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Updated January 23, 2026 Reviewed by Margaret Foley
This is Part 2 of a series.
In the first post in this series, I discussed why I chose to publish my books through traditional publishers and how my first book came to be titled Changing Children’s Lives with Hypnosis: A Journey to the Center. My hope is that discussing my experiences will help other writers who are contemplating writing their own books.
I had no idea how many copies I would be able to sell of my first book. To build interest, I set up a website. I hired a public relations firm that helped me appear on local television slots around the country and on one national-level syndicated television show.
I appeared on many radio podcasts, happily participated in many podcast interviews, provided interviews to reporters from multiple magazines and newspapers, participated in book signings at bookstores, and started this blog for Psychology Today.
I delivered lectures at medical institutions and conferences around the country. Notably, I did not have a social media following. I did advertise on Google, Facebook, and Amazon, as well as in local high school newsletters.
I also promoted the book to my patients. I encouraged over 100 people to write Amazon reviews for the book, and it garnered an average rating of 4.9 stars. (I had been told that once the number of Amazon reviewers exceeds 50, its algorithms are more likely to promote the book.)
Four years after this intense publicity effort, I can share that most of it yielded virtually no book sales, as far as I know. My PR firm suggested that the publicity helped promote my “brand.”
The publicity that did seem to increase the book’s distribution included:
Including ebook sales, all of this effort yielded total sales to date of just over 2,000 books, the majority of which occurred because of direct contact with me (e.g., with patients, friends, and lecture attendees).
The book definitely did not sell itself. While some people told me that they had recommended the book to friends, as far as I know, this only led to a small number of sales.
In retrospect, I think the book would have done better had I had a big social media following, and if the word “hypnosis” had not featured prominently on the cover. I think I knew this intuitively when I wanted to relegate that word to the subtitle.
“Hypnosis” carries a lot of misleading negative historical baggage, as I have discussed in a previous blog. At one of my book signings, a passerby looked at my book cover and said, “Ewww, hypnosis.”
What defines a book’s success? If the number of book sales is important, major publishers desire book sales in the tens of thousands. To make it to a best-sellers list, sales need to exceed thousands in a week.
For professionals or business owners, a published, polished book (even if self-published) makes them appear more credible, and thus they can become more successful in their professional ventures.
For other authors, as long as the book touches their target audience (such as family members and friends), this is sufficient to be defined as successful.
I defined success as being able to reach as many people as possible with the idea that hypnosis can help them improve their mental and physical health, whether they worked with a professional or on their own.
Thus, while the sale of 2,000 books was very nice, and I know that the book was shared among some people who read it, I had not been able to reach the vast number of people out there who could benefit.
So, I set out to write The Life Guide for Teens: Harnessing Your Inner Power to be Healthy, Happy, and Confident, which would teach people how they can help themselves using many techniques I have taught in my clinical practice, but not exclusively related to hypnosis.
I applied many of the lessons I had learned in writing my first book to this new project. I kept “hypnosis” out of the title. I planned to choose a much more colorful cover. I wanted to reach as wide an audience as possible, but I knew that I needed to pick a specific audience.
These decisions make it easier to target marketing. This allows book retailers to categorize the book for its intended audience through online campaigns (e.g., if you liked this book, you might like…) and for placement in certain sections in physical stores.
For an author, it is very helpful to keep their target reader in mind while deciding how to write a book. I even had the advantage of having my adolescent patients read and give me feedback on chapter drafts and contribute to the “teen to teen” sections in my new book.
Thus, I think the book was written in a way that would appeal to teens who still read books, which was an anticipatable hurdle, no doubt.
And then, an unanticipated major hurdle: My book agent informed me that no major publisher would be interested in even looking at the proposal for my new book because sales of my first book were dismal, in their eyes.
She said that even if I had written the most amazing book in the world, the publishers would be uninterested because all they care about is sales. She said that she knows this is unfair, but that this is the state of publishing today.
My agent suggested that the publisher that took my first book might be interested, because they were a small publisher that has a different publishing model than the major publishers, which works out financially for a small publisher even with books that sell in the low thousands.
Fortunately, my publisher offered me a contract for my second book, and it was finally published early last year. Its pace of sales has been much faster than that of my first book, but even so, its total sales to date remain under 3,000.
Unfortunately, the successful, albeit modest, publication record of my first two books did not translate into an easier road for my third book, which I will relate in Part 3 of this series.
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Ran D. Anbar, M.D., FAAP, is board-certified in both pediatric pulmonology and general pediatrics. He is the author of Changing Children’s Lives with Hypnosis and the new book The Life Guide for Teens.
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The best way to begin something new—in love, work, and life.
Self Tests are all about you. Are you outgoing or introverted? Are you a narcissist? Does perfectionism hold you back? Find out the answers to these questions and more with Psychology Today.