideal readers, and all he did was get a thousand books out into a community of people that, that, really resonated with it. And so let's say his viral coefficient was probably like three or four for that book, right? So if you really engineer a good book, that's the kind of return you can get.
Now the difficult thing is, an author who, and something we haven't discussed yet, is that an author who has a longer runway or other ways that their book can pay off for them, like we just mentioned the consulting side, or, if they have more books in their series, then they're going to be able to sustain a longer runway to find that niche.
And examples of this is a lot of authors, they can develop as long and as much as possible, you know who they think their reader avatar is, but at the end of the day, sometimes you figure that out after your launch. A great example of this is Mike Michalowicz with profit First.
When he was initially marketing his book, he was going to college campuses and expecting students to buy his book. He was going to to organizations on campus that were business focused and saying, Hey, buy my book.
Right? And it's not really his ideal audiences, like they're college kids. They're not focused on like, profitability of their businesses at that age. But what he found is that, over time he started to build this following with mompreneurs or moms that were running the household finances or moms that were handled the CFO of of the family business.
And it was through that group that all of a suddenly the viral coefficient for that cohort was really high. And so this initial audience, business students who he thought would gravitate towards his book. It ended up that they were actually taking their books home on breaks during winter break and spring break or whatever, and they were leaving these books at home where the moms were actually picking up the book and saying, they walked past their kids' room and see oh, profit first. What's this? And we're reading the book and then all of a sudden it took off with that group of people. Right. So, that's the importance of finding the person who really finds your work valuable early on.
And so, the people who have. Like that took time for Mike to figure out, right? If he had a short runway of a month and he just went to a bunch of college campuses, and never took the time to get to the point where he figured out who his book was written for, then it, it would've been a failed project.
But because, he had some time to figure it out. It's important.
Sue Campbell: Yeah. I think that's a really important lesson too, just in persistence, because a lot of writers will get demoralized. Their book will launch, they'll give it their best sprint for the launch, and they haven't necessarily been building while they were writing the book, so they're just throwing as much as they can at it in like 60 day window, and then nothing happens.
And then they're demoralized and they stop.
Alex Strathdee: Yeah.
Sue Campbell: When really, some of the most successful books have had a really long tail for how long those authors have been at it. Sometimes right when the book launches, but often even before it launches, they're spending time like James Clear is a great example, and I know you and I have both looked at what he's been doing, and a lot of writers don't understand.
Atomic Habits has sold like 30 million copies at this point a couple years ago it was just 3 million. Like, it's just been exponential growth and it, the only reason he even got a book deal is because he had a hundred thousand people on his newsletter.
Alex Strathdee: right. Yeah.
Sue Campbell: Right. So it's like he did the work of growing the audience.
The audience got him the book deal, and then he continued the work of growing the audience and has just had this like astronomical success.
Alex Strathdee: Yeah. And one of the other things he did, which we love to talk about is which I know you're no stranger to, is obviously gatekeepers, who are members of communities that have a large audience. And so, he took it to, I believe it was CrossFit gyms. Like the heads of coaches at CrossFit gyms who then, were recommending his book to their audiences.
And that's another like, again, that's the co they have a higher coefficient, right? It's all about finding the people who have that higher coefficient. One of the really creative ways that I saw this done was Marni stock. Marni actually have the book, but lead it like lasso by Mar Stockman and Nick Kong Glow.
I'm probably screwing that up. But you know, they essentially had, they're two very successful entrepreneurs with no audience. So they actually leveraged an audience out of the gates. They stole ip. I mean, they didn't really steal the ip, they did it in a legal way. And they talk about how the, how they can actually do this.
They knew there was a huge millions of fan base for the show. Lead it like lasso, right? And so what they did is, or Ted Lasso, sorry. The book is called Lead it Like A Lasso. And so they knew that if they wrote something for that audience, there'd automatically be an inherent viral coefficiency amongst that audience.
And also it was automatically made them relevant to certain gatekeepers, right? Like podcasts that were all about the show. But they networked into those ways in a very. And I know you and Tim talked about this in your episode is, the, what networking really is. And, they did a great example of this where, Marni had just knitted a sweater for her new wiener dog that has the jersey of FC Richmond or whatever the sports team is.
And so, they were scrolling on social media and saw the head of one of the top podcasts in the Ted Lasso area had just gotten a similar dog. And so they reached out, they said, Hey, have we got a sweater for you? And sent it in the mail. And it spurred this conversation, this really heartfelt conversation that led with them providing, I dunno if you wanna call it value, is kind of like a salesy word for it, but, really caring about like, if someone knits you a sweater for your dog, you're probably gonna pick up their call or ins their email.
So it was like really paying attention to what was going on in their life. Social listening and Marnie talks about how she spends a, an hour every week just social listening, looking at people in her network who she can provide value to. So she kind of systematizes it into her weekly cadence.
And now that book within just one year sold over 40,000 copies, which is way beyond what they thought it was gonna do, which for a new author obviously, is very strong. So that's another really great example of building your, crafting your book to inherently have a viral coefficient and then, using some social listening to genuinely care about people and what's going on in their lives.
Sue Campbell: Yes. I love that so much. You also promised me a story about mindset 'cause I'm all about mindset. People are just like, no, I don't even wanna think about it. I don't wanna do it. It's yucky. I don't wanna be like that. So, so gimme your good story about mindset and the framework that you use for your clients.
Alex Strathdee: I might have used the wrong word story, but it just, it's a great way that we get authors to get out of their shell and be willing to market their book. And I all good things are stolen from other people. I, I credit Mike Mcow. It's he writes some get different one of his market book about marketing, if you have a better thing to offer the world than what's currently out there, if your solution is the best available, you're actually doing a disservice to people by not marketing it. So it kind of turns it on where you're actually morally wrong by not marketing your thing if you believe that it's a better solution.
Right. So it's a way to shift your thinking and get authors to actually send that pitch, they think they're being selfish when it's actually you're being selfless. Because people's lives are going to be improved by what you have to offer. Right? So it's a total shift in the mindset of what you have to offer.
And Bill Gladstone, who's the late literary agent to Marie Kondo, Jack Canfield, et cetera, he says that if you're gonna spend a a thousand hours writing your book, you better be willing to spend a thousand hours marketing your book, right?
So you have to market. And so another thing you can do is blame it on your mom or blame it on your marketing team. So like jenna Kutcher to ask for reviews. She just reached out. Or when she would ask for 'em, she'd say, my mom told me this year I need to be better at asking for help, and so this is me trying to, put her advice into action. Would you be willing to leave a review on my book? Right.
And it kind of makes it like this tongue in cheek way of asking for help. we actually just were working on this one of our authors, Mike Cohen, who's one of the leading neurofeedback practitioners, he's releasing his next book this year, or about a month, about neurofeedback and some of the stories that he's seen. And, he felt kind of salesy. He's a doctor, he felt kind of salesy and marketing-y asking for people to leave reviews ahead of time. And so what we did is we told him, blame it on your marketing team.
And so, he wrote in his email, my marketing team says I have to do this. And it kind of is like a funny way to, to ask for it. So there, there's ways that even if you're shy to marketing, blame it on your mom or blame it on your marketing team can be a, a funny way to, to still get that done, even if it's not something you're super comfortable with.
Sue Campbell: let's talk a little bit about how do people actually put this into practice? I've already got this big life. Maybe I have a day job, I've got family responsibilities. So how do I get my marketing systematized so that I can actually do this in the face of all of the other things that I've going on?
Alex Strathdee: Yeah. One of my favorite quotes is "random acts of marketing don't work." And that's by Alan Dibb of the One Page Marketing. I always love people who don't just talk the talk, but walk the walk. Right? I mean, if you go look at his book, it has over 10,000 Amazon ratings.
I mean, it truly, it sold over a million copies. It's a top selling book. A lot of authors don't think that they have the resources to bring on a team, right? And so the first thing that I recommend all authors do is get yourself a virtual assistant.
That's going to really aid you in, starting to delegate the smallest tasks. And that's the next thing authors have is they're like, well, I have this virtual assistant, but they don't actually use 'em or know what to delegate. 'cause they're like, well, I can just do it myself. And then borrowing some more tactics from the entrepreneurial world, the key is that if you, if someone can do something 80% as well as you can, delegate it. Delegation is a muscle that you have to build. And so the like, start, with the smallest thing, right? Can someone simply reach out to one podcast a month?
So. I'm not the first person to preach virtual assistants. And I certainly won't be the last, but every author needs, like, if you are planning on making this a full-time career, that is a skillset that you need to start building now.
It's if you're a basketball player, you gotta work on your free throws because that, like the time comes where that is is valuable. And it's gonna help you start to build your authorship as a business versus just you trying to do things randomly. That don't build traction.
So, VAs are a huge part of beginning to systematize the work that you're doing on a regular basis.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, and just for a mindset perspective on that too, like you're not gonna get a VA and it's suddenly gonna magically solve all your problems. It's gonna feel clunky at first, and that's okay. You're not doing it wrong. If you get a VA and you're like, well, now what do I do? That's just part of the learning process.
And the sooner you start it, the sooner you figure it out and figure out how a VA is gonna work well for you.
I also am a huge advocate for a paid test project, right? So you're not long term to this person. You're like, Hey, I have this little project going on. You're interviewing for that. Let's test it out. And then if you like the way that turns out, you're gonna first learn about your failures of communication in that test project and you're gonna figure out like who is going to help you. Right. Like get to the goal, you'll figure out their work style. And you pay for their time Yes.
Alex Strathdee: That's very lean startup with you.
Sue Campbell: Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about for anyone out there who's like really keen to get marketing but is a little hesitant in some areas and wants some good insider info.
Alex Strathdee: I'll leave it with these two things which is, like the go, go listen to the stories that Sue brings you, or I know the Self-Publishing School podcast for what, I think it's dead now, but there's still a history of episodes that are really good.
The big best thing you can do to save on time and I always kick myself because I'll spend, fi five years spinning my wheels on something. And then I'll read something or learn something. Like if you guys were talking about Alex Hormozi and like when I read A Hundred Million Dollar Offers, I was like, well, this would've like fast forwarded me about five years, like learning from the experts like Sue here.
It just saves you so much time in the long run. And it's like one hour of learning saves you 10 hours of work and figuring out yourself. I mean, it's probably even more than that. So, really go figure out, what these other people did, like John Strelecky, he's sold I believe 8 million copies now of Cafe on the Edge of the World.
I mean, he just went to Chamber of Commerce meetings one by one, handing out books. One by one having genuine conversations. The viral coefficient of the book was really good. And now he sold 8 million copies, right? Like that was his core tool that he used initially. And so figure out what tools different authors used.
Find your, what we call your author twin. Figure out what exactly their path. Go listen to their interviews on different podcasts. They might say some things on one podcast, they might say some other things on another, but go just obsess over that author, your author twin maybe even connect with them as well.
And that's gonna really get you far. So Author twins is definitely like another hack as well for you to kind of figure out your book launch from backwards as they say.
Sue Campbell: I love that idea. That's great. You can learn so much just from finding that we call them comparable authors, right? What is this person doing that's effective? What are they doing that's maybe not that effective that you think you can do better? Right? But really having someone that you're using as a model gives you a quick boost.
Thank you Alex, so much for your time. Please let people know where they can find you and what you do for authors.
Alex Strathdee: You can check us out at getshelflife.com.
Sue Campbell: Beautiful. Alex, thanks so much for your time.
Anne Hawley (2): If you'd like a weekly dose of writing, insight and mindset and marketing tips in your inbox, subscribe to the write anyway newsletter@pagesandplatforms.com slash subscribe. And that's it for this episode of the Write. Anyway, podcast, thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.