Master Class: Your Roadmap To Readers

Your ideal audience is not hiding, you just need a map to find them. This summer, join me and a group of writers develop your plan to identify exactly who your ideal readers are, craft a marketing strategy for your work, and develop a plan to grow your audience and increase book sales.

So many writers I speak with feel that they are juggling too many things, and struggling to build momentum in terms of reaching readers. If this is you, then you need to stop and reframe things; to stop doing the stuff that everyone else is doing (and doesn’t really work), and dig into the deep research & planning needed to reach actual readers, not just “followers,” who never buy your books or spread the word about them. This course provides the strategy you need.

In other words:

  • Stop speaking to the wrong audience. (eg: other writers, not readers)
  • Stop throwing blog posts down into the vacuum of the internet.
  • Stop doing all of the ‘best practices’ that stopped working three years ago.

This is the business side of being an author – of focusing your efforts on only what matters. This is about moving beyond the “marketing strategy” that most authors use:

  1. “Tweet about my book.”
  2. “Tweet again about my book.”

The goal of this Master Class is about actively building a solid plan for reaching readers, and forging powerful connections with other writers in the course.

Let’s face it, just as you won’t hit the lottery, you likely won’t ‘go viral,’ waking up one day as having magically become a bestseller. In this Master Class we focus on developing a strategy to reach readers and increase book sales.

WHAT YOU GET:

In this Master Class, we will spend 8-weeks over the summer slowly working through four key areas of reaching readers, described below. You will be provided with:

  • An action-oriented workbook filled with worksheets that allow us to develop a customized plan for you, one step at a time. One new module is released every 2 weeks, and we spend time working through it via an online forum.
  • Each two-week module is broken down into an instructional week, and an implementation week. This program is all about taking action.
  • For each module, we have a conference call where I lead you through key aspects of the session and where you can ask questions and brainstorm. (all are recorded in case you can’t make any of them.) Call schedule:
    July 8, 3pm ET
    July 22 3pm ET
    Aug 5 3pm ET
    Aug 19 3pm ET

WHO THIS MASTER CLASS IS FOR:

This summer session is open to writers who have taken the Build Your Author Platform course, or by special permission from the instructor.

COURSE FEE

This is the first time I am running this session – and because of that, I am offering it a much lower price than I normally would.

$399 early bird (before June 28)
$499 (June 29 – July 8)

The Master Class runs from Monday July 8 – August 30. I had originally intended for this to be a four week program, but I KNOW that many of you will be on vacation during part of the summer and that if you have kids, your time is busier than usual. That is why I have extended the timeframe of this Master Class to eight weeks, double what I originally planned. This is meant to give you time to work through the lessons thoughtfully, and to not feel that you are missing anything if you take a vacation.

Here is a peek at what we will cover:

  1. SESSION 1: PLATFORM AUDIT & GOAL ALIGNMENT
    Are you working hard, but walking down the wrong path? Here we audit your existing platform and compare it to meaningful measures of success. For instance: are you focusing your efforts on the wrong tactics and goals? Are you pushing readers to repin you on Pinterest, but not buy your books? Are you ignoring core channels (such as your Amazon author page), and spending way too much time on channels that aren’t converting (such as a blog?) All parts of your platform need to lead to points of action for readers – we get real about what is and isn’t working. This is a process of refinement to focus your resources on only what matters.

  2. SESSION 2: TARGETING IDEAL READERS
    Only a small percentage of who you can reach are those who you should really be focusing most of your professional efforts on: those who will take action, who will buy your book, read your book, and spread the word about your book to others. We are going to identify these people and laser target your efforts there. This is about proactive outreach, not just trying to accumulate more and more followers, most of whom will never actually buy your books. We go in-depth to connecting with readers beyond social media.

  3. SESSION 3: DEVELOP YOUR MARKETING PLAN
    This is the next level, you won’t grow unless you plan for success. Here we create a detailed plan for the next year – marketing ideas, platform efforts, PR, and how each relates to measurable goals that matter. The goal is to get off the treadmill of endless ideas for reaching readers, and creating a strategy. We develop a Gantt chart to map out goals, milestones and tasks so that you know what you need to do, when, and how it all connects. This gives you a big picture view, but also specific step-by-step tasks to take.

  4. SESSION 4: WORKING SMARTER
    Here we dig into managing your time and energy so that all of your efforts are sustainable. We discuss productivity tactics, and how to develop schedules that work for you. Key to this is to create a workflow that is rigid enough to provide structure, but flexible enough to work within your constantly changing life. Everyone has the same 24 hours to work with each day, we focus on developing the habits you need to accomplish more in the same amount of time.

The entire program is about action and building momentum. It is about making decisions and building a roadmap to reaching readers. It is about working TOGETHER to be honest about the barriers, and be inventive about ways around them.

And really, this is about being honest about what really holds us back. Yes, we are all busy, both physically and emotionally. In my experience, you can have no “perfect” strategic plan without addressing the psychological and emotional side of managing it all. I hope that doesn’t sound flakey, but I will not pretend for one moment that some worksheet alone will give you success. This is a human process – how you manage your platform as a writer, and how you connect with readers.

If all of this sounds like it resonates with where you are and where you want to be, please consider joining me for this program. I would love to spend the summer working through all of this with you, and really be able to hit the ground running in the Fall. To register, you simply need to leave a $50 deposit. You will be billed for the balance of the course fee once we begin in July. And as always, if you need a special payment plan, just let me know.





As usual, if you have ANY questions, reach out to me via phone or email: dan@wegrowmedia.com or 973-981-8882.

Thanks!
-Dan