Matt Bird
The framework authors use to find readers beyond who they already know.
When you tell your family and friends you’re a published author, they’re the people who buy your book first. But then what?
Beyond Family & Friends™ is a framework of 7 circles and 7 levers of influence that authors use to build a market of book buyers and readers beyond their existing relationships. Without reaching beyond family and friends, a book is unlikely to achieve the level of sales, influence and opportunity it’s capable of.
The framework was developed by Matt Bird, founder of PublishU, an international publishing house that has helped first-time and serial authors write, publish and market their books world wide. It’s built from coaching hundreds of authors through the exact problem every published author eventually hits: a warm circle of early support that’s far smaller than the readership their book deserves.
The extent of your influence is determined by the size of your circles and the strength of your levers.
Circles are where your influence exists. Levers are how you grow it. Strengthen both, and strangers start to choose to buy your book, recommend your ideas and share your message, without you knowing them first.
As an author, you have seven circles of influence, seven distinct groups of people who could become readers, each reached in a different way:
Circle #1: Family & Friends - The people who know me because they are relatives or genuine friends
Circle #2: Neighbours - The people who know me because of where we live
Circle #3: Colleagues - The people who know me through the work we do
Circle #4: Network - The people who resonate with me because of a mutual interest
Circle #5: Social Followers - The people who follow me and what I have to say on social media
Circle #6: Market - The strangers who find me because of my expertise or the subject of my book
Circle #7: Media - The people who encounter me through third-party media amplification
These seven circles sit on a spectrum from closest to most distant. Family & Friends, Neighbours and Colleagues are relationships that exist whether or not you wrote a book; they know you for other reasons first. Network and Social Followers occupy the middle ground: people drawn to you because of a shared interest, but who may not know you personally. Market and Media sit furthest out: strangers who’ve never met you, reached only through what you say, write or are covered for. A neighbour hears about your book over a fence; a member of your Market finds it through a Google search or an AI recommendation. The size of each circle, and how connected you are within it, sets a ceiling on your influence. The levers are what raise that ceiling.
In addition to your seven circles, you have seven levers, the tools you use to grow each circle and deepen your influence within it:
Lever #1 Calling: The niche of people that I exist to serve
Lever #2 Clarity: The speed at which people understand my work
Lever #3 Character: The trust that I build with clients and readers
Lever #4 Conviction: The depth of belief that I have in my own message
Lever #5 Conversation: The interpersonal, in-person conversations that I have
Lever #6 Communication: The online communications that I create and curate
Lever #7 Consistency: Turning up often enough, for long enough, for trust, visibility and credibility to compound
The levers split roughly into two kinds. Calling, Clarity, Character and Conviction are internal; they’re about who you are and how well-defined your message is, and they need to be resolved before anything else works. Conversation, Communication and Consistency are external; they’re the behaviours you repeat, in person and online, that put the internal work into motion. A clear Calling with no Consistency goes nowhere; relentless Communication built on a vague Calling reaches people but doesn’t convert them. No lever works alone, and no circle grows by accident. Every lever is a deliberate choice you make about how you show up, and every circle expands in response.
You can approach this in two directions.
Direction #1: Circle first. Consider each circle of influence, and which lever could best help you extend it.
For example, Circle #7: Media is best extended by strengthening Lever #1: Calling. Niching down to a more defined audience makes you a sharper fit for journalists and producers looking for an authority on a specific subject; a person who tries to appeal to everyone can end up appealing to no one.
Or, Circle #2: Neighbours is best extended by strengthening Lever #5: Conversation. Where you live gives you natural, low-pressure openings to mention your book in passing, at the school gate, the gym, the local coffeeshop. An author who never raises their work in these everyday exchanges leaves an entire circle of potential readers untapped.
Or, Circle #4: Network is best extended by strengthening Lever #6: Communication. The people who share your interests but don’t know you personally are most likely to discover you online, through a newsletter, a LinkedIn post, or a shared post from someone they already follow. An author who never communicates publicly stays invisible to a circle that would otherwise welcome them in.
Direction #2: Lever first. Consider each lever in turn, how you could improve its potency, and which circle it’s best applied to.
For example, Lever #4: Conviction is strengthened by identifying and removing a self-limiting belief, then approaching colleagues with more confidence. An author who believes in their work will help others believe in it too.
Or, Lever #7: Consistency is strengthened by committing to a regular posting rhythm and applying it to Circle #5: Social Followers. An author who shows up sporadically is forgotten between posts; an author who shows up on a predictable schedule becomes someone people expect to hear from, and trust builds in that expectation.
Or, Lever #2: Clarity is strengthened by reducing your message to a single, sharp sentence and applying it to Circle #6: Market. A stranger deciding whether to buy your book has seconds, not minutes, to understand what it’s about and why it’s for them. An author whose pitch takes a paragraph to land loses readers who would otherwise have bought on the spot.
One PublishU author, a first-time business author with almost no online presence at launch, used Direction #1 to work through her circles one at a time. Starting with Circle #6: Market, she applied Lever #2:Clarity, rewriting her one-line pitch until a stranger could understand what her book was about and who it was for within five seconds. Within three months of consistently using that sharpened pitch in outreach, she’d secured two podcast features and a regular column, both found through Circle #7: Media, a circle she’d never actively worked before.
That’s the pattern worth taking from this framework: influence doesn’t expand evenly or by accident. It expands one circle, one lever, at a time, through deliberate, repeatable choices.
Your family and friends will always be your first readers, but they were never meant to be your only ones. The seven circles show you where your next readers are already standing. The seven levers show you how to reach them.
If you’re ready to map your own circles and levers, and build a clear plan to grow your book’s reach beyond the people who already know you, that’s what we do within the PublishU Marketing My Book programme.
Matt Bird is the Founder of PublishU, an internationalpublishing house that helps first-time and serial non-fiction authors write,publish and market their books worldwide.
Connect with Matt on Instagram 👉🏼click here or LinkedIn 👉🏼click here
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