How to Thrive in a Winner Take All Market: Advanced Strategies for Authors

Introduction

In this blog, we’ll explore advanced strategies for authors to thrive in a winner take all market, based on the insights shared by Joe Solari at the 20Books Vegas 2021 Day 2 event. From understanding the power law curve to marketing and community building, we’ll cover key points and actionable strategies for building a successful publishing business.

Thriving in a Winner Take All Market

• The speaker introduces himself as Joe Solari, who helps authors build successful businesses. He shares his experience of working with authors earning six to seven figures, highlighting the opportunity in the publishing business.

• The discussion is based on his book ‘Advantage’ and research from successful clients. He emphasizes the conflicting yet successful strategies adopted by different authors, challenging traditional views on publishing success.

• The presentation delves into the power law curve driving the market, where a small percentage of titles make significant sales. This data challenges the notion of unlimited market demand and emphasizes the intense competition in the industry.

• Additionally, the audience learns about the logarithmic change in book rankings and the inevitable sales curve for authors, highlighting the need for long-term audience retention strategies rather than relying on short-term sales peaks.

Key Points on Marketing and Community Building

• The key points from the original text highlight the significance of understanding the layers in the marketplace, beyond traditional funnel thinking, to create a positive feedback loop and influence the market.

• At the neuroscopic level, the power of marketing lies in creating images, connections, and relationships with characters and story worlds in the audience’s mind, harnessing the audience’s association of identity with the story brand to build a community around like identities, such as fans of specific book brands or characters like Star Wars or Harry Potter.

• Furthermore, the discussion delves into the concept of using the audience’s connection with the story and characters to generate a ‘pure signal’ that amplifies in the marketplace, influencing algorithms to target similar audiences for better conversion, emphasizing the importance of quality over quantity in audience building to avoid convoluted results.

• Moreover, the sustainability and success of this approach are contingent on retaining readers from the current launch and compounding advantages in the future rounds, stressing the need to focus on customer retention and community building.

• The segment also touches on the study ‘Significant Objects,’ which demonstrated how storytelling adds value to objects, emphasizing that the meaning and value are created by the words in the story, presenting storytelling as a powerful marketing tool for creating meaningful connections with customers by leveraging characters and story worlds.

• The importance of community building is highlighted, emphasizing the need to focus on helping fans find each other, rather than just setting up a platform for congregation, with reference to a study from Carnegie Mellon that showed smaller strong tie communities having better sales results than massive clustered communities.

Analysis and Strategies for Building a Publishing Business

• The key points from the text are to question the premise of focusing solely on getting more people to recommend content, and instead consider getting the right people to recommend it to the right audience.

• The two essential resources for a cumulative advantage in a publishing business are funds and fans, as they are interconnected - funds are needed to find fans, while fans are the main source of funds.

• The shift in perspective is from viewing the publishing business as a marketing mechanism to an accumulator for funds and fans, emphasizing that ‘bigger isn’t better,’ but ‘better is better.‘

• Advertising is not discouraged, but the focus is on using it differently, such as running campaigns for long-term customer attraction and implementing strategies to retain customers once they enter the market.

• The importance of directing attention towards retaining customers once they come in, ensuring they continue to engage with the content and the community, rather than just focusing on new customer acquisition.

• Strategies for attracting the ideal reader by using different keywords and approaches, as well as creating an enjoyable experience for both the publisher and the customer.

Brand Awareness and Marketing Strategy

• Brand awareness is essential for creating a strong marketing strategy, and it requires constant and consistent effort to make an impact on potential customers.

• Building brand awareness involves multiple touches and interactions with customers before they truly understand the value and promise of a brand.

• Customers often need reassurance that the risk of trying a new product or author will benefit them, and this is where brand continuity plays a crucial role.

• Authors can leverage brand awareness to communicate their message and build a community of loyal readers who trust their recommendations.

• It’s important for authors to deliver on their brand promise, as failing to do so can significantly impact their credibility and trust with readers.

Strategies for Engaging Fans and Building Email Lists

• Engaging fans to create and share content can reduce the workload for creators and fulfill the audience’s needs more effectively. The example of author Chris Kennedy allowing fans to have full reign of the Facebook group and newsletter shows the benefits of empowering fans.

• Maintaining separate pen names for different genres or categories is advisable unless there is a larger brand promise tying them together. This allows for deeper connections within each story world and enhances reader engagement.

• Creative strategies, such as sending emails from the perspective of characters or including additional content like recipes related to the story, can add value to the reader’s experience and increase engagement.

• Using autoresponders to engage new readers can be a powerful strategy for building email lists. Autoresponders can help in guiding readers through different series and nurturing the relationship, leading to better reader retention and loyal fan base.

• Starting authors can benefit from utilizing platforms like Book Funnel and Story Origin to build their email lists effectively. However, it’s essential to focus on attracting quality subscribers rather than quantity to ensure better engagement and sales in the long run.

Conclusion

By implementing the strategies discussed by Joe Solari, authors can effectively navigate the challenges of a winner take all market and build a sustainable publishing business. Understanding the power law curve, marketing at a neuroscopic level, and focusing on customer retention are key elements in this journey towards success.

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