Ways Non -Fiction Authors
Can Make Money Far Beyond
Selling Books
When writing and publishing
non-fiction books, there's
tremendous earning
potential just through book
sales. This is particularly
true if you become popular in a broad
interest topic, and particularly if
you're prolific with your writing and
publishing.
However, unlike fiction, non-fiction
offers you a huge amount of earning
potential beyond simply the sales of
books. In fact, in many ways, when a
reader buys a book from you, that can
be the very start of a customer
relationship that can even be worth
tens of thousands of dollars in income.
The reason for this is when publishing
a non-fiction book, you're generally
solving someone's problem, or
answering someone's question:
How can I make my garden look
better?
How do I get more leads and sales
for my business?
How can I get fit and bulk up?
How can I increase the value of my
home?
... and so on.
So your book will answer their
questions and help solve their problems.
And the better the book, the more it
starts your relationship with the
reader in a positive way.
Of course people who buy your book
are interested in the topic. They may
be superficially interested, or they
may be hugely motivated to dive much
deeper into the topic. With such
readers, your book is just the start of
your relationship with them.
So that's where your relationship with
your readers becomes more of an
"information publisher and coach"
rather than just an author.
I'll be talking through five ways you
as an author can build an entire
portfolio of offers that can increase
your income significantly, by turning a
simple book publishing business into an
information publishing and coaching
empire.
Here's several examples of authors
who have done just that:
Dan Kennedy is quite prolific as a book
writing, with a focus on helping small
businesses with their marketing. But
that's just a tiny percentage of his
income.
His books introduce readers to his
website, his paid newsletters, his
courses, and his consulting. For
example, he mentions that just one
reader who purchased one of his books
from a $1 bargain bin in a store,
turned into a client who's now paid him
well over $100,000.
Anthony Robbins is a hugely well known
motivational coach who publishes books
and these introduce new coaching
clients to him. His information and
coaching business is vast, and even
though the books bring him a small
percentage of clients overall (the
majority come through infomercials)
they're highly qualified.
Melonie Dodaro publishes a popular
book about successfully using LinkedIn
to grow your personal and business
brand. And that book leads the reader
to her website where she offers more
in depth courses, in-person coaching,
and services.
Of course it's important to realize that
a large percentage of people who get
your book will look at it only briefly if
at all. It will be a small percentage who
really dive into your book and then
visit your website, take up the free
offer you make to readers in return
for their email address (very
important!), and then check out your
other offers.
However that small percentage will
come to you very much sold on your
way of communicating, so they'll be
hugely receptive to other offers of
yours. In some ways, they'll transition
from your book to your website
already fans of yours, and this makes
selling to them so much easier than
attempting to sell to someone who's
never heard of you before.
Okay, so let's dive into more detail
about ways to turn a book reader into
a hugely valuable customer, while at
the same time offering tremendous
value to them every step of the way
(since every time you over-deliver to a
customer, it makes them more likely to
buy from you again, and to recommend
your products and services to others).
Expand on Your Book With In-Depth
Training Courses
If the subject you're writing about is
particularly narrow niche, a 100 page
book may cover the entirety of the
subject. However, most books, even on
very niche subjects, can go more in
depth and be turned into a fully-
fledged training course. And in
particular can be communicated in
multiple media formats: audio, video,
and tool kits (more on this later).
So you need to transition your book
readers to your website. A great way
to do this is to offer them bonuses if
they visit your site at private page
(just for book readers) and sign up
with their email address. This way,
they get access to great bonuses that
aren't available to regular website
visitors, and you get their email
address for regular follow-up.
And you follow up on them by email
with great content, and also some
offers (don't overdo it however of
they'll stop reading your emails). This
is a great opportunity to start
presenting them with your courses and
other offers, and also to encourage
them to become a regular reader of
your blog by emailing them links to
your latest posts (or the best post
from the last seven days) once a week.
Now, a training course can be delivered
purely online as a download. Or it can
be set up as a private member area
(more on this in the next section).
However, by also sending your
customer something physical through
the post, you can generally charge
quite a bit more as it has a higher
perceived value.
Plus, it creates a stronger emotional
bond with the customer. Rather than
just data on a hard drive, it's
something that has pride of place on
their shelves.
So for example, you can deliver
everything immediately online, and also
send customers:
DVDs with training videos.
CDs with audio.
Printed out and bound manuals and
transcripts.
The DVDs and CDs can be very light to
post, whereas manual and transcripts
can start to get rather heavy.
However, the more you deliver, the
larger the "Thud Factor" as it's called.
The thud sound you get when a huge
package is delivered at your door. So
the higher the thud factor, the more
perceived value a course can have, so
the higher the price.
And with a training course, depending
on how in depth it is, the intended
target market, and how valuable the
subject area is, can sell for anything
from $30 to $5,000.
While a $30 course may be
introductory, a $5,000 course could be
the equivalent of a Masters degree in
your subject area, and a percentage
of your customers are going to be
interested in that if they've been
happy with previous purchases from
you.
Often, offers to customers start at
the lower end of prices. And then
customer then gets higher priced
offers as they purchase more and
more products. Whereas other
customers may want to jump straight
to the most expensive course. So
having these all publicly available to
buy can be helpful.
So sales of these courses will come
from:
Your email list.
Your website traffic.
Promotional partnerships where
other sites promote your courses.
Online advertising campaigns.
Making Predictable Income with
Membership Sites & Newsletters
A membership site is a private area on
your site with fantastic information.
Often membership sites also include
tools that members can benefit from,
and even private discussion areas
where members can get in depth
answers quickly.
The reason for having a membership
site as well as training products is
because it's regularly updated, and can
have an interactive element to it. In
return the customer pays either
monthly or annually to keep access to
the site.
And a newsletter is effectively a "real
world" version of a membership, where
a newsletter, CD, DVD, or combination
of these, is sent to the customer once
a month. The customer then again
either pays monthly, or even annually.
And this can be either instead of, or
more likely alongside access to a
membership site.
Two Examples:
If we return to the example of Dan
Kennedy, he has a monthly newsletter
that goes out to thousands (more likely
tens of thousands) of business owners.
He's said that he consider his
newsletter the core of his business,
and this alone produces millions in
annual revenue for him.
An even more successful example is
Lynda.com which was recently sold to
LinkedIn for well over a billion dollars.
Lynda is a job skills training site that
is over 20 years old, and has training
videos on hundreds of different
subjects.
You'll find in fact that both of those
examples, and with billed monthly
offers in general, a free or low-price
trial period is required. There's a
resistance by customers to being billed
monthly, so you can overcome that
resistance with a low-price or free
trial so you can prove the value you're
giving them.
And one huge benefit of billing
customers monthly (automatically onto
their credit card) is it creates very
predictable monthly cash flow for your
business, which takes a lot of worry
out of entrepreneurial life. It also
means you have a captive audience
that you can promote other products
and services too, and since they're
already buying from you, their
response rate will be high.
Charge For Your Expertise & Time With
Coaching
If you're an expert in the subject
you're writing about, then beyond just
offering books and training products
for your audience, you can work with
them on a one-to-one basis to answer
their questions directly and offer a
much more personalized approach.
This could be offered as consulting or
personalized training (much the same
thing, although they have slightly
different connotations), and can be
very helpful to clients that are
confused about certain areas of your
topic, have very specific questions, or
just want to move forward quickly.
This is often offered at an hourly
rate, or even a day rate, and is
generally done remotely over the
phone or through Skype, or can
sometimes be done in person in certain
instances.
You can even take this further if you
choose, and actually offer services to
customers where you do the work for
them. For example, if you published a
book on small business marketing, you
could offer marketing campaign
management for clients, and
depending on the size of the project,
could cost the client more than
$100,000 a year.
The example above of Melonie Dodaro
publishing her book about LinkedIn as
a lead generator for her business,
helps attract clients to her coaching
and marketing management services.
Selling Tools is Much Easier Than
Selling Information
When selling information, there's
always a resistance from the person
you're selling to as information takes
effort to internalize and to implement.
That said, if the information is about
a hobby the person reading may be
truly passionate about it. But for
information about solutions to a
problem, there likely isn't that same
passion. The easier you can make it,
the better.
So if you can find a way to give your
customer a tool they can put into
action and that solves their problem
with minimal effort on their part, that
can sell very well. Because in an ideal
world, people want things done for
them, so the less effort they have to
exert to solve a problem, the happier
they'll be.
If you're selling a training course, you
can include tools as part of it. You can
then start to present the product as a
toolkit which can make selling it a lot
easier. Here are examples of tools you
can sell as part of a course, or even as
their own offers:
Software
"Fill in the blank" templates
Spreadsheets for quick calculations
Quick start guides
Now some tools can take a long time
(and a lot of money) to develop,
particularly software. So make sure
you know your audience well if this a
route you're going to take.
Put Together High-Priced Seminars
and Retreats
To maximize your income while at the
same time catering to multiple client
types, it's important to have low priced
and also high priced offers. One of
your lowest priced offers is of course
your book.
Then you can offer more in depth
information, leading up to high-priced
coaching, consulting, services, and
tools. And towards the highest end of
prices is putting together seminars and
retreats where your absolute best and
most valuable information is presented
to customers.
Plus, people often greatly enjoy the
social aspect of seminars, and it can
be a fun getaway. It can also be a
great way to network with people that
have similar interests.
When putting together seminars, you
have two main options:
High priced and exclusive.
Low priced with the maximum
number of people you can get.
The high priced option may even sell
for thousands of dollars, and you may
have quite limited seating. This is
often offered to your best customers
first, so they get first refusal.
Whereas the low priced option is
designed to get you the biggest
captive audience possible. Often then
you sell your highest priced offers to
that audience, since selling from the
stage can be the most receptive place
to make those offers
Can Make Money Far Beyond
Selling Books
When writing and publishing
non-fiction books, there's
tremendous earning
potential just through book
sales. This is particularly
true if you become popular in a broad
interest topic, and particularly if
you're prolific with your writing and
publishing.
However, unlike fiction, non-fiction
offers you a huge amount of earning
potential beyond simply the sales of
books. In fact, in many ways, when a
reader buys a book from you, that can
be the very start of a customer
relationship that can even be worth
tens of thousands of dollars in income.
The reason for this is when publishing
a non-fiction book, you're generally
solving someone's problem, or
answering someone's question:
How can I make my garden look
better?
How do I get more leads and sales
for my business?
How can I get fit and bulk up?
How can I increase the value of my
home?
... and so on.
So your book will answer their
questions and help solve their problems.
And the better the book, the more it
starts your relationship with the
reader in a positive way.
Of course people who buy your book
are interested in the topic. They may
be superficially interested, or they
may be hugely motivated to dive much
deeper into the topic. With such
readers, your book is just the start of
your relationship with them.
So that's where your relationship with
your readers becomes more of an
"information publisher and coach"
rather than just an author.
I'll be talking through five ways you
as an author can build an entire
portfolio of offers that can increase
your income significantly, by turning a
simple book publishing business into an
information publishing and coaching
empire.
Here's several examples of authors
who have done just that:
Dan Kennedy is quite prolific as a book
writing, with a focus on helping small
businesses with their marketing. But
that's just a tiny percentage of his
income.
His books introduce readers to his
website, his paid newsletters, his
courses, and his consulting. For
example, he mentions that just one
reader who purchased one of his books
from a $1 bargain bin in a store,
turned into a client who's now paid him
well over $100,000.
Anthony Robbins is a hugely well known
motivational coach who publishes books
and these introduce new coaching
clients to him. His information and
coaching business is vast, and even
though the books bring him a small
percentage of clients overall (the
majority come through infomercials)
they're highly qualified.
Melonie Dodaro publishes a popular
book about successfully using LinkedIn
to grow your personal and business
brand. And that book leads the reader
to her website where she offers more
in depth courses, in-person coaching,
and services.
Of course it's important to realize that
a large percentage of people who get
your book will look at it only briefly if
at all. It will be a small percentage who
really dive into your book and then
visit your website, take up the free
offer you make to readers in return
for their email address (very
important!), and then check out your
other offers.
However that small percentage will
come to you very much sold on your
way of communicating, so they'll be
hugely receptive to other offers of
yours. In some ways, they'll transition
from your book to your website
already fans of yours, and this makes
selling to them so much easier than
attempting to sell to someone who's
never heard of you before.
Okay, so let's dive into more detail
about ways to turn a book reader into
a hugely valuable customer, while at
the same time offering tremendous
value to them every step of the way
(since every time you over-deliver to a
customer, it makes them more likely to
buy from you again, and to recommend
your products and services to others).
Expand on Your Book With In-Depth
Training Courses
If the subject you're writing about is
particularly narrow niche, a 100 page
book may cover the entirety of the
subject. However, most books, even on
very niche subjects, can go more in
depth and be turned into a fully-
fledged training course. And in
particular can be communicated in
multiple media formats: audio, video,
and tool kits (more on this later).
So you need to transition your book
readers to your website. A great way
to do this is to offer them bonuses if
they visit your site at private page
(just for book readers) and sign up
with their email address. This way,
they get access to great bonuses that
aren't available to regular website
visitors, and you get their email
address for regular follow-up.
And you follow up on them by email
with great content, and also some
offers (don't overdo it however of
they'll stop reading your emails). This
is a great opportunity to start
presenting them with your courses and
other offers, and also to encourage
them to become a regular reader of
your blog by emailing them links to
your latest posts (or the best post
from the last seven days) once a week.
Now, a training course can be delivered
purely online as a download. Or it can
be set up as a private member area
(more on this in the next section).
However, by also sending your
customer something physical through
the post, you can generally charge
quite a bit more as it has a higher
perceived value.
Plus, it creates a stronger emotional
bond with the customer. Rather than
just data on a hard drive, it's
something that has pride of place on
their shelves.
So for example, you can deliver
everything immediately online, and also
send customers:
DVDs with training videos.
CDs with audio.
Printed out and bound manuals and
transcripts.
The DVDs and CDs can be very light to
post, whereas manual and transcripts
can start to get rather heavy.
However, the more you deliver, the
larger the "Thud Factor" as it's called.
The thud sound you get when a huge
package is delivered at your door. So
the higher the thud factor, the more
perceived value a course can have, so
the higher the price.
And with a training course, depending
on how in depth it is, the intended
target market, and how valuable the
subject area is, can sell for anything
from $30 to $5,000.
While a $30 course may be
introductory, a $5,000 course could be
the equivalent of a Masters degree in
your subject area, and a percentage
of your customers are going to be
interested in that if they've been
happy with previous purchases from
you.
Often, offers to customers start at
the lower end of prices. And then
customer then gets higher priced
offers as they purchase more and
more products. Whereas other
customers may want to jump straight
to the most expensive course. So
having these all publicly available to
buy can be helpful.
So sales of these courses will come
from:
Your email list.
Your website traffic.
Promotional partnerships where
other sites promote your courses.
Online advertising campaigns.
Making Predictable Income with
Membership Sites & Newsletters
A membership site is a private area on
your site with fantastic information.
Often membership sites also include
tools that members can benefit from,
and even private discussion areas
where members can get in depth
answers quickly.
The reason for having a membership
site as well as training products is
because it's regularly updated, and can
have an interactive element to it. In
return the customer pays either
monthly or annually to keep access to
the site.
And a newsletter is effectively a "real
world" version of a membership, where
a newsletter, CD, DVD, or combination
of these, is sent to the customer once
a month. The customer then again
either pays monthly, or even annually.
And this can be either instead of, or
more likely alongside access to a
membership site.
Two Examples:
If we return to the example of Dan
Kennedy, he has a monthly newsletter
that goes out to thousands (more likely
tens of thousands) of business owners.
He's said that he consider his
newsletter the core of his business,
and this alone produces millions in
annual revenue for him.
An even more successful example is
Lynda.com which was recently sold to
LinkedIn for well over a billion dollars.
Lynda is a job skills training site that
is over 20 years old, and has training
videos on hundreds of different
subjects.
You'll find in fact that both of those
examples, and with billed monthly
offers in general, a free or low-price
trial period is required. There's a
resistance by customers to being billed
monthly, so you can overcome that
resistance with a low-price or free
trial so you can prove the value you're
giving them.
And one huge benefit of billing
customers monthly (automatically onto
their credit card) is it creates very
predictable monthly cash flow for your
business, which takes a lot of worry
out of entrepreneurial life. It also
means you have a captive audience
that you can promote other products
and services too, and since they're
already buying from you, their
response rate will be high.
Charge For Your Expertise & Time With
Coaching
If you're an expert in the subject
you're writing about, then beyond just
offering books and training products
for your audience, you can work with
them on a one-to-one basis to answer
their questions directly and offer a
much more personalized approach.
This could be offered as consulting or
personalized training (much the same
thing, although they have slightly
different connotations), and can be
very helpful to clients that are
confused about certain areas of your
topic, have very specific questions, or
just want to move forward quickly.
This is often offered at an hourly
rate, or even a day rate, and is
generally done remotely over the
phone or through Skype, or can
sometimes be done in person in certain
instances.
You can even take this further if you
choose, and actually offer services to
customers where you do the work for
them. For example, if you published a
book on small business marketing, you
could offer marketing campaign
management for clients, and
depending on the size of the project,
could cost the client more than
$100,000 a year.
The example above of Melonie Dodaro
publishing her book about LinkedIn as
a lead generator for her business,
helps attract clients to her coaching
and marketing management services.
Selling Tools is Much Easier Than
Selling Information
When selling information, there's
always a resistance from the person
you're selling to as information takes
effort to internalize and to implement.
That said, if the information is about
a hobby the person reading may be
truly passionate about it. But for
information about solutions to a
problem, there likely isn't that same
passion. The easier you can make it,
the better.
So if you can find a way to give your
customer a tool they can put into
action and that solves their problem
with minimal effort on their part, that
can sell very well. Because in an ideal
world, people want things done for
them, so the less effort they have to
exert to solve a problem, the happier
they'll be.
If you're selling a training course, you
can include tools as part of it. You can
then start to present the product as a
toolkit which can make selling it a lot
easier. Here are examples of tools you
can sell as part of a course, or even as
their own offers:
Software
"Fill in the blank" templates
Spreadsheets for quick calculations
Quick start guides
Now some tools can take a long time
(and a lot of money) to develop,
particularly software. So make sure
you know your audience well if this a
route you're going to take.
Put Together High-Priced Seminars
and Retreats
To maximize your income while at the
same time catering to multiple client
types, it's important to have low priced
and also high priced offers. One of
your lowest priced offers is of course
your book.
Then you can offer more in depth
information, leading up to high-priced
coaching, consulting, services, and
tools. And towards the highest end of
prices is putting together seminars and
retreats where your absolute best and
most valuable information is presented
to customers.
Plus, people often greatly enjoy the
social aspect of seminars, and it can
be a fun getaway. It can also be a
great way to network with people that
have similar interests.
When putting together seminars, you
have two main options:
High priced and exclusive.
Low priced with the maximum
number of people you can get.
The high priced option may even sell
for thousands of dollars, and you may
have quite limited seating. This is
often offered to your best customers
first, so they get first refusal.
Whereas the low priced option is
designed to get you the biggest
captive audience possible. Often then
you sell your highest priced offers to
that audience, since selling from the
stage can be the most receptive place
to make those offers
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