Your First 10K Readers… the phrase itself sings a sweet song to any aspiring author dreaming about making a full-time income by writing a book.
Imagine the sheer excitement of being able to share your book with 10,000 readers – thousands of people around the world eagerly turning the page to consume the words you’ve written.
It’s not too good to be true; in fact, with self-publishing, thousands of authors have built a business from their books and earn a full-time income through their writing.
Many of those authors even share their process on how to do it, and Nick Stephenson is one of them.
Well-known in the indie author community, Nick is not only known for his success as an author, but also for his self-publishing courses for authors.
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Our reviews are meant to be unbiased, 3rd party reviews, but we will speak up if there is a scam or a clearly better option.
In this article, we’ll review Nick Stephenson's flagship online course, Your First 10K Readers. Here's what we'll cover:
#1 – Who is Nick Stephenson?
Nick Stephenson is a bestselling author, course creator, and entrepreneur from England. Although he is best known as a novelist of mystery and crime thriller books, such as his Leopold Blake series, Nick Stephenson writes both fiction and nonfiction.
After graduating law school and working various jobs to make ends meet, Nick soon discovered the self-publishing world, and decided to pursue a career as a novelist. While he worked in marketing, he started self-publishing the books he wrote on Amazon’s KDP.
Through advanced marketing techniques, Nick Stephenson was able to grow his income and audience, which allowed him to sell more books and leave his full-time job to make a living from his writing. He then created an online training course called Your First 10K Readers, to teach other authors his strategies.
Today, Nick Stephenson has written over seven books, and has three online courses: Your First 10K Readers, The Author Marketing Machine, and StoryEngines.
Nick Stephenson: Author Profile
Best known as an author, Nick Stephenson has written a variety of fiction and nonfiction books. He is a multiple time bestselling author, and his novels are popular in the crime, thriller, and suspense genres.
Related: How to Write a Novel
His popular fiction series, known as The Leopold Blake series, is a crime thriller that was first published in 2013, and has seven books in the series. Panic, Departed, and Paydown are some of the bestselling titles in this series. The books can be read in any order.
In addition to the fiction novels, Nick Stephenson is also known for his nonfiction work, which includes books for other authors on how to grow their audience, like Reader Magnets, and Supercharge Your Kindle Sales.
#2 – Nick Stephenson courses
Nick has built an online platform with his online training courses. He develops training to help other authors scale their books and increase readership.
The majority of his courses are focused on book marketing techniques, but he also has a writing development course for fiction authors.
These are Nick Stephenson’s courses:
- Your First 10K Readers. An advanced marketing course for authors to grow their audience through
- StoryEngines. A writing development course for authors looking to improve their storytelling through detailed story structure and character development.
- The Ultimate Guide to Boxed Sets Promotions. A bonus course that teaches a strategy for boxed set promotions, including how to create, launch, and promote a boxed set.
- The Author Marketing Machine. This bonus course focuses on author landing pages, email marketing, and boosting traffic through keywords and Facebook ads.
- The 60 Day Author. This bonus course includes material to help you write your book in 60 days, covering topics on planning, plotting, and structure, as well as cover design and formatting.
#3 – Your First 10K Readers course review
Your First 10K Readers is the flagship Nick Stephenson course. It was the first course he launched, and remains to be his core product for authors.
In a nutshell, Your First 10K Readers is an advanced marketing course for self-published authors. It does not include content on how to write and publish a book, but it does focus on marketing strategies for after you’ve written your book.
The online training is delivered with high quality videos, PDFs, and audio recordings. Due to the nature of the content, the video-heavy training suits the content best, since the video walk-throughs allow you to see exactly what Nick is referring to.
The course isn’t just a step-by-step tutorial, but includes specific examples of authors to help teach you the strategies. What I appreciated about Nick’s use of examples is that he makes sure to use authors from a variety of other genres.
Here are the modules for Your First 10K Readers:
- Module 1: Rule the Retailers. This section dives in to setting up your book for success during pre-published phase of your book. It covers the Amazon algorithm, keywords and categories, book descriptions, book covers, pricing strategy, and exclusivity vs broad reach.
- Module 2: Drive Endless Traffic. This section focuses on launching your book and marketing strategies. You’ll learn about building a launch team, merchandising and promotion tactics, as well as book ads.
- Module 3: Convert Traffic into Subscribers. This section covers more advanced, long-term marketing strategic such as book funnels, author websites, and email marketing.
- Module 4: Engage Your Audience. This section goes into selling strategies, book reviews, and social media.
- Module 5: The Ultimate Launch Template. This section is all about your book’s launch, with content on building a launch team, and a complete launch promo template.
- Module 6: Scaling Up with Facebook Ads. As the name implies, this section is all about Facebook advertising, and covers fundamental topics on the Ads Manager platform, as well as how to create, monitor, and scale your ads.
In addition to the core modules offered, there are some supplemental and bonus material included as well, such as:
- Expert Interviews with self-publishing experts like Mark Dawson, Nick Loper, and Joanna Penn.
- Group Coaching Call recordings of previous sessions.
- Bonus: The 60 Day Author, which takes you through a quick overview on actually writing and producing your book.
- Bonus: Tools Overview, which goes over must-have tools for Keyword & Category Research, Websites & Landing Pages, Automation, and more.
- Private Facebook Group, where you can join the private course community and get support from fellow students and authors.
- Supplemental eBook Cheat Sheet (eBook that recaps all course content). Overview, quick and easy reference guide as you go through the course.
How much does Your First 10K Readers cost?
Your First 10K Readers has two options: $597 one time payment, or $59 per month for 12 months.
With the course’s single payment option of $597, you can save $111. It includes the full course, lifetime access, a 30-day 100% guarantee, and possible bonuses (depending on what’s being offered at that time).
With the course’s payment plan, you pay 12 monthly installments of $59, brining a total course price of $708. It also includes the full course, lifetime access, a 30-day 100% guarantee, and possible bonuses. This option allows you to flexibly spread out your investment throughout the year.
#4 – The pros & cons
As with anything, there are some pros and cons to consider when it comes to Nick Stephenson's course.
Remember that we are weighing the pros and cons in a general context, and what some authors may consider a pro, might be a con to their situation, and vice versa.
Pros: Your First 10K Readers course
Overall, this is a solid book marketing course for authors, especially those looking to grow their platform to build an author business.
It is heavy on the marketing and tech side of things, but if you’re ready and willing to learn the material and implement the process, it might be worth the investment.
If you have the drive to learn, are tech-savvy (or willing to learn), and are looking for a solid marketing strategy to grow your platform and readership, this content in this course will be invaluable.
Here are the main pros of the Your First 10K Readers course:
- Specific strategy without overwhelming. This course is a blueprint for Nick’s specific marketing strategies.
- Supplemental material. Bonus content includes expert interviews, how-to’s and reviews for specific technology tools, and access to private Facebook group.
- Not genre-specific. Unlike some of the other courses out there, what Nick Stephenson teaches can be effective for both nonfiction and fiction authors.
- Guided videos. The videos feature slides, with audio of Nick walking students through the material in a presentation-like format.
- Support. Students in need of assistance can reach out for support via the website, or comment in the private Facebook group, where Nick often responds.
Cons: Your First 10K Readers course
Although there are plenty of great things about the course, there are also some downsides we noticed.
However, it’s important to note that while these may be considered disadvantages for one author, they may not be considered negative aspects to another author.
Because everyone’s goals and needs are different, we approached these disadvantages by considering the majority.
Overall, the biggest factor to note is that Your First 10K Readers is an advanced marketing course; it is NOT a course designed to walk you through the entire self-publishing process.
But if you read through Nick Stephenson’s content promoting the course, such as his emails and sales page, you already know that, since he explains exactly what type of course this is.
Here are the main cons of Your First 10K Readers:
- No in-depth course material on how to write and publish your book. This course is designed for authors who do not need support on writing and publishing a book. This course is specifically for those who have a written book they want to promote.
- Advanced marketing technology. If you’re not tech-savvy and are new to the marketing scene, it can be difficult to set up some of the tools the strategy uses.
- Additional services and tools that cost money. Many of the strategies you will learn in the course rely on using additional services and tools, which costs extra.
- Not for beginners. Again, this is an advanced course. If you’re completely new to the self-publishing scene, you might be a bit overwhelmed with this course material.
- Video-centric. The course is delivered primarily through video, as is standard for many online courses. However, if you’re a learner that struggles to grasp content via video, you might lose engagement quickly.
#5 – Is Your First 10K Readers for you?
Overall, Your First 10K Readers is a solid course for authors looking to implement an advanced marketing strategy for increasing book sales, growing an author platform, and building an online business.
Whether or not this course is worth the investment will depend on your own author goals, and individual needs.
Your First 10K Readers might be a good choice if you are…
- Looking for advanced marketing strategies. If you already know marketing basics and want to uplevel your strategy, this course is a good choice.
- Are tech-savvy. This course relies on the use of other platforms and tech know-how, so be prepared to learn how to navigate other technology when implementing these strategies.
- Don’t need help with writing and producing your book. If you’re past the book writing and publishing phase, you’re ready for this course.
- Plan to build a book business. If you plan to publish more books, and grow your platform, this course might be a good choice for you.
Your First 10K Readers is probably NOT a good choice if you are…
- A beginner self-published author. New to the self-publishing scene? Then you are probably not ready to learn the content in this course. Try starting with a first-time author’s course instead.
- Looking for direct assistance/hand-holding/accountability. If you need coaching, accountability, or one-on-one support, this course is not for you since it doesn’t offer much hand-holding. Try a course with personalized coaching included.
- Need assistance writing and publishing your book. If you are still learning how to write and publish a book, you’re not ready for this course.
- Not driven to implement the marketing strategies. If you don’t have the drive to get down in the trenches with the content and really implement the strategies being taught, this course is not for you. It’s not a done-for-you service; you will have to learn the process, then implement the steps on your own.
#6 – Nick Stephenson alternatives
There are a few big-name book marketing courses and programs available to self-published authors.
Some alternatives to Nick Stephensons's Your First 10K Readers are Mark Dawson's Self Publishing Formula and Chandler Bolt's Sell More Books.
To be completely transparent, we are part of the Self-Publishing School family, but our mission on SelfPublishing.com is to provide our readers with third party, unbiased reviews.
If you're curious to see how our author education programs like Sell More Books matches up, here's a quick comparison chart.
Some key differences to note are that our programs include 1-1 coaching with an expert bestselling author, mastermind community support, and comprehensive online training.
#7 – Final rating
Hopefully, this Nick Stephenson course review has given you clarity on whether or not this course is for you at this point in your author journey.
If you’re still on the fence, do some more research, and look into similar courses to compare which one best fits your needs.
Related: Best Self-Publishing Courses
The good news is that you are taking steps towards investing in yourself…even if you are just starting out with the idea to write a book, or if you have a clear vision on how to scale your book business.
All it takes is the first step to decide on a goal; now it’s time to get clarity on how to achieve that goal, and work towards your dream.
Do you have other questions about the Nick Stephenson course?
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