How My Self-Published Book Solved Niche Problems to Reach #1 on Amazon

Hello! What's your background, and what are you working on?

I'm Jon Sherman, a fanatical golfer, former Googler, and Internet marketing nerd.

In 2015 I founded Practical Golf, a blog that is focused on giving honest coaching advice to the everyday golfer. I had zero experience running a website, writing professionally, coaching, or building an online audience. In just over two years I have managed to grow the readership to more than 500,000 golfers a year and self-publish a bestselling book: 101 Mistakes All Golfers Make.

My site has multiple revenue streams (affiliate income, premium memberships, my book, and consulting), but for this article I am going to focus on how I was able to write the book, which generated more than $25,000 in revenue.

What motivated you to write the book?

I've always been an avid reader and enjoyed writing in high school and college. In the back of my head I thought it would be cool to publish a book — I just had no clue what it would be about.

When I started my blog in 2015 I decided I was going to use everything I had learned in the 20+ years of playing golf to help others enjoy the game more and improve. I didn't know it at the time, but the first 30 or so articles I wrote were really the proof of concept for my book. People seemed to enjoy my perspective, and one day I woke up in the middle of the night and just decided I was going to turn all of my thoughts into a book.

In retrospect it seemed a bit far-fetched since I had no experience as a professional writer. However, I felt so passionate about my message to golfers that I believed whatever I wrote was going to help them. Overall, I think that was my main driving force.

What was the writing process like?

My initial thoughts for the book turned out to be the complete opposite of what I ended up producing. I spent about a month constantly writing chapters on all things golf. When I had a rough copy finished I sent it out to friends and family. Their responses were kind, but I could tell they were not blown away by the content.

Looking back on what I wrote, it wasn't that good. But if you want to become a writer, you have to write… a lot.

Then the idea hit me that I wanted to make an informal reference guide that didn't follow the traditional format of a non-fiction book. I thought it would be interesting to chronicle all the mistakes that golfers make, and offer reasonable solutions. My goal was to produce something a golfer of any level could read in an afternoon, and get real advice on how to improve.

101 seemed to be a number that sounded catchy, so the title "101 Mistakes All Golfers Make (and how to fix them)" was born. Once I made that decision the rest was actually quite easy. I racked my brain for several months with all of the ideas and wrote mini chapters. I gave myself a deadline to have everything completed by the end of the year, which ended up being a very important way to motivate myself to get it finished. Personally I find when you have open-ended deadlines you don't work with as much urgency.

I also had the benefit of my website being a testing ground for content. The content I produced for the book itself was original, but the underlying ideas were connected to blog content that I knew had done well.

Luckily my wife was an experienced copy editor, so as I finished chapters she would edit them, which saved money on hiring someone else (which you absolutely should do if you are going to publish a book). The only true out-of-pocket expense I had was about $60 to buy a Word template that would convert to paperback publishing standards for Amazon.

I used a great website called Canva to design the book cover, and overall the only true investment in the entire thing was my time, which you should never discount as not being valuable.

So now the book was finished. How'd you go about publishing and getting the word out?

Essentially you have two options when it comes to self-publishing. You can sell directly to your own audience, and keep almost all of the profits. Or you can go through Amazon. (There are other outlets as well, but to be honest Amazon is the only true game in town.)

I chose Amazon for 101 Mistakes because at the time my website had a limited audience. It was an easy decision because it was the difference between marketing it to several thousand golfers, or several million. The tradeoff was giving up 33% of the revenue to Amazon, which I figured was well worth it.

If you scour self-publishing forums you'll see tons of posts that are entitled, "Why isn't anyone buying my book?" While there are several answers to this question I believe most authors don't succeed because they don't have an audience to help give the book a "boost."

When you publish a book on Amazon you are releasing a grain of sand onto a beach. The only barrier of entry is an Internet connection and a computer, which is why there are millions of indie books currently out there.

My strategy was to use my connections in the golf industry and my audience to get positive reviews at launch and get enough sales in the beginning to catapult it into the top 20 sales ranking for golf books. My thinking was that if it had positive social proof, and a position in the top rankings, then hopefully people who had never heard of me or my website would be enticed to purchase it.

That's interesting. Could you go into more depth about this strategy?

Sure. My first order of action was to get a few official quotes to display on the sales page for my book. I contacted people that I had formed relationships with through my website and asked if they would be interested in reading the book and giving quotes. Luckily they were all happy to do it and gave me some great quotes.

Anyone who is an Amazon customer knows that reviews are the heart of their sales platform. People are more likely to purchase an item that has a 4½ star review versus 3 stars. I made a list of 50 people who had been my most avid supporters on social media (predominantly Twitter). I contacted them all individually and told them I had written a book, and simply asked if they were interested in reading it and then providing an honest review on the Amazon sales page when it launched.

Almost all of them followed through, and when the book went for sale it had a nice collection of organic reviews. Sometimes people will try and game the Amazon system with paid services; I don't recommend doing that.

So now the book had a clean looking sales page — positive official quotes and a bunch of five star reviews from people who had actually read it and liked the content. The last piece of the puzzle was a successful launch.

This is where having an existing audience really paid off. For about a year I had built up an email list by offering golfers weekly advice through my blog. On the official launch day I wrote an email announcing the book, clicked send, and hoped for the best.

I nervously watched the sales figures the first day, and by the afternoon things started to pick up steam. When I woke up the next morning the book had sold several hundred copies and was the #1 golf e-book on Amazon, and the #2 best-selling book overall for the category.

Since I was able to give it that initial boost things luckily took off from there. The book was able to sustain momentum for most of 2016, and remained in the top 20, selling several thousand copies.

What's your advice for indie hackers who want to self-publish?

Nothing I did to write or market my book was all that complicated. If you want to self-publish a book it's quite easy in theory.

However, getting sales is the real X factor. It should go without saying that you should be knowledgeable, passionate, and write something that people will get value out of reading. If you are missing most of those elements then your book will not have a chance to succeed.

Had I published a book without my blog, I am almost certain it would not have done nearly as well. I believe that building an audience online is the most valuable thing any author can do. You need a group of advocates who are going to help spread your words. The competition is fierce, and I truly believe that was my ace in the hole.

There are other authors who have been able to launch books without an audience, but if you go in with that strategy the odds are very much stacked against you.

Where can we go to learn more?

Feel free to check out my blog, Practical Golf, or follow along on Facebook or Twitter.

You can also just leave me a comment below!