BOOK MARKETING: “Are There Secret Formulas or Short Cuts for Making the Best-Seller List on Amazon?” by Lorilyn Roberts

Are There Secret Formulas or Short Cuts for Making the Best-Seller List on Amazon?

John 3:16 Marketing Network

Part One of Six

If I knew of a secret formula, I would be a millionaire—and so would you, because secrets promising success don’t remain secrets for long.

There is one sure road to the best-seller list, provided you have a good book, and that is hard work and networking. I don’t know of any other way to do it. What I have discovered, however, is many authors spend a lot of time and money in less productive ways, thus coming away feeling discouraged and defeated.

Examples of comments I have heard include: “I can’t get anyone to review my book,” “my sales are non-existent,” “I don’t know where to begin,” “I spent money doing ‘this thing’ and got no results.”

You also have heard this if you have been marketing for a while. I could tell some fabulous tales of “drain holes” I thought would work and didn’t.

One of the reasons I made becoming a member of the John 3:16 Marketing Network free is so people would not feel like they paid for something and got less than their money’s worth, and most authors don’t have a lot of extra money (like me). 

I also didn’t start the John 3:16 Marketing Network to become a marketing guru. God gave me the vision, but He gave me the passion to write. But without a way to promote my writing, I knew nobody would read my books because nobody would know they existed.

I will share a short story about my first book, The Donkey and the King, which I published using a Print on Demand publishing company. When my book arrived, I was ecstatic. I could at last say I was an “author.”

But, sadly, I didn’t know any other authors to share my excitement with and I did nothing to market it. I made no announcement and told nobody about my new book, except my closest friends and family. I did nothing to promote it, not even with people in my church. ZILCH! NADA!

I am sure you are wondering how many copies I sold—maybe ten copies. Yep, I probably made the Guinness Book of World Records for the “worst-selling” book that year. Why didn’t I do something to promote it?  First, I didn’t know how; and second, I was too shy to talk about my own book.

A couple of years later, I went on Amazon to see if The Donkey and the King was listed since I had never checked. Sure enough, it was there. I had one review by someone I didn’t know with a rating of five stars. That was the first time it occurred to me that somebody out there might like to read my book beside my closest friends and family.

I have gone from that day to this—because God put it in my heart to start the John 3:16 Marketing Network.

The John 3:16 Marketing Network is based on John 3:16 from the New Testament in the Bible: “For God so love the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

To become a member of the John 3:16 Marketing Network requires only two things:

1. You believe in John 3:16.
2. You have an active blog/website.
    

Over the next six days, several of our John 3:16 Marketing Network authors are hosting a guest blog of different authors as part of our twice a year membership launch. Each day I will share a marketing article, and the guest author for that day will share something about herself and her writing career.

Before we are authors, we are people uniquely gifted and loved by God. Once we look beyond what someone does and see him as we see ourselves—a human being with needs, wants, struggles, hopes, and dreams, we can relate to him better and discover things we have in common.

That brings me back to the question and the title of this piece, Are There Secret Formulas or Short Cuts for Making the Best-Seller List on Amazon?

The short answer is no, there are no secret formulas, but yes, there are shortcuts to make marketing easier. Please check out my book How to Launch a Best-Selling Christian Book on Amazon.

Author Note: The John 3:16 Marketing Network is no longer active, but the ideas presented in the book still apply in 2022.