Does it even make sense to self-publish a new book each month? Let’s start with that question.
For some people, it makes sense. For other people, it doesn’t.
If you want a signature book that becomes a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, or New York Times bestseller, don’t publish a new book every month.
If you want a bunch of books that each earn you a steady stream of income, publish a new book every month.
It’s that simple, and when considering this logic, it’s understandable that some self-published authors publish a new book each month while authors with traditional publishers only publish a new book every 1-2 years.
Some self-published authors even operate under various pen names and publish 100s of books each year with the help of ghostwriters.
In my video The Math Behind Making $100,000/yr From Self-Publishing books, I explain how having more books will make it easier for you to make 6-figures through self-publishing.
To put it simply, if you have one book, that one book needs to make $100,000 each year for you to make 6-figures from your books.
If you have 10 books, then each book only needs to bring in $10,000 each year for you to make 6-figures from your books.
If you have 100 books, then each book only needs to bring in $1,000 each year for you to make 6-figures from your books.
If you have 1,000 books, then each book only needs to bring in $100 each year for you to make 6-figures from your books.
While 1,000 books is usually reserved for authors with a team of ghostwriters or authors who produce no-content books (i.e. journals, coloring books, etc.), the math is obvious.
More books makes it easier to hit certain income goals.
The only problem is that we have a limited amount of time, and publishing that many books is no easy feat. And there’s also that marketing part. Just because you have 100 books doesn’t mean all of them are going to make $1,000 each year to help you reach your 6-figure goal.
There are a bunch of different ways to promote your books and get more exposure. When you self-publish at least a book each month, the strategies change. Instead of a massive build up, you only send out a few emails and social media posts about your new book.
The strategy isn’t to get a surge of sales. The strategy is to get enough reviews to make your book look attractive to a potential buyer and run Amazon Ads to generate consistent sales and income.
This is how you write books that bring in a consistent $100+ each month instead of a book that gets a ton of sales during the first quarter of its release only for those sales to follow a downward trend.
Once you master the system, the more books you write, the more money you make. This is why some self-published authors advocate for publishing a new book each month (or much more than that under different pen names).
So now the question boils down to how can we find time to make this work? I managed to self-publish 25 books while in college and will be doubling that number to 50 books by the end of 2020 since I’m now done with college and have a ton of extra time.
The most important goal for self-publishing is to have a daily word goal. I set the goal to write at least 1,000 words for my books per day. I frequently hit 2,000 and 3,000 words on some days and that’s more than enough to write at least one book per month.
The thing with my books is I aim for concise knowledge. If you desperately want a 300+ page book with filler, don’t look at my catalog. I’ve only written two books that were over 200 pages, and each of those took me almost a year to write because I’m committed to not add any filler.
Most of my newer releases are around 80-100 pages which adds up to around 16,000 to 20,000 words. Let’s take 18,000 words as the middle ground to run some numbers.
- At 1,000 words per day, it only takes me 18 days to complete a book.
- At 2,000 words per day, it only takes me 9 days to complete a book.
- At 3,000 words per day, it only takes me 6 days to complete a book.
And we are not including no-content books. I could probably write at least 3 of those books from start to finish per day because many of the journals are copy and paste the same page a bunch of times and maybe add a different quote on each page. This is how some authors end up with 100s or even 1,000s of books without a team of ghostwriters.
Word search books are also in the no-content category and take some extra time to create but not as much as a typical book. If you want to see me write a word search book, let me know in the comments.
But for the purposes of this post we’re talking about writing your typical book rather than a fill-in-the-blanks type of book.
As I just demonstrated through the numbers, you can very reasonably complete a new book every 18 days. 1,000 words per day is not a big ask. It’s perhaps 30 minutes of your day assuming you can type at 33 words per minute which is lower than the average pace of 40 words per minute.
If you manage to write 2,000 and 3,000 words on some days, you can trim that number down even more.
Post Production
The last things left are looking over your book and publishing it in its different formats.
I prefer to eyeball my book once and just publish it. This method takes a lot of time off from the post-production process and allows me to more quickly move onto the next book.
The more books you write, the easier it is to spot mistakes in your work. I will be honest and say that I don’t spot all of the mistakes. I’ll do the audiobook version of the original book a few weeks later and find some small Grammar mistakes. These don’t bother me because I can correct them as readers bring them up and simply re-upload the file.
For my recent book Build Your Authority Platform, a reader mentioned how much he loved the book and shared two small typos that were in the book. You could still read through the book and understand what was being said. You could still get a ton of value from that book.
I could have handed the book to a proofreader to address those issues but…
- A proofreader won’t take your book as seriously as you do
- A proofreader can still miss typos
- If it costs $0.03 per word which is standard, it will cost you $540 to hire a proofreader to proofread 18,000 words
Less than 1% of people who buy my books ask for a refund. To me, that indicates as long as you provide value in your book, you can get away with a typo here and there.
And if someone doesn’t like my book only because of a few typos even if they like the value from the book, I don’t want that person as a client. Those are usually the types of people who get on top of you and micro manage everything that you do.
That’s really all you need to do to write a new book every month. It doesn’t take too much extra time to turn that into two new books each month. I go into more detail in the YouTube videos above and frequently talk about self-publishing on my YouTube channel, but this the basic framework.
Just find 30 minutes each day to write 1,000 words. Repeat that for 18 days and you’ve got a new book. 12 days is more than enough to eyeball 18,000 words and create paperback and eBook editions of your book for Amazon. An audiobook takes more time but is definitely worth it. I do hire someone on Fiverr to edit the audio files. You can find someone to edit audio files for ACX at around $15 per hour which only comes down to around $30.
Not bad considering it would cost $540 or more to have someone proofread that same book word for word.
If you want to accelerate your self-publishing brand and get more book sales, schedule a complimentary call with me to discover if we are a good fit.
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