The Power of Multiples
How hungry are you to sell 5,000 copies of your book?
You’ve heard the story about elephants, right?
Raised from infancy with a manacle on his leg attached by a chain to a stake in the ground, the little guy learned he couldn’t wander far.
As the elephant grew the stake in the ground never did, but despite being a one ton animal with power enough to uproot a tree, the elephant never strayed from its flimsy prison.
Your Stake in the Ground
If selling 5,000 copies of your book seems like a big number, you might want to consider the chain on your ankle.
Who put it there?
Can you break free?
How far?
Could you sell 50,000 copies of your book, and how would you do it? Who would you need to talk to to make it happen?
And let me be clear, I’m not immune to the stake.
I regularly find myself confronting limiting beliefs. My book isn’t well written enough. I don’t have a big enough platform. Nobody reads anymore. I don’t know where to find that many readers. (The list goes on, but I don’t want to accidentally infect you with a new limiting belief you’d not previously considered.
Ask the Right Question
I can’t fix your limiting beliefs anymore than I can fix my own, but I can tell you where to start. And you can start by asking a new question? “What would my life look like if?”
If you sold 5,000 copies of your book, what would your life look like?
How about if you sold 50,000?
500,000?
When does the number start to look too crooked to fathom? 5,000,000? Until you identify a number so big it shuts your inner critic off because it seems too ridiculous to seriously consider, you aren’t dreaming big enough and you won’t pull the stake out of the ground.
A Caution Worth Noting
Make of this what you will, but even if the elephant overcomes its self-limiting belief and pulls the flimsy stake from the ground, the chain and manacle will remain fastened in place.
We all have our chain, and it can never be removed, but when you recognize it as a nuisance and nothing more. you will achieve great things.
My Book
Hey, You know my book is coming out in January. What’s stopping you from preordering it today? Grab your copy now and I’ll send you the audiobook, free of charge, one month early.
5000 sales would mean I can confidently commit to writing more works in the future. Anything beyond that is gravy, but that kind of viral take off is difficult to create on command (even for the most successful authors and marketers). But if I can make enough sales to justify continuing to write, then I keep myself in the game with a decent chance of making the big time. One other point I often think about- writers who have a major smash hit with their first work seem to normally sink without a trace afterwards. They most likely didn't understand why they were successful. By contrast those who gradually do better with every production/marketing cycle seem to endure because every stage (including the setbacks) adds to their understanding of the process, the audience and the market.