-jayson gaignard

Jayson Gaignard sold over 20,000 copies of his book before it was even launched. He did it without ads, without a big following, and largely one conversation at a time. It’s a fitting way for his book to gain traction, because it proves his book’s point: no real success is self-made, and your biggest wins always carry other people's fingerprints. 

The launch of Community Made: The Truth About Success and the Relationships That Create It definitively proved that the book’s thesis is spot on.

Jayson’s career centers on bringing entrepreneurs together and studying how real relationships get made. He didn't come to this work through a traditional academic path. It was the right people and the right books, all arriving at the right moments to shape his trajectory.

He had already written a successful book, Mastermind Dinners, which sold around 50,000 copies. This new one was a more personal undertaking, because at this point in his life, he believes the most meaningful thing he can do is get his hard-won lessons onto the page and “send the elevator back down.” 

Jayson invested over 1,000 hours across writing and the design to ensure his book would be easily finished. He even spent 12 hours on the line breaks alone. Inside, readers see a larger typeface, wide margins, and imagery so they feel momentum on every page. He’s already received feedback from readers saying they finished it in a single sitting, which is exactly what he was going for. 

Throughout the making of the book, Jayson leaned on Charlie Hoehn, co-founder of Author.Inc for guidance. Jayson’s publishing path began before Author.Inc was founded, but he sought Charlie's counsel at every stage, from writing to marketing. Jayson calls Charlie an incredible resource and says he can point to 30 different things in the finished book that came out of their conversations. When a decision felt off, he had someone who had spent years inside major nonfiction launches to test it against, and that gave him the confidence to create the book he envisioned.

Jayson built his campaign around distributing copies rather than raising the most money. He priced the tiers close to cost and pushed hardest on a five-book bundle he sold at a loss, on the logic that a reader keeps one copy and gives the other four away. He had been showing the work publicly for over a year, posting his progress almost daily. 

When he finally asked for support, people had watched him earn it. He didn't run ads, and he didn’t need to. What carried the campaign was a network of about 810 people he had invested in over the years, asked one at a time, including some he went back to who had raised a hand 18 months earlier. Almost everyone said yes.

He set the Kickstarter goal at $36,000, which was higher than he had first planned. It cleared its goal in 14 minutes and more than doubled within a day. Then it stalled. For weeks in the middle the campaign barely moved. Jayson had compared notes with others who had run campaigns, Charlie among them, and he understood that a long flat stretch is normal and that a second surge tends to come at the close. So he kept his nerve, held his energy for the final days, and the campaign finished at roughly $210,000 USD, 587% of its goal, with 20,979 copies sold.

On a panel afterward, an author with millions of followers heard his numbers and said they didn't compute since Jayson only had a couple thousand on Instagram. To Jayson they compute perfectly, because the campaign ran on the same three moves the book teaches: to find your people, invest in them, and ask them for help. The book isn't in general release yet, and he isn't chasing a bestseller list. He set out to get it into the hands of the right readers, and by his own measure he already has.

This case study reflects one author’s personal experience. Success varies widely and depends on many factors such as genre, audience size, marketing effort, and timing. While this author achieved a significant outcome, most authors experience different results, and there is no guarantee of similar outcomes.