This article will talk about how to launch your business book as a New York Times bestseller. For your book to become a New York Times bestseller, you have to create a lot of hype around it and sell many copies in the first week after its release.
This requires a particular strategy and plan of attack. However, if you follow the advice contained within this article, you will have an opportunity to be on the New York Times bestsellers list.
Let’s begin by talking about why launching your book as a New York Times bestseller is so essential, then we’ll move on to tips on how to do it properly.
Difference Between an Amazon Bestseller and a New York Times Bestseller
When you look at online bookstores such as Amazon, you’ll see that they list books based on their sales rank. The higher the sales rank an individual book achieves, the more popular it becomes.
The most significant difference between Amazon’s sales ranking and the New York Times Best Sellers list is that Amazon ranks their books based on how much money each book has sold, whereas NYT ranks their books by how many copies of every specific book were sold. Let’s take a closer look:
AMAZON BESTSELLERS RANKED BY SALES RANKING: Millions of different products are for sale from numerous online retailers on Amazon. Each product has its own sales ranking, which is updated every hour.
This means that if your book becomes very popular on Amazon, chances are it will end up near the top of one of these rankings (such as the bestselling nonfiction books).
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST RANKED BY SALES: The New York Times Best Sellers list ranks their books in order of units sold each week.
You need at least 5,000 to 10,000 diverse sales in a week to achieve a bestseller status in the New York Times. It means your sales should be from different locations and across various retailers around the country.
So, for example, when you open the paper and look at their bestsellers list, you don’t see fiction or nonfiction categories there – just a long list of different titles in alphabetical order depending on which part of the country they sold best in.
The Impact of a Bestseller Status On Your Business
Many business book authors want to sell their books in bulk, which is why getting listed on the New York Times bestsellers list is essential. It allows them to reach out to a broader audience.
Many business people purchase books every week, so by getting your book on this list, you can reach your target market much easier since they’ll be looking for your book when they’re in line at Barnes & Noble or waiting at airports train stations.
On top of that, it gets you noticed!
The average person doesn’t know that you can purchase your way onto this list (which is what most people think), but only if you’re willing to pay a fortune. According to many insiders, though, there are other ways to get there for free or for next-to-nothing. And here’s where we come in! We’ll tell you how it’s done.
Steps a Business Author Needs to Carry Out to Launch Their Book as a New York Times Bestseller
Writing a book is one of the most complicated tasks that an entrepreneur can undertake. It requires serious mental fortitude, in addition to patience and discipline, especially when it comes to marketing your business book for maximum exposure.
The New York Times Bestseller List is one of the most prestigious lists in all of literature. It ranks titles based on their popularity in the United States across all formats, including hardcover, paperback, audiobooks, etc., both fiction and nonfiction.
This list factors into its rankings not only total sales numbers but also how many people read each title through libraries or rental services like Chegg or e-books download sites like Amazon Kindle.
How then do you go about creating an impactful buzz around your book to propel it into the New York Times Bestseller list?
Here are four steps that will help you launch your business book as a best seller.
Step 1: Identify your target audience.
This can be tricky because you cannot be effective if you do not know who will benefit from reading your book. Who would read your book and find it interesting?
Understand their demographics, what they like to read if they are male or female, etc. For this reason, the author of the business book must market research for their target group before embarking on writing any content for the book itself. This way, there would be no guesswork involved when creating content for an audience that may or may not exist.
Step 2: Identify key influencers.
Influencers are people who can actively contribute to the overall promotion of your business book. These people have a large following or fan base that purchases particular books or read books within a specific genre.
This could be anything from self-help entrepreneurs like James Altucher to best-selling authors/influencers like Tim Ferriss. Look at their fans and try to figure out if any of them would fit into the target audience for your book.
Then reach out to the influencer personally through email or phone call to explain your project and what you would need their assistance to help you launch your Business book as a New York Times Best Seller.
Step 3: Launch a marketing campaign.
A marketing plan is an essential part of the launch of your book as it will help you set some goals and understand what kind of audience or reader would be interested in reading your business book.
For example, if you write about becoming financially stable and successful by making money online, certain people would be more inclined to read your book than others.
Identifying these types of individuals and tailoring campaigns specifically towards them is very important because they are the ones that you want to reach out to first before anyone else. Using social media, especially Facebook can help with this step because it allows for pretty advanced statistical analysis through analytics.
You can then use this data to determine who you should target and what marketing tactics are most effective for reaching a receptive audience.
Step 4: Launch your book as a New York Times bestseller.
Once the above steps have been completed, it is time to launch your business book as a Best Seller to achieve its full potential and make the company behind the book lots of money.
This step involves creating a buzz around your finished product by engaging with people socially, such as readers or even celebrities who would love to get on board with you if they feel like it aligns with their lifestyle or image. There aren’t any hard and fast rules for promoting something like this because it is a lot of trial and error.
Step 4b: Launch your book as a New York Times bestseller for your business.
Business authors will want to use the same steps outlined here with a few modifications depending on what kind of company they work for or own.
If you promote your Business Book as a New York Times Best Seller, make sure that you have already done significant research into marketing strategies suitable for promoting items such as books written by companies.
This is because many different angles can be taken to reach an audience that may not even exist yet. Think about who would benefit from reading this type of content you provide versus someone else, and then create marketing campaigns geared towards those people.
It is important to note that the bestseller lists for both Amazon and The New York Times are updated regularly, so there isn’t a set date in which your book needs to hit one of the bestseller lists to be considered a success.
It all depends on how well you market your book after it has been released. There aren’t any hard and fast rules for promoting something like this because it is a lot of trial and error.
If you build up a significant following before releasing your book or find influencers who will promote your Business Book as a New York Times Best Seller before its release, then there’s no reason why you can’t get onto these lists within a matter of days.
Conclusion
Once you have published your book, if your goal is to secure Amazon sales rankings, you will not need anything else because Amazon’s bestseller status makes it easier to get exposure and sell books.
However, if you want to publish for extra exposure or even create a business based on selling books, consider carefully where you should invest your resources for the greatest return on investment.