I'm About to Ruin Book Marketing for You | Rebecca Hamilton
I'm About to Ruin Book Marketing for You
(You've Been Warned)
I'm going to ruin book marketing for you.
I hope you either really love writing books, or have a more chaotic hobby you'd like your royalties to fund, because the magic of selling books dies once you see behind the curtain. (you can keep the magic of storytelling, though!)
Stop reading here if you prefer to keep the mystery alive.
You've Been Fighting a Dragon That Isn't What You Think
Picture yourself as a prince or princess in knight's armor. Maybe it's slightly too big, the helmet keeps sliding over one eye, and you look heroic but also mildly concussed. But you get the picture: these metal boots feel too big to fill, and you're going to try to slay this Marketing Dragon anyway.
This enormous, algorithm fire-breathing dragon that other authors whisper about in hushed tones, or flail around warning about on the internet. But you can never take your seat at the throne of your kingdom if you don't defeat it. And you certainly didn't put all this armor on to end up trapped in a cave, invisible to humanity, swinging your oversized sword at shadows.
So you take a stab at it.
Nothing.
You stab again.
Nothing.
Maybe you've been stabbing for years, and all you have to show for it is a dented, dinged-up sword that has you wondering if you need a different one. Again. But no matter how many marketing strategy swords you brandish, the dragon's skin feels impenetrable, forged from steel made of Amazon's author customer service and dying dreams.
You start to wonder if the authors who 'slayed it' are holding something back. Because with everything you've thrown at this beast, how is it still standing??
What's Actually Inside the Dragon
Now you carry a heap of swords, the heft of them weighing you down. A battle axe, spiked ball-and-chain, rocket launcher. You're not sure how, if any of this works, you'll have time to write more books, but dang it, you're determined to slay this beast. That or just give up on your kingdom and become a peasant. Because why is this so hard? You've tried everything.
Each time you take a swing: Clang, ping, nothing. You're doing all the things, but the only result is it's wearing you down.
But then, as you drop your useless weapons and take off your pointless armor, you hear it.
A tiny yip.
Not outside the dragon. Inside it. You follow the yips to a little door on the side of the dragon you've never noticed before. You open it, and inside the massive, terrifying dragon?
Is a puppy in a control room.
A slightly chaotic, tail-wagging puppy running around stepping on buttons.
He hops on one, and sales spike! He skids sideways, read-through jumps. He trips over his ears, visibility compounds. All seems well until he just as excitedly dances over other buttons that tank sales, flood in the wrong readers, empty your coffers, or sometimes just do nothing at all.
You've been trying to defeat the marketing dragon... while a puppy has been accidentally pressing the control panel this whole time.
It Was Never a Monster. It's a System.
That's book marketing. I'm sorry it's not a mythical beast. It only looks like one because you haven't seen the control panel.
And the reason it feels impenetrable is because you've been stabbing the exterior instead of learning where the buttons are.
After helping 550+ authors build real careers- NYT bestsellers, USA Today bestsellers, six-figure authors, seven-figure authors, quiet empires and loud ones, Rebecca Hamilton can tell you something that’s both comforting and mildly annoying:
It's always the same dragon.
Different genre. Different tropes. Different heat level. Same control room. Same buttons.
What changes? How you press them.
The Formula Behind Every Six Figure Author Career
Underneath everything, underneath every author who has figured this out, is one formula. Not vibes, or luck. Not 'post more and hope.' It's a formula built around:
•One proprietary branding strategy that locks in your ideal readers
•One proprietary catalog system that multiplies sales instead of asking one poor book to carry your entire financial future
•One proprietary profitability engine that turns ads into math instead of a casino.
•Four proprietary launch methods that create short-term momentum and long-term compounding growth
•One proprietary organic discovery system that stabilizes visibility
•Two proprietary advertising strategies that optimize and scale
The buttons are the same, but the system is calibrated to each individual author, that's what takes time. But when an author learns to use the buttons with intention, they don't just slay the dragon. They get the dragon to fight for them.
All while maintaining their kingdom: their voice, their goals, their stories.
Once You See the Puppy, You Can't Unsee It
Marketing stops being a fire-breathing monster and starts being a system you can actually learn. What buttons to press and how to press them. What buttons not to press. What buttons work for you that won't work for someone else, and vice versa. What buttons only work if you first press others.
The reason it feels like luck is because you would have to be lucky to accidentally hit only the right buttons in only the right order in a way that works for your brand. But you could hit the right buttons in the right way and the right order on purpose if you knew how.
Here’s something most authors don’t realize: the books you might be tempted to dismiss, the ones topping charts that you don’t think are “that good”, are actually the ones with the most to teach you. Twilight. Fifty Shades. Every massively successful series authors love to critique. Their sales aren’t an accident. Understanding why popular books succeed is one of the fastest ways to understand your own readers,and which buttons actually move them.
And once you do? No more:
•Waiting to be discovered
•Blaming 'the algorithm'
•Wondering what everyone else knows that you don't
Ready to Stop Stabbing and Start Pressing Buttons?
Yes, I could very much ruin book marketing for you. But just be sure that's what you want. Because once I do, you'll either:
a) Fall in love with building something engineered and inevitable, OR
b) Miss the mystery and need to find a new chaotic hobby to fund with your royalties.
If you’re ready to turn your dragon enemy into your dragon ally, let’s start with a free call. We’ll talk through your brand, your goals, and pinpoint a path forward that will actually help, for your genre, your catalog, your career. And if you’re not ready for a call yet but you know something needs to change, start by stopping the bad book marketing advice you’ve been following. That’s a good place to start.
This doesn’t have to be your reality. Bank over rank. You don’t need to burn out.
