Keep a Public (launch) Diary

Have you ever heard of a failed book launch on social media?

Me neither!

We’re used to seeing the highlight reel. The bestseller list screenshot. The tearful reaction video when an author hits #1. 

But one unhinged author is doing something audacious: documenting his launch in real-time and sharing his previous failures.

What most people don’t know: authors do the majority of marketing heavy lifting, not publishers! I certainly didn’t know how bad it can be for traditionally published authors until I listened to this podcast episode last week.

12-time author and creator Jonathan Goodman decided to not leave his book marketing to luck. He turned his upcoming book launch into a reality newsletter where nothing is off limits.

If you're in the middle of a creative project, thinking about starting a newsletter without going all in yet, or curious about promoting your work the audacious way, this edition is for you.

As seen from Jonathan Goodman, author of Unhinged Habits 

Attention isn't everything. If you’re active on social media, you know vanity metrics lie. Converting attention into paying customers is an entirely different game. 

Jonathan Goodman’s last book launch flopped. So for his next book, he tried something different: he started documenting the entire launch process six months before publication. 

"Diary of a Book Launch"—his pop-up newsletter on LinkedIn and Substack— shares real-time progress reports, strategies, and the marketing insights publishers usually keep secret. 

Success is everywhere; honest failure is rare. Sharing it publicly? That takes audacity.

But the truth is, failures are what brings us the closest to our desired result. In science, we call that experimentation. Most of the time, we don’t plan an experiment expecting success but we want to learn something. We observe the results objectively, stay curious and try not to judge our competency in the process (yes, even that sometimes fails…).
 
The problem is not ‘failing’. The problem becomes when failures go unreported. People (or scientists) repeat the same flawed experiments over and over— different projects, same (preventable?) mistakes.

Failures can provide immense value for your target audience.

I asked Jonathan if sharing his previous experience wouldn’t be counterintuitive for his future book sales. And the answer is not what I expected.

More than a marketing move, this pop-up newsletter is just one piece on his strategy to provide insane value to his target segment: authors. Not only did he share his unfiltered experience so that first-time authors can avoid the same mistakes, he also organized author dinners and workshops to provide a sense of connection and community.

Because Jonathan acted according to a key piece of data: ‘People who write books are people who read books and also people who have audiences of people who read books.’

So here is my nudge.

What would it look like to share a valuable piece of your process around the thing you’re building?

Keep up the audacity,

Laura