I was talking to an author who published with me the other day and I asked her if she was happy with the money she had made from her book. I knew the financial investment she made to be in my program was a stretch for her and I wanted to make sure she felt like she got her money’s worth.
“Honestly,” she said, “books sales themselves are less than I expected. I’ve only made about $2,500.”
(I looked it up. It’s $2,622.49 in 9 months. Which, to be honest, isn’t bad for a first time author.)
“But the real success for me with my book is that I have made at least $10,000 in sales from coaching clients who never would have signed up to work with me if it weren’t for my book. Maybe more.”
In less than a year since she published, she has made her investment back several times over.
Before she wrote her book she had done a little paid coaching, but she didn’t have a strategy. She didn’t know who she was serving. She didn’t know how they would find her. She didn’t know what to sell them.
Now, she entices readers of her book with a free e-course and once they are on her list she offers them a $1,000 program which includes 6 one-on-one coaching sessions spread out over 3 months. She has had 10 readers take her up on that offer.
That’s $12,622.49 earned in 9 months!
I know that might not sound like much but this author (who asked me to keep her name confidential for this email) had been a coach for 5 years before writing her book and hadn’t really made any money as a coach. Maybe a couple hundred dollars here and there but nothing she could count on. She has really wanted to quit her day job but there just hasn’t been a viable path out that she could see. Until now.
She has tried to make a go of it before but she HATES marketing. She signed up for a class with a popular coach to get clear on her business and loved the class, but didn’t really move her business forward. So she signed up for another class with a business/marketing guru but couldn’t make the time to watching the videos and do the trainings. She confided to me that she has spent more in coaching and business training than she has made as a coach.
She blamed herself for that, but I wonder, were those just the wrong investments?
For me, any class that gives me a to-do list instead of a definitive outcome is stress-inducing instead of stress relieving.
Now she knows for every 500 books she sells, she is likely to make $12,622.49. She knows how to sell more books, or write more books. And she knows her clients are readers who want to go deeper.
I don’t want to make this sound like a panacea. She’s still not ready to quit her job, but she has a strategy that can actually take her there.
More freedom and flexibility to be with her kids and her clients on her terms is in her sights. We are giving it one more year and we’ve got the plan to get her to $50K in the next 12 months which would replace her current day job salary.
I want to share that strategy with you too. I’m teaching about it in a private, invite-only class on Monday. It’s free, but if you want in, you need to do your homework.
So here we go with your third homework assignment:
Figure out what YOU want from your book
- What would success look like with your book? Let your imagination go wild!
- Who has achieved this kind of success? Find someone and track down their biography. What were the steps that got them there? It wasn’t just their book. What else have they done? Look for certification or degrees, speaking or programs, check out their website and social media sites.
- Measure the gap between where you are and where you want to be. What DON’T you have right now that you need to get the success you want?
When you are done, send this to me at [email protected] and I’ll send you an invitation to Monday’s class.
If you know anyone who wants to write a book, please share this with them. I am going to break the seal on the real reason people don’t make money from their books and I’m going to give you the secret for using a non-fiction book to create business revenue.
P.S. Did you get the last two assignments? Homework for any of these will get you an invite to the free class. If not, here they are:
Homework #1: http://eepurl.com/3p1z5
Homework #2: http://eepurl.com/3wTdT
