Did you know that acorns and squirrels can teach us something about selling books? Stick with me, and you will see exactly what I mean.

1. Grow then flower: Build your online presence first

A tree does not invest effort into blossoms until it has first established itself. Likewise, if you move to advertising before you are established, you may run out of energy and shrivel away for lack of sunlight.

If you are really sure you don’t want to run a fully ineffective Twitter account, then what you need is an online presence. The best time to build that was last year but the next best thing is right now.

Having a Web presence is especially important in the six to eight months before publication because that kind of lead time gives reviewers, and other people your publisher is sending galleys to, a sense that your book is a carefully executed ublishing endeavor. It also gives the impression that you’re a serious professional who is going to stick around and have a long term impact.

Penguin Authors Guide to Online Marketing, 2008, Penguin Group USA

An online presence is not the same as having lots of followers. It might result in many follows, likes, subscribes, or whatever, but they are not the same as having a presence. One hundred fans who hang on your every word are infinitely more valuable than 50,000 people who might or might not even notice you.

One hundred fans hungry for your next utterance is a platform. 50,000 followers who ignore you is a low-value vanity project.

This presence of people actively interested in you and your content is the foundation to what some call your Author Platform. All an author platform is when it comes down to it, is the number of people who will pay attention when you announce your book.

2. Grow with similar trees: Connect with the right tribe

Trees that do well often do well as a group. They tend to grow in forests and woods of similar trees. People are not so different.

You know – or should know – what type of readership your book is for. If your novel is dog fights in space, thrills, daring escapes, and evil villains – odds are you share a fanbase with Star Trek. On the other hand, if your book is a guide to scrapbooking, I would start by looking for an entirely different tribe.

While you are building authentic connections and establishing your presence, it will all be for nothing if you have surrounded yourself with Romance readers but are writing a Western set on the moon.

Identify your tribe – the tribe that your book is for and then connect with them. Which leads us on to…

3. Put down roots: Build authentic connections

Trees with deep roots can handle droughts and high winds with ease. Likewise, an author with roots firmly embedded in the community can also make it through storms that takedown less well-established authors.

Who were your first readers? Your closest friends and family members most likely. Why? Because these people care about you and are interested in what you have been doing. Your mum, for example, is likely to buy your book even it is utter pants. Not because she wants the book but because you wrote it.

Likewise, people you have built authentic relationships with are significantly more likely to buy a copy of your book if you ask them to. If your book turns out to be a right stinker, your closest relationships will remain despite your poor writing. These will be the same people from whom you can hear the hard lessons of what you did wrong. The same people who will cheer when you try again.

For those months when overall book sales are down, authors with an authentic community continue to sell well. This is why it matters that authors put down roots. A tree all by itself cannot pollinate with others of its kind.

This is why the most important thing you can do as an author is to build authentic connections with people. Not fake friendship – real honest human connections. This is the foundation of a great new author platform. Later, as people learn that your book is amazing, you will attract fans but first, build authentic relationships.

To create authentic connections, you need to create content that connects with your readers. “Please buy my book” is unlikely to cut it.

When you publish something, ask yourself these questions:

• How does this serve my readers?
• Is this for me or for my readers?
• What value am I providing here?
• Am I solving a problem for my reader or spamming them?
• If I were a reader, wouild I want to read this?

To build authentic connections, we must refocus from “what do I want them to do?” to “what do they want from me?”

4. Plants are selective about polinators: Prioritise those who share your enthusiasm

Most plants are specialised to support a small selection of pollinating insects. As an author, you cannot afford to invest in getting all the readers. If you focus on just the readers that will love your work, you can prosper with far fewer polinators.

Build enough authentic connections and you will soon find yourself with a core group of friends who share your enthusiasm. People who may generally be excited about your book release.

You don’t need thousands – just twenty or thirty enthusiastic supporters can do the job. Let’s look at how that works.

Joe with a big following

Let us imagine Joe the author. He has 50,000 followers on social media. His book comes out and he blasts that out to his followers. Repeatedly. Every day. The CTR of such a promotion will probably fall within the average between 0.119% and 2% depending on the platform.

Assuming the best 1,000 of his followers might click his link. The average conversion rate is reportedly 9.21% across all industries. Let us suppose Joe does better and gets 10% conversion. He can expect to sell 100 books. Although it is likely to be much less.

That’s probably it for Joe’s internet sales. He might continue to publish links but will likely experience rapidly diminishing returns.

Jane with enthusiastic and genuine connections

Let us now imagine Jane. She has 550 followers which include 100 enthusiastic readers in waiting. They have been following her journey towards publishing, perhaps gained access to early chapter previews, and love the genre Jane writes in. On the day of publication, she tells her followers the book is out.

Jane can expect about 100 people to follow her link. She can probably expect between 60 to 80 of them to buy the book right away with a few additional sales in the days ahead. Fair warning, these numbers are a guess but they seem reasonable as we are talking about a tight-knit group who are enthusiastic and waiting to buy Jane’s first novel.

Now assuming the book is good, Jane may be surprised to discover that an average of 5% of customers are evangelical about the products they love. If we assume Jane sells 100 books very quickly, we might also expect around 5 of those readers to promote the book to their followers. Given that these are people that formed authentic connections with Jane, they probably have similar connections themselves. This means that Jane might see 500 more sales via recommendation.

If 5% of the second wave are also the type to Instagram their reading, Tweet their new book purchases, and recommend to genre reading groups on Facebook. Well, maybe Jane will so 2,500 books sold in the third wave. Maybe more. Maybe less. At this stage, only the quality of the book itself is doing the work.

5. Pick your polinators well: Seek out evangelists

There is a reason oak trees focus on squirrels. That’s the animal that gets acorns planted best. Oaks don’t need to worry about any other animals. The humble little squirrel is the oak tree’s animal seed planter of choice.

While we would all like to be that author who the top book bloggers keep on speed-dial, the truth is that the really big book bloggers have more than enough books to keep them busy. Instead, look for more down-to-earth evangelists.

Roughly 5% of any audience are early adopters. The kind that is into a thing before it’s popular. These are the people that your tribe looks to for new ideas and recommendations. While influencers are a noticeable example of this, ideas defuse through a population starting with the few who like to try new things.

Most readers only want to read books by authors they already know and trust. These are the safe and shy readers. At some point, the safe and shy’s favourite authors were unknown to them. Who do you suppose suggested the safe and shy read that author? Why, yes. It was the evangelist.

Fifty evangelists within a tribe could cause your book to end up recommended to around a thousand readers. Find your tribe’s evangelists and make friends with them. Not only will you get some great recommendations, but you will place yourself to later be the one who is recommended.

6. Ignore stones, root in good soil: Seek out readers only

Trees grow in places where trees are able to grow. They don’t try to grow everywhere but stick to the good woodland soil that supports them. They grow where the pollinators live, the soil is good, and the rain is okay.

The main places trees grow are woods and forests. The main audience that will buy your book are people who read books.

This is so obvious that it needs saying often. The people who buy books tend to be the people who read books. Occasionally the friends and family of people who read books. Guess which books those friends and family buy – the ones the reader asks for.

I have some great books in my to be read pile. They were given to me as Christmas and Birthday gifts. Every last book was on a wishlist that I had made. All the books people give me are books I, with my reader hat on, asked for.

One last time in case you missed it. Readers buy books. Connect with readers.

7. Trees rarely try to grow on other trees: Selling to other authors has serious pitfalls

There are a few trees and tree-like plants that grow on other trees. It is hard to do and there are not that many that can. Most trees stick to soil.

Sure, you might be a writer’s writer. In which case you have a star-studded future ahead of you. Back on Earth, the rest of us probably write for readers that like what we like. That was your tribe that we were talking about (in case you skipped that bit).

The problem of trying to find readers among other (new) authors include:

• Your audience is already in editor mode and thus likely to be less forgiving.
• These authors are trying to push their own book. Will they be willing to recommend yours too?
• Everyone else is trying to do that and the space is very loud. Will anyone hear you?
• You miss the enthusiastic readers who do not write.
• We writers tend to have small budgets.

There is nothing wrong with connecting with your fellow authors. Just remember they, like you, are looking for readers rather than authors.

In other words, your primary audience is not other authors but readers. Other authors may also be readers but not all readers are authors.

8. Acorns are a numbers game too

Despite the lengths I have just gone to in order to explain that authentic connections with the right tribe’s readers are how you sell books, numbers can (disappointingly) matter. Not how you imagine though.

Numbers can matter when trying to land a book deal. While every agent and editor wants to land someone like Jane from our earlier example, Joe is a safer bet because that 0.2% to 2% conversion rate is dependable.

Oak trees produce far more acorns than they need to make a few new trees. This is because most of those acorns are going to be eaten. The few that are buried and not eaten, they make all the rest of them worth it.

I’ve heard it said that agents and editors only pay attention to an author’s Platform when it has 50,000 followers. That’s where the Author Buzz Author Platform guide can come in. The guide is regularly updated and is free to read website.

If the question you are asking is “how many followers do I need to get noticed by an agent or publishing house?” The answer is about 50,000. Sorry.

My advice is to build your core audience. Make authentic connections. Be social. Then, maybe, tell your tribe about your quest to get the numbers that show your community is large enough to sell books to. Be honest. People tend to be friendly and helpful when you are authentic and honest.

Another numbers part of the game is analytics. Numbers that tell you how many people engaged. how many clicked, how many came back more than once. These numbers, though possibly intimidating for some, will tell you how well your efforts are going. Especially the return visitors number. That’s a key metric.

9. Trunk support branches: You are going to want a website. Maybe two.

Trees support all their branches, leaves, fruit, blossoms, and a few birds by having a strong, deeply rooted, trunk. Your author platform needs a trunk too. That should probably be a good website.

There is no way to get around the fact that you are going to have to set up a website. Penguin Books recommends two websites (or they did back in 2008). One for your name (as an author) and one for the book itself.

I can see why two sites are recommended. You want to show up first in Google for both your name (or pen name) and your book title. Getting listed for relevant searches is called SEO. Here is our introductory guide to author SEO.

That means domain names, hosting, and web design. Actually, you can skip the web design part and use a system such as a site builder, WordPress, or similar and just find a nice theme. We use these guys. I highly recommend them for UK-based and US-based authors. If you have any recommendations for good hosts in other countries, please drop a comment.

Here is a guide to the bare minimum your website should have.

Website creation is fairly entry-level these days. You can usually set up the whole thing for pocket change. You could spend thousands on a professional web designer but to get started, this is utterly unnecessary.

If even that sounds like too much, Author Buzz is a free WordPress hosting service. Just create yourself a group for you as an author, and say yes when asked if you want a free blog. This is especially effective for reaching a UK audience.

10. Always add value

If you want readers to be interested in you and your site, your content and your site must be interested in your readers. In other words, every page of your website needs to be for the benefit of readers rather than your ego.

This means every new page, new post, new image, new whatever – it all needs to add value for your reader.

Plants that thrive and spread are the ones that add value to the ecology of their environment. They produce flowers to feed and attract pollinating insects. They produce fruit that animals can live off.

The relationship between oak trees and squirrels benefits both the tree and the animals. The squirrel gets food (acorns). The tree gets its seeds planted (also acorns). That is a win-win situation.

To add value consistently, you will have to pay attention to what your readers are telling you. If you can identify problems that your readers have and you can offer a solution, you will add immeasurable value.

Think about it this way: Who would you be the most likely to buy a used car from a person who always seems to be trying to sell you his old junk or someone who has consistently given you good car advice. Be the man that gives good advice.

You will know when you are adding value when you start to see return visitors. When the same few names pop up again and again, you will know you have formed a lasting connection. Feed and water those connections to make them grow.