The Two Secrets To One Author’s Instant Success With His First Book
Willie Crawford wrote his first book, a cookbook, in 2000. He started there because, as a kid, his grandmother taught him how to cook, and he felt that others would enjoy her recipes as well.
But, according to Willie, it was a combination of his copywriting skills and something he shared in his newsletter that helped him to succeed right out of the gate.
Willie wrote his copy using what Jay Abraham called “future pacing”, which is when you place the person where they see themselves experiencing the product.
Willie explained, “I use expressions like ‘imagine your kids coming home from school thinking about fast food until they smell the odors in the house,’ or ‘imagine food so good that you sneak back downstairs in the middle of the night and fight over the leftovers’ He continued, “When someone can envision that then they’re like, wow, these must be really great recipes.” And then they want to buy it.
But Willie also did something else. He published a newsletter and in the newsletter, he let members submit recipes that he shared in it. But Willie said that for some reason his subscribers associated those recipes with him, and so they thought that since these recipes were so good, Willie’s recipes must be good too, so they started asking him to write his cookbook.
From that experience, Willie gathered that if he could figure out what his audience wanted and give them more of that he could continue to make money with them.
So, he started offering other products that were related to a high-end gas grill. But he tried to sell them anything not related to his cookbooks, they would push back. So, you have to make sure that once you are in a niche, and you grow an email list in that niche, you have to narrow your offers to appeal to that readership, and you’ll continue to be successful with it.
Adapted from this week’s podcast with Willie Crawford on “How to Use Joint Ventures to Build Relationships, Become a Bestselling Author and Grow Your Business!”