Step By Step – the Nick Stephenson Way

One year ago I took a giant step and signed up for Nick Stephenson’s online marketing course called ‘Your First 10k Readers’. I’d come across Nick’s course through another source, the ‘Self Publishing Podcast‘ with Sean Plett, Johnny B. Truant, and Dave Wright- a sometimes irreverent but highly entertaining and useful podcast on the indie publishing industry. I heard about SPP after reading a book written by the hosts called Write. Publish. Repeat – recommended to me, interestingly enough, by Amazon. (See purchase link below. If you can get past the profanity that crops up occasionally, this book is an absolute gold mine.)

As you can see, it was a bit of a rabbit trail that got me from point A to point B which is part of the moral of the story. ?

Anyway, signing up for Nick’s course was risky. It cost money – real cold hard cash which I had not been earning enough of through my book sales to justify such an expense. Except… I’d come to a crossroads in my writing career. It was time to take the plunge and invest in myself and my writing if I ever wanted to get beyond break-even status.

As I said, that was one year ago. Twelve months later I can safely say it was one of the best investments I’ve ever made. (Right up there with learning how to actually use Scrivener to it’s full potential. But that’s a topic for another post.)

It’s not that I’m suddenly rolling in cash or anything (unfortunately) and Nick cautions students right up front that his system takes WORK. It is not a get rich quick scheme or a fly-by-the-seat-of your-pants way to fool people into buying your books. What it is, is a really smart and well laid out system for growing your audience while offering value to your readers – all in a step by step format that keeps that ‘overwhelmed’ feeling from taking over.

I voraciously listened to the entire course in the first week or two, but there is so much content and so much detail that there was no way I could implement everything at once. Heck, I’m still taking baby steps compared to many others, but I’ve managed to make some significant inroads this summer.

Part of the delay is that many of Nick’s recommendations are best applied if you have control over your own work. Sure, I contacted my publishers to try and get keywords and categories on Amazon changed, but there is only so much you can do when you don’t have control. I’m happy to report that now that I’ve gotten the rights back for some of my already published work, I am making huge strides forward.

As part of the process, the entire NEIGHBOURS Series has been republished in ebook format and the paperback is in the review process. I’ve learned how to format to multiple platforms, automate my email sequences, create landing pages, plan book events, install, upload, download and cross-load (if that actually was a thing) and so much more. I can’t even begin to express how valuable this training has been. There is still so much more I need to learn, but I finally feel like I’m moving forward instead of just spinning in a void.

Thanks Nick Stephenson and all the other contributors to the 10k course. This is stuff that you will keep coming back to again and again. The investment was minuscule to the benefits. Watch the first couple of videos FREE and even if you don’t buy, you will see what I mean about value. I’m not one to try to push stuff on people, but if it’s something that is actually worth it, then I don’t mind. And this is worth it. Trust me.

Also worth reading: Write. Publish. Repeat. Here is the link:

 So, the moral to all of this is:
RABBIT TRAILS CAN BE A GOOD THING IF THEY LEAD SOMEWHERE AWESOME.