Self Publishing

Every author aspires to make the first $100 from their books. It’s a milestone to celebrate as any progress is good progress. However, once you reach your first $1,000 as an author, you’ll start to see more possibilities.

All of a sudden, self publishing will appear as a viable path to a full-time income. You’ll start setting further out milestones such as your first $1,500 and your first $2,000. Each milestone you pass will fuel you towards significant earnings in the future.

But it all starts with the first $1,000 in earnings. That’s when we cross the bridge from hobbyist to a potential full-time author.

The authors I interviewed on The Wealthy Author Summit each surpassed $1,000 in book royalties. Some of these same authors make $1,000 every week from their books. You can get lifetime access to the Wealthy Author Summit here.

Identify Your Monetization Path

Almost no full-time author exclusively relies on their book royalties for income. An author’s monetization path features multiple assets combining together. The book is a pathway to begin the conversation and enable the reader to explore those assets. 

Books aren’t sales letters. No one reading dozens of pages explaining why you should buy something else. Books built trust, and by occasionally incorporating offer(s), you can substantially increase your average revenue per reader.

The end of a book presents the best opportunity to promote multiple products and services. Authors often use the final pages in their books to promote a book series, service connected to the book, training course, merchandise, and affiliate offers. These monetization paths require more creativity if you are a fiction author. A podcast can be a great choice for fiction and nonfiction authors alike.

Consider your available assets and what assets you’ll have by the time you publish your book. Some Podcast Domination readers end up becoming clients. Readers will recognize your expertise as they read your content and prefer you to guide them along the process rather than take the DIY approach.

Publish Multiple Books

If you want to make $1,000 from a single book, that book must generate $1,000 in royalties and backend deals. That sounds simple enough.

However, if you want to make $1,000 from two books, those books must average $500 in royalties and backend deals. A second book cuts the averages by half. Many full-time self published authors reached that status with dozens of books under their belts. Some authors rely on easy-to-create journals and workbooks while others publish traditional content focused books.

Either way, the self published authors with many books to their name end up reaching the $1,000 milestone sooner. Some of these same authors end up making more than $1,000/mo from the book royalties alone.

Writing books doesn’t guarantee you’ll make money. Publisher Rocket helps you conduct research so you can discover profitable book topics and keywords in your niche. Some of your books will earn more than others, but prior research gives each new title a better chance to outperform your catalog.

Most authors with dozens of books get carried by 1-5 books. A small percentage of their books make up a large percentage of their income. 

Writing routines will make or break your ability to produce several books. Write content at your peak hours and set reminders throughout the day with motivational messages to stay on track.

Grow Your Email List

Social media helps a little bit with book sales. So does running ads (we’ll talk about those later). Amongst the different strategies to generate sales, nothing works as well as your email list. 

Some authors use the first page of their book to promote a free opt-in. This free opt-in ranges from a bonus guidebook to a free chapter of another book you wrote. Fiction and nonfiction authors can both incorporate this strategy to grow their email lists. 

Writing multiple books puts your 1-page call-to-action in front of more potential readers. The upside to promoting your opt-in on the first page of your book is that previewers can join your email list even if they don’t buy your book.

Some authors go as far as offering the entire audio version of their books for free if you join their list. Considering the costs of acquiring an email subscriber through Facebook or Google Ads, some authors will forgo the royalty in exchange for a new email subscriber. I personally do not follow this approach, but it works for some authors.

You can use social media to grow your email list and create content to build your brand. Both measures will grow your email list, but all strategies pale in comparison to collaborations. Co-authoring a book, cross promoting existing books with other authors, and running events (i.e., virtual summits, book giveaways, etc.) will accelerate your email list growth in a way the other strategies can’t. 

Growing your email list (and engaging with your subscribers) is the most important step of reaching $1,000 from your books and making sustainable income from your work. 

Get Initial Reviews

Social proof impacts every stage of the customer journey. A potential reader may turn away from your book if it has bad reviews or not enough reviews in general. Getting initial reviews for your books is a critical part of demonstrating robust social proof.

Getting reviews boils down to asking enough people. You can reach out to some friends and encourage them to leave reviews. You can refine this starting point by checking who reviews your competitors’ books. Reach out to those reviewers and offer a free copy of your book in exchange for an honest review.

It’s important to ask specifically for an honest review. Asking for a 5-star review or a positive rating is sketchy and not allowed by Amazon. If you deviate from Amazon’s rules and a reviewer calls you out on it, you could find yourself in trouble. I’m not sure what ‘trouble’ looks like, but it’s best to avoid it. Asking for an honest review rather than a positive review will put you in good standings with Amazon and the reviewer.

Run Amazon Ads

Amazon Ads allow you to scale your book’s success. You can reach 100,000s of potential readers on a relatively low ad spend. Granted, some of those potential readers will scroll past your book and not click, but some of those potential readers will click on your ad and learn more about your book.

Your Amazon Ads will perform better if you first get initial reviews for your book. Many Amazon Ad experts recommend getting at least 10 reviews for your book before investing in advertising. You can use authors’ names and books as keywords in your ads. This strategy will help your books appear when someone searches for another author’s name or book. Publisher Rocket makes it easy to find these keywords, but you can create Amazon Ads yourself as well.

One of the Wealthy Author Summit speakers discussed how he uses Amazon Ads to generate thousands of dollars from his books each week. He’s truly mastered the system and gave us the full break down during our session. You can get a lifetime All-Access Pass to the Wealthy Author Summit here.

In Conclusion

Reaching your first $1,000 in book earnings is a big milestone. When you cross this milestone, you’ll see it’s possible to make a full-time income as an author. Then, it’s a matter of refining your process, writing more content, and marketing your way to success.

Most full-time self published authors have dozens of books published under their names and pen names. It’s no secret that you have to keep cranking them out in order to build your income and influence.

However, writing these books is easier said than done. Each one is a big project that will require weeks of your time in the best case scenario. It’s considerable time to pour into a product that may flop. 

That’s why it’s important for you to conduct some research before you start writing your next book. That way, you give yourself a better chance of writing a book that will perform well on the Amazon algorithm. Publisher Rocket is by far the best resource to do keyword research to ensure your book topic is a potential winner.

But if you don’t find the time to write your potential winner, then what’s the point? You have a bunch of great topics but no books to show for your research. To publish books at a faster pace, incorporate these three strategies into your work routine.

#1: Repurpose Your Existing Content

For nonfiction authors, it makes sense to repurpose your existing content into your book. Most people will forget about your blog post days after they’ve read it. And if you’ve published many blog posts over the years, most of your readers will never get the chance to read those older blog posts.

You can breathe new life into those blog posts by incorporating them into your book. Why write about a bunch of strategies to boost happiness when you can copy and paste a prior blog post of yours on the same topic. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.

This will allow you quickly move forward with your book. Some authors write articles with the intention of adding them to their upcoming books. If you can think that far ahead, each blog post will help you grow your author platform while providing additional content for one of your books.

#2: Establish A Daily Writing Routine

If you want to see a goal to completion, work on it every day. That’s how you see continuous progress. My daily writing routine involves 1 Medium article, 1 blog post, and some words for my book. 

I write at least 2,000 words each day which is enough to further build out my writing career without it taking up my entire day. I start writing first thing in the morning and continue writing when opportunities present themselves in the afternoon and evening. 

You can’t only write content because you have to build out your platform. This is how you actually sell books rather than just being the world’s greatest secret. Writing 1K-2K words per day is enough to make considerable progress with your book but also enough to address the other parts of your brand.

#3: Set A Word Count Target

For each book you write, set a word count target. The word count target helps you stay focused rather than hit on tangents and make your book longer than it should be. The quicker you complete your current the book, the quicker you can start your next book.

I go for 15k-20k words per book. Your word count goal may look different, especially if you’re writing novels. However, a word count goal gives you an idea of when you’re approaching the end of your book.

You can go a little under or above your word count range depending on how you feel about your book. However, this range will give you a target to shoot for which is essential for transitioning from one book to the next.

The name of the game is publishing as many high quality books as you can. Growing your platform will help you get the initial sales and then the Amazon algorithm will take over from there. You can also run Amazon Ads to stimulate the Amazon algorithm to give your books a higher sales rank (i.e. the ads drive sales which helps in those areas).

Write each day, keep the long-term in mind, and someday you may get the results you seek. 

Learn how to become a full-time writer here

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.