I’ve hired more than my share of book coach consultants. They are great. They unshackle you from the manacles of tired ideas—force you to dare bigger, do larger.

My guest today, Nick Stephenson, went from a dreading his soul-sucking job to becoming a best-selling author. He spent years stumbling, got fed up with what seemed like an impossible production schedule, and cleverly set about building an audience that couldn’t wait to purchase his next novel.

It occurred to him that the whole “release a book every six weeks” cycle was unsustainable and offered little in return for the time spent. He noticed the success of services like BookBub, who had massive mailing lists, and decided, “Hey, why can’t I do the same?”

If you have an engaged audience, you can skip the middle man.

But how does an author, or anyone selling a product, skip the middle man? It’s not like you can just throw up a website and expect the sales to roll in. Nick decided to leverage sites like Amazon to grow his audience. To convert Amazon traffic into hungry fans.

Nick has perfected the art of leveraging monolithic systems to turn attention toward his books. And now he teaches other authors how to do the same. It’s got me terribly excited—not just for it’s potential, which is has plenty of, but also for it’s complete lack of sleaziness. It’s one of the most honest and delightful sales techniques I’ve seen.

Enjoy.