David Wright - Iterate and Optimize

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Iterate and Optimize

By Sean Platt &

Johnny B. Truant

Copyright 2016 by Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant. All rights reserved.

Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited. The authors greatly appreciate you taking the time to read our work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends about it, to help us spread the word.

Thank you for supporting our work.

For Robin and Cindy, who stuck with us

while things were less than optimized.

Write. Publish. Repeat. Conversations is a 30plus-part instructional video series (retail price $49) in which the authors elaborate on the cutting-edge insights learned in self-publishing since releasing the book version of their #1 best-selling guide, Write. Publish. Repeat. in 2013.

Visit the link below to get the Write. Publish. Repeat. Conversations course for FREE!

SterlingAndStone.net/repeaters

Is This the Right Book for You?

Hi there. Im Johnny, and Ill be the written voice in these pages. Youre holding a book that I co-wrote with my partners, Sean and Dave. (Their contributions are equally strong, though Im the mouthpiece.) But contrary to what you might expect, the first thing wed like to do as you hold our book is to suggest that Iterate and Optimize might not be right for you.

Because heres the thing: We set out to write a book that would apply to all creative entrepreneurs. Doesnt matter if youre a writer or a musician or a moviemaker! Whats in these pages will equally apply to all of you!

Well, thats not how things turned out.

This book is all about the changes we made to our small indie publishing business, Sterling & Stone, over the course of two years to turn it into a much larger (but still fairly small) indie publishing business. Its about how we added new book imprints and genres and product lines. Its about how we ratcheted the term solo authorpreneur up until it grew into little empire . How we strategized bigger, optimized our writing systems to tell better stories, hired people to help us grow, diversified our work into multiple media (audio, paperback, hardback, foreign rights, surely combining those soon into Frankensteins like foreign audio), how we built our tribe, bought better advertising, and leveraged social media. How we diversified into software and app development and are now turning our eyes toward scriptwriting, TV, and film. Its even about how we created a series from scratch with the specific purpose of engineering a hit that would (and did, and continues to) generate a lot of money in book sales.

We will mention places where non-authors can apply what we do (and I still think theres a lot of that; everyone should build a community and can benefit from a high-converting email autoresponder series, for instance), but who are we kidding? This is a publishing book and one for entrepreneurially minded authors, at that.

Throughout this book, there are places where well point out ways that non-writer creative entrepreneurs can apply what were teaching. Weve also interviewed a bunch of creative entrepreneurs from non-writing disciplines as this books case studies to round out our otherwise writerly focus. But for the most part, the provided examples are those of Sterling & Stone: our own company. Thats the business we know. Those are the specific, brass-tacks examples we have for how to take your business to the next level.

Because thats where were coming from; the approach weve taken with Iterate and Optimize narrows this books audience. The only way we could have kept this book for everybody would have been to dilute the hell out of it. To remove all of our specific examples. To make this book not just applicable to any creative entrepreneur but to any writer and publisher as well.

We think that by reading about what weve done to vastly improve our businesss growth and profits, youll learn a ton that you can apply in your own publishing business, even if youre working solo. But on the other hand, chances are there are things in this book that wont apply to you. At all.

If you arent going to run a five-figure crowdfunding campaign, the bit about our Kickstarter optimizations wont be relevant to your business.

If you dont plan to launch a podcast network, your eyes may glaze over when you get to the section about Sterling & Stone FM.

We considered pulling out anything we thought wouldnt apply specifically to indie publishers. Then, beyond that, we considered pulling out anything that wouldnt apply to the average indie publisher. If we had, we could have created a middle-of-the-road book that might have applied almost entirely to you, dear reader. But we didnt. We figured there was still a lot of value in the more niche book youre holding even if it meant appealing to a smaller readership.

So yes, its possible this is the wrong book for you and if you feel strongly that it is, wed rather you return it now than end up disappointed. Accordingly, we hereby promise theres a bunch of stuff in these pages that youll never have any use for. Only read on if you want to see what weve done and take what applies then leave the rest. Or, as wed do with a book like this: Read it all for inspiration whether it applies or not, just to see how another successful company does business. The concepts, if not the specifics, are universal.

Similarly, if youre brand new to publishing and havent yet read this books predecessor Write. Publish. Repeat., youll definitely want to close this book and read that one instead or at least first. After youve read WPR , you can decide if you want to know more about how we do what we do and how you might apply it to yourself and then, if the answer is yes, you can read Iterate and Optimize .

So thats the deal. We havent stripped this book down. We havent removed stuff thats highly specific to Sterling & Stone but might not be applicable to certain readers. Amy, our Studio Manager, called this a manual for how to build a company exactly like ours, and while thats a bit tongue-in-cheek, its still far more accurate than to claim this as a how-to guide for everyone.

So, are you still with us after all that?

Awesome! We promise to give you all of what weve promised above plus a whole lot more than youll ever need.

(SARCASTIC SIDE NOTE: This means that by proceeding, youve waiving your right to say, Man, these guys wont shut up about their specific business! Because hey, thats what this book is !)

Welcome to the advanced course. We promise to overdeliver.

So with that out of the way, lets Iterate and Optimize together.

iterate

i-t-rt/

verb

To do shit better each time around

optimize

p-t-mz/

verb

To get more from the shit youve already got

Why "Iterate and Optimize"?

Youve found this book in a store or on a digital storefront. You almost certainly know who we are, because as mentioned in the introduction, our book Write. Publish. Repeat. is a necessary prerequisite for this one. But maybe you dont listen to the Self-Publishing Podcast , which forms the cornerstone of our public presence. If thats so, it means you havent heard us talking endlessly about iterating and optimizing two words our listeners are probably sick of by now.

So Ill bet youre wondering why we chose the title we did, because its kind of a strange one.

The reason as with most things at our company, Sterling & Stone comes down to story.