How Data Helped Sell 10,000 Books

Unlike a lot of people in publishing, I love data.

I learned about data from my husband Scott whose expertise is user experience design. When we first met, I was blown away by all the testing and data he would do before launching anything — and he was blown away by the fact that traditional publishing, then and now, is entirely subjective.

I know I’m successful because I use both data and instinct to my advantage.

(Thanks Scott!)

I know that 44% of the people who have subscribed to my list will open this email.
I know that the average advance my clients receive is $175,000.
I know that 50 of you will take our quiz this month.

I also look at my clients’ data to help them make decisions. 

For example, a few years ago I had a client whose audience is K-5 teachers. Her audience was huge and engaged across multiple platforms. She had Facebook groups, an active email list, thousands of followers on social media, and even a strong Pinterest audience.

But her podcast? Barely got 10% of the attention any other post on any other platform would get. Her blog did better. After looking at the data, I suspected that she should stop doing the podcast. My client and her team agreed, killed the podcast and then two weeks later Apple decided to end the entire K-5 education category on their podcast app.

Because, as the data showed, K-5 teachers didn’t listen to podcasts. 

Instead, they read blogs, made Pinterest boards, and participated in Facebook groups.

Thanks to data, my client knew where and how to put her efforts, not just in growing her audience and business, but promoting her book, too. She sold over 10,000 copies in the first month because of what we found out writing her proposal. 

It may seem counterintuitive to apply something quantitative, like data, to a relatively squishy artistic endeavor like writing a book. But I’m here to tell you that figuring out what data to track is not only useful but essential to become an author. 

If you write a book not knowing what people want to hear from you, you’re basically taking a wild guess. You’re throwing time and effort into the world not knowing how it’s going to land.

But when you’ve been tracking how people respond to you — on each type of messaging and on each platform or medium you’re in — you know exactly what will happen or close to it. 

You’re able to look a literary agent or a publisher in the eye and say: I can sell 10,000 copies and here’s exactly how I’m going to do it.