Love her or hate her she has done the unimaginable.
A little-known farm girl from Saltillo, a small town 90 miles east of Dallas, now 43 mother of three, Colleen Hoover, has taken on Literary giants and conquered.
She has sold more books than Stephen King and John Grisham in their first printing.
She has written best seller after bestseller in diverse niches as romantic comedy, ghost stories, gothic suspense, domestic violence, child sexual abuse, steamy romances, and everything in between.
She has truly broken Genre boundaries, defying the traditional writing success recipe of writing in a single genre. In 2022 six of her books straddled the bestselling list.
Colleen Hoover has achieved all this without the help of publishing houses, book agents, or the usual marketing machinery that backs best sellers.
And all these in a span of 10 years. She self-published her first book Slammed in 2012.
Her success has not been an accident though. She’s been meticulous focused and resolute.
As a marketer, I got curious to know her success recipe, I wanted to discover her marketing ‘secrets’ — some secret recipe that broke the publishing ceiling and let her soar.
Here is what I learned, 10 marketing lessons any writer can apply and soar in the writing:
- Leveraging Social Media
Most people attribute her success to BookTok, and that’s Okay, she rode the TikTok wave to glory.
But that’s not where she started on social media. Long before BookTok came along Colleen Hoover was churning a following on BookTube and Bookstragram.
She was sharing goofy, and sometimes self-deprecating videos while leveraging her story as a social worker and Mom to build a loyal and adoring fan base.
That fan base would swoon and gush over her books growing into a cult-like following that call themselves CoHorts,
3.9 Million followers on social media don’t come easy or accidentally, Colleen was visionary and knew what she was doing.
- Become a Savvy Self-Promoter
Most people shy from self-promotion, but not Colleen, she knows a thing or two about the art of self-promotion. And she does it tactfully, with free giveaways. In 2012 just as launched her first book Slammed she decided to give away free copies of the book.
That got her readers’ attention, besides getting their eyeballs on her books. Then she went a step further, she gave her books to a handful of influential bloggers to get more eyes on her work.
It was an audacious move that would prove to be a masterstroke years later. She would build on that strategy years later, during the pandemic.
As people were locked up in their homes, binging on Netflix, Colleen Hoover broke their monotony. She decided to give away several of her titles for free.
That got readers’ attention and bought her loyalty. The kind of loyalty influencers crave to get.
That adoring fanbase would pay back in kind. They were responsible for driving up sales and making her a BookTok sensation.
But giving away free books isn’t all. Books can’t persuade people to buy them, they must be memorably written. Colleen Hoover’s writing is infectiously popular with her fan base who are mostly young women.
It responds to their grabby display of emotions. Videos of sobbing, gasping, sometimes screaming fans holding Colleen Hoover’s books, as they croon and lavish wild displays of adoration, are responsible for making her a household name.
- Forget Niche Writing
She threw niche writing out of the window, and instead embraced a wide variety of tropes and genres, choosing to serve her swooning fans a smorgasbord of emotions, — from dreamy romances to tearful traumas, to steamy romances, — stuff that take readers on an emotional roller coaster.
She delivers love stories, tear-jerking soaps, wild narrative twists, and love-smitten traumas, seasoned with sometimes steamy sex scenes.
And that has pulled an array of readers, evangelical crusaders who swear by Colleen Hover.
- The Unexpected Twist to What sells
Colleen Hoover’s success has happened largely on her terms. Readers who act as her evangelists have been driving up sales through rapturous reviews and viral reaction videos.
But her journey to glory land didn’t start yesterday. It started with a $9-hour job as a social worker, living in a single-wide trailer with her husband and three sons.
Then she self-published her first book “Slammed,” in January of 2012, sold six copies on that first day, and couldn’t believe she had earned $30 in royalties.
Little did she know that seven months later she would earn $50,000 as “Slammed” hit the New York Times best-seller list.
The publishing industry didn’t know what was driving her book sales, as she seemed to be going against book marketing laws.
What they didn’t know is that she was riding the wave of a meticulous social media strategy. It was better publicity than any sales and marketing team could have engineered.
- The Power of Personal Branding
Most blockbuster authors break out because of a popular series. They write a series of books based on the same character (Harry Porter, for example) to build a loyal following.
Colleen Hoover has a blend of characters, and instead, she branded her books as ‘Colleen Hoover,’ — a personal brand.
“I kept being told that authors need to brand themselves as one thing. And I was like, well, why can’t I brand myself as everything? — “Why can’t I just brand myself as Colleen Hoover? “she was quoted in an interview with the Times.
And she has succeeded. It’s a phenomenon that goes against traditional branding. What Libby McGuire -(Atria), Hoover’s main publisher, called “the reverse of the Oprah book club.”
Oprah using her status as a successful media personality would recommend books and sometimes sell one or two million books.
was one woman making a recommendation, and sometimes selling two million books,
Colleen Hoover has managed to rope in hundreds of people, all making recommendations of her books — and selling more books than Oprah did.
- The Power of Influencers
In the age of influencers, Colleen Hover understands the magic of word of mouth. She has tapped into the power of influencers among her readers.
They tend to be young, adoring females, a new kind of emerging readership, who tirelessly swap stories about Colleen Hoover’s books.
To understand the depth of her fan loyalty, a 26-year-old Nashville resident influencer Kierra Lewis, in a TikTok video, sits in her car tearfully rocking a Colleen Hoover book clutched to her chest.
“This book is amazing! Dammit! It really gives you a whole new perspective!” she emotes.
And she isn’t alone, thousands of mostly young, ethnically diverse social media influencers regularly share videos of themselves responding to Hoover’s books.
- The Personal Connection with Her Fan Base
According to Hoover, readers control what is selling and she makes an effort to meet them in person.
She plans books, mugs, and T-shirt signings — These face-to-face meetings are kin to pilgrims to her fan base.
They wait patiently in line chaperoned by an army of Assistants who keep the line moving, as they shuffle along, sometimes for hours, just to get their books, T-shirts, and Mugs signed by the ‘CoHo’ herself.
She also organizes Book Bonanzas, an annual charity convention to meet hundreds of fans, and CoHorts who love these annual pilgrimages.
And for readers who can’t meet her in person, she drops in on discussions about her novels on social media.
In Conclusion
The rapid success came with a price, and upheaval to normal life. And that’s where mentorship is important.
Hoover has a mentor in novelist E L James, author of “Fifty Shades of Gray,” who advises her on how to navigate this sudden success.
They spent summer mornings in Dallas signing copies of their books, eating fried chicken, and exchanging success tips.
These seven book marketing strategies work, but they take hard work, patient execution, and commitment.
Use them too, to sell your books.
This article was first published Here:
Sources and further Reading:
https://slate.com/culture/2022/08/colleen-hoover-books-it-ends-with-us-verity.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/books/colleen-hoover.html
https://time.com/6221457/colleen-hoover-trauma-it-starts-with-us/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/colleen-hoover-new-book-11666105107
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