Editing the Format of your Book for Social Media Sharing (with examples)

He has a million followers as a book influencer . . .

Selling books is so hard.

These days, they get discovered on social media. That’s not going to change.

Which means that your book needs to be formatted in a friendly way for sharing online.

Those shares can (and do) result in millions of free impressions for your book.

Yet, I’ve never heard an author doing a social media edit of their book.

I did.

I hired one of the biggest book influencers in the world to review my manuscript. Their job was to suggest ways to improve my book content's chances of getting shared and going viral.

I wrote about his five suggestions on my big book launch post.

Today, I’m going to dial in on formatting. I’ve read at least 20 books on book marketing. And listened to at least 50 podcasts on it and have never heard anybody mention this before.

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Alex Wieckowski 📚 (the influencer I hired) told me he found a section in my previous book (The Obvious Choice) that he was sure would go viral but couldn’t share it.

Why?

Because of the interior layout.

Yeah, seriously.

The lines he wanted to share spread across two pages. He can’t take a picture of two pages for social media. It wouldn’t perform well. So, he didn’t share it.

How your book is formatted impacts whether or not key material gets shared.

Which impacts your sales.

Why haven’t you ever heard about this before?

Because you can’t measure lost sales that never happen if a potential reader never discovers your book. What you don’t see and can’t measure, however, is very often more valuable than anything you can see and can measure.

Proactive book marketing > Reactive book marketing

How many sales did I lose because Alex couldn’t share that passage from my book? I’ve no idea. But the guy has over a million followers across social media. So, a few.

This time, I’m getting ahead of the problem.

I got the first-pass design pages back from Unhinged Habits last week. Printed them out. Get my red-ink muji ballpoint pen ready.

My editor, Alex, and I have all gone through the manuscript and highlighted the most compelling aphorisms and tidbits.

My review’s looking for two things:

1. Ensure all key phrases are one page.

2. Lists and bullets don’t start on one page and end on another.

Yes, reader experience is the priority. But moving a paragraph or two around is usually no problem. You just need to get in front of it at the design stage.

Two examples of book format changes for social media

Example 1: Moving a paragraph up to bump a full list onto the next page

Here’s an example of a three-part list early in the book that crosses two pages.

Tap the image to see the list crossing over two pages and paragraph I'll move to put it all on one.

There’s three points in the “few pieces of advice” list. If I move the “when I asked my friend […] told me” passage above the list, it’ll bump the list to the next page and all will be together.

As a bonus, my book title is now right above the list and will appear if people take a picture of it.

Example 2: Reordering an image so a key component appears together

First, check out this illustration. It’s a compass. You prob read it clockwise. The order doesn’t much matter so long as ‘reflection’ is last (in the far-left spot.

(Oh, and pls ignore the dumb duplication error. That’ll be corrected too.)

If it was just this image, its order is fine.

But there’s text that follows the image going deeper into each element. Multiple early readers highlighted the ‘risk spectrum’ section as being particularly compelling.

Uh oh, look at the above. The three risk spectrum elements split across two pages in the design. No es Bueno, mi hermano.

Easy fix though:

Flip the order of ‘risk spectrum’ and ‘trajectory’.

That’ll move the risk spectrum section up the page with enough room to have all three elements. Trajectory getting relegated to the next page está totalmente bien.

I’ll get the image changed too.

Is this really going to sell more books?

I dunno.

I think so.

Maybe. Probably. I mean, it should.

It’s easy and free to do. So doesn’t hurt.

I can’t stop thinking about just how hard it is to sell books. And that, when it comes to books, good enough isn’t good enough.

For a book to break through, it’s got to be truly great.

And, even then, that’s often not enough––the book still has to achieve a critical mass of readership in order to become a hit. Some do it solely on merit but that’s rare.

I finished reviewing the first pass pages of Unhinged Habits yesterday and started crying at my kitchen table. Alison asked why.

“It’s so, so good”, I told her. She gave me a hug and said she was proud of me and that felt nice.

Years of work. Early mornings. Trade-offs. Hard decisions. It all came together into this beautiful thing I created. Into this important thing I created. Into this thing that’s going to help you become an (even more) amazing parent, doting spouse, better friend, and caring grown-up son.

But here's the thing: even great books die in obscurity.

That's why I'm obsessing over these tiny formatting details. That's why I'm moving paragraphs around for social media. That's why I'm thinking about page breaks and image placement.

Unhinged Habits is truly a great book. It deserves every chance I can give it of catching the lucky break it needs to break through.

These small formatting tweaks simply increase the surface area for luck. My book deserves to be discovered and come hell or high water, I’m going to do everything I can to make that happen. And I hope you do as well.

-Jon

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P.P.S. Please send me a connection request on LinkedIn: Jonathan Goodman