How To Find Your Tribe and Sell Thousands of Books

Struggling to promote your book to the right readers? Learn proven techniques to cut through the noise.

Author DC Palter, author of  To Kill a Unicorn, explains how he leverages his tech startup expertise to directly reach niche audiences hungry for his writing. Discover how to create value exchanges that convert contacts into reviewers and advocates.

Gain tactics on writing compelling articles that establish your authority while subtly promoting your creative works. Understand why niche beats mass market when resources are limited.

Hear how DC turned podcast guest pitches into book reviews by offering custom feedback on startup decks. Get early access to his next novel combining the drama of Silicon Valley and high stakes cybercrime.

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Transcript

Jim James (00:01.538)
Hello, welcome to this episode of the Unnoticed Entrepreneur with me, your guest. Oh, I'm not your guest at all. I'm your host. Do that again. Take two. Hello, welcome to this episode of the Unnoticed Entrepreneur with me, your host, Jim James. Today we're going to Santa Monica in Los Angeles to meet DC Palter. And we're going to talk about ways that you can get your book unnoticed

DC Palter (00:10.573)
Alright, take two.

Jim James (00:30.042)
even if you have a novel, as he does, about something quite niche. So DC Palter, welcome to the show.

DC Palter (00:38.437)
Thank you, Jim. It's great to be here.

Jim James (00:40.29)
Well, it's great to see because there are many people who have got a book or a novel in them, and maybe they've written one, but they don't know how to overcome the challenges of getting readers because, you know, I've published two books now and it's, if you're with a big publisher, there's distribution, but you have to do the marketing yourself actually as the author, there are platforms like Goodreads, there are people that will sell reviews

DC Palter (00:46.283)
Mm-hmm.

DC Palter (00:55.312)
Yes.

Jim James (01:09.426)
to you, which are not necessarily credible and don't lead to sales. So it's going to be great to hear from you how you're marketing your book, which is called To Kill a Unicorn. And here it is. And for those people that are listening, you can't see it, but DC is holding up his book. And DC is actually a long time investor and a very skilled and experienced a business operator in the high tech space in LA and also was in Japan. So

DC, actually, we have very loud dogs.

DC Palter (01:46.981)
The neighbors, I can hear them as the neighbors.

Jim James (01:47.116)
Can you hear them?

Uh, I wonder, those are very loud.

Or they just stop. Um, I'm going to need to do that again. I don't know if I'm going to get rid of that. That's the problem. Cause it's so loud. I could hear them in here. Maybe they just.

DC Palter (02:03.393)
Hmm, the microphone's picking them up. So they're not actually all that loud, but it's the microphone that's picking them up from next door. Yeah, I can hear them, but not very loud, but the microphone seems to be rather sensitive for that.

Jim James (02:07.154)
Could you hear it as well?

Jim James (02:12.743)
Yeah, could you hear them?

Jim James (02:19.122)
Yeah. Okay. I'm afraid I'm going to do that again, just because if I've got that with the barking and I can't get rid of it. Maybe they've seen the car and they're not chasing it anymore. Okay. Take three. I think I can mark that. There we go. Okay. Take three.

DC Palter (02:27.054)
Yeah, that's bad.

Jim James (02:42.89)
Welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. If you are an author, you've written a book or you are thinking about writing a book, but are slightly overwhelmed by the challenges of marketing that book, and you've heard, especially with AI, more and more books coming out daily, and you're competing with the big publishers and the AI-generated publishers, and you've got a book you wanna get to your audience, but you don't know how to do that.

Today's episode is going to be for you, because we're going to talk to DC Palter, who's an author, but also a long time tech entrepreneur and experienced investor as well. Joining us from Santa Monica in LA, DC Palter, welcome to the show.

DC Palter (03:24.257)
Hey Jim, thanks for having me on today. Looking forward to the discussion.

Jim James (03:27.554)
Me too, well you've got a book called To Kill a Mockingbird. Oh no, that was Samba. Ha ha ha!

DC Palter (03:31.13)
Not quite, not quite. Not that famous yet. Nope, nope. To kill a unicorn. Yes.

Jim James (03:35.606)
To Kill a Unicorn, great title. DC, tell us a little bit about the book because obviously you wanna know the context, but also how are you managing to generate interest in the book and readership when, you know, you're writing a novel about the high-tech industry. So, you know, it's maybe not obvious in terms of how you're gonna get that into the New York Times bestseller. How are you going about this?

DC Palter (03:43.191)
Uh-huh.

DC Palter (03:53.38)
Mm-hmm.

DC Palter (04:03.245)
Yes, yes. Well, I'm waiting for Oprah to call but so far she hasn't called yet and you know that would make me famous But still waiting for that call so you're absolutely right that With Everyone has a novel in them and some people actually sit down and write it and it takes them Months to years to do it and they think wonderful. I'm done. I got the book. I got the book I'll put it on Kindle and The world will come running to it

Jim James (04:07.644)
She must just be busy.

DC Palter (04:32.329)
And of course, it turns out writing the book's the easy part. Marketing the book is a difficult part. And that's no different from my experience as a startup founder with technology products, that building the product was the easy part. Getting the world to know about it, to be aware of it, to buy it was the tough part. And so I always say marketing is two thirds of the job.

The engineers hate to hear that because they're like, I've built the greatest thing in the world. But unless somebody knows about it, you haven't built anything.

Jim James (05:08.47)
Yeah, no, I absolutely, you know, I was at a conference originally saying the same with, you know, podcasts and especially now with books where there's so much content that at least two thirds and definitely no less than half of your efforts should be on the marketing. So you've got a great background in high tech and in high tech and in startups where you're used to trying to cross the chasm from innovation to early adoption and then to mass adoption. And it's the chasm where

DC Palter (05:12.918)
Mm-hmm.

Jim James (05:38.246)
most people get lost. DC, what lessons did you learn from building startups that you are applying to introducing and getting readers for to kill a mock, a kill, I'm going to say that again, To Kill A Unicorn?

DC Palter (05:40.635)
Yes.

DC Palter (05:52.833)
To kill the unicorn, yes. So surprisingly, the techniques I learned in building a networking simulator product and network acceleration products, very niche products for a particular audience, I've applied to consumer marketing

which seems like it should be completely different, but the techniques end up being the same. If you're competing against Cisco, you're competing against Google, these other giants out there, you can't just stand up there and say, I've got a better product. It doesn't work. You can't compete with them. Their budget just for parties is bigger than your entire company. Their budget for advertising, they can do Super Bowl ads. You're lucky if you can put a billboard up in front of your office. So you have to be strategic about it.

You don't have a big budget, you don't have a lot of name recognition, but you have to get your market out there. So on the high tech side, I did the same thing. The key I thought was finding the audience, the very niche audience that needs your product. And that's what Crossanticasm talks about for your early adopters. Get in front of them, find out where they are, and market to them. And so that's not

doing Super Bowl advertising. That is finding out what trade shows are gonna be at, finding out what publications they look at online. And you can't afford 20,000, $50,000 for an advertising campaign on InfoWorld or something like that. So you have to get articles written about it. You have to find things that are interesting and exciting to them. I applied those same techniques to the novel.

So everyone says, if you have a novel, go get reviews in New York Times. Well, New York Times is not going to write about the tech, is not going to write a review of a small press book. They just don't do it. Oprah, I'm still hoping she'll call, but she hasn't called yet.

DC Palter (07:55.041)
My novel is a mystery about the tech industry, about a startup similar to Theranos that's doing some evil things that they're keeping hidden. And the main character is a hacker who's trying to find his missing friend who works at that company. And then he ends up digging in and find out the real story behind the company. So I wrote it to be very,

to be very specific about the tech industry and to be very, in some sense, some extent it's a farce, but you're not gonna get the jokes unless you're part of the tech industry, unless you know the startup world. So the book is not for your typical mystery reader, the mystery book clubs, the library book clubs, and my audience doesn't read the New York Times. I don't know if you all do, but they're not reading the book reviews in the New York Times. So I said, where are they? Well, they're building startups.

They're building technology. They are looking for investment. Well, these are all places on map. I'm in accelerators. I'm in the investment community. I'm writing articles. I'm mentoring these startups. So one thing I did that ended up being very successful was I started writing articles about what investors are looking for when you pitch to them.

And I published those on my blog, I published on one substack, I published on one media. It took off on media. I now have 50,000 followers, my articles get read by tens of thousands of people. And I did that, yeah, sure, I wanted to help the startups, but I also wanted to promote my own book. So every article, I give some very useful advice. Here's what your pitch deck needs to be, here's what the investment world is looking for, here's what your marketing process needs to be. But at the end, I say, if you enjoyed this, please take a look at my book. And a little blurb at the end. My own self-marketing.

I own self-advertising, and I'm getting in front of 50,000 of the exact kind of people that would enjoy the book, which is not your typical novel audience. A lot of the people don't even read novels for the most part, but if it's about their world, it's about hackers and startups and founders and Silicon Valley, that they'll read. So that's been my process.

Jim James (10:16.686)
I love that, that as you say, you've got a really a niche product in that sense, haven't you? And you're really taking the classic niche marketing approach.

DC Palter (10:21.185)
Yes, yes, yes. But the great thing is the niche is big. So when I was making network simulators, our niche was a few thousand companies. With novels, there's something like 50,000 startups being started every year, and there's probably two founders and five tech people all over the world.

And, you know, so this is not going to be a New York Times bestseller, but the audience of the startup community, the Silicon Valley community is tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. So it's a niche, it's a relatively small niche, but it's a big enough niche that you can do very well with selling a book.

Jim James (11:07.346)
Although actually, to be a New York Times bestseller, the volume that you need to sell is not that great. It's about getting the high sell-through rate in the first seven days. The same with Amazon. It's remarkably low, but you need to get traction very quickly in the first 48 hours to get up the charts, and then it boosts the book if it sees you already doing well.

DC Palter (11:11.821)
Yeah. Well, it's true.

DC Palter (11:19.565)
Yeah. Yes.

DC Palter (11:25.68)
Yes.

Jim James (11:33.995)
just for anyone that's worried about. And that's why some of these publishers will lay out the, you know, the advanced copies so that people review them, of course, as well.

DC Palter (11:43.597)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Jim James (11:48.054)
DC, you know, you're based in LA, and you have a background as well with Japan, and you publish under Japonica Publications as well, I think. So, with the writing and the style, can you give any guidance on what works for people that are looking at using, in effect, their authority in one domain, which is in your tech and your Japan world,

DC Palter (11:58.289)
Mm-hmm.

DC Palter (12:13.797)
Mm-hmm.

Jim James (12:17.166)
to lead people so that it doesn't seem too jarring because if you're talking about investor decks and then go, oh, and by the way, it may be slightly, here's an, people may be slightly bemused by that. How have you, how have you, feel like managing the transition from an editorial point of view?

DC Palter (12:23.758)
Yes.

DC Palter (12:29.616)
Here's a novel.

DC Palter (12:34.874)
Yes.

DC Palter (12:41.617)
Uh, so in terms of the editorial, uh, when I'm writing about startups, when I'm giving advice about how to build a startup, um, the writer hat stays on, but the novelist hat goes away. I'm...

Most of what I write about comes out of working with startups and the accelerators. It's the same questions over and over again. It's the same mistakes. It's the same misunderstanding. It's looking at pitch decks and saying, here's what's wrong about it. So all of that information is just like inside screaming saying, I need, people need to understand this. And so as a writer, my, it's just natural for me to write those out

and do an article, one or two articles a week about what you need to know. It's just the same thing as coming out of regular conversations. Then the hard part then, as you say though, is like, okay, so I've written this article about here's what you need to do to talk to investors in 2023. And getting to the end and saying, and if you enjoyed that, read my novel. So...

Part of it is that I don't, yes, they're very different things, but it's the same audience. And I separate them. I get to the end of the article, I wrap up the article, and then there's a blurb at the end saying, if you enjoyed this, here's my novel. So I don't talk about the novel in the article itself, except when I'm writing articles about Theranos and what happened there, and then it's a direct tie-in. But for the rest of it, I separate it, and it just looks like an advertisement

So it's not I don't try to weave it into the story

Jim James (14:20.706)
Okay. And then are you also offering some of your expertise to people that might want you to review their deck, but maybe don't have a budget to pay you for that? How are you responding to that request?

DC Palter (14:31.353)
Yes, yes, yes. So.

DC Palter (14:37.633)
Yeah, so...

Pretty much every day I get two or three requests on LinkedIn saying, I'm a startup founder, can you look at my deck? You know, you've written this article, it resonated with me, can you look at my deck and give me some advice? And it's kind of overwhelming because I do want to help out, but it was a lot. And then I said, well, you know, these people want a favor from me. It takes my time. I charge them, except they don't have enough to pay me for it. If they had money to pay me, they wouldn't need my help writing the pitch deck.

So I do it on a limited basis, but I have turned it into a service that says, well, you want a favor from me. It's going to take me somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour of my time to go through your pitch deck and write up my notes about it. And I want a favor from you. You have to buy my novel. It costs you, you know, the ebook is $5.99, so it's not like you're going to go broke. And you have to write a review on Amazon. Now everyone's like, oh my God, I have to write a review? I'm not a writer.

No, the thing about Amazon is it's about quantity rather than quality. All you need is two lines, right? It's just like give it five stars or four stars, you know, be honest about it. And just say, you know, I enjoy the book, a great story about Silicon Valley, something like that. That's all I need, right? Because you just need the quantity. I don't need like a two page analysis of everything that went on the book. But I want you to read the book. I want you to enjoy it. If you don't enjoy it, that's fine too. You know, be honest.

You want my time, I want a favor back from you. So I've turned this into a bit of a service. If you want a pitch deck review, read my novel and write a review and I'll read your pitch deck and give you a review.

Jim James (16:25.41)
Great, DC Palter. And I love the way that you're using your expertise to also introduce people to another aspect of you, which is as a novelist, which must also give people a little bit of a surprise to see that you're a bit of a Renaissance man in that sense. Is this something that you've done with regarding the book, uh, marketing To Kill a Unicorn? Being very careful with my words now.

DC Palter (16:36.365)
Yes. It is.

DC Palter (16:51.813)
Hmm

Jim James (16:55.698)
any advice on what has not worked with marketing.

DC Palter (16:59.661)
So what everyone says is, you know, if you can get in with the big publishers, great, then they'll do the marketing and they'll get you in New York Times, wonderful. If you get there, congratulations to you. That's a very small percentage of the people, the rest is your choices, small press or self-publishing.

As soon as you self-publish, on day one, you'll be inundated with people saying, your book is wonderful. I'd be happy to do a review for you. And then you're like, okay, great. And then they say, and send me a check, send me a demo for $100. And you get dozens of these reviews or posting on their blog sites or feature in different places. They can get you some readership.

But if you look at the ROI from it, which as a business person, you always have to look at the ROI, it's not gonna pay for itself. So if you just want readers and you don't care that you're kind of throwing some money away, then that's fine. But if you're looking at actually making money from your book, don't waste your time on people offering you their marketing services for the most part.

Jim James (18:11.422)
Yeah, that's really good advice. I had that when I published my books as well, that people said, as you say, everyone of us has this, your book is wonderful. I'd love to help. Let me give you a review and then you get this thing in the tail. So that's fantastic advice there. And I think this idea that you're really focusing in on, on where your audience are is terrific. DC, so you've got the first book, To Kill a Unicorn.

DC Palter (18:22.433)
Yes. Yeah.

DC Palter (18:33.393)
Mm-hmm.

Jim James (18:40.126)
Is there going to be another book coming out?

DC Palter (18:42.381)
Absolutely, and I'm happy to announce here on your show for the very first time the Second book is in the same series is the same characters This one's more less of a farce and more of a cyber thriller about government conspiracies and terrorists It's called Countdown to Decryption C2D Countdown to Decryption and it will be released by the same publisher Panda Moon Publishing on March 20th so

Jim James (19:10.43)
Okay, well, that's coming up very, very soon. So the timing, timing will be perfect for that. So if you've got the same characters, presumably in To Kill a Unicorn, the company might have been killed, but the main actors were not killed off.

DC Palter (19:12.598)
Yep.

DC Palter (19:19.515)
Yes.

DC Palter (19:25.189)
So yes, in the first book, it's about this evil startup, like Theranos, so the main characters are trying to figure out what's going on there. In the second book, same characters, but the friend of one of the main characters is killed under, murdered under suspicious circumstances. The government says it's a home invasion robbery, and that doesn't make any sense. So the main character is a hacker,

DC Palter (19:55.203)
and finds the last email that was opened was a message from the terrorists saying, and well, and it wasn't random because she's a human rights lawyer working in the Middle East. And she gets this message saying, attached is a file that has the plans for a terrorist attack. You need to get this to the authorities and stop it. And she's murdered five minutes later. So that starts the action

Jim James (20:23.435)
Oh.

DC Palter (20:25.123)
character needs to figure out how to open this, because he doesn't have the password, how to open this file, and also figure out who murdered her. So it's a grand adventure.

Jim James (20:36.046)
Yeah, I can see that. Oprah surely will listen to this show and be calling you. Yeah, maybe she can ring me and I can offer to broker an introduction because I know you'll be too busy to take her call, so I'll offer to help. That's terrific. Yeah, you're more than welcome. So, DC, if there is a tip, one tip that you'd like to suggest to, not just

DC Palter (20:39.609)
Yes, it's right up Oprah's exactly the kind of book she focuses on. Yes, oh that would be great, we can go on together, yes. I'll keep that in mind. Thank you for that offer.

Jim James (21:06.174)
aspiring authors, although you're very smartly taking the experience you've got from the startup world and seeing the book as a startup. What would be the one piece of advice you give to me and my fellow unnoticed entrepreneur?

DC Palter (21:21.125)
So I described what I did that works for me, which was writing articles about startups and getting in front of the audience that way and being at startup events and accelerators and places like that. That's what works for me because that's where my audience is. So forget about what I did, that's not gonna work for you.

Well, actually, it might work for you, Jim, but for the rest of the audience out there, it's probably not going to work for them because that's not who their audience is. So don't think about what I did, think about the process. And it's the same for whether this is a B2B piece of IT equipment or whether it's a $6 book. Know your audience and find a way to get in front of them that is probably not the front door, is probably not the way everyone else is telling you to do it because that's going to be really expensive and not very effective because there's a lot of noise.

You need to find the back doors, you need to find the places where these people are at, in a way that you can do affordably and still get them to see you.

Jim James (22:26.154)
I think it's brilliant advice to, as you say, to see the process that you've taken, to find where people are. And you've say very innovatively taken your writing and also the offer of looking at their pitch decks to then do a review of your book, right? It's a

DC Palter (22:38.181)
Mm-hmm.

DC Palter (22:43.469)
Yeah, it's not the way most people are going to be promoting their novels, but that's what works for my audience with my book. So kind of think about it the same way as you said, you know, lateral thinking. The front door is going to be really crowded. You're going to have to fight your way through. You're going to have to have a lot of money. You go to the back door, it's wide open and but you need to find a way to get around to the back door.

Jim James (23:05.942)
Yeah, no, that's wonderful. And DC, I'm asking now people like yourself, who are readers and writers, any books or podcasts that you'd recommend that you enjoy that we can put on our list for reading?

DC Palter (23:23.865)
So if you like my novel, which is a crazy fun story about all the insanity of Silicon Valley, there's one other book out there that's kind of similar in that way. It's called The Big Disruption by Jessica Powell. So if you like the TV show, Silicon Valley. I think both of my book and her book fit into that same sort of tone, and you'd like both of these books as well.

Jim James (23:51.982)
Okay, that's the great disruption. Okay. All right, and it's called the great disruption.

DC Palter (23:52.725)
And she can use the publicity as well, because she has the same challenge I do.

The Big Disruption, sorry, The Big Disruption by Jessica Powell.

Jim James (24:02.454)
Jessica Powell. Okay, we'll put a link to that as well. And DC, if you want to find out more about you and also maybe to get a copy of To Kill a Unicorn or even an advanced copy of your next book, where can they go?

DC Palter (24:09.315)
Mm-hmm.

DC Palter (24:13.009)
Mm-hmm.

DC Palter (24:16.305)
So the easiest description, maybe not the best place, but the easiest description is my website, dcpalter.com. If you want to know more about me, then probably go to LinkedIn, DC Palter on LinkedIn, it'll have my background. And if you've got a startup, that's kind of the place to reach out to me.

Jim James (24:35.294)
Okay, that's wonderful. And for those people that are going to be going to the YouTube channel to see this, then we can absolutely put that on the screen. So you can see that on the screen. And there is a very nice image there of rocket ship going down. And, and you can see you can get the book there from DCPolter.com. DC, thank you so much for joining us and bringing really an innovative view to the show of

DC Palter (24:45.082)
Great.

DC Palter (24:52.56)
Yes.

Jim James (25:04.842)
marketing with a product that people may not have thought about how to take traditional startup practices and apply them to book promotions. So thank you so much for bringing us that insight today.

DC Palter (25:17.049)
Thanks for having me Jim, it was a pleasure.

Jim James (25:19.95)
So DC Palter, an established entrepreneur in his own right, and now really on a mission to write great novels for a targeted audience. And really wanted to have him on the show because DC shows us that there is always a way, a method to get to the audience. And often it's an unconventional way, but also that we all have something of value for our audience and we can arbitrage that value.

In his case, he's arbitraging his investment advisory expertise in return for reviews. What do you have that your audience needs from you that you can offer them in return for what you need? That would be one of the wonderful takeaways that I've got from today. So thank you for joining DC Palter and myself, Jim James here in the UK. And he's giving us a nice wave for those of you that can see on the screen and for those of you listening,

he's giving us a very nice royal wave. And until we meet again, I just encourage you to keep on communicating. If you can leave a review on the podcast player that you listened to this show, because just like his book reviews, podcast reviews are really the way that the players will help us to know what people think of us and to help promote them. Thank you very much for joining me, Jim James, on this episode of the Unnoticed Entrepreneur on Tour. Meet again, just encourage you to keep on communicating.