By Meredith Eaton, CEO

The most common question I get from authors is some variation on “How do I sell more books?!” And my answer is the one that no one wants to hear: “Hustle.”

Most of the time when an author, or aspiring author, is asking that question, they are really asking “What’s the easiest way to sell a lot of books.”

But easy isn’t what gets things done. Hustle is.

Hustle isn’t easy, but it’s effective. It’s the most universally effective way to accomplish goals and transform the world that I have found.

I’m currently obsessed with NPR’s podcast “How I Built This” which is interviews with successful entrepreneurs  about how they built their companies. The common thread through almost every story?

Hustle.

Dermalogica was built on cold calls, hundreds of hours teaching classes and late nights packing boxes and doing laundry. For years.  (Hustle doesn’t always work fast.)

Sara Blakely, the creator of Spanx, ran around the stores that first carried her product, putting out her own signs on the checkout counters advertising where to find her products,  AND she paid her friends and family across the country to go buy them so the stores would sell out and order more, to buy herself more time for general consumers to discover her.

The founders of Airbnb flew from CA to NYC where their only listings were, knocked on the doors of the hosts, offered to take professional photos of their space, and then talked to them about their user experiences with the site, and ended up redesigning the whole website based on those conversations, which was the turning point for their struggling company.

I could go on, but I hope you see the point. These are now huge, multi-million dollar, market disrupting companies, in very different markets, started in different decades, all built on hustle. These innovators and entrepreneurs didn’t sit behind a website or a social media account, or in a coffee shop waiting to be discovered, waiting for the hand of fortune to swoop down and scoop them up. Rather,  they made calls, and knocked on the doors, and got in people’s faces and problem solved, and took risks, and asked for and offered help, and built partnerships and never rarely did any of them think about when they could stop hustling and coast. Because Hustle is a way of life.

I know, you’re probably reading this and thinking “OK, well that’s all well and good for entrepreneurs, but I’m a writer, it’s totally different.”

Except it’s not different. Or not as different as you want to think. More writers would be wise to think like entrepreneurs. Authors who hustle sell more books than authors who don’t.  It’s just that simple.

Meet Lindsay Barry, an author with more hustle then I’ve ever seen. The best evidence of her hustle is her Instagram page, but don’t think that means she’s letting social media do the heavy lifting. Most of her IG is just a record of her hustle. Lindsay never misses a chance to tell people that she wrote a book and then follow up by asking if they would like to buy it/review it/invite her somewhere to sell it/sell it for her/connect her to someone else who like to do any of those things.

Lindsay sold 750 books in her first year, which is no small feat for a first time author with a tiny, indie publisher. She has over 80 amazon reviews, and her book is carried in the National Building Museum gift shop. She’s read to hundreds of classrooms, sat at tables at STEM Nights, STEAM nights, community markets, teacher development days, inside her gym, and at a Hardware store. A HARDWARE STORE, you guys. To sell books. Because that’s how hustlers role.

I know other authors who have won more awards, who have had bigger media coverage, who have been featured speakers at book conferences, who had famous names attached to their books, and Lindsay has sold more books, built larger social media following, and gotten more reviews than any of them.

Because if your goal is selling books, hustle is what gets it done.  Every time.