Inside the Metrics of James Swanwick’s Triple #1 Amazon Release
How Strategy, Data (and a Ton of Hard Work) Turned a Book Into an Eight-Figure Lead-Generation Engine
From 16 Rejections to The #1 New Release
James Swanwick is a former ESPN Sports Center anchor and the founder of Alcohol-Free Lifestyle, an eight-figure coaching company that has helped thousands of high achievers quit drinking without willpower, rehab or AA.
His program is so effective that a 2023 study conducted by University of Washington concluded it could help participants reduce their drinking by up to 98%. These stats blow other methods for quitting out if the water.
But when James set out publish a book that would share his secrets with the world, his journey began with a hard “no” from 16 major publishers.
“I pitched 16 publishers. They all said no. So I said, ‘F them—I’ll publish it myself and make millions.
Even if a traditional publisher had said yes, it would’ve taken two years just to get it to print—and they’d take most of the profits. I’d rather bet on myself.”
Rather than give up, he partnered with New Wave Press—leading to results even big houses chase: a #1 New Release in three Amazon categories (Alcoholism Recovery, Alcoholism, Healing) and a first-year sales pace outstripping 95% of traditional book launches.
For James, the book wasn’t just a win—it’s fast becoming his company’s primary source of authority, daily leads, and impact.
From Messy Draft to Market-Ready in 9 Months
This accelerated timeline meant James could capitalize on market momentum, immediately begin generating leads, and outperform industry averages while competitors were still waiting in the queue.
“If I’d tried to do this alone, it would’ve taken years—if it got done at all. With New Wave, we did it in nine months—and it’s a far superior product.”
What James started with: 50,000+ disorganized words—emails, blog posts, notes, and rough chapters.
What New Wave Press did: We structured, co-wrote, and refined the manuscript for speed and impact, partnering closely with James to make the book resonate for high achievers. Our structured process delivered a professional product in just nine months—less than half the traditional timeline.
In other words: Faster launch. Faster results. No compromises on quality.
How We Engineered CLEAR to Become the #1 New Release on Amazon in THREE Categories
CLEAR was the #1 New Release on Amazon in three categories.
First, let’s establish one core premise: rankings matter.
Why? The higher your book ranks, the more likely it is to get seen by your target audience and the more likely you are to turn those readers into revenue down the line.
But that begs the question: what type of rankings?
You have probably heard of bestseller lists from newspapers like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal — but in today’s media landscape, it turns out that the polish of those “old guard” publications is wearing thin.
What matters in the digital (and, gulp, AI) era is data. And no retailer has more customer data than Amazon.
Amazon rankings are what matter most when it comes to book visibility and as an overall indicator of success. And this isn’t just our opinion.
Members of the “Big 5” publishing houses are quietly admitting this, too. Simon & Schuster CEO Jonathan Karp stated this very sentiment under oath during an anti-trust lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice in 2022:
“Amazon’s bestseller list, in my view, is more important than the New York Times bestseller list.”
Amazon rankings are what the biggest publishers in the world base their financial decisions on because unlike traditional outlets like NYT and WSJ who curate “weighted” lists that amount to little more than an “editor’s choice” column, the Amazon bestseller lists actually track what’s selling by volume — and what readers are actually buying.
So, we followed the data and optimized for Amazon directly by doing extensive keyword research that informed how we chose the subtitle of the book itself.
The results we uncovered were quite interesting, to say the least.
This is the scoring system we used to choose the winning subtitle.
Our original subtitle for the book was “The Only Neuroscience-Based Method For High Achievers to Finally Break Free From The Grip of Alcohol.”
Everybody on the team liked it, but our research pointed us in a different direction. We utilized proprietary software to analyze relevant keywords across all titles in the space and chose a specific phrase that had relatively high search volume with comparatively low competition score.
Based on these results, we came up with the following subtitle that inserted a full keyword phrase: “The Only Neuroscience-Based Method For High Achievers To Quit Drinking Without Willpower, Rehab or AA.”
This straightforward and strategic approach led to CLEAR skyrocketing up the Amazon charts to #1 three categories: Alcoholism Recovery, Alcoholism, Healing.
Observing the Ripple Effect of Five-Star Reviews
The ripple effect of all the momentum we created was 50+ reviews (average of 4.9 stars) in just 2 months after publication (as of this writing).
This is significant because earning 50 or more Amazon reviews is a milestone that sets books apart in a crowded market. Industry research shows that fewer than 5% of books ever reach 50 reviews on Amazon.
“It’s been the number one new release for almost a month. That didn’t happen by accident—we engineered that with keywords, title testing, and strategic launch planning.”
This milestone is not only a strong indicator of real reader engagement and social proof, but also a key trigger for Amazon’s algorithm to boost a book’s visibility and credibility.
These aren’t just random AI reviews, either. The book has received heartfelt, genuine feedback from people whose lives have been changed by the material. After all, drinking is a problem that affects not only the user, but everybody in their life.
You can scan through some of the reviews in the slider below:
By surpassing milestone of 50 genuine reviews in just 60 days, James’ book joined the top percentile of independently published titles—reflecting both outstanding reader impact and market traction.
This is why we follow the data.
PS: I just checked. We got another one as I was writing this.
Diving Into Sales and Engagement Benchmarks
In its first 60 days after publication, CLEAR has sold 1,718 copies across print, audiobook and ebook formats (as of June 9, 2025 at 4:52pm EST, to be precise).
Here’s the breakdown across different formats:
So, are these numbers good or not? If this is your first time digging into the numbers of a book launch, allow me to lend some perspective for context.
The average self-published non-fiction book sells fewer than 250 copies total in its lifetime. The average traditionally published non-fiction book sells between 500 and 2,000 total copies in its lifetime.
According to a study by Publisher’s Weekly:
“950,000 titles out of the 1.2 million tracked by Nielsen BookScan sold fewer than 99 copies. Another 200,000 sold fewer than 1,000 copies. Only 25,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. The average book in America sells about 500 copies.“
It’s also important to note that James, like the majority of our authors, is most concerned with targeting a specific avatar who is a perfect fit for his high value, high ticket programming.
In this instance, that means CEOs, professionals and top performers in various fields who want to get control of alcohol as a way of upgrading their health, supercharging their already successful careers — and most importantly, improving their relationships with loved ones.
These clients tend to be in their 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. They have most likely struggled for years with the fact that while they are not alcoholics, they know alcohol is dulling their edge. They have likely already tried things like Alcoholics Anonymous, rehab or “white knuckling” it to various degrees of success.
This avatar is very specific and although the book can be utilized by anyone, it’s designed to help a targeted audience. Given those parameters, going as broad as possible to the general population was never the goal. We were shooting for a subset of people with the time, money and motivation to take the next step after reading.
We factored the makeup of that ideal audience into our launch targets.
“I care more about how many books we sell to our dream avatar of prospect…I’d much rather sell less and have a great influx of leads to my coaching program.”
More than raw sales data, we were fascinated by what the engagement metrics revealed about how people in James’ target market are consuming the book.
10,000+ Pages Read
In just the first 60 days post-launch, Swanwick’s book generated over 10,200 Kindle pages read across 250+ readers—that’s the equivalent of nearly 48 entire read-throughs of the 213-page book.
The Kindle stats.
For context, industry data shows most self-published nonfiction books never reach even 10,000 pages read in their entire lifespan. This level of Kindle engagement signals true reader interest and positions the book for continued visibility and profitability on Amazon.
1,200+ Hours Listened
In the book’s first two months, listeners logged over 1,200 hours—averaging 3 hours per person (50% of the audiobook’s total length).
The Audible stats.
This puts the book at the very top of averages for nonfiction, where most books are completed only 35–50% of the way. This means listeners are deeply engaging with James’s message, which maximizes the impact of every coaching and program invitation he makes.
The “Weird” Way New Wave Press Sets (And Hits) Launch Targets
“My first book? I just threw it up on Amazon and hoped for the best. This one? Strategic funnel design, platform placement, launch sequencing, bulk incentives. It’s night and day.”
The answer to that question begins with how we define success.
When setting our launch targets for books, we take a counterintuitive approach. While traditional publishers (and many self-proclaimed book marketing “gurus”) will encourage you to focus on pre-launch and launch week in order to cram as many sales in as possible, we eschew that paradigm.
“Launch week? Why not a launch year?“ we inquire boldly.
Instead of condensing as many sales as possible into a 1-3 week window and setting our targets (read: expectations) against those constraints, at New Wave Press, we broaden the definition of launch from a week to a full year.
This shift in perspective has five immediate effects:
Immediate Effect #1: It significantly reduces the pressure to hit arbitrary metrics and allows the author to focus on the quality of the book itself, not just the marketing blitz.
Immediate Effect #2: It allows for a slow turning of the dial that lets us gradually spread the message of the book across the internet in a more strategic way.
Immediate Effect #3: It encourages the perspective that busy prospective readers probably need to hear a message 5-10 times before remembering to buy something.
Immediate Effect #4: It creates opportunities for influencers to see we are building steam and support us when their calendars open up along the way.
Immediate Effect #5: It supports the concept of creating perennial sellers, not just a “one and done” book that hits hard and fades fast.
Think of it this way…
When your favorite artist goes on tour, they have likely spent a year or more writing the music for their album. Then, they’ll often go all over the world for 1- 2 years just promoting that album. They’re spending just as much time (or more) promoting the music as they did writing it.
They have to sing the same songs every night with just as much enthusiasm as the first night, because despite the fact that they are most likely sick of their own music already — for many people at the show, it might be the first (or only) time they’ll get to hear them live!
Who's bad? Not you. Keep promoting.
For instance, Michael Jackson’s HIStory World Tour ran 82 shows for 13 months from September 1996 to October 1997 — and he was showing up in top form every performance. He was just as concerned about opening night as he was about the finale.
What makes you think you should put in less work than MJ?
The long term approach is how you drive a piece of content into the culture. First, you spend time crafting it into the absolute best it can be. It’ll never be “perfect” — but every creator knows the difference between 93% and 99%. That 6% delta will keep you up at night wondering what could have been.
I once asked marketing legend Seth Godin about how to create work that stands out from the noise — and he told me:
“Don’t try to make your writing go viral. Write with one person in mind and make it so good that they can’t go to sleep that night without telling at least one other person.”
That advice stuck. Once you’ve done that, buckle up. Be prepared to pread out the promotion over a long period of time and let the work…do the work.
Launch week is largely irrelevant if you’re confident in your product. Think longer.
Not All Book Sales Are Created Equally
Let me tell you a dirty little secret that many “bestselling” authors don’t want you to know: you can buy your way onto any list with enough bulk orders and logistical management — even coveted bestseller lists like those of the New York Times. That’s is another conversation for another day.
However, this is the reason why as an author you shouldn’t just be impressed by total sales volume. While it’s great to sell a lot of books — you should be more impressed by sales over time.
Many books that are marketed aggressively sell well the first week or so…then fall off shortly after. They’ve achieved a bestseller badge, but not much more. Consistent sales over time, even in smaller amounts, are a better indicator that people actually care about your work.
In other words: It’s better to have a book that sells 5-10 copies every day for 5 years consistently than it is to have a book that sells 5,000 copies in a 7-day blitz, then immediately drops off when the hype fades. The former shows continued engagement and word of mouth from a real fan base. The latter is a party trick that can be bought.
Longevity and consistency is key.
We haven’t turned on any paid traffic yet. We haven’t engaged any influencers to push it. We haven’t gotten any corporate bulk sales. This is all being driven via word of mouth because the book itself is a stellar product.
Based on how early we are in the game and the momentum it already has, I don’t see any reason why we won’t sell 7,500-10,000 copies across all formats in the first year. That puts it in the top 2-3% of books who sell that many copies in their lifetime.
Understanding The Publishing Industry’s “Dirty Secrets”
Most authors have no understanding of how the publishing industry works, and that puts them at a tactical disadvantage for getting the biggest ROI on their work. There are two popular models most people are familiar with when it comes to publishing a book.
Model #1: Traditional Publishing
These are the what the industry refers to as the “Big 5” — you might have heard of them before. This group includes the publishers Penguin Random House, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette and Macmillan.
Each one of these has dozens of smaller imprints that focus on specific types of books, just like a record label would have its own sub brands a la Universal Music Group -> Interscope -> Aftermath -> Shady Records -> G-Unit. It’s turtles all the way down.
I like to call them the five blind mice. See how they flail!
Traditional publishing is often the blind leading the blind.
But working with one comes with a lot of strings and fine print. Namely:
I. The process is old school and very slow: You are not likely to get a traditional deal because it requires you to first convince an agent to represent you. Then the agent has to sell your work to the publisher. Most of the time, they are not successful. When they are successful, this process can take 3-5 years. If you’re running a business, that’s too long to wait. Remember, James got rejected 16 times and came back with no deal — and he had hundreds of thousands of followers, an email list and a successful business.
II. It’s designed to keep you poor: If you do manage to get an advance, it’ll likely be small ($5k – $50k) unless you have a huge audience. According to estimates from Publisher’s Lunch, only 4-6% of authors receive an advance of $100k or more. It’s not a lump sum, either. You’re paid in installments that usually take 2-3 years. And don’t forget, you have to pay your agent 15%, then taxes. If you’re lucky enough to get $100,000 deal, that looks more like $60,000 when it’s all said and done, spread over 4 payments — for your life’s work.
III. It’s backwards: In traditional deals, the publisher, not the author, gets all the profits from the book until the advance is paid back. And even after that, the deals always favor the publisher with a something like a 90/10 split. On a $29.99 book, the author makes $2.99 at best. Most authors don’t earn out their advance anyway. So they’ll never see a royalty check. Bummer.
IV. It’s predatory: when you sign with a major publisher, they own your intellectual property aka the copyright to your book. You willingly give away the rights to your creation, which is the real source of profit, forever.
V. No customer data: when you work with a traditional publisher, they sell your book to retailers. Those retailers keep all the customer data — neither you, nor the publisher, know who’s reading your book. This is really bad because you cannot build a customer list of engaged readers to follow up with for additional sales.
I could keep going on about how publishers expect you to do all the marketing for your own work and bounce like a deadbeat dad once the baby (your book) is born — but I think you get the point. I’ve taken this route and never will again. The numbers don’t make sense.
Model #2: The “Agency” Publishing Model
There are many companies out there who will write and publish your book for a price. They are service businesses just like any other agency and as such…some are very good, some are deplorable and most are just “ok.” Their price ranges can be anywhere from $1,000 to $250,000. Levels of quality, service and professionalism vary, not always accordingly.
The good thing about them is that for the most part, you have 100% ownership and control over your work unless otherwise stated. You’re paying for a service, they perform the service. That’s typically the extent of the relationship. They usually don’t take any royalties from book sales.
Agencies make books like widgets in a factory.
I. Their incentives aren’t aligned with yours: though they may say differently, the fact that they don’t have any backend potential on your book typically means that as soon as they’re done writing / producing it for you, they’re onto the next project.
It makes sense if you think about it. In a service business, you’re only getting paid while you’re working. If the project price is already set, it eats into your profits to overdeliver. They aren’t getting paid to help you market and promote the book forever. At most, they’ll give you a push on launch week, but they aren’t your partners in the long term success of the book because they aren’t paid to be — which is fair enough. Just like your web designer isn’t going to spend their free time thinking about ways to drive more traffic to your business years after completing your website, these agency model book producers shouldn’t be counted on to actually continue pushing or supporting you. It’s not in their long term best interests.
II. No supply chain means almost no profit for you: typically, these types of “book in a box” businesses get your physical book produced by delivering your digital files to a print on demand service like Ingram Spark or Amazon KDP.
(Side note: if you can ever avoid working with Ingram, do so. They are one of the worst companies on the planet. You’ve been warned.)
The agency will connect everything so that whenever a customer orders your book, it’s printed and shipped automatically. This eliminates the need to store your book in a warehouse. These book agencies don’t have relationships with printers and warehouses to manufacture, store and distribute your book because logistically, it’s annoying and time consuming to do. This means they can’t negotiate rates that would allow you to really profit from book sales.
The print on demand model trades cost for convenience and in the process you lose almost all your margins. On a $29.99 book, you’ll be lucky to make a few bucks per book. Back to square one.
III. Still no customer data: with print on demand, you typically don’t get any customer data, either. When someone purchases your book, you’ll get a notification that it shipped, but you usually won’t usually see who it is buying because the printer is keeping that information for themselves. That means you can’t follow up with additional offers. This is a big no-no for serious business owners.
All in all, the agency model leaves you in not a much better place than traditional publishing aside from owning the rights to your work.
But rest assured, there is another (much better way)…
Model #3: The New Wave Press Publishing Model
(Yes, those are all distinct steps.)
As of 2025, our rates are around $100,000 to do all this — but if you’re reading this post at a later time, that may have changed. The reason why we charge this much is because it takes 10-15 skilled people to produce and ship a professionally crafted book that competes with any other top tier published work on the market. If you were to hire each of the roles above individually, it would cost more and you’d have to manage them all.
Trust me, you don’t want to do that. Hell, some days I don’t even want to do it.
Yes, there are other companies who will do the book for a flat fee and not take any profit split, but what you’ll find is that once they’ve completed your project, they aren’t going to be of much assistance.
The good news is that unlike agency services that ship you off to print on demand and call it a day, we’ve gone the additional step of bringing our printing and fulfillment in house — which means that you have total control over your book manufacturing process. That gives us two distinct advantages.
The first advantage is profit. You’ll actually begin making money from day one. Because we print in bulk, you have real margins. Here’s what the numbers look like — I took this directly from an author contract.
A snapshot of production expenses and profit with the New Wave Press model.
The second advantage is customer data. Because we own the entire value chain from production to distribution, we retain the information from every customer who has ever purchased your book — even customer data from the notoriously stingy Amazon.
We are shipping everything from our fully automated warehouse, so we have to know this information. And since we get the data, you get the data. That means you are able to actually build an email, SMS and direct mail list of your readers so that you can follow up with them to make backend offers.This is where the real profitability of your book comes into play.
In order to make all this happen seamlessly, each author gets access to a custom software portal that connects all sales, marketing and social channels so that your team has an up-to-the-minute report of exactly what’s going on in the business of your book. It’s one place to see how everything is working together on the front and backend.
Here’s an example of what a custom author data portal looks like (sample data for privacy):
This is a partial sample of a client dashboard with our custom backend.
This type of visibility and data tracking is something I always wanted as an author, but it didn’t exist. So we made it for our authors.
Utilizing CLEAR as an Eight-Figure Lead Generation Engine
We look at every reader you acquire as a potential client for a higher value product or service and work backwards from that premise. When we partner with eight-figure entrepreneurs like James on a book, the upside of a well-executed strategy is pretty obvious.
“Forget a 12-day bestseller sprint. We’re playing the 12-, 24-, even 36-month game—compound growth, sustained visibility, and strategic positioning.
Anyone can write a book now. But can you launch it? Market it? Profit from it? That’s the real work. And that’s where New Wave shines.”
The best way to monetize a book is not through book sales — it’s by converting a small percentage of readers to a high ticket program, consulting or coaching offer. When a converting a reader into a new client is worth several thousand dollars to your business, things get exciting very quickly.
Many of the authors we work with have businesses that offer products and services ranging from $5,000 to $100,000+. This makes the cost of working with us negligible in comparison after making a few sales on the backend.
Over the next few months, we’ll be tracking the progress inside of CLEAR’s funnel to share more insights with you in an updated report. For now, let’s create some reasonable assumptions based in reality to paint a picture for what’s possible when using a book to convert readers into clients.
The model pictured shows realistic projections for an author with a $15,000 coaching offer and how book sales can translate into conversion on the backend.
This model illustrates a reasonable conversion from readers to coaching sales.
The model pictured includes a 3-stage funnel
Stage 1: Selling the book in physical, digital or audio format. There’s profit on the front end that can be reinvested into content, ads, influencers or other marketing activities.
Stage 2: Converting a small percentage of readers into booked calls from strategically placed CTAs in the book. This assumes 1% on the initial read and another 1% book within 90 days after with proper followup. It would also be reasonable to cut that number down to 0.5% before and after for a total of 1% conversion from reader -> booked call, which makes more sense as total book volume increases.
Stage 3: Closing leads from the book at 20%. This is about standard for an average sales team with a high-ticket offer working warm leads. This number could also be cut in half to 10% as volume increases and still have a very high ROI.
Note: costs are derived from total cost of producing and fulfilling 400 physical books ($8.50 per book x 400 books = $3,400). In this model, cost per call is $3,400 / 16. Ebook and audible are not included in costs because they are marginal.
Using the above assumptions, you might reasonably be able to expect $40,000-$50,000 net revenue generated on the backend from selling about 1,000 books, given a $15,000 offer. This is obviously not a promise of earnings, it’s a hypothetical model — but it’s based in reality to show that, just like with any other traffic source (such as paid media), books can be engineered to create precise ROI outcomes.
This is the mindset and level of precision we employ with all of our authors.
Are You The Next New Wave Author?
“If you’re thinking about working with New Wave, I would say do it — because it’s not just getting help writing and publishing the book. It’s outstanding support, strategizing the marketing and ensuring that all T’s are crossed and all I’s are dotted.
If you’re serious about impact, work with New Wave. You’re not just getting a book—you’re building a lead engine.”
They say a book is never truly finished, it’s just abandoned by the author — and I think it’s the same with this case study. The work for CLEAR (and all our titles) never truly stops. We’ll make sure to continuously update this page with the latest performance metrics as the book unlocks new levels of revenue and success for James and his team.
In the meantime, what about you?
If you’re an entrepreneur, coach or professional who’s already creating 7 or 8-figures of revenue in your business, but you don’t have a book…you’re missing a tremendously powerful asset that can drive leads, grow sales and build brand authority.
Ready to get started? Book a call with our team today to learn more about our process and see if it’s a fit.
Thanks for reading!
Daniel DiPiazza | Publisher at New Wave Press