Five lessons from week one of This is Strategy

Once you decide to write a book about strategy, it raises the bar for having a strategy for the launch.

People generally focus far too much on the launch of a project. Rocketships need a perfect launch, because just about everything after the launch is simply ballistic. But most of us don’t work at Cape Canaveral.

The world of books is a metaphor for a lot of industries, where old methods aren’t working well but persist in sticking around. First-time authors are often pushed into a cycle of hustle and scarcity, which leads to burnout and disappointment.

The alternative isn’t easy, but it’s worth embracing. It can be effective in more than just a book launch.

Celebrate the true fans

The seductive promise of the book industry (or movies, or fashion, or any business that has “star maker machinery”) is that they will somehow introduce your idea to strangers.

It certainly worked for JD Salinger and even Joni Mitchell. But it hardly works that way now.

This is Strategy had a great launch, perhaps the most successful book I’ve done in years, because 1,000 people showed up first and made a difference. This opened the door for others who wanted to be part of the conversation.

In their rush to reach strangers, traditional publishers ignore the opportunity to dance with people who are already excited. In my case, thanks to purple.space and the loyal readers of this blog, there were folks eager to offer me the benefit of the doubt.

Creating the launch package, with seven books, the collectible (and delicious) chocolate and the powerful strategy deck (check them out) gave this group of magical people first dibs on something special, as well as a chance to share it.

The first step to publishing a book well begins long before you decide to write a book.

Create the scaffolding for the idea to spread

Books aren’t unique, but the math is particularly compelling: They never achieve any of their useful goals in the first week. A network TV show used to get all of its viewers the first and only time it ran. A book, on the other hand, is worth writing if people are reading and talking about it years later.

The launch is a chance to model that behavior. If the launch simply focuses on getting the word out, it’s likely that the word will fade over time. But, if people talk to one another as part of what you’re doing, they’re more likely to continue to do so.

Last week, in hundreds of cities around the world, readers came together to talk about strategy. Not about my book, but about their strategy and how they can improve it. More than eighty bookstores stepped up to volunteer their spaces, and the book became a catalyst for conversation. Getting a copy wasn’t the point–talking about the work to be done was.

Ignore false proxies

How many people liked that post on Instagram? How did the book rank on the Times list? What did the first reviewers have to say?

It’s so easy to see, tempting to manipulate, and, ultimately, pointless. The proxy of the Times list has been so manipulated that it’s now meaningless–and the work publishers and authors put into shifting their efforts into this antiquated measurement is distracting and ultimately wasted.

A false proxy is convenient, vivid and unhelpful. It’s like asking a programmer how many words per minute they can type. It might be useful to be a fast typist, but it doesn’t help you become a great programmer.

Normalize the idea

I did more than 80 podcasts that launched last week. (I’m grateful for the passionate people that power this medium, and delighted by the magic of our conversations). That might seem like a way to get the word out to promote a book, but that’s not really what’s happening. People don’t usually hear a podcast and then open their phones to buy a book.

Instead, a book is a chance to have a conversation. The conversation is the product, the book is just the catalyst.

When an author and publisher spend the time and effort to produce a book, they’re actually demonstrating a commitment and sending a signal that this is worth talking about. The conversations I did, though exhausting, were a foundation for the conversations I hope that others will have going forward.

Successful non-fiction books are now a souvenir of an idea that is spreading and worth understanding.

Abundance instead of scarcity

For four hundred years, the only way to get a book on a store’s bookshelves was for some other book to come off the shelf. There wasn’t enough room for it to be any other way.

Now, with online shopping and digital formats, there’s infinite shelf space. It’s “and” instead of “or.”

That’s one reason why the launch matters so much less than it used to–it’s not a useful proxy for shelf space any longer.

My publisher understands the new math. Instead of focusing on limited access and short-term measurements, the posture is to be promiscuous with the ideas and to weave together communities of practice and interest. The magic of an idea is that if I share it with you, we both have it.

My launch partner on the audiobook has a similar mindset. While the default online marketplace model is to hold search hostage, keeping a huge share of the proceeds in exchange for offering a scarce slot in their store, there are new options. Discovery doesn’t just happen in the online store’s search box. Since most of the readers seeking the book in the early days already know my work and can find this page, I can bypass this scarce resource and offer a reader and author-friendly alternative.

Abundance is generative, and it also gives us room for gratitude. The acknowledgments of a book are my favorite part to write, because so many people, people not mentioned on the cover, are involved in producing and delivering an idea of value. I don’t get to list all the readers, of course, or the people they talk to about the book, and that’s the real point of this post, and the book itself.

If you want to change a system, change the culture. And if you want to change the culture, it helps to create the conditions for people to step up, talk about it, and take action.