What to Do to Sell Your Book: Standing Out in a Flooded Market

Richard Lowe (The Writing King) joins the KAJ Masterclass Live for a conversation aimed squarely at the hardest part of authorship: getting a book to sell in a flooded market. He covers what makes a book stand out, why people write their own, how a ghostwriter keeps the voice authentic, and the promotion strategy that starts long before the book is finished.

Richard Lowe is The Writing King, a professional ghostwriter and author who has written more than 113 books under his own name and ghostwritten over 54 more for clients. Before writing full time he spent 33 years in enterprise IT, including two decades as Director of Computer Operations at Trader Joe’s.

DISCUSS YOUR BOOK

Full transcript of the conversation follows.

Standing out in a flooded market

KAJ: Welcome to this special edition of the KAJ Masterclass Live. Today we have Richard Lowe, a professional ghostwriter and author whose passion is helping individuals and businesses write books that showcase their expertise, build credibility, and tell their story. Richard, so many people are writing and self-publishing books now that many readers don’t even want another book handed to them. Against that backdrop, how do you see the challenge of getting a book to actually sell?

Richard: There have always been a lot of books published. Walk into a bookstore and the walls are covered with them, and the question is how you stand out. Now you also have the virtual bookstore, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and the rest. You have to have a good title and a good cover. If your title is bad, your book won’t sell; if your cover is bad, it won’t sell. Your cover needs to use copywriting techniques so it jumps out at you.

Richard: If your book isn’t selling, the first two things to look at are whether you’re promoting it correctly and whether the cover is good. If you’re not promoting it, nobody will see your book page, and if the title or cover is bad, nobody will buy. Everything else is secondary.

Why write your own book: legacy and credibility

KAJ: With so many books available, help us understand what’s so great about writing your own book. Why the drive to write one?

Richard: One reason is legacy. It’s something that moves on past your life; people outside your sphere, all over the world, can read it and learn about you, or read your fiction. You expand yourself across the whole planet. I could read a book from India and learn about someone doing something important; I’d probably pick up a book about how the Taj Mahal came to be, a place I’ve always wanted to visit and never reached, and the book might catch my attention on why it was built.

Richard: The second reason is closer to home. I tend to write for people who want to build a name and credibility. Maybe they’re at a certain level in their job, haven’t been able to get promoted, and are thinking about starting their own business. One way to do that is to write a book, publish it, get it out there, and use it to get speaking engagements, get the press to notice you, attract venture capital. The book becomes a tool to get you out there. That’s the kind of book I generally write, though I’ve written fiction and other kinds too.

How a ghostwriter keeps it authentic

KAJ: As a professional ghostwriter, how do you get down to the job? Many times a book carries a name, but it was actually written by someone else. How do you maintain authenticity, so it reflects the real person to the reader?

Richard: What I do, and what most ghostwriters do, is interview the person a lot. We go through everything they want to do, what the book is about, what they want to accomplish, who they are. We use several kinds of analysis tools to understand their personality, because I want to write the book as if I were them. It’s their book, not mine; I’m writing in their voice, from their personality, to the world, so I have to write like I’m them.

Richard: After that analysis, I write a chapter, they look at it and say, that’s not me, and we rewrite until it is. After the first chapter I’m pretty well honed in and it becomes easier, because I’m writing as if I were them. It’s like an actor pretending to be someone else; I’m pretending I’m that person and writing as though I were them. It’s a rare talent. When a ghostwriter pulls it off, you can’t tell a ghostwriter wrote it; when they don’t, you can read it and tell it was written by somebody else.

Putting the passion in

KAJ: When you write a book yourself, you bring your full expertise and passion. For a ghostwriter, isn’t it more about doing a job? What about the passion, the intense expertise the person is trying to convey?

Richard: That’s the trouble with writing any book, and for a ghostwriter it’s magnified a hundred times: putting the passion in. Anybody can put words on paper, but getting the passion in is a matter of understanding how words and language generate it. It’s about pulling your reader in and engulfing them in the world you want, whether that’s a coaching world or a book about a wrestler.

Richard: If I were writing about a baseball star, I’d want to understand the passion he or she feels, then put in the actual words, all the senses, it smelled this way, it tasted this way, so you feel where that star came from. Why did he become a baseball player? Something drove him: maybe his father, maybe he met a star who signed his baseball and he thought, I want to become this. I have to get that feeling into the writing, and it’s not easy at all. But that’s what I get paid for, and that’s what I do.

Selling the book: start before it’s written

KAJ: Now you’ve written a book for someone and they have it in their hands. What do they do with it? How do they go about telling the world to buy a copy, when so many people, maybe even their own spouse, won’t want to read it?

Richard: Part one is writing the book and part two is selling it; they’re two different things. From the moment a ghostwriting project starts, the author and I work together on little posts on their social media about the journey of writing, not about the book but about the journey: I discovered this about myself, or my book coach helped me through this writer’s block. People see this, become enamored with the person, and start following the story, so you build up buzz over the eight months to a year it takes to write a book. Might as well use that time to start promoting.

Richard: By the time the book is ready, you have a launch party, maybe a virtual one on Zoom where you invite 500 or a thousand people and a hundred show up, or a physical, catered party where people buy copies. Then you have tailored promotions: a book tour with speeches, a blog tour across a hundred blogs, and more. The key is to start early, well before the book is written, because if you wait until it’s published you’ve already lost the momentum.

Richard: There’s also an Amazon reason. Amazon’s algorithm looks at the first two weeks to determine the book’s audience, so you want as many people as possible to buy in that window. Then Amazon sees technical people buying it and promotes it to technical people. That’s the secret: you have to promote the book. You can hire people, and big-name authors hire PR agencies to get on talk shows, but most people don’t have those resources, so you use podcasts, mailings, your library, and your local bookstore. If your sister or mother won’t even buy a copy to get you off their back, you’ve got a problem.

Getting clients: networking past the shyness

KAJ: What’s your secret to getting clients? You’ve published many books, including two Kindle bestsellers, ghostwritten dozens more, and authored over a thousand articles. Where do the big-ticket clients come from? How do they know about you?

Richard: First, I spent 33 years in the technical industry, so I have contacts and knowledge from there. I build my audience on LinkedIn; you can use whatever social media fits, Facebook for science fiction, LinkedIn for my business and technology books. Then you network, reaching out. I had to overcome being shy, believe it or not. We couldn’t have had this conversation a few years ago. I’m still an introvert, I like my own space, but I’m not shy anymore, and to promote anything you have to get over the shyness, virtually shake some hands, build a network, and then boldly ask, have you ever thought of writing a book?

Richard: You have to get used to rejection. Out of about 50 people, one says yes, they want to do it. Then the question is whether they have the income to support it, whether they really want to, and the all-important one, whether their spouse wants them to do it too. Networking is a big part. You can also do podcasts and just get out there and become a pretend extrovert, telling people you’re looking for anyone who wants to write a book. But you have to do a lot of it.

Why he left tech for ghostwriting

KAJ: You were a VP twice and Director of Computer Operations at Trader Joe’s. After so many years, why choose ghostwriting rather than tech, which is exploding exponentially?

Richard: I actually ghostwrote my first book at 17, and it was never published. My grandfather was in the Philippines in World War II, captured by the Japanese, and spent time in a POW camp. I took his journal, interviewed him, and ghostwrote a book for him. He kept it but nobody ever saw it, and I had this idea of being a writer. But I had to make a living and raise a family, so that got put aside and I became a tech person.

Richard: When I reached my fifties, I realized I was tired of tech, and really tired of corporate, the politics and the straitjacket of working by a company’s rules. I had income saved as a runway, so I jumped out to be a freelancer. First I wrote a bunch of books and tried to sell them myself, and realized that wasn’t what I wanted; what I wanted was to help other people write their books. Once I got some good customers, I was hooked. I wrote books on the Internet of Things, AI, a couple of fiction books, a science fiction book for a rock star. It let me get out of my shell and meet people, which I needed, because writing alone in a room drove me a little bonkers.

The freedom of running your own thing

KAJ: So it’s about adding value to others and to yourself, a different feeling from being tied to a corporate position.

Richard: Yes. As far as tech exploding, I’m making about double the income now that I made in tech, and I’m happy with that. In some ways it’s easier because I’m running my own business, with all the good and the bad: where’s the money coming from next month? Freelancing is like that, so I learned the hard way to keep a pipeline of work coming in, and then there are taxes and all the things that were handled for you in a corporate job. But on the good side, I don’t have a boss telling me what to do. I work with a client, not for a boss, and the difference is night and day. In tech you’re building something for other people; working for myself, I’m building something so I can help other people the way I want to help. It’s about freedom and living the life you want.

KAJ: A lot of people would like to learn more and engage with you professionally. What’s the best way?

Richard: Just go to thewritingking.com and use the contact form to send me a message. Read through the website; I’ve got about 400 articles on how to write. Or just send a contact and I’ll be happy to get back to you.

Quotable moments

Frequently asked questions

What makes a book stand out in a crowded market?

Two things come first: a title and cover strong enough to jump out at a browser, and consistent promotion. If a book isn’t selling, those are the first two things to examine, whether the cover is good and whether it’s being promoted at all. A good cover uses copywriting techniques to grab attention; everything else is secondary to those two.

How does a ghostwriter keep a book sounding like the actual author?

Through deep interviewing and personality analysis, then writing in the author’s voice rather than the writer’s. It works like acting: the ghostwriter pretends to be the client and writes as though they were that person. Early chapters go back and forth until the voice is exactly right; after that it comes naturally. When it’s done well, you can’t tell a ghostwriter was involved.

When should you start marketing a book?

Long before it’s published, ideally from the moment writing begins. Posting the writing journey, the discoveries, the setbacks, the coaching, over the eight months to a year of writing builds an audience invested in the person, not just the book. Waiting until publication forfeits that momentum, and it also matters for Amazon, whose algorithm reads the first two weeks of sales to decide who to promote the book to.

How does a ghostwriter find clients?

Mostly through networking and a willingness to face rejection. It starts with existing contacts and an audience built on a channel like LinkedIn, then reaching out and directly asking people whether they’ve considered writing a book. Roughly one in fifty says yes, and even then income, genuine desire, and a supportive spouse all have to line up. It takes a lot of outreach and getting comfortable being a pretend extrovert.