How to sell 100,000 books with no audience, fame, or endorsements

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Yesterday, I wrote about Andrew Kap’s book 3 Words I Used To Sell 100,000 Books.

​​That book talks about the marketing behind Andrew’s law of attraction book, which has sold 100k+ copies since 2019.

One thing Andrew has done to promote his law of attraction book is start a YouTube channel in which he answers reader questions, highlights testimonials, and shares additional stories to illustrate points from his book.

In the chapter of the 3 Words book about that YouTube channel, Andrew says you shouldn’t worry too much about the production value of your YouTube videos. He gives an example:

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A perfect example of not needing high production value if you have high quality content is Alex Hormozi. You look at his content on YouTube, and a lot of his stuff seems like he’s filming inside of a closet. And the funny thing is — that’s because he actually is!

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I don’t agree with Andrew that Alex Hormozi’s inside-the-close videos stand on their high-quality content.

They stand because Hormozi is rich, successful, and now famous.

But that’s actually a good reason to read Andrew Kap’s 3 Words book.

Because Andrew made his law of attraction book a genuine bestseller without any of Alex Hormozi’s advantages.

He sold 100,000 copies of his book on his own — without a previous audience, without fame, without headline-worthy personal success stories, without celebrity endorsements.

And so, this point about Hormozi notwithstanding, it’s well worth reading Andrew’s 3 Words book about how he made his law of attraction book such a success.

By the way, YouTube is only one of the things Andrew is doing. So if you object to going on YouTube to promote yourself or your book — and if you do, I’m right there with you — then you’ll find lots of other strategies Andrew has used to promote his book and sell many metric tons of it.

I encourage you to read Andrew Kap’s book. In fact, I’m offering two free bonuses if you get it by tomorrow and write me:

Free Bonus #1: How Andrew Kap Wrote His Last Law Of Attraction Book in 60 Days

This is an interview I did with Andrew this past week.

His 3 Words book talks about book marketing: titles, covers, reviews, etc.

It doesn’t talk much about his writing process. But Andrew wrote his 200-page Last Law book in two months. And again, it has a 4.6 rating.

So I sat down with Andrew for an hour, grilled him on how he writes, how he prepares, researches, organizes his writing, the tools he uses, etc.

I also chimed in with my own thoughts and experiences. You might wonder why. I checked just now. I haven’t sold 100,000 books. But adding up all the books I have published on Amazon, I have sold 69,500 books.

Free Bonus #2: 4 Proven Hooks To Sell More Books

This is a short presentation I recorded a few days ago. It will give you the hooks, three examples for each, and how-to advice for coming up with each of the hooks for the book project you are working on.

These hooks are what I reach for when I’m thinking of writing a new book. They are also what I advised someone recently after he came to me and asked for help with writing his book. ​​​​

Hear me now:

​​You can get Andrew Kap’s book any time. But if you’d like to also get the free bonuses above, the deadline for that is tomorrow, Monday, Jan 29, at 8:31pm CET.

​​Here’s what to do:

1. Buy Andrew Kap’s 3 Words book on Amazon. You can get it in Kindle, audiobook, paperback, hardback, used, new, or collectible versions — your choice. The link to the book is at the end of this email.

2. Forward me the receipt email that Amazon sends you, and do it by the deadline (tomorrow, Monday, Jan 29, at 8:31pm CET).

3. I will then send you the free bonuses, the interview I did with Andrew, and the 4 Proven Hooks presentation.

Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/3words

My book recommendation for book marketing

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Today, I have book to recommend to you. It’s called, 3 Words I Used To Sell 100,000 Books.

I came across this book because I saw it hovering in the Amazon direct response bestsellers above my 10 Commandments book.

I looked up the author. His name is Andrew Kap. He’s the author of The Last Law Of Attraction Book You’ll Ever Need To Read. Facts about this book:

* Publication date: Nov 24, 2019

* Amazon rank as of today: 17,819, which means it’s selling around 220 copies per month, almost 5 years after its publication

* Number of reviews: 3,898, of which 79% are 5-star

I got curious. I bought Andrew’s 3 Words book. I started to read. I finished. And now I’m recommending it to you.

Actually, before recommending, a few disclaimers.

First, the “3 words.” They are not magic. They are not last, not law, not attraction. They are not words you can put in your title or anywhere in your text and automatically sell 100k copies.

Second, the book is written in a kind of sales copy style.

​​The first few chapters, which build up to the reveal of the three words, might sound like a video sales letter teasing you about the three health foods in your fridge you should never eat if you hope to lose weight.

Except Kap doesn’t keep teasing you for an hour and then tell you to buy something else. Instead, he reveals the three words, and pretty soon into the book.

He then unpacks the three words throughout the rest of the book, and tells you all the tactical and strategic things he did to sell and keep selling his Last Law of Attraction Book to 100k copies and beyond.

So get Kap’s book. Read it. Apply it. Or apply a part of it.

Because as you will see, Andrew Kap is rather obsessive in his determination to get his Law of Attraction book into as many hands as belong to humans that could benefit from the ideas he has to share.

But even if you don’t implement all of what Kap has to tell you, and even if you apply only 10% of it, you’re still likely to outsell 99% of self-published authors, and I imagine the majority of traditionally published authors as well.

Final disclaimer:

​​I wrote to Andrew and told him I want to recommend his book to my readers. I also asked if he would be willing to do the same with my 10 Commandments book to his readers. He agreed.

So not only am I telling you about this book, but I am actively promoting it. For that, I’ve got two free bonuses in case you get Andrew Kap’s 3 Words I Used To Sell 100,000 Books:

Free Bonus #1: How Andrew Kap Wrote His Last Law Of Attraction Book in 60 Days

This is an interview I did with Andrew this past week.

His 3 Words book talks about book marketing: titles, covers, reviews, etc.

It doesn’t talk much about his writing process. But Andrew wrote his 200-page Last Law book in two months. And again, it has a 4.6 rating.

So I sat down with Andrew for an hour, grilled him on how he writes, how he prepares, researches, organizes his writing, the tools he uses, etc.

I also chimed in with my own thoughts and experiences. You might wonder why. I checked just now. I haven’t sold 100,000 books. But adding up all the books I have published on Amazon, I have sold 69,500 books.

Free Bonus #2: 4 Proven Hooks To Sell More Books

This is a short presentation I recorded a few days ago. It will give you the hooks, three examples for each, and how-to advice for coming up with each of the hooks for the book project you are working on.

These hooks are what I reach for when I’m thinking of writing a new book. They are also what I advised someone recently after he came to me and asked for help with writing his book. ​​​​

Hear me now.

​​You can get Andrew Kap’s book any time. But if you’d like to also get the free bonuses above, the deadline for that is this coming Monday, Jan 29, at 8:31pm CET.

​​Here’s what to do:

1. Buy Andrew Kap’s 3 Words book on Amazon. You can get it in Kindle, audiobook, paperback, hardback, used, new, or collectible versions — your choice. The link to the book is at the end of this email.

2. Forward me the receipt email that Amazon sends you, and do it by the deadline (Monday, Jan 29, at 8:31pm CET).

3. I will then send you the free bonuses, the interview I did with Andrew, and the 4 Proven Hooks presentation.

Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/3words

Magic words that bring you status

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Yesterday, I went on Twitter in search of my own name.

What I found was a photo somebody had posted of a densely scribbled page, containing the text of one of my emails.

I squinted and leaned in so far my nose almost touched the screen. It was true.

People are actually copying out my emails by hand as a way to learn email copywriting.

It was a bizarre moment. It reminded me of the first time I printed a black-and-white photograph in my high school’s darkroom.

Take a normal-looking piece of paper, expose it to light for a second, then dump it into a bit of clear, water-like liquid. A picture emerges of something you had photographed days or weeks ago.

It feels like magic, because the ingredients seem so ordinary — paper, light, a bit of water-like liquid.

I’ve been writing this daily email newsletter for 5+ years. At first, I was writing mostly just to practice and then sending my emails out into the void.

After a while, I created an offer. I sent out an email just like the ones I had been sending out. Except this time, money came back at me.

It felt like magic, because it was still the same ordinary ingredients — a bare-bones text editor, ActiveCampaign, the blue “send” button.

Since then, I’ve continued sending the same text-only emails, just words in a text editor. And that’s been good enough to give me status and authority in this field. I got into copywriting some ten years ago by hand-copying issues of Gary Halbert’s newsletter. Today people are copying my newsletter issues by hand.

A few days ago, I announced I’m looking for five beta testers for a 3-month group coaching program.

The goal for this group coaching program is to implement the techniques and ideas I talked about on the “How I do it” call I held on Monday. Write interesting emails… build a list… grow your status… make money.

I announced this group coaching program to the people who were there for the live “How I do it” call, and to the people who signed up for the recording.

And in spite of the fact I once again managed to muck up the tech, so that some people never got the link to join the live call, and others never got the recording, I’ve so far filled three of those five spots. I also have a few people who’ve expressed interest in the remaining two.

But I want to get this sign-up process wrapped up now, so I can kick the group coaching off.

So if you’re interested, hit reply and let me know a bit about who you are and what you do.

I will send you a doc with the full info on this 3-month program, and you can decide if it’s for you or not.

If not, no problem. But if yes, then you can join us, and we will start next week.

If you open

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Just now, I went on Amazon and checked the top three ebooks in the “nonfiction” category. They are:

#1: “Two Women Walk Into A Bar”

#2: “The Amish Wife”

#3: “If You Tell”

Unless you know these books already, the titles give you no clue as to what they might be about. And yet, they are at the top of Amazon.

Only once you dig into subcategories and the subcategories of those subcategories to get to the the marketing bestsellers, do you find understandable titles like:

“1-page Marketing Plan”

“How To Get To The Top Of Google”

“The Psychology Of Selling”

What gives?

Is it better to have a mysterious and opaque title to suck in aimless passersby? Do clear, benefit-oriented titles just scream “sales pitch” and drive readers away?

I’m sure it’s obvious to you, but I like to flog dead equines. So let me point out that the top three nonfiction books were all written by people with large existing audiences… big celeb endorsements (the author of the Women/Bar book was on Oprah multiple times)… and giant marketing pushes from established publishers.

On the other hand, the marketing bestsellers went to smaller existing audiences and probably had smaller if any marketing pushes (the last one, Brian Tracy’s The Psychology Of Selling, was published in 2006 and probably gets no active marketing whatsoever any more).

In other words, the top of the top nonfiction bestsellers are there in spite of their titles. While for the marketing books, clear, understandable, benefit-oriented titles help overcome other limitations, and sell books that might not sell otherwise.

And on that note, I’d like to tell you that yesterday I recorded a short presentation, 4 Proven Hooks That Sell More Books.

Based on that clear, benefit-oriented title, you can probably guess what the presentation is about.

I will be giving this presentation away as a bonus in a couple days’ time, if you buy a book I will be promoting. But more about that when it’s due.

For today, I’d like to point you to a little book with a clear and understandable title. It’s a title that I know for a fact has sold copies of this book that wouldn’t have sold otherwise.

I know this, because people who bought the book wrote me to say so.

The title is The 10 Commandments Of A-List Copywriters. The author is me.

And if you’d like to get this book, you can find it lurking among the direct-marketing bestsellers on Amazon. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

One of the very few newsletters I read with interest

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One year ago, on January 10 2023 to be exact, I got a sudden burst of 100+ new subscribers.

That’s not how things go on a normal day in the Bejako hobbit hole. Not anywhere close. So I picked up my walking stick and went outside to investigate.

Google Analytics told me I had a mass of new website visitors from Twitter that day. So I walked over to Twitter, asked around, and came upon a tweet, which had been seen by 120k people, recommending me among several other email copywriters.

The person who wrote that tweet was one Kieran Drew.

At that time, Kieran had something like 100k Twitter followers. Today, he has over 200k. He also has a weekly email newsletter with close to 30k subscribers.

Kieran is an ex-dentist. He quit his comfortable job pulling teeth in September 2021. And he started to write online, full-time, to an eager audience of zero.

Kieran got his success so quickly and so thoroughly not via clever algorithm hacks or by running paid ads. Rather, he did it simply by writing. Clear, valuable, fun writing.

Thankfully, Kieran is not one of the descendants of Matt Furey in the daily email world, the way that I am.

His newsletter is pleasantly free of shaming… mocking… us-vs-them dog whistles… the daily striptease of a throbbing subject line that’s only paid off behind the paywall… or try-hard contrarian takes.

And yet, without all of these staples of daily emails, and even without writing daily, Kieran has his huge and devoted audience. And if you’re wondering if that huge and devoted audience is actually worth anything, Kieran grossed over $500k in 2023 alone, and he hit two 6-figure months.

If you’re interested in writing, or in making money online, what I’ve just told you should be enough to motivate you to get on Kieran’s email list and see what exactly he writes about and how he does it and how he profits from it.

But if by any chance it’s not enough, I can also add my personal seal of approval.

The fact is, I subscribe to hundreds of email newsletters. Most of them I ignore with a kind of malicious glee.

Some I work through out of a feeling of responsibility.

And then, there are a very few that I read regularly and with interest.

Kieran’s newsletter is among those very few. If you’d like to see why, sign up below and try it for yourself:

https://kierandrew.com/

Meet me in Barcelona?

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Yesterday, I held the “How I do it” training on Zoom.

I was happy with the content and the presentation. I felt I gave people who were there some genuinely new ideas on how to write and profit from a newsletter. And inevitably, I also highlighted some things folks already knew, but that I could vouch really were important, from personal experience.

So the live presentation was good. But, as usual, it was a weird experience.

I minimized the various Zoom windows so could I see my slides and focus. I ignored the chat except at a few moments when I stopped to field questions.

Inevitably, I spent over an hour talking at my computer, which gave me zero feedback, while at the same time feeling that I should somehow be interacting with actual people, who were muted and invisible.

It was strange and unsatisfying. This same stuff doesn’t bother me when I write and send these daily emails. But doing a live video presentation that somehow doesn’t feel live is different.

All that’s to say, there’s genuine value to meeting and seeing people in real life.

I live in Barcelona. It’s a big city, and attractive.

I know some of my readers live around here as well.

Also, Barcelona happens to be one of Europe’s top 5 tourist destinations, so maybe you are planning a trip here some time soon.

I will organize a meet up in person, in the flesh, blood and hair and bones, some time in the next few days or weeks. If you would like to join me — if you live here or are just visiting — reply to this email, and I’ll keep you in the loop.

Double up and triple up

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As this email goes out, I will be hosting the training on how I do it, meaning how I write and profit from this newsletter.

I had to cut a lot of possible content from this training.

​​A bunch of worthwhile ideas didn’t make it because I wanted to keep the training tight. I wanted to share only the absolutely most core, valuable advice I would give myself five years ago at the time I was starting this newsletter.

But what about the rest of the content? What about the stuff that I had to cut out?

Let me tell you one idea I won’t talk about on the training, but which has been something valuable I do unconsciously, and should be something I do a lot more of consciously:

Everything you do should serve double or triple or quadruple purposes.

I think this is a good life philosophy in general. But since this newsletter focuses on marketing and making money via writing, let’s talk about that, with the example of this “How I do it” training:

1. I announced this training two weeks ago.

2. Since then, I’ve been collecting ideas to talk about on the actual training. I’ve also been collecting examples, case studies, illustrations to bring up on the training.

3. Some of those ideas and examples made it into my daily emails over the past 10 days.

4. On the other hand, some of the ideas from my daily emails over the past two weeks will go into this training, even though I hadn’t planned it initially.

5. Once it’s over, this training will be relevant and useful to me as a kind of business checklist, because it’s helped me crystalize my thoughts on many things I had been doing well without being aware of them, some I had been doing poorly while tolerating.

6. This training might become a lead magnet down the line. I might turn into text or keep it as is, give it away, in whole or in part.

7. Or perhaps I will turn this training into a paid product, or a bonus for some other offer. I’m sure to take ideas from it… or stories that I tell… or questions that come up… or the format itself, or even topics that I planned but didn’t end up including… and use those in the future in a different format.

That’s what I mean when I say double up or triple up the uses you get out of everything you do.

Emails become courses… and courses become books… and books become podcast appearances… and podcast appearances become emails… which in turn become live trainings, which become bonuses…

I think you get the idea.

I’ll leave you here for tonight. Because I gotta go. I still have lots to do before the training tonight.

In the meantime, if you want to see doubled-up or tripled-up content in action, check out my 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters.

That book was motivated by an email I wrote in this newsletter… some of the content first appeared as emails… some of the book content was later repurposed to emails. And all of it has been driving high-quality readers to my list for the past three years. Like a reader joined my list a few days ago and wrote me to say:

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I’m writing to tell you that I absolutely loved your book 10 Commandments Of A-List Copywriters.

I found it so captivating that I was hooked page after page and just couldn’t put it down without completing the entire book in one sitting.

And I came away wanting so much to be able to write like you. So much that I caught myself being even a little jealous (sorry!).

So I’ll go about incorporating the many ideas that I have learnt from your book.

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To get this doubled-up, tripled-up book:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments​​

If you want to learn to pray, raise your prices

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I live in Barcelona, have been for almost two years now. In order to find out a little about this city, I picked up a book, called Barcelona. It talks about the history and the architecture of the place.

Since Barcelona is on the sea, the culture has been influenced big time by sea and sailing.

​​One of the oldest churches in the city is Santa Maria del Mar.

​​The patron saint of Barcelona is St. Eulalia, also the patron saint of sailors.

​​And according to the book I’m reading, the locals have a saying:

“If you want to learn to pray, learn to sail.”

I wrote that down when I read it. It’s very practical advice, even if you don’t want to learn to pray.

It reminded me of my attitude from day zero of my copywriting career, back in 2015.

I started out charging $15/hour.

I told myself that after five jobs completed at that rate, I would raise my rate to $20/hr.

And I did so.

Then I repeated the process, over and over. $20, $25, $40.

While I was still on Upwork, around 2018, I eventually got to $150/hr.

Then I got off Upwork, and started charging clients still higher effective fees for the work I was doing.

At every step of the way, my mindset was lacking. I had zero inner game. I was emotionally sure that the work I was doing would not be worth the new price I wanted to charge.

And yet I raised my prices. My mindset and my skills and my deliverables caught up. They had to. I was working with clients who were suddenly paying me lots more money.

So if you want to learn to pray, learn to sail. And if you want confidence and the skills to back it up, raise your prices.

This applies beyond copywriting, and beyond client work. ​​

That’s why pricing will be something I will talk about on the free presentation I will host tomorrow, about how I write and profit from this newsletter that you are reading now. But that training is only open to people who are signed up to my list. If you’d like to get on there, click here.

How to get drug-dealer levels of cash without selling drugs

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Last Monday, I wrote an email about Pinky Cole, the founder of Slutty Vegan, a fast-food brand with 11 locations, valued at $100M.

I’ve been traveling in the days since, so I didn’t get a chance to finish the New Yorker article where I first read about Pinky Cole.

I was reading that article again this morning. I found out that when Cole first launched Slutty Vegan back in 2018, she did so without a physical location, just on a bunch of food-delivery apps.

The first day, Cole sold exactly one slutty, meat-free hamburger.

Things inched and middled and crawled along at this pace until Cole hired Ludacris’s manager, Chaka Zulu. Zulu helped Cole get a bunch of rappers, including Snoop Dogg, to endorse Slutty Vegan. Result:

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From there, demand exploded. “I felt like a drug dealer,” Cole said. “We had, like, trash bags of money, because we only took cash.”

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Along with reading the New Yorker, today I’ve been preparing intensely for the live training that I will host this coming Monday, about how I write and profit from this newsletter.

I’ve been collecting ideas for that training over the past couple weeks, and today I also made a big brain dump.

I realized I will have to significantly pare back all the valuable ideas I could share, in order to have a training that makes sense and that doesn’t go on forever.

But one thing I’m sure to keep is the point of the Pinky Cole story above.

It should be obvious enough. But if you want me to spell it out, and show you how it fits into making money with a newsletter, particularly if you also work with clients at the same time, then join me for the training on Monday.

This training will be free.

It will happen on Monday January 22, 2024 at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. But you will have to be on my list first. Click here to sign up.

How to write flawless transitions from your anecdotes to your sales pitches every day

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A couple months ago, I wrote an email about a surprising passage in Morgan Housel’s Psychology of Money.

The passage talked about the Wright brothers, and how they were publicly flying airplanes for four years before newspapers took any notice.

To which I got a reply from a reader, asking about another interesting anecdote from the same book:

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I’m curious if you could give some examples as to how you would segway the passage of the Bill Gates and Lakesides computer study program story in the chapter about “Luck and Risk” to make different points?

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The topic of the actual Bill Gates story is irrelevant here. The point is simply this:

It might be a worthwhile exercise to sit down with an interesting story you come acrosss… write down different morals to squeeze out of that story… and sketch out how you would link that to what you sell.

But I’ve never done it, and I don’t plan on starting now.

Instead, what I do whenever I come across a story that I find surprising is just write it down, and have it sitting around for when it fits naturally into a point I want to make.

In my experience, this is the only way to write flawless transitions from your anecdotes to your sales pitches every single day.

Sometimes, surprising stories I’ve written down sit around for days, weeks, months, or years before I use them for something. And there are many surprising facts and stories and anecdotes I’ve written down and never used at all.

That’s ok.

Surprising facts and stories and anecdotes are free and plentiful. Millions of books are filled with them. Plus each day of your own life will provide a dozen new ones if you only keep your antennae up.

What’s not free or plentiful is your readers’ attention or ongoing interest.

And shoehorning a story to make a point that doesn’t really fit… or worse yet, pulling out a bland, predictable takeway from an otherwise good story, is a great way to lose readers’ interest today and to make it harder to get tomorrow.

I have more to say about the topic of keeping readers’ interest for the long term.

Specifically, I have a simple three-word question I use to guide all my emails, which you might also benefit from.

I’ve revealed this three-word question before, but perhaps you’ve missed it.

In case you would like to find out what it is, you can do that on the free training I will put on in a few days’ time.

The training will cover how I write and profit from this newsletter that you are reading now.

It will happen on Monday January 22, 2024 at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. But you will have to be signed up to my list first. Click here to do so.