Industry experts, content creators, and entrepreneurs — all can profit from creating their own book.
Most entrepreneurs think publishing a book is hard work. They’ve heard it’s difficult to find a publisher, don’t know how to self-publish, or fear the time and money investment. But nothing could be further from the truth.
The good news is, we don’t have to be Steve Jobs or Elon Musk to publish a book successfully. And we don’t need to have all the skills and knowledge right away.
I’ve been working in publishing for five years and found anyone can do it successfully if they cover one of three essential points. And to prove it to myself, I self-published a cookbook on Amazon in late 2020 for only $700 (more on that later). It still earns me a steady $100 every month without any marketing activity from my side.
Apart from additional passive income, books will give us visibility and credibility for our work and expertise, which in turn can lead to new clients and more revenue.
So if you’re looking to expand your touchpoints, reinforce your reputation or simply want more financial freedom through a book, here’s what to look out for:
It might not be the right time for you to write a book — it will probably never be — , but it can certainly be the right timing for the content to be published.
Let me explain this point with a personal example: My own cookbook I mentioned earlier.
At the beginning of 2020, I discovered that people were eating more and more vegetarian or even vegan. On top of that, supermarkets started to sell high-protein products in nearly any product segment. High-protein burger sauces, high-protein yogurt, high-protein chocolate, high-protein spices.
I was starting a plant-based diet as well and doing a lot of sports, so I wanted to find new recipes that covered both areas. I search for a suitable cookbook on Amazon and found there very only very few protein-rich books available. Not a single one covered both trends. So I decided to publish one.
It was perfect timing.
Two years earlier, people might have had no interest in a vegetarian, high-protein cookbook. It would simply have died unnoticed. Three years from now the number of books in that sub-genre might already be ten times higher. And fierce competition would make selling my product more difficult.
Having this cookbook online right now, when everybody is looking for healthy veggie recipes, and simultaneously having limited competition is like a holy grail.
How did I know the market was ready? We can never be 100% sure, but there are certain signs that help to estimate the perfect timing:
- People talking continuously about the topic
- Increased media coverage
- New products flooding the market
- Increased search volumes in Google trends
In my case, I noticed a lot of new vegetarian and protein-rich products got listed at retailers. I also did Google trend research in spring 2019. As you can see in the graphs below, the number of online searches for the keywords ‘high protein’ (blue) and ‘vegetarian’ (red) increased at the beginning of 2019 in Germany. Now — in retrospect — the peak of the blue ‘high protein’ line in the course of 2020 is even more noticeable.
Curves like this are very good signs that the market is ready for our topic. So if you have an idea or gut feeling where the public’s interest might be going, you should start doing some research. Chances are now is the time to work on that book.
Did you build a successful online business?
Are you one of the content creators that comes up with creative ideas all the time and people are constantly asking how you do it?
Did you fail to build a business three times and finally found out what went wrong?
See, the stories above have been covered in various articles and books already. They are not new. Still, they can hold the essence for a bestselling book — as long as we can tell them differently.
As a PR agent, my job is to find interesting aspects in the products, books, or personalities of my clients. Sometimes, their books are really innovative. Sometimes, they tap into a new market trend. And some do none of the two. But even if these titles aren’t revolutionizing the industry, my job is to find a golden nugget that attracts the interest of journalists and their readers. That’s exactly what we have to do in our personal stories: Find the one thing we’ve done differently.
Running a marathon is not shareworthy. Running 42km with a broken leg, however, is very shareworthy. It also shows determination — which can be a great hook for a personal development book.
Being a great content creator on several platforms will not make us unique. Testing the identical headlines on Facebook and Instagram for 365 days, on the other hand, and analyzing the results, can make our book stand out.
If we cannot find a golden nugget just now, we can create one. By observing our competition and by questioning what we’re missing in other books, we can develop ideas that help us create our golden nugget.
The next time you read an article or book about leadership, productivity, financial wisdom, or any other topic, write down answers to the following questions:
- What made you pick it up?
- What excited you while reading it?
- If you didn’t like the content, determine what was missing.
- What would have made it better?
These insights serve as a collection of possible differentiation and lead us to the golden nugget we should go after.
Returning to my cookbook as an example: When I searched for vegetarian titles, I only found recipes in which protein was nearly non-existent. Moreover, they were far from clean — including many processed ingredients. On top of that, they never stated the macronutrients in the recipes. I had to calculate them by hand.
Once I decided to create a recipe book, I made sure to have the number of calories, protein, carbs, and fats included for each meal. I also indicated interesting facts about the micronutrients of the food itself and why they were good for our health. That alone was a reason for fitness people to buy my book and not another. Other golden nuggets could have been a 30day meal plan, an extensive list of protein sources, or quotes from a professional athlete. You see, there is always something shareworthy we can include.
As Joe Bunting, from The Write Practice said:
“Just because a similar story has been told does not mean it has been told by you.”
Many of us think we don’t have something innovative to tell. That our ideas have already been covered. And that’s probably true. But that shouldn’t hold us from creating a book. It should ignite us to find the unique piece in our story. Because this golden nugget will be to reason people buy your book.
You don’t have to have it. You just need to know where to find it.
It’s the most unsexy of the three scenarios, but it’s a powerful one. So it should be on our list when publishing a book.
I didn’t have any fans when I hit the publish button on Amazon. So what did I do? I looked for places where my audience was and tapped into that pool.
I prepared some of the recipes from my book and posted pictures including the preparation info on vegetarian Facebook groups. I got great feedback there. Some even shared my recipes after buying the book. Depending on the size of the group, my audience was quickly adding up to a few hundred people.
Where we find the people will largely depend on our industry. If we’re experts in programming, cryptocurrencies, parenting, or water recycling, Facebook might not be the best platform. We’ll probably find our future fans on Reddit, bitcointalk, Quora, netdoctor, parents.at or another platform specifically dealing with our topic. Forums are very useful in this case, so make sure to check them out as well. A bit of keyword research will quickly reveal where our audience is.
I also gave away a few copies to friends who were active in the veggie and fitness scene. Another idea was to give a few copies to gyms for display or as gifts to their members. They would serve as multiplicators to people who heavily consume topics similar to my book, and they would be more likely to buy and talk about it as well.
The beauty here is that I didn’t own these audiences and didn’t spend any marketing budget until now. Still, I sold hundreds of copies. Not because I had a million fans and impressions, but because I reached the right people. And reaching a few right people can be enough to break even and generate profit.
If our books cost between $10 and $15, and we find 500 interested people, that can be $5,000 or more in sales. For many, that’s quite a sum! Especially without active promotion and if we manage to keep the initial costs low.
Summing up, publishing a book requires a bit of research, but it’s not the workload many people think of in the beginning. If you’re not aiming for the New York Times bestseller list or Man Booker Prize, but your objective is to generate profit, your best shot is cooperating with other experts for a quick turnaround and keeping the costs low.
Entrepreneurs know that taking charge of everything isn’t always the best idea for running successful businesses. It’s neither feasible nor effective.
Everybody has different strengths. It makes much more sense to work with people who have the skills and know-how we lack to create our book in the most effective way.
Business people also know that high profits come from either high sales or low costs. Also in publishing these are the two screws we can adjust.
Coming back to my cookbook, I didn’t do everything by myself. I outsourced nearly every task:
- Recipe research
- Writing
- Cover design
- Editing
- Production (Amazon)
- Getting reviews
I aimed for low costs, as I wanted to release this book as a trial. The total costs of the tasks mentioned were $700. Not more. It took me approximately 20 hours to do some market analysis, pre-research for recipes, select freelancers, review their deliveries, and upload the book on Amazon. The platform then took care of the production and delivery.
I didn’t do any intensive marketing either, apart from sharing recipes online and giving free copies away during the launch period, due to other projects that came in the way. Still, I sold copies (ebook and paperback) worth $1.800 in the first ten months of this trial, which is an approximate ROI of 2.
And if I continue to share a few recipes now and then in social media groups, chances are likely that my book will keep paying the steady $100–$150 in passive income.
