How do we usually judge a successful book? We usually look to see if it’s a bestseller.
This is the holy grail of a successful book, right? We think that being on the New York Times or USA Today bestseller’s list is the sign of a good book, a successful book.
Really, it’s more a sign of good marketing, the ability to sell 10,000 to 15,000 books in one week, before anyone really knows much about the book—that’s what gets you on one of these lists. Plus, there’s some backdoor politics. You have to have an in with the publishing world and the book reviewer world. There’s quite a bit of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” in the bestseller competition.
No doubt, when you start down the path toward a bestseller, it all begins beautifully. You sign with a traditional publisher, and maybe the publisher gives you a $10,000 dollar advance when you sign. You’re thinking, “Yes, I’ve made it!” There’s much excitement and celebration.
Then you go into writing and re-writing mode for 12 to 18 months. Your book goes through cover design, internal design, proofreading, formatting, and typesetting for at least another 6 months.
If you’re lucky, the publisher helps line up distribution to bookstores, which is great. And if you really lucky, your publicist lines up some book reviews and appearances. You feel like a celebrity author. And two or three years after you first signed that contract, your book is ready for release!
It’s all still beautiful because your book sells 10,000 copies in one week and makes the New York Times bestseller list! Your dream of being a successful author has officially come true.
Let’s see how the financials actually shake out.
We’ll assume that your book had a price tag of $19.99. You sell 10,000 copies and the gross revenue is almost $200,000. Celebration time!
But, wait, when you traditionally publish, the publisher gets approximately 90% and the author gets about 10%, especially if you’re a first-time author.
So, who really benefits, here?
Your net is $19,900, and after you pay back that $10,000 advance from three years ago, you get just under $10,000 to keep.
And your book drops off the publisher’s radar. Your publicist stops calling and emailing. You suddenly feel adrift. If you ever sell another copy, it’ll be off the momentum of the initial launch (and believe me, that’ll wear off sooner than you think) or your own marketing savvy (which you’d better develop real fast).
I don’t want to be too negative, here. In fact, I’m extremely optimistic about the possibilities of writing and publishing a book. Let me show you a different way.
Let’s talk about self-publishing.
Let’s start from where you are now. You’re growing. You’ve figured out your business model or what you want your platform to center around, and you’ve begun to scale it. You’re making progress, but it still feels slower than you’d like it to go. You’re ready to make a huge leap to the next level. You can practically see and taste the next level.
You have a message that you know changes peoples’ lives for the better. You’ve had conversations with people, and they say things like, “Wow, this is incredible! You need to share this! It’s life-changing.”
You know, within your bones, if you could spread your message, more people could transform some part of their life, their health, family, faith, spiritualist, relationships, or business.
And you know that if you could start changing more peoples’ lives, the other parts of growth would fall into place. You’d have more revenue, more traffic, more clients, better clients, more workshops, full workshops, more speaking gigs, higher paying speaking gigs, and live events with a packed house. You can see it all coming together. But why isn’t happening, yet?
How can you make it all grow faster? How can you reach more people quickly? How can you spread your message farther in a short time frame?
With a self-published book, you can get growth and momentum for your business and platform in the next three months. Yes, three months.
The self-published part is actually fairly important.When you self-publish, you are in control of your funnels.
You may be thinking, “What the heck is a funnel, and why do I want to control one?” Let me show you an example.
Let’s talk about a sales funnel.
A sales funnel is how you bring someone who has never heard of your business or platform into your world, give that person a chance to get to know you, and then provide an opportunity to buy your product or service or support your platform.
A sales funnel is the journey that a person goes through from stranger to acquaintance to customer, client, or supporter.
How do you guide someone on this sales funnel journey with a book?
It starts with publishing a book that has the keywords in the subtitle, that your ideal customer, client, or supporter would type into Amazon. For instance, if you are writing a book for people who teaching meditation to parents of young kids, you’ll want to include words like “meditation” and “busy,” so that your ideal people are more likely to find your book when they’re searching Amazon.
Then, you’ll want to put an opt-in or freebie at the beginning of the book and the end of the book.
People who are just browsing through the Amazon bookstore will click on your book title, look in the beginning of the book and be interested in both the book and the freebie. They might even click and get your free offer before the buy the book. Or, if they read your book and love your message, they’d get the freebie then. Either way, they join your email list.
Now that you have their email address, you can send them a series of emails to deliver the freebie, tells them more about you, and sells them an entry-level offer.
Even if they don’t buy from you right away (or if you’re in the non-profit space, if they don’t financially support you right away), they’ve give you their email address.
You can continue to send them valuable content through a free newsletter, maybe once a week or once a month.
And every few months, when you have something for sale or are running a fundraiser, you can send them another email, and then they might become a buyer or supporter.
But you have their email, and that’s the goal here.
Because you have their email, so you can send another email to introduce yourself and another email to sell them a lower-end offer. This is the process of bringing the person through a sales funnel, from stranger to acquaintance to buyer.
This is how you use a book to build your business and platform. And this is only one type of funnel.
If you want to know more about how to write and self-publish a book that will strategically level-up your business and platform, you’re going to want in on the Free Book-Writing Crash Course that’s starting on June 7th.
The course will walk you through:
1. Three things you need to know about publishing and why now is the perfect time for your book.
2. The quick-start method that will get you clear on your topic & motivated to write today.
3. How you can write a high-quality, publishable book that you are proud to sell in 90 days.
Want in?
The free crash course is only available for a few days, so sign up to get in:
