If you’re writing a book, or thinking of writing one, please don’t take the quickest path to the poorhouse.
Don’t start writing your next book unless you can identify multiple ways you’re going to make money from it.
The answer “I’m going to make money when people buy it at the book store” doesn’t count. That revenue is quickly wiped out from what it cost you to publish the book.
Sadly, thousands of authors view the book as the end product—the one thing that’s going to bring them fame and fortune and make them rich. When the book doesn’t sell, they call me, sobbing because they can’t park in their garages that are filled with unopened boxes of books they can’t unload.
What Smart Authors Do
Smart authors use their books as calling cards. The book “upsells” readers to a variety of other products and services. Those can include small-ticket items like board games, calendars, coffee mugs and information products to really pricey services like coaching programs, boot camps and membership sites.
After working with more than 9,000 authors over the last 20 years, Steve Harrison has learned that the most successful authors simply do seven key things differently than poor authors. Some of them are very famous bestsellers, like the creators of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and Rich Dad Poor Dad.
Others are happily not-so-famous but quietly raking in high six- figure and even seven-figure annual incomes without ever being on Oprah or hitting any bestseller list.
Steve is hosting a free teleseminar at 2 and 7 p.m. tomorrow, Thursday, Oct. 7, on “How to Achieve a Lot More Success as an Author by Discovering the Seven Things Rich Authors Know That Poor Authors Don’t.”
To learn what wildly successful authors know that poor authors don’t, join him for the 75-minute call. There’s no cost to participate, except for your normal long distance charges, so go here now and sign up.
Even though the call is free, I promote these calls as a compensated affiliate if you buy other products and services later because hundreds of authors have told me they regret the day they ever decided to publish a book. I hope you aren’t one of them.
After working with more than 9,000 authors over the last 20 years, Steve Harrison has learned that the most successful authors simply do seven key things differently than poor authors. Some of them are very famous bestsellers, like the creators of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and Rich Dad Poor Dad.
Others are happily not-so-famous but quietly raking in high six- figure and even seven-figure annual incomes without ever being on Oprah or hitting any bestseller list.
Steve is hosting a free teleseminar at 2 and 7 p.m. tomorrow, Thursday, Oct. 7, on “How to Achieve a Lot More Success as an Author by Discovering the Seven Things Rich Authors Know That Poor Authors Don’t.”
To learn what wildly successful authors know that poor authors don’t, join him for the 75-minute call. There’s no cost to participate, except for your normal long distance charges, so go here now and sign up.
Even though the call is free, I promote these calls as a compensated affiliate if you buy other products and services later because hundreds of authors have told me they regret the day they ever decided to publish a book. I hope you aren’t one of them.
Brava, brava. When people call me to ghostwrite their business book I ask them why they want a book. If they have stars in their eyes and think just getting a book out there will make them rich and famous I try to talk them out of the effort. If they know the book is the new brochure, a path to more clients and other streams of income, then we talk. Just because you can get a book out there doesn’t mean you should. However, if you are willing to follow Joan’s advice and work it, then it is a smart thing to do. I am going to repost this on my blog.
Henry, you’re so right.
If you take on clients who want you to write business books for them, and they have no interest in upselling readers to something else, your project, I’m betting, will be a failure, at least in the client’s eyes.
Thanks for commenting.
I’ve read your newsletter with great interest. Not every author writes books in order to make themselves rich. My upcoming book “Sex, Love, & Mental Illness: A Couple’s Guide to Staying Connected” is a labor of loving concern. I am looking for ideas on how to market to specific niches like psychotherapists and pastoral counselors who may want to buy my book and use the info with their clients. This is an important audience that gets overlooked when it comes to publicity tips.
Dr. Stephanie:
Congratulations on what sounds like a fabulous book. Even though you didn’t write your book to become rich, there’s no reason why you can’t, if you use the book to upsell your target audience to other products and services.
That said, here are some ideas on how to market your book to niches:
–Find bloggers who write about mental illness and let them know about your book. Ask them to review it, and let them excerpt something from the book.
–Offer to write a guest blog post for those bloggers.
–What about pastoral counselors who blog?
–You can probably find pastoral counselors, psychotherapists and even marriage counselors on LinkedIn. Try to connect with them there. You may not find a lot of questions on LinkedIn concerning your topic, but you might find a few.
–Go to Amazon.com and write reviews on other books on mental illness. You can flaunt your expertise and link back to your site and the product page for your book.
These are just a few ideas. I hope you’ll agree to include this question in my newsletter’s “Help this Hound” section. My readers are great at coming up with more ideas than I ever could.
Great tips. It’s important to know that not everyone even wants to read a book or only read a book.
People love to have information in several formats and for this reason, they will buy books, audios, videos, etc of the same info.
Passive learning such as drive time does not lend itself to reading or watching videos but audios work well in this case.
We can’t help as many people if we don’t give them all the means by which to access our information.
E-learning works well with all formats in addition to those offline.