Jeremiah Gardner raised $23,000 to publish his book "The Lean Brand" through crowd publishing in 28 days. He did this by creating a simple book cover, writing a chapter outline to generate interest, and promoting the book pre-order campaign to his friends, Twitter followers, and email list. Key lessons included starting with your core audience, connecting with readers by writing something valuable to them, and continually learning from experiments and audience feedback to improve the book idea.
2. MEET JEREMIAH GARDNER
He’s an author, mouthpiece and bulldog lover.
His work is about reframing the
way people think about brand
innovation.
HE WANTED TO
SHARE HIS
IDEAS IN A BOOK
5. was to find a mentor to help him.
He teamed up with Brant Cooper,
bestselling author of:
The Lean Entrepreneur.
HIS FIRST STEP
6. He then created a simple cover with the
help of @FAKEGRIMLOCK ( Most
famous robot dinosaur on entire internet)
COVER DESIGN
7. FUND THE IDEA
Jeremiah hopped onto Publishizer - the
book pre-order platform and invited the
public to fund his idea.
8. To spread The Lean Brand story,
Jeremiah and Brant recorded a short video.
SHORT VIDEO
Videos inspire trust, and increases conversions!
9. CHAPTER OUTLINE
To give readers a taste of all the awesomeness
to come, Jeremiah wrote a chapter outline that
described each chapter in a single paragraph.
10. HE WROTE ABOUT IT, AND COINED A BRAND NEW TERM: ‘CROWD PUBLISHING’
And in 28 days, Jeremiah funded $23K in preorders for The Lean Brand.
12. LESSON # 1
Start with one. A successful book is
earned one reader at a time.
13. FRIENDS, FOLLOWERS & FANS
When he launched his campaign,
he focused promotion on 3 groups:
14. are typically first to support your book.
The Lean Brand had 62 patrons who paid $100 to
be thanked on a special page.
THIS DOUBLE PAGE IS WORTH $6200!
FRIENDS
15. He asked for retweets from influencers, and received one from
Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, who has 200K+ followers.
FOLLOWERSare people who follow you on social media.
Jeremiah built his Twitter audience to over 1000
followers by sharing great ideas and content.
16. are people who subscribe to your blog.
This is also known as a mailing list.
A mailing list is your most powerful
tool for selling books.
FANS
17. LESSON # 2Have a publishing plan.
Identify your readers and know how
you will reach them.
18. Jeremiah was off to a fantastic start, and then disaster struck.
A bushfire surrounded his home in San Diego. His house was spared,
and nobody was harmed. Whew…
19. Jeremiah built up momentum again by
sending updates to his mailing list.
He shared tips, news and goodies,
and celebrated funding milestones!
20. MEDIUM is an increasingly popular place to share writing.
Jeremiah shared an excerpt from his book
on Medium, called Branding ≠ Bullshit.
21. IT BECAME AN AMAZON #1 BESTSELLER IN IT’S FIRST WEEK.
He self published The Lean Brand,
and organised a book launch tour.
23. It shared the basic ideas behind the book, and was packed full of
tweets to help spread #TheLeanBrand on Twitter.
To get readers excited, he wrote The Lean
Brand In 999 Words and gave it away for free.
24. Can be described in a single tweet
GREAT BOOKS
Try it for your book. It’s harder than you think!
25. LESSON # 4Offer concrete value.
Find demand for your story, and
you will find your marker
26. This is how he learned which ideas
were valuable to readers.
A SERIES OF EXPERIMENTS
Jeremiah's book began with
He’d write a bit, and test it on his audience.
He'd speak about it, and measure the reaction.
He’d tweet out a line, and see how it did.
27. FUND REWARDS
Jeremiah offered high value rewards for his
readers. Readers are real people! How can you
make their lives better?
LOOK, PRINT IS NOT DEAD!!
28. LESSON # 5Keep Learning.
Smile at your successes, laugh at your failures
and enjoy your publishing experience.