For Immediate Release:

Monday, January 5, 2015

Many wannabe authors have one-tracked minds. They think only about the book they want to write. If you have dreams of creating a career as a successful author and spending your days writing bestselling books, you may be focused primarily on your book idea and time at your computer cranking out manuscripts. In today’s publishing environment, however, this type of strategy doesn’t often lend itself to successful authorship. If you want to achieve that goal or develop a career as an author, think beyond each one of your books.
The average author doesn’t earn a living from the income garnered from book sales. The most successful authors have a big-picture vision of their books—especially nonfiction books—that includes more than just creation of manuscript after manuscript. Their strategy encompasses a variety of other products and services that help them promote, sell and monetize their books.
These products and services allow authors to bring in additional income—besides book sales. Promotion of coaching services and online courses that relate to a particular book, for instance, provide opportunities to encourage clients and customers to purchase the book as well. Additionally, the promotion of products and services increase the author’s and the book’s discoverability online, which increases book sales. And book sales send readers back to the authors’ websites to purchase supporting products and services.
Let’s look at an example to see what this looks like for one particular aspiring author.

One Book Idea, Many Products and Services

Imagine Sarah, an aspiring author who want to write a memoir about her journey from bankruptcy to successful business ownership. Her initial idea is to share her story. She’s always loved writing, and she thinks producing a memoir will be the perfect way to become an author.
However, she begins to think larger. Although she has a career, she wants one as an author. She doesn’t want to give up her business quite yet, but she might want to do so eventually—especially if she can succeed as an author. So she brainstorms ways to monetize her book, including writing several additional books.
Sarah has no background in finance or business, nor does she have an education in entrepreneurship. (She has a college degree in English, which is why she knows she can write.) She began her landscape design business because she is passionate about gardening and wanted to work for herself. However, her failure provided life experience that translated into a desire to learn how to succeed at what she really wanted to do—to become a landscape designer.
Interestingly enough, as she started her business over after going bankrupt—and achieved success, she became an expert in something entirely different. She became an expert in building a dream business no matter your financial situation. Often friends and clients would ask her how she succeeded in business or request advice on how to start their dream businesses. She gladly offered them counsel—for free.
While Sarah’s memoir will, indeed, allow her to tell her story, she realizes that it doesn’t provide the type of monetization opportunities as prescriptive nonfiction. So she brainstorms three more books, two that are logical spin-offs from the memoir and one related to both her landscaping business and her memoir.
Next, she brainstorms different products and services for each book. These will allow her to monetize each book, as well as to promote them, by offering readers a way to:

• dive deeper into the subject matter with courses or membership sites
• get one-on-one support from Sarah with coaching or consulting
• continue learning about the subject with additional short books or workbooks
• meet Sarah and hear her speak on the topic
• increase her visibility and discoverability online

Now Sarah has a plan for becoming a successful author. She can prioritize the book ideas, releasing them in whatever order seems most effective for her writing career, branding or business. She can build out her products and services as she releases each book.

Beyond-the-Book Strategy Results

Sarah’s plan achieves a variety of results that allow her to create a career as a successful author. By thinking beyond her one initial book idea she:

• brands herself with a series of spin-off books, which helps her attract readers, customers, and clients.
• increases her book sales with a “long-tail effect”; the more books she writes and publishes, the more books she sells.
• achieves expert status; multiple books, products, and services create a sense of authority or thought leadership in her subject area, which helps her attract readers, clients, customers, and speaking and media appearances.
• earns money from a variety of sources rather than just book sales.
• makes it possible to develop an income related to her books and her writing that can replace the salary she receives from her current job.

As Sarah implements this strategy, her income as an author will be based upon book, product, and service sales. She will earn more money than the average author who writes one or two books and relies on book sales alone for income. While she doesn’t spend all of her time writing, this strategy allows her to focus all her attention on activities related to her writing and her books. The more successful her “author business,” the more time she can spend writing.
Eventually, Sarah might even be able to give up or sell her landscape design business. However, she loves this work. Therefore, she can continue to grow the business through her writing, successfully combining her two passions. She can author more books spun off from the first one on landscaping (Book #4). She also can create online courses related to landscape design or provide coaching or consulting to other landscape designers. If she wants to go a step further, she could create a Google Hangout on Air or a podcast related to landscape design to help promote her books, products and services on this topic.

Beyond-the-Book Opportunities

Thinking beyond the book opens up a whole new world for an author. It is filled with a huge number of opportunities restricted only by your imagination and knowledge base. (If you don’t know how to create products and services related to your book, read Authorpreneur: How to Build a Business Around Your Book.) Employ this strategy to create a successful career as an author, one that supports you financially and allows you to pursue your passions.
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