Perennial Seller - Ryan Holiday
The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts
Basically every creative, from pure artist to business-minded entrepreneur, is trying to have an impact that lasts and outlives them (or at least their direct work on the project).
But at the same time many of us look to “experts” and “gurus” for shortcuts and quick fixes for instant success.
The Lindy effect: The longer something lasts (e.g. success of a restaurant, book, …) the greater the chances that it will continue to last.
[bq] “Perennial sellers - big or small - not only refuse to die or fade into oblivion; they grow stronger with each passing day.”
Part I: The Creative Process - From Mindset to the Making to the Magic
[bq] “Over the long run, all the marketing in the world won’t matter if the product hasn’t been made right.”
[bq] “Our best chance of success starts during the creative process.”
Many of us have ideas, but that’s the easy part. What counts is turning those ideas into reality, into things people love and want.
To create something great, need to believe in a true purpose. Otherwise not willing to put in the required work.
[bq] “The question is: Why are you creating? […] Because the answer will determine how likely you are to be successful.”
Every great work comes with a willingness to make sacrifices for it. If it didn’t, everyone would be doing it.
[bq] “Art is the kind of marathon where you cross the finish line and instead of getting a medal placed around your neck, the volunteers roughly grab you by the shoulders and walk you over to the starting line of another marathon.”
Creating a perennial seller requires taking the long view, not just aiming for the quick payout.
Want to focus on timeless topics and styles.
[q] “Focus on the things that don’t change.” - Jeff Bezos
Need to have an ability to largely ignore current hypes and trends.
Great work takes a lot of time and persistence.
[bq] “Very few great things were ever created at a hackathon.”
Silence, solitude, and even isolation are crucial ingredients in creating great work.
[bq] “An idea must be given space to develop. Rushing things eliminates that space.”
Should test you idea early and often, and pivot/adjust if necessary.
[bq] “A book should be an article before it’s a book, and a dinner conversation before it’s an article.”
[bq] “An audience isn’t a target you happen to bump into, instead, it must be explicitly scoped and sighted in. It must be chosen.”
Narrowing down your audience allows you to fully focus your creative energy, making the right thing for the right people.
Many writers find picking one real person and writing as if the book was only for that person extremely helpful.
Just like asking ourself what the audience is, we must also ask ourself what the purpose is. What does it do for people?
Rather than creating something that’s marginally better than something else, can we create our own category and find our own blue ocean?
[q] “Only is better than best.” - Srinivas Rao
[bq] “Brashness, newness, boldness - these attitudes are not at all at odds with perennial sales. In fact, it’s an essential part of the equation.”
But questioning too many conventions at the same time makes your work incomprehensible rather than controversial.
[bq] “Our goal here is to make something that people rave about, that becomes part of their lives.”
[bq] “It takes time and effort and sacrifice to make something that lasts.”
Part II: Positioning - From Polishing to Perfecting to Packaging
To create a perennial seller, the actual creation is only the very beginning. Artists must take ownership of everything that comes after, as marketers and managers, rather than hand it off to someone else (e.g. publisher) and think their job is done.
[bq] “The person who is going to need to step up is you."
[bq] “You are the CEO of your work.”
After finishing the first draft of anything you are much too close to it to accurately assess it. Need to get professional help of an editor, producer, etc.
[q] “When people tell you something is wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.” - Neil Gaiman
Often we push back against feedback simply because we don’t want to hit pause and do more work on a project we thought was finished.
Should test a product as early and often as possible, and see if it really adds value to the user.
Should clearly think though early on, ideally in writing, what exactly the project is supposed to achieve.
Recommends the “one sentence, one paragraph, one page” method, describing the project and its benefits at those three lengths. This should also contain a clear description of the target audience and what problem it solves for them.
Targeting a small and well-defined group initially makes it much easier to spread later on.
[bq] “You must create room for the audience to inhabit and relate to the work. You must avoid the trap of making this about you.”
Need to get three critical variables right: Positioning, Packaging, Pitch
[bq] “How you present yourself has an enormous influence over whether you will be chosen or ignored.”
The pitch builds on the positioning (what is it and who’s it for) and the packaging (does it look as polished as possible at first sight) and convinces people that they should care.
No matter how good your work is, if you don’t communicate that to the right people in the right way, it won’t be a success.
[bq] “A person on a singular mission can’t be distracted, he can’t chase every colored balloon he comes across.”
Whether we like it or not, selling/marketing our idea is part of the artists job.
[bq] “Our expression, if it is to have impact, must reach other people.”
Part III: Marketing - From Courting to Coverage, Pushing to Promotion
Each new piece we create competes not only with its contemporaries, but everything that came before and after as well.
[bq] “Marketing is anything that gets or keeps customers."
[q] “'If you build it they will come’ can happen, but to count on that is naive."
Need to accept one truth: No one cares about what we made. How could they if they don’t know about it? So it’s our job to make them care.
A lot of the things we discover are not through advertising but word of mouth.
McKinsey study: An enthusiastic recommendation from a close friend has fifty times higher conversion rate compare to “normal” word of mouth.
Same study: 20-50% of all purchasing decisions come through word of mouth.
[bq] “Our marketing efforts […] should be catalysts for word of mouth.”
[q] Tribes grow when people recruit other people. That’s how ideas spread as well.” - Seth Godin
[bq] “Selling in perpetuity and launching strong are not mutually exclusive.”
A proper launch, “an artillery barrage of marketing,” with interviews, articles, guest appearances,… is really important.
People choose what other people are choosing. They choose things that have momentum.
Some examples from a book launch by James Altucher
Highly viewed book trailer
Several provocative articles
Many Amazon reviews
Multiple podcast appearances
Media stunts
Big giveaway
Concentrating all of it in a small window around launch gives you the necessary momentum.
Public (or at least your target audience) should feel like you are suddenly everywhere.
Preparing such a launch takes a lot of time and effort, so should start to do it as early as possible.
Want to ask ourselves what we bring to the launch (relationships to media, favors people owe us, …). Ideally make an exhaustive list.
Post a “Call to Arms” online, asking people for help with launch (template on p. 126).
When your audience buys your work, they pay a lot. Not just the actual price, but also other things, like opportunity cost. Need to make it as “cheap” to them as possible (maybe even literally giving away some for free), without degrading its perceived value.
[bq] “Price, distribution, and other variables are not only essential business decisions they are essential marketing decisions."
Giving away free excerpts, or even the whole thing, can actually be a great sales strategy if done right.
Even directly opening your work up to piracy can drive sales and make a work a success if done right. Paulo Coelho used this strategy very successfully.
[q] “Although it’s hard to turn fame into money in the arts, it’s impossible to turn obscurity into money in the arts.” - Cory Doctorow
[bq] “What’s the right price to create a perennial seller? […] As cheap as possible without changing the perception of your product.”
[bq] “The more accessible you can make your product, the easier it will be to market. You can always raise the price later, after you’ve built an audience."
Getting thru people to love and endorse your product can be the best marketing you can get, especially if those people are influential.
[bq] “When a real person, a real human being whom others trust, says 'This is good,’ it has an effect that no brand, no ad, no faceless institution can match.”
The key to getting these people on board is not to ask them, or try to trick them into it, but to understand them, give something to them, and let them suggest it themselves.
[bq] “Think relationship first, transaction second.”
[bq] “Almost everyone - from brands to artists - overestimates the value of traditional PR."
But while traditional media often might not sell many copies, it can add a lot of credibility and convince potential investors, gatekeepers,…
Still, it’s a tradeoff. And traditional PR tends to be extremely expensive.
[bq] “How many copies could you give away for free for what you’re paying a publicist?”
When pitching media, don’t want to go to the top outlets straight away, but start with small and obscure ones, both because it’s easier to get, but also to make it seem like a buzz is developing organically.
Media stunts can be another great tool to grab attention, either directly of readers, or of traditional media who then report it to their readers.
[bq] “The most newsworthy thing to do is usually the one you’re most afraid of.”
[bq] “The real goal [of traditional PR] is establishing a presence or building a reputation and profile.”
What really sells copies in the long term though, is word of mouth.
Another strategy to het media coverage is “newsjacking”. Connect what you do to breaking news or a trending topic to insert yourself in the conversation and get coverage.
[bq] “As an effective tool for the launch of a product, [paid] advertising almost never works."
Paid advertising usually only works well if there is already an interest in and awareness of the product.
[bq] “Advertising can add fuel to a fire, but rarely it is sufficient to start one.”
[bq] Before that: “We are better off taking the money set aside for adverting and putting into every other marketing bucket instead.”
The one exception: advertising that’s offensive, outlandish, or polarizing, essentially a stunt, can get more actual media coverage and word of mouth.
[bq] “When it comes to creating a perennial seller, the principle to never lose sight of is simple: Create word of mouth."
Part IV: Platform - From Fans to Friends and a Full-Fledged Career
[bq] “Becoming a perennial seller requires more than just releasing a project into the world. It requires the development of a career.”
[bq] “A platform is the combination of the tools, relationships, access, and audience that you have to bear on spreading your creative work - not just once, but over the course of a career.”
[bq] “No matter what you’re selling, a platform is an invaluable asset.”
[bq] “Fame and platform are not the same.”
Collecting a mailing list is the single most important part of your platform. It gives you a direct connection to your fans, independent of any other platform/service which can change its system at any time.
Social media followers can be extremely valuable , but there’s the risk that the platform changes, or even disappears (e.g. Myspace). They’re much less certain/direct than mailing lists.
[bq] “Building your list is not someone else’s job. People will not beg you for the opportunity to join it. You can’t buy subscribers.”
[bq] “The best way to create a list is to provide incredible amount of value.”
Building a network of valuable relationships is also important. They should be genuine relationships, and mutually beneficial, so that when you have to, it’s okay to ask a favor.
[bq] “Your relationship with your fans must be more than transactional. It must be deeper. It should be for life.”
[q] “Authors who want long-term success should adopt this mantra: Participate. Participate. Participate.” - Barbara Hendricks
[bq] “The reality is that the race to creative success is really a marathon.”
A successful launch is great, but many projects that were successful in the long term didn’t start out so well. But their creators kept showing up.
[bq] “The best marketing you can do for your book is start writing the next one.”
The best way to sell your existing work is to create more great work.
Doing something unusual from time to time that’s not geared at existing fans but at reaching a new audience can be good to expand your platform, and also explore new ideas.
[bq] “Most of the real money isn’t in the royalties or sales. For authors, the real money comes from speaking, teaching, and consulting.”
It’s about “building an empire” more than just producing singular good works. To become perennial sellers, artists often can’t just rely on their main creations, but have to think of everything else around it as well. The main creation can even be a loss leader, building the brand for everything else.
Also helps to have multiple streams of income.
Conclusion - What’s Luck Got to Do with It?
No matter how good your work is, luck also always plays a role in the making of a perennial seller.
[bq] “The more you do, the harder you work, the luckier you seem to get.”
Staying at it dramatically increases your chances of finding that luck.
[bq] “When it comes to making your art - whether it’s music or writing or building a great company - you either really want it or your don’t. There is no easy way in, or out."