In partnership with

In 2015, Anna-Louise Bates’ life changed forever.

Her husband and 7-year-old son were hit by a car while walking home from a Christmas party.

Anna-Louise was thrown into a life of grief and despair.

The tragedy hit the headlines around the world. But for Anna-Louise, she had no control over the narrative that was being put out in the media.

Some news outlets announced that her son had died before he had.

Some even said that she’d turned the life support machine off herself.

The story being churned out wasn’t Anna-Louise’s.

And for many years, that’s the story that existed in the public sphere.

It took eight years before Anna-Louise could get her version of events down in black and white.

She hired a ghostwriter, got her memoir written, and it was then a case of approaching publishing houses. The manuscript took around a year to complete.

So far, so good.

But sadly, that’s where Anna-Louise’s dream of getting her own words out into the world ended.

Publishing houses told her that she didn’t have enough Instagram followers.

One even said that she’d already had enough media exposure.

The book was shelved. And that was that.

On New Year’s Day 2024, Anna-Louise posted on LinkedIn that she was determined to self-publish her book in the coming year.

To cut a long story short, I knew exactly how I could help.

By September, the book hit the #13 spot in Women’s Biographies on Amazon.

Anna-Louise’s book was sandwiched between Michelle Obama’s and Miriam Margolyes’ books.

It was in the top 500 books out of all the millions on Amazon.

Her bestselling spots weren’t a fluke.

They were all pre-planned.

Here’s the short version:

• We set ourselves a date to publish

• We built an audience

• Published the book to our audience

Here’s how we did it in more detail:

Decided which Amazon categories to target

Amazon has millions of books on sale. Before we did anything, I analysed different categories to see what other books we were up against in the bestsellers lists. We had to get the balance right between choosing relevant categories (you can choose up to three categories when uploading your book to Amazon KDP) and ones that we thought we could easily dominate, giving us a better chance of achieving a bestseller spot. All of this was done by looking at Amazon’s Best Selling Rankings (BSR) using Publisher Rocket.

Built an email list

Email allows for more personal interactions compared to other platforms too. As an author, you can foster deeper relationships with your readers by sending regular updates and encouraging feedback.

We used Beehiiv as our platform of choice because it gave us the option to build a website AND an email list all in one. It was the perfect option for us. You can see Anna-Louise’s website here.

Gave away the first chapter for free

Getting people onto your email list can be hard work so one of the best ways to do it is to offer something for free, in exchange for someone’s email address.

In this instance, we gave away the preface to Anna-Louise’s book for free. The preface was a well-written hook, urging the reader to read on. They could only do that when they bought the book. So for now, readers got a free taster of what to expect and we got their email addresses so we could inform them about the forthcoming launch. A win-win situation.

Gave a pre-launch book talk at a library

Anna-Louise booked a spot at her local library, where she gave a book talk to increase awareness of the forthcoming book. It was a free event but she got free publicity from the library and was able to talk about the process of writing and publishing the book.

People started talking and asking when her book was going to be published. We told them to sign up to the email list.

We also produced a prototype of the book for the event via Amazon KDP, which allowed Anna-Louise to get first-hand feedback, which we then implemented into the final version.

Edited and formatted the book thoroughly

After getting incredibly useful feedback from the library talk, we were able to go back to the manuscript and adjust elements like the font size and even the front cover. All of this was done through Atticus, which allows you to build books for print or e-readers ready for submission to Amazon KDP.

Booked a launch venue

Anna-Louise booked a local venue to launch the book and touchingly, she booked it for 15th September 2024 - what would have been her late son’s 16th birthday. We set up a page on Eventbrite and sold tickets to cover the cost of hiring the venue. VIP tickets were also sold that included signed versions of the book, that we had pre-ordered as author copies from Amazon.

Built up pre-launch hype on Beehiiv and socials

As the venue and date of the launch were confirmed, we used Beehiiv to build momentum and drive people to book tickets. Within a few weeks, we had sold out and recouped our costs of the book launch.

Uploaded the book two weeks before launching - or so we thought!

Things often go wrong so we aimed to get the book published on Amazon KDP two weeks before the launch. Amazon KDP can take up to 72 hours to be published (providing everything is fine) but for some reason, ours took nearly two weeks.

Heading to the launch, the book still wasn’t published so we had to resort to Plan B - telling people that we’d email them (just as well we’d built an email list!) when the book was finally published.

It was literally as we were pulling up to the launch that we got the email to say that the book was available to buy.

Held a launch - and got everyone to buy within a 30-minute window

The launch included readings and a Q&A session but the critical part was announcing that the book was now live on Amazon.

We asked everyone in the room to buy the book at 7pm and for good reason.

Amazon’s charts are updated hourly and within a few hours, because everyone had all bought at the same time, Anna-Louise’s book duly appeared in the Amazon charts.

Kept the momentum going

We screenshotted all Anna-Louise’s bestseller positions as proof that we could use for ongoing promotion. Later that week, we wrote press releases about Anna-Louise’s bestseller status and contacted the media.

Anna-Louise’s story was featured in both regional and national press, including some of the most-visited news sites in the UK.

We also emailed everyone on our email list and asked for Amazon reviews.

You can see Anna-Louise’s book on Amazon here.

Final Thoughts

Writing and publishing a bestseller can be done, without the need for publishing houses to be involved.

We proved that with careful planning, and dutiful consistency, we could compete with the best.

You can do it too.

If you would like my help in publishing your book, join me for a free chat here.

The Daily Newsletter for Intellectually Curious Readers

If you're frustrated by one-sided reporting, our 5-minute newsletter is the missing piece. We sift through 100+ sources to bring you comprehensive, unbiased news—free from political agendas. Stay informed with factual coverage on the topics that matter.

Join for free today!

Disclaimer. This post includes affiliate links, which means that should you decide to use any of the products or software that I recommend, I get a small fee at no cost to you. I only recommend products I use and love.