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\n\t\tOpinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.\t<\/p>\n
The comments started flooding in: \u201cCongratulations!\u201d \u201cOMG! That\u2019s amazing,\u201d as they saw my 8-year-old son and me beaming with pride as our second book debuted, 40 feet tall on a New York Times Square billboard<\/a>. Little did they know, I was testing a question most authors never think to ask: Does the billboard actually sell the book, or does something else?<\/p>\n After my book, Make Every Podcast Want You<\/em>, was featured on a Times Square billboard as one of the \u201cTop Books to Change Your Life in 2024,\u201d authors started reaching out to me. Fiction writers and children\u2019s book authors were asking how they could achieve the same success and how to better position their books when they weren\u2019t directly contributing to business growth. They wanted to understand the mechanics of the billboard.<\/p>\n I had already seen how podcasts and PR could sell a nonfiction book and skyrocket it to an Amazon bestseller. But I wanted to know something more specific: How many sales could actually come in directly from the billboard itself, separate from everything else?<\/p>\n So I decided to test it.<\/p>\n For our next book, I picked something vastly different \u2014 a children\u2019s book I had written eight years ago, when my son was a baby, called It\u2019s Just a Fart<\/em>. It\u2019s completely uncorrelated to any other business entity I run. No course to upsell beyond the book purchase. No elaborate funnel, just a simple email opt-in on the book\u2019s website. I made it alongside two other moms \u2014 illustrator Amanda Swift and formatter Arlene Soto. My two boys served as consultants on the project, weighing in on which drawings were funniest.<\/p>\n I put the book up in Times Square. The messages came flooding in. The press picked it up. Then I waited to see what would actually happen to sales.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what I learned: The billboard only drove sales after the press turned it into a story. The ecosystem around promoting the book made the billboard an event, and that event boosted book sales.<\/p>\n The billboard alone didn\u2019t convert. The story around it did.<\/p>\n Most people walking through Times Square on any given day aren\u2019t expecting to buy a children\u2019s book about farts. And they didn\u2019t. The billboard generated attention, photos and congratulations \u2014 but not an immediate spike in pre-order sales. The momentum came later, once the billboard became part of a larger story shared across social media. <\/p>\n That\u2019s where people learned why the book existed: a solo trip I took with my son, who served as one of its most enthusiastic consultants. He weighed in on which illustrations were funniest, how to make the babies look even sillier, and who, ultimately, inspired the book in the first place. People weren\u2019t buying because they\u2019d seen a billboard. They were buying because they connected with the story behind it.<\/p>\n The biggest marketing mistake entrepreneurs make is believing the moment is the marketing.<\/strong><\/p>\n The moment is the catalyst. Marketing is everything you build before, around and after it. Without that ecosystem, even the most impressive visibility play becomes a fleeting photo opportunity instead of a meaningful business asset.<\/p>\n A billboard is a positioning tool. It tells the world: this exists, this matters enough to be here. But positioning isn\u2019t the same as connection, and connection is what actually moves a stranger to pull out their wallet for a book they\u2019ve never heard of, written by someone they don\u2019t know, about a topic that\u2019s objectively silly.<\/p>\n A billboard says, \u201cLook at this.\u201d An experience says, \u201cHere\u2019s something to be a part of.\u201d One is ego. The other turns attention into participation. Belonging creates resonance, and resonance creates sales.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re an author or founder considering a high-visibility positioning play like this, here\u2019s what I\u2019d tell you, having now run this test twice with two very different books:<\/p>\n A New York Times Square billboard is a phenomenal positioning tool. It is not, on its own, a sales tool. Treat it as one beat in a larger story, not the whole story. Before you book the billboard, build the experience that will live around it. What could be the specific, personal, slightly inconvenient detail that makes a stranger feel like they\u2019re part of something bigger?<\/p>\n What story are you creating around the story of your book?<\/strong><\/p>\n I saw the same principle play out with one of my clients, memoirist Whitney Joy, author of Seven Blank Pages.<\/em> Rather than build her launch around simply announcing that her book was available, we built it around a visibility moment that reflected the heart of her story. On launch day, seven copies of her memoir were intentionally set free to travel from reader to reader, each with a trackable QR code, mirroring her book\u2019s themes of connection, healing and shared humanity woven throughout.<\/p>\n Readers weren\u2019t just buying a memoir. They were becoming part of the story.<\/p>\n The visibility moment gave people something meaningful to participate in, and participation is far more powerful than plain old PR promotion. Ask yourself: What story are you creating around what you\u2019ve made? Sales follow a story, not the other way around.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t mistake the congratulations for conversion. Too many founders invest in the visible moment while neglecting the story, distribution and follow-up that actually create momentum. Visibility is the spark. The ecosystem you build around it is what catches fire. And the story is its gas.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n The comments started flooding in: \u201cCongratulations!\u201d \u201cOMG! That\u2019s amazing,\u201d as they saw my 8-year-old son and me beaming with pride as our second book debuted, 40 feet tall on a New York Times Square billboard<\/a>. Little did they know, I was testing a question most authors never think to ask: Does the billboard actually sell the book, or does something else?<\/p>\n After my book, Make Every Podcast Want You<\/em>, was featured on a Times Square billboard as one of the \u201cTop Books to Change Your Life in 2024,\u201d authors started reaching out to me. Fiction writers and children\u2019s book authors were asking how they could achieve the same success and how to better position their books when they weren\u2019t directly contributing to business growth. They wanted to understand the mechanics of the billboard.<\/p>\n I had already seen how podcasts and PR could sell a nonfiction book and skyrocket it to an Amazon bestseller. But I wanted to know something more specific: How many sales could actually come in directly from the billboard itself, separate from everything else?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nThe billboard didn\u2019t sell the book. The story did.<\/h2>\n
What actually built the sales<\/h2>\n
Key Takeaways<\/h2>\n
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