Iterate and Optimize

The top-to-bottom guide to taking your writing and publishing business from "Square One" to "Stratosphere." Iterate and Optimize is a behind-the-scenes peek into how indie publishing company Sterling & Stone grew their three-author team into juggernaut - and a next-level guide for authors looking to explode their sales and do the same. In Write. Publish. Repeat., bestselling authors Johnny B. Truant, Sean Platt, and David Wright explained how to build a thriving international publishing empire with no luck required. Rather than resting on their laurels in the years since WPR was written, they've been evolving their once-fledgling business a little bit at a time: expanding to eight publishing imprints, ten high-profile podcasts, a coordinated staff working behind the scenes, millions of words published and hundreds of thousands of books in the hands of eager readers. In Iterate and Optimize, they show you how they grew their business from the ground up in tiny, incremental steps - and give you a road map so that you can do it, too. More than "just another self-publishing guide," this book delves deep into the business behind the success of Platt, Truant, and Wright's company Sterling & Stone, making it the essential "advanced course" follow up to Write. Publish. Repeat. It explains how to tweak your processes over time while maintaining momentum, wringing more profit out of assets you already have. You'll learn how to diversify and create more products with less work, generate more money doing what you already do now, and set yourself up so you can build a readership who will support you in the specific ways you intend to evolve. You'll learn how to grow from a bare-bones, minimum-viable-product business into a slightly larger business or an outright empire - not with massive, flashy (and risky) moves, but by the sustainable magic of incremental growth: small improvements made consistently over time. In this book, Platt, Truant, and Wright give you all the nitty-gritty they've learned and implemented since their last nonfiction publishing bestseller. You'll learn how to "iterate and optimize" the way you handle: • Exclusive versus "going wide" distribution • International and multi-format sales • Advertising and marketing • Optimizing book covers, descriptions, and metadata to increase conversion • Slowly and sustainable building your assistants or contractors, plus outsourcing right • Advanced product funnels, including the changed role of free books • Networking and in-person meet-ups • Workflow management and systems • The writing and pre-writing process so you can "write better faster" • Social media • Podcasting • Crowdfunding - what works and what doesn't • And much more!