An Author Must Have Friends

The Rule of 200

Part 5 of An Author’s Guide to Hand Selling Books
by David A. Rozansky, Publisher, Flying Pen Press
Readers, Writers & Royalties columnist
October 11, 2007

 
[This is the fifth article in a nine-part series.]

 
In the first article in this series, I gave a general overview of why authors should sell their own books. In that article, I gave a list of the seven rules we teach authors about how they can hand-sell their own books.

To quickly review, these seven rules are:

1. The Rule of Use. Authors must use books to sell books. (Discussed in a previous installment).

2. The Rule of Sales. Authors must be mentally and logistically prepared to sell their books. (Discussed in a previous installment).

3. The Rule of 3 Feet. Authors must tell everyone that comes within 3 feet about their books. (Discussed in a previous installment).

4. The Rule of 200. Authors must prepare a list of 200 contacts and work those contacts as their core fan base.

5. The Rule of 5x5. Authors must make five separate contacts each day, five days a week, and try to sell their books.

6. The Rule of Writing. Authors must keep writing new books.

7. The Rule of Crowds. Authors must sell their books before large crowds, preferably on the Internet.

This article will discuss the fourth rule, the Rule of 200, in detail.

The Rule of 200 is a secret weapon that an author can use to propel personal sales of her book. No bookstore, no publisher, no publicist, no other person can match the power of an author’s use of The Rule of 200.

The Rule of 200 states, “To Sell a Product, the Seller Must Rally His Personal Contacts.” It is said that each person has about 200 personal contacts with whom he or she has a personal relationship or regularly engages in conversation.

For an author trying to sell her book, this is an important group of people. These 200 people are the people who will be most interested in the book, the ones most likely to buy the book, the ones most likely to talk about the book among strangers.

To use the Rule of 200, one must first identify the 200 contacts one knows. This is a very difficult project, surprisingly. I call this the List of 200, and it will take about one whole afternoon to create. I should note that for power networkers or people in specific professions, this list of contacts could number in the thousands, but as the typical person has 200 contacts, I still call it the List of 200.

To create the list, the author simply starts writing down names of people she knows and who would know her (but not a list of strangers listed as connections or friends on social network sites or email lists in Outlook).

The first ten names on the list will be supremely easy. Halfway through the list, something happens. The author will find that it’s not so easy to come up with more names. Professional contacts, distant relatives, people not seen in a few months all come up in this exercise. It takes a little effort to remember them all, and it’s okay to raid an address book or contact-management software.

The last 20 names on the list will take as long to think of as the first 180 names. The author must dig deep into memory, but she must resist the temptation to halt the exercise.

The next step is to use the List of 200 to make the first round of sales. This allows the author to practice the sales pitch among a group that is more likely to say yes, building confidence and quickly identifying ways to improve the sales pitch. However, the list is far more useful in buzz marketing than it is in direct hand sales, and so an author should consider giving review copies to each contact, or at least the closest friends and relatives.

The List of 200 represents people who are most likely to talk about the author’s book to others. The contacts at the top of the list — those closest to the author — will likely be talking about the book long before it is published. Most of the list, however, is not that likely to know much about the author’s book unless the author tells them about it.

In considering the List of 200, the author should realize that each contact on the list has their own List of 200, and 200 times 200 is 40,000. While it would be grand if all 200 contacts worked this hard for the author, the truth is that only a fraction of the List of 200 will become excited enough to talk about the book, and most likely, those that do will only talk to a few of their contacts. How well this network of contacts and contacts’ contacts moves information about the author’s book depends on how much energy the author can infuse into this network.

The author should “deputize” as many contacts on the list as possible. To do this, the author makes it easy for these deputies to take the marketing message forward. The author should make sure these deputies know what the sales pitch is for the book, and make sure they all have a copy of the book. She should have promotional material such as flyers or bookmarks, and they should all know how to contact the author if they find someone who wants to buy an autographed copy. Little gifts and office visits will keep the deputies excited about the book.

An author should also offer to talk at any club or group to which the deputies belong. The author should also politely ask these deputies to tell others about the book, and supply a website link and an electronic brochure about the book that the deputies can email.

An example of why the Rule of 200 is so powerful can be seen by comparing two authors published by Flying Pen Press: Gaddy Bergmann and James R. Strickland.

Bergmann wrote Migration of the Kamishi, a post-apocalyptic-lit novel, and Strickland wrote Looking Glass, a taut cyberpunk thriller. The two novels were released the same day, and both were featured at the Flying Pen Press premiere party at the Tattered Cover Bookstore. They had the same start, but one had an easier start than the other.

Oddly, it was Migration of the Kamishi, which probably has a smaller target market, that had the easier start. Bergmann is a wonderful speaker and a scientist with many contacts. He has a large family here in Denver, with many cousins coming to the party. Bergmann contacted everyone beforehand and had them fired up about the book, and as a result, many of them not only bought the book at the premiere, they later told a lot of people who went directly to the Flying Pen Press website to buy the book, and Bergmann hand-delivered many of the copies.

Strickland, on the other hand, is not originally from Colorado, and he is a full time writer with a background in IT. His friends and family are spread across several states. Furthermore, his social time has been eaten up with packing, moving and unpacking. As a result, less people knew about the book and thus the book had a harder time getting known in the community. Fortunately, Strickland’s contacts included authors who have contacts in the trade, so once the word reached the reviewers, book sales picked up. Still, it was harder work than Bergmann’s networking.

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In the next installment, I will discuss The Rule of 5x5. To subscribe to the entire series of articles on the topic of An Author’s Guide to Hand Selling Books, please click on the “Subscribe to this Group” button at www.ReadWriteRoyalty.Gather.com. To receive all of Mr. Rozansky’s articles, subscribe at www.FlyingPenPress.Gather.com.

David A. Rozansky is the publisher of Flying Pen Press. He has been in publishing since 1987, and has more than one million published words under his byline. Flying Pen Press is at http://www.FlyingPenPress.com.

Flying Pen Press is the publisher of the two novels named in this article: Looking Glass by James R. Strickland (ISBN 978-0-9795889-0-7)and Migration of the Kamishi by Gaddy Bergmann (ISN 978-0-9795889-1-4). Looking Glass is cyberpunk murder mystery where a serial killer is stalking cyberspace and using the Internet itself as a weapon. Migration of the Kamishi is a story of life three thousand years after an asteroid has hit the Earth and wiped out all civilization, and how the Earth is healing from all the things done to it by mankind. Both novels are available wherever great books are sold.