Tired of shouting into the void with a book you believe in? We unpack a simple, proven path to clarity that makes every marketing move easier and cheaper: find your shelf, define your reader, and deliver the payoff your genre promises. Penny Sansevieri and Amy Cornell pull back the curtain on what actually drives sales velocity for authors—clear positioning, focused targeting, and small, high-impact pivots that align your book with how readers shop.

We start by grounding your work with “shelf neighbors,” those three to five titles your ideal readers already love. From there, we build a one-sentence reader statement that communicates value at a glance and respects genre expectations. You’ll hear how a smart subgenre pivot turned a stalled romance into a winner, why “my book is for everyone” is the most expensive mistake in publishing, and how to turn your unique elements into crisp marketing hooks that get clicks, not shrugs.

For nonfiction writers, we dig into articulating outcome-driven benefits that media and influencers can immediately pass on to their audiences. For fiction authors, we show how to pair familiarity with freshness—a recognizable promise with a distinct twist—using comps that do the heavy lifting on retail pages, ads, and pitches. Throughout, we emphasize that marketing can sharpen and amplify, but it can’t invent a market where none exists. That’s liberating: focus on fit first, then flourish with confident messaging, right-sized keywords, and cover cues that signal the right story to the right people.

Ready to stop guessing and start gaining traction? Listen now, craft your one-sentence reader statement, and text us your top targeting question. If this episode helps you refocus your book’s positioning, share it with an author friend, subscribe for more practical strategies, and leave a quick review so we can reach more writers who need it.

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