by Johnny B. Truant

The biggest question that aspiring authors ask is how to write a book.

To them, an author with even one finished book is a magician. The folks who desperately want to tell their story — but haven’t yet — see the act of writing as beautiful voodoo. How could anyone take the complex and layered fantasy they see inside their head and make it real with words? What alchemy is this, to use letters and ink (or e-ink) to transport an entire world from the author’s mind into the minds of readers?

The biggest question that published authors ask, on the other hand, is how to sell more books.

Once a book becomes a product, marketing boots hit the floor and we go into salesperson mode whether we’re comfortable there or not. For a lot of authors, the book remains a precious piece of their soul, and they can’t be objective enough to sell it. For others — those who are best at selling — the book becomes a cold, hard product that must be tweaked and manipulated until it fits into the right niche, positioned just so to attract buyers in any way possible.

Traditionally published authors can avoid the issue entirely if they want. They can sit back and hope the publisher will handle all the selling, especially since most trad deals severely limit marketing options anyway. Self-publishers like us, on the other hand, have to wear two hats — one for creation, and one for selling. We have no choice but to handle marketing, if we want to be successful. If we don’t find a way to sell our books, nobody will.

Which venues and tools should you use for your promotions? How often should you plug your book, and in what way?

Should you spend money to advertise? How much? Which ads work best, and how long does it take for them to show profits … if they ever do?

Worst of all, how can you possibly stand out in this day and age? More books were published in the past few years than in all of prior history, making your book one of competing millions. Between authors being told that Rapid Release is the only way to survive (it’s not) and the rising tide of AI-written books, the “stand out” problem isn’t going to change any time soon.

But I’ve got a question for you: What if you didn’t need to stand out?

What if you had no competition, no matter how many other books are published around you?

What if instead of fighting to be seen, your book was seen from its inception? What if instead of starting from obscurity, your book began its published life already in the spotlight?

I call this way of thinking about bookselling as “The Bookstore of You.”

The Bookstore of You

Close your eyes for a second, so I can paint you a picture.

Imagine walking into a bookstore in your town. It’s a small place: cozy and intimate, maybe with a little sitting area with overstuffed chairs and soft incandescent lighting. It smells of paper and old vellum. And it’s dead quiet, save the soporific sound of turning pages.

In this bookstore, only your books are sold.

There’s no Tom Clancy. No Sarah J. Maas. No Stephen King. No summer reading books assigned for kids going back to school in the fall … unless, of course, they’ve been assigned something you wrote.

If you only have one book, that book is on every shelf in this magical bookstore. If you have many, your catalog fills the shelves. If you’re an Artisan Author who doesn’t care about sticking to one genre, you might have your own genre sections: sci-fi here, thrillers here, romance over here.

Your book covers are on every poster. You’re on every recommended reading list. Every Staff Pick is one of yours, and if you were to ask the clerk for their latest favorite, you’d get a gushing review of the last thing you wrote. Everyone is talking about you, eager to see how the last book’s cliffhanger will resolve.

Now, as you picture this Bookstore of You, let me ask some questions.

How hard would it be to stand out in that store?

How much would you need to advertise and market to the people who shop there?

How hard would you have to push to sell? You wouldn’t, obviously … because in the Bookstore of You, everyone’s already sold on your work. They didn’t discover you randomly while browsing Amazon, then had to be convinced to buy. No, these people “bought” in advance. They didn’t go into Barnes & Noble to browse around until they found a new read. Instead, they walked right into The Bookstore of You, knowing they’d buy you from the start.

When you’re an Artisan Author, the usual promotional strategy flips on its head. You’ll still do outreach and marketing, but the goal is no longer to sell individual books to cold traffic. The goal, rather, is to sell them on you.

It’s harder, yes.

It’s slower, yes.

But if you put in the time to make it work, it makes you bulletproof. How hard is it to get readers to buy your next book if The Bookstore of You is the first place they shop?

How hard do you have to sell anything if readers, if whenever they want a new book, they look you up instead of browsing Amazon?

How much easier would life be if you didn’t have to worry about keywords or placement or algorithmic visibility … because the only search term that matters to the very best buyers is your name?

When you market like an Artisan Author, you sell up front, sell big-picture, and put in the time to make those early bonds stick. A tiny percentage of the effort is done en masse: running ads, hitting social media, and all the other things most authors do. You’ll do those things, yes … but instead of working hard to sell a single book now and then repeating it all from scratch when the sequel comes out, your careful nurturing in the first go-round will create a growing snowball of people who no longer have to be sold.

For example, I really like selling books in person. It’s the ultimate put-yourself-out-there, woo-people-who’ve-never-heard-of-you-before move, but I like it because every time someone comes over and I’m able to talk to them face-to-face, I’m starting the process of creating a long-term, high-value bond. It’s the opposite of leverage. Those interactions literally happen one person at a time, and I often talk to any given reader for five or ten minutes each.

Yep. Ten minutes to reach one person.

That’s a lot more work than running a Facebook ad or Bookbub Featured Deal, where you’ll reach thousands or tens of thousands of people with very little effort. The difference is that the way people normally promote their books is fast and easy, but it’s also middlingly effective at bonding. If you get 100 sales from an ad, even the people who buy still don’t really know you. They still don’t have any reason to come back to you next time — not any more than they’d come back to other authors they’ve read before.

By contrast, a higher-touch approach like mine — where the goal is to sell yourself, not just a single book — might earn ten potential True Fans right away. True Fans are the name of the game for an Artisan Author. Ten potential True Fans in one day is 1/10^th of a percent toward the my goal of a thousand. Personally, I like those numbers.

Better, not more.

As with all things Artisan, the goal is quality over quantity. You can use any selling approach you’d like (i.e. you don’t need to sell in person like I do), but you must keep one thing firmly in mind: Your goal isn’t to close a single transaction, which is the way most authors think. Instead, your goal is to earn more regular customers in The Bookstore of You … and doing so will take effort and time.

But oh man, will your effort be rewarded.

You create those new “regular shoppers” by being a real human being. By not thinking of your leads as leads, or numbers on a dashboard. You do it by enticing people to join your email list not with short-term tactics and cheap prices, but instead by being honest, open, and interesting to your new readers. You do it by asking people to reply to the emails you send, after you’ve lured them. You do it by answering their email replies when you’re lucky enough to get them — not via dismissive, 30-second standard responses just to clear your inbox as fast as possible, but instead by taking as much time to answer that email as you would for a friend.

Quality, not quantity. Effectiveness, not speed.

“Friend” is the right word. If you want to create regular patrons to The Bookstore Of You, you’re not just collecting readers; you’re making friends. Not customers, not prospects, not leads … but friends.

This is why Artisan Authors will have an advantage as “the usual way of doing things in self-publishing” gets harder and harder. Do you think visibility will get easier if you keep putting all your eggs in Amazon’s basket? Do you think royalty rates will improve? Do you think KU readers will become more loyal than they are right now (hint: they’re not), or that those all-you-can-read readers will decide one day to ditch Amazon’s buffet to shop only at The Bookstore of You?

Nope. Ain’t gonna happen.

Of course the hands-off, non-Artisan way of publishing will continue, and of course it will work for some authors. The name of that game is “Rapid Release,” and it’s only getting more rapid.

It works for some authors, but will it work for you?

Long-term, do you have the stamina (to keep producing as fast as possible), the budget (to out-advertise the bigger players), and the shining uniqueness (to stand out in a growing flood of new books) to survive that way as the Rapid Release market grows more and more intense?

Or might it instead be better to slow down, focus on an entirely different crop of readers, emphasize quality in your reader acquisition instead of always rushing for quality?

When all the high-churn authors start crying about declining visibility and sales, the author who’s focused on building up that Bookstore of You won’t have to worry. They’ll simply throw open the doors of the Bookstore and keep treating the readers who come looking for you first — ignoring the noise in the market entirely — like gold. 

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About Johnny

Johnny B. Truant wrote the indie cornerstone guide Write. Publish. Repeat and hosted the original Self Publishing Podcast. If you'd like to learn more about the Artisan Author approach to publishing, check out Johnny's forthcoming book The Artisan Author, which launches July 15th on Kickstarter and November 4th on booksellers. You can also read this post on his Substack for a bigger picture of what it means to be an Artisan Author.

On the fiction side, Johnny is the bestselling author of Fat Vampire, adapted by The SyFy Network as Reginald the Vampire. His other books include Pretty Killer, Gore Point, Invasion, The Beam, Dead City, Unicorn Western, and over 100 other titles across many genres.

Originally from Ohio, Johnny and his family now live in Austin, Texas where he's finally surrounded by creative types as weird as he is.

Top photo purchased from Depositphotos.