How did 4,000 Creators Become Best Selling Authors and Get Thousands of Book Sales?

After spending 6-12 months writing a book how do authors sell tens of thousands of copies and get on best seller lists? This episode promises to reveal the secrets behind Tyler Wagner’s phenomenal success in helping authors do that with his companies - Authors Unite and Partner Profits.

As a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, marketer, and entrepreneur, Tyler Wagner shares how he built his company by focusing on creating powerful referral relationships instead of pouring money into Facebook ads and SEO. Discover the importance of building a vast network of referral partners and how this innovative approach can transform your business.

We also dig deep into the strategies Tyler used to leverage bestseller status to cultivate a dedicated reader base and attract significant media attention. Learn about the realistic expectations of reader engagement and the critical role loyal fans play in word-of-mouth marketing. Tyler provides actionable tips on using bestseller accolades to land media appearances, aiming for that tipping point where your book sales soar organically.

Tyler's web site Authors Unite

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Episode Transcript

Eric Eden (00:00):
Welcome to today's episode.
Our guest today is Tyler Wagner.
He is a Wall Street Journalbestselling author and a
marketer and an entrepreneur.
Welcome to the show.
Thanks, man.
Thanks for having me.
So why don't we start out byyou just sharing a minute or two
with people about who you areand what you do?

Tyler Wagner (00:23):
So I want the name's Tyler Wagner.
I run, I'd say, two main things.
I do, at least business wise.
I run two companies One'scalled Authors Unite, the other
is called Partner Profits.
Authors Unite, we help peoplewrite, edit, publish and then
market their books.
And then Partner Profits wehelp companies scale by
increasing their referralrelationships.

(00:46):
I'd say me, as, like a person,I live between Miami and
Columbia, and right now I'mactually down in Medellin and
Columbia right now, so that'swhere I'm doing this interview
from.

Eric Eden (00:59):
Very nice, very nice.
We're ready to be inspired.
So why don't you tell us astory about some of the best
marketing you've done, themarketing you're the most proud
of?

Tyler Wagner (01:10):
Yeah.
So I think first I'll justmention we've worked on over
4,000 books now with AuthorsUnite.
So I think just making as manypeople bestselling authors on
various lists Amazon, barnes,noble, new York Times, wall
Street Journal and USA Todaythat has been so fulfilling and
that business is awesome.

(01:30):
But I think for your audience,what might be at least most
beneficial as far as somethingthat they can take with them and
take action on and anybodylistening, if you are interested
bestseller lists, just reachout or whatever I'm happy to
help if I can.
But ultimately each list kindof functions in a different way
and you just you need to get alot of book sales to hit these

(01:53):
lists and then there's someother criteria, but that can be
for another episode or peoplecan reach out.
But to me, what I'm most proudof on the marketing that I've
done is actually how I've scaledAuthors Unite to be an
eight-figure company and the waythat I've done it is through
it's basically just referralrelationships.

(02:13):
So my and this is a veryshortened version of my story
but when I was younger, Istarted the company Authors
Unite when I was 19.
So I'm 32 now, so it's 13 yearsand in the beginning, just as,
like most people, I think, a lotof ups and downs and I tried so
many different marketingmethods Facebook ads, seo

(02:35):
funnels, you name it Google ads,youtube ads.
I tried all these things For me.
I don't know why.
Maybe I was doing it wrong orthe vendors I was hiring were
doing it wrong.
Whatever, it was probably acombination of both.
It just was not working Eitherway.
At some point I want to say itwas probably three years into

(02:56):
the business it just hit me.
I was like I have a couplereferral partners and they are
the majority of my revenue.
I just noticed it.
Like it wasn't something that Iwas like hyper aware of, but
once I noticed it, then Irealized I was like, oh my God,
I don't need to be doing likeFacebook ads, funnels, like all

(03:21):
these very, I would say,difficult marketing activities.
And again, they can.
They work for people.
I'm not talking bad about them,like they can totally work for
people, but for me they weren'tworking.
Essentially, for years I usedto do a hundred calls a week and
what I would do, and I still doit.
But now I have a team of 20people and they do most of the

(03:42):
calls and I only do calls oneday a week now, so thank God.
But I put in the work.
Literally for years I did ahundred calls a week, 20 a day,
monday through Friday.
And what these calls werereaching out to people that were
in the same industry as me, sothey had the same clientele and
I would just reach out to them.
And again, we still I still dothis today and we do this for

(04:05):
other companies, just at a waylarger scale, and we simply
reach out and we say, hey, name,I think there might be ways we
can collaborate and that's allthe message says.
Right, we do it throughLinkedIn and we do it through
website contact us, like theforms on websites.
And let me step back real quick, just to make sure I'm not

(04:25):
losing anybody, so just to I'lluse my own company as an example
.
So for authors, unite again.
We do a book, ghostwriting,editing, publishing and then
book marketing.
So basically anything an authorcould want, we do so.
For us, our best targets forpartnerships or referral

(04:45):
partnerships are other bookpublishers.
Ghostwriters, editors, pragencies are really good, and
then we have a list of hundredsof other ones, but those are our
top four.
Example of them book publishers.

(05:06):
We have literally reached outto every book publisher that is
like English speaking, based inthe world that we can that we
could find, to book a call withand form a referral relationship
with them.
So we are partnered with liketens of thousands of book
publishers alone.
Right, and this is like anycompany can use this method to

(05:26):
scale.
And what I have discovered in mylife thus far is most people,
when you ask them about likereferrals and stuff, they say,
oh yeah, I got a couple ofreferral partners, they're great
, and they refer me a few peoplea year.
And my question is okay, that'sgreat, but what have you had
10,000 referral partners?
What have you had a hundredthousand?
What if you had 10,000 referralpartners?
What if you had 100,000?

(05:47):
Like, how much would yourbusiness grow?
And that's what we do forcompanies now is we go into
companies that's what PartnerProfits is and we discover who
could be their top partnershipopportunities like other people
or companies that work with thesame type of clientele,
sometimes competitors as well,and sometimes it's just

(06:10):
complimentary services andessentially you just want to
partner with as many of them aspossible.
And now we're in a positionwith Authors Unite where every
week we get hundreds ofreferrals because we've put in
the time to build thoserelationships.
So I know that was a longeranswer than you probably
normally get on that one, but Ijust wanted to make sure it was

(06:30):
completely understood.
And any company can use thismethod.
It's just referral scale yourreferrals and stop focusing so
much on the clients or potentialclient and focus more on
partnering with people, becausethen you have a system of one to
many instead of one to one andit's a way better.

(06:51):
It's just.
It's better in every way, shapeor form that you can look at it
.
So that would be my answer.

Eric Eden (06:57):
I love it, I love it.
That's great and power ofreferrals is strong and it seems
like you've put a great processbehind that.
Is that sort of the secret tohow you've been able to publish
with authors 4,000 books?
I haven't heard many people saythey've helped authors publish
that many books.
Is that how you've gotten thescale on the Authors Unite is

(07:18):
through referral searching.

Tyler Wagner (07:19):
That's the exact math.
That it just to be clear.
So we haven't published 4,000plus books, but we've worked on
4,000 plus books.
That's like a combination of, Iwould actually say, most of our
clients.
It's only the marketing in theindustry.
That's our main differentiators.
We're the best at marketingbooks.
So a lot of publisherstechnically were like

(07:41):
competitors on the publishingside.
But most publishers in fact Ican't really even think of a
publisher that offers there's afew, but it's not at the scale
that we do.
But so let's just say 99.9% ofpublishers do not offer
marketing for their authors.
So even though we'recompetitors on the publishing

(08:02):
side, we are not competitors onthe book marketing side.
So publishers refer to us justfor that one aspect, and then
the ghostwriting, publishing andediting.
That's probably 25, 30% of ourbusiness.

Eric Eden (08:18):
Yeah, that makes sense.
I think a lot of publisherswould outsource their marketing
because they're not really greatmarketers.
One of the things I wanted toask you is yeah, I think it's
really hard for authors to get alot of people to buy their book
.
I've seen some stats that ahuge percentage of people sell
less than a thousand copies oftheir book after they spend six

(08:39):
or 12 months writing it.
So how do you get, how do youget people to buy books with
marketing Like, what are themost successful things?

Tyler Wagner (08:46):
you've helped authors do so the way and I
actually I always tell potentialclients this is I can actually
guarantee any book likeshort-term success.
But I can't.
You can't guarantee any booklong-term success because
ultimately the market decidesthat right, like you need a good
product or service to havelong-term success for anything,

(09:08):
right.
But I can tell you how I do it,at least in the short term and
in the long term.
But again, that's dependent onif the product or service is
good.
In this essence we're talkingabout a book.
How I've done it is this If yougo to, I'll give you the origin
story.
If you go to Google, you cantype in ebook promotion sites.
There are thousands of thesewebsites where they have email

(09:31):
lists, or at least they say theydo.
Some of them, I think, they'rescams and other of them are
actually legit, but regardlessof that, they are.
Let's just say, for sake ofexplanation, they're all
legitimate.
They say they have a email listof readers, right, and these
readers have opted into theiremail lists to be notified when

(09:52):
books or eBooks are discounted.
So what I did when I wasyounger is I would try, like I
tried out, like as many as Icould find.
So at least hundreds, probablyover a thousand, of these eBook
promotion sites.
So you like, pay them anywherefrom somewhere as low as like 20
bucks, somewhere as high as afew thousand dollars, and you

(10:15):
pay them a fee to promote yourbook to their list.
And through trial and error, Ifound out that most of them do
not work.
So I wasted a bunch of moneyand they didn't work.
And then for the few that didwork and they would consistently
work what ended up happening isI reached out to all of them

(10:35):
separately and I was like hey,guys, you might be aware of each
other, but you probably vieweach other as competitors.
What I would invite you guys todo is all join me at Authors
Unite and we become one big team.
And now what I did is Iessentially combined all of
these I'll call them email listpartners together and now we

(10:57):
have a list of 5 million pluspeople combined that are people
that have opted in to benotified when eBooks are
discounted.
So what happens is when we do alaunch, we discount the eBook
for one week, and normally 99cents, but it doesn't have to be
that low.
It could be 299, 499, but 99cents is just converts, the

(11:19):
highest and ultimately, the goalfor any author should just to
be, just be to get it in as manyhands as possible.
Even if it's free, it doesn'tmatter, you just want people to
read your book, that's the goal.
So, regardless, we discount it,we email it doesn't matter, you
just want people to read yourbook, that's the goal.
So, regardless we discount it,we email it to all these people.
Normally that results in 10 to20,000 sales in the first week

(11:40):
of release, and then that islike more than enough to hit
most of all the major bestsellerlists.
And then, after you hit thosebestseller lists and you have
that strong reader base of,let's say, if 20,000 people buy
the book, half of them actuallyread it, just realistically.
So then you got 10,000 truereaders and then 5,000 of them

(12:04):
actually love it.
So now you got 5,000 loyal fansthat are like word of mouth
talking about it.
And then you move to phase two,which is basically leveraging
the bestseller accolades formedia attention.
So once you're a bestsellingauthor on all these mainstream
outlets, it's a lot easier toget on podcasts, a lot easier to

(12:26):
get featured in outlets, andyou do that continuously.
And then I guess I'll end it onsaying the hope is that after
maybe six to 12 months afterthat launch and the continued
marketing efforts, you're atabout 50 to a hundred thousand
copies sold and then at thatpoint I would call it as, like

(12:46):
Malcolm Gladwell calls it like,the tipping point, where it's in
enough hands that if it issomething the market likes, it's
going to take off or take on alife of its own by word of mouth
, and then it can just spreadfrom there.

Eric Eden (13:03):
So that's awesome man , that's great.
Thanks for sharing theseinspiring stories.
Really appreciate it.
These inspiring stories, Reallyappreciate it, and I'm going to
link to both of your websitesin the in the show notes so
people can easily get there andreach out if they'd like to
learn more on either of thesefronts.
Sounds good, man, thank you.