My First Do-It-Yourself Book Launch

I’ve lived a charmed life over the last 15 years – quietly cranking out one book after another for mid-major publishers, and watching many of them reach national rankings in categories like customer service and communications skills. With a lot of help. When you have publicists who place you in national publications, corporate sponsors with massive lists, and bookstore placement, you have a huge leg up. It’s kind of like making a great hamburger when you have the finest steak to start with.

Fast forward to 2017, and my first self-published book in my longtime “day job” as a psychotherapist. Self-help is a crowded field with literally thousands of titles out there, and while I’ve been doing it for the better part of a decade, I have no real platform as a shrink outside of my small town in upstate New York. But I still wanted to get my particular approach for treating fears and phobias in front of a wider audience, and knew this time that I would essentially be planting a tree in the middle of a very deep forest.

Still, my new book No Bravery Required did recently reach #1 nationally on its topic. With the help of a little bit of money, a lot of elbow grease, and no backers other than myself. Here’s how I did it:

Priming the pump. Well ahead of the book launch, I started publishing articles on the book’s topic. With my last book, I had great press including a feature article in Time Magazine, but I knew there would be no Time this time. Instead, I leveraged my existing blogging platform – I am a monthly contributor for a NY Times bestselling author and TV personality, and I have my own therapy blog – as well as this article for The Mighty, a national website for mental health issues with over 700,000 followers on social media and 150 million readers.

Getting reviews. Ansel Adams once said that in photography “it takes a lot of milk to get a little cheese.” Getting reviews on Amazon was very similar. These reviews were important because the better quality paid launch partners – which I will discuss next – required a certain number of positive reviews first. So I offered a free electronic review copy to our online community of over 400 regional therapists, and also mass mailed potential reviewers in my social network.

When it comes to getting reviews, you will discover that people are fundamentally busy, and this part was probably the closest I came to making a pain in the ass of myself. But with enough gentle persuasion and some one-on-one marketing, I eventually got what I needed to move forward.

Lining up paid partners. The real key to do-it-yourself book promotion is creating a so-called countdown deal on Amazon – offering the Kindle version of your book for 99 cents for a short time – and then paying to promote this on book launch sites with large lists of readers who want to hear about free or 99 cent books every week.

The 800-pound gorilla of paid promotion sites is BookBub. It costs much more than the others (think hundreds of dollars for many categories), and I would have gladly paid it, because it has a huge list and tremendous ROI for many people. But getting in at BookBub is kind of like making the guest list for the Oscars. I tried and, as expected, did not make the cut. I’ll consider them again if I ever make the New York Times bestseller list or whatever.

Ultimately I ended up going with BuckBooks (highly recommended, if you can meet their strict acceptance criteria), Awesome Book Promotion, RobinReads, BargainBooksy, and Bknights on Fiverr – total cost around $180. I also launched an Amazon sponsored pay-per-click ad campaign that generated over 10,000 impressions by launch day for just a few bucks, a very good deal.

Creating the buzz on launch day. Finally, I created a free goodie for people in my social media network who purchased the book on launch day – an edited and curated collection of articles on workplace stress, published as an ebook with a nice professional cover – and made a series of announcements leading up to launch day on Facebook. And on the actual launch day, many of my Facebook friends were incredibly kind about sharing this offer with their lists as well.

Then it was time to sit back and watch launch day happen! (In my case, sneaking a peek at my book’s rank in between therapy sessions.) One annoying snag was that the number 1 book in my category that day was actually a national humor bestseller that was only tangentially about fears and phobias, but still listed in that category – which raised the bar for how well I had to do. But thankfully by day’s end I had topped this book as well, with an overall Amazon rank near the top 2500.

In the end, I did get my #1 ranking for books on fears and phobias – and also a top 5 ranking in the very crowded self-help category of anxiety disorders (where many of the major self-help books live). It won't stay at that rank forever, of course, but I'm still pretty happy about that, and not just for my ego: a good launch and good reviews reportedly make a long-term difference in how likely Amazon is to promote this book in search results. (My previous book, which launched at #1 in the large category of customer service in 2013, still sells very well after over four years.)

But perhaps the greatest reward was an unsolicited reader review on launch day from someone who felt this book would finally help him or her conquer their fears. This is why I really went through this exercise in the first place – to add my voice to the dialogue about treating anxiety and help people. And I truly believe that a good launch campaign is the best way to do this in a crowded marketplace.

My new book - No Bravery Required

I am very pleased to announce the release of my latest book, on a subject very near and dear to my heart: a simple, clinically proven strategy for painlessly treating fears and phobias.

Based on my successful longtime Anxiety Camp program, No Bravery Required looks at the key areas that good therapists use to treat fears and phobias, including mindful awareness, physical relaxation, cognitive restructuring (e.g. changing the way you think about a scary situation), gradual exposure, and social and communications skills for social anxiety.

The core point of this book is summarized in its title: losing your fears involves specific tools and skills, not bravery. And when done correctly, getting well should be much easier than staying ill. The strategies in this book have been proven over and over, both in the Anxiety Camp group program I have run since 2009, and in the hundreds of individual clients I have treated over the years.

To order your copy - in paperback or Kindle format - click here.

What Emotionally Unstable People Do Better Than You

When I describe someone as emotionally unstable, it isn’t an insult. It is a clinical description, just like having brown hair or wearing glasses. So I mean it in the nicest possible way.

This is because emotionally unstable personality disorder, also known as borderline personality disorder or BPD, is an actual diagnosis. And it is often quite treatable for many people who suffer from it. Which brings me to the topic at hand – emotionally unstable people who are successfully treated do something that would also benefit each and every one of us, if we did it. They learn to behave counterintuitively in their worst moments.

Here’s an example. Relationships with borderline personality sufferers often feel like living inside of a food processor, because one minute you are their best friend in the world, and the next you are the cause of all their problems. This is because they have an intense fear of abandonment, combined with a diminished capacity to process negative emotions. Which means that if you forget to respond to their text message, or sound a little frustrated about something, it can quickly turn into a flashpoint.

So here is how you treat this: you help them to recognize familiar patterns of behavior, and then behave differently when they happen. For example, let’s say that Joe is a BPD sufferer who is upset with his wife Sally because of something she said. Here is how the conversation might go:

Joe: You are always rejecting me! I can’t stand it anymore! I feel like jumping off a bridge!
Sally: Joe, do you think you’re having a borderline moment right now?
Joe: You’re right, Sally, I probably am.
Sally: So how about doing what we’ve planned for these moments – binge-watching your favorite TV show, and then coming back and talking with me in a couple of hours?
Joe: Sounds good – see you then.

Listen carefully: this conversation would sound very unrealistic to most people. Joe would normally not feel like watching TV when he is upset and frantic about Sally, and would not appreciate having his disorder called out. But in this case they have learned – often with the guidance of Joe’s therapist – that naming what is happening and taking a break will work for him in moments like these, so they agree ahead of time to do so. Which means they get all the benefits of a relationship with a BPD sufferer – which is often intense and passionate – while mitigating the drawbacks.

Now let’s circle this same idea around to you and me. *We* don’t inherently know what is best for us in the moment either. So we also need to plan ahead for what to do in our worst moments. And once we have a game plan for those moments, we can learn to master them.

Here is a personal example: every year, I close my therapy practice over the holidays. And because I am usually so busy, I always believe that having all this time off will be fantastic! But then the same thing always happens: within a couple of days, I feel depressed and out of sorts from being out of my routine, and feel stuck in the house by the cold weather.

Now in *that* moment, going back to work seems like the last thing that would help me feel better. But sure enough, going back to work the first week in January always lifts my mood again. So I have learned to plan for purposeful activity over the holidays.

The same thing is true for you. Dreading a fearful situation? It may be time to take a walk. Angry about something? You may need to give it time rather than acting on it. Feeling stuck in your life? This may be the time to connect with your friends. Your worst moments will often go much better with a thoughtfully composed plan - that may, in fact, go against your human nature - which you execute every time you are in that situation.

So take a tip from emotionally unstable people: acting on your feelings is not always a good idea, and making an alternative plan of action in advance is often the key to peace of mind. Because as Benjamin Franklin once said, those who fail to plan often plan to fail.