This week I’m kicking off a new blog category (I know, the excitement is freaking palpable) to more closely align with what I do for my clients. I’ll be writing a series of posts on how to leverage your book to market your business. (The category will simply be Leverage Your Book.)
So many entrepreneurs and small business owners love the idea of authoring a book for all the reasons that I have pounded into your brains for the past five or six years. But when the book is done—an accomplishment in itself—they are faced with two challenges: how to publish the book and how to sell the book.
I have addressed self publishing in tons of previous blog posts, and yes, I have a course on self-publishing as well as concierge services if you would like someone to walk you through the process.
I’ve also written many blog posts on how to market your book: various kinds of launches, marketing ideas, getting publicity.
A Slight Shift
But I want to make a slight shift here to what I feel is the key to gaining more visibility and more clients. For most of us, it’s not about selling copies of our books. We are in a business that is not the book selling business. The book is a marketing tool for the business. Your money is in bringing in more clients who pay premium prices to work with you, not making a $7 royalty every time someone, whose name is not known to you, orders a book from Amazon.
Too many people get hung up on “making their money back” through royalties. And that is why there are so many crappy books out there, to just blurt it out. People want to have a book but they don’t want to spend money on editing, on layout, on a fantastic cover, on the marketing. They worry the money going out the door will never come back. Understandable.
But your book reflects back on you. A book filled with typos, no clear message, and the same content in more than one section of the book (yes, I’ve seen it in published books, word for word) is worse than not having a book at all.
Just as with any other marketing strategy, you’ve got to put a little money behind your book. And most books will never make in royalties what they cost to produce. And that’s why you need to know how to leverage your book properly to not just make back your initial costs, but to reach a wider audience and grow your business.
For Better Focus
So, this next series of posts may be shorter than normal (please stop applauding), and definitely more focused. Some of these posts may end up in my next nonfiction book, appropriately (and tentatively) titled: Don’t Sell Your Book. (You see how I wrapped it around to bring in the blog post title there? That comedy training paid off.) The book, and these posts, will discuss how to leverage a book for maximum marketing impact. I will be going deep on individual tactics rather than overall strategies. The goal is to give you practical techniques to help you leverage your business book, gain more clients, and afford better scotch. It’s a mission.
