Author Success Story: Soren Kaplan

Almost exactly one year ago, I launched a website for a new client: Soren Kaplan. I must confess … I always did like the site that we built for him, Leapfrogging.com, but I didn’t have any idea quite how successful it would be.

After quickly browsing his recent statistics, I found that Soren has steadily been getting over 500 visitors each month to his site. That’s pretty impressive.

With that in mind, I posed some questions to Soren about what he believes is the secret to his success. Hopefully, these ideas will help other authors take their websites to the next level. Enjoy!


Who built your website? How was the experience?

Smart Author Sites.  Entire site for under $2k!

Which social networking sites do you regularly participate in? Facebook? Twitter? GoodReads? LinkedIn? Any others?

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

How has your online presence (be it through a website or social networking profiles) increased your visibility/book sales?

Social network is the name of the game.  Also writing for blogs like ldrlb.co and fastcompany.com provides opportunities for others to tweet out and promote articles that reinforce the book.

What is your “secret” to achieving this success? Were there any tricks or creative ideas (i.e. a contest) that you used?

Use Hootsuite to automate twitter posting.  I post 5-7 custom tweets per day and the system does it for me so I spend literally no time myself tweeting!

Is there anything you would do differently if you were starting over again?

I would be sure to integrate Facebook from the start so people could “like” my home page and each and every blog post.

What is the greatest lesson you’ve learned in the process of building your online presence as an author?

It’s a journey, not a one-time event!

How and where do you promote your website? Is the URL on business cards? Your email signature?

I’m constantly writing for blogs where my website is listed with my bio, business cards, email signature, twitter, Facebook, Linkedin.

Final words of wisdom for any new authors wondering how to get started….

Don’t worry about book sales!  Keep writing and following your passion and the sales will come.

Keep an eye on what your ultimate goal is… Is it really book sales, or is it about finding paid speaking opportunities, consulting projects, or something else?  And remember, book marketing is a journey, not a one-time event.