If you’re like most people, you believe that writing and publishing a book is a pathway to fame and fortune.
Well, I have some good news and some bad news…
Bad news first. Unless you’re in the .00001 percent of people who hit it big with a major bestseller (think J. K. Rowling-, Danielle Steel-, or Stephen King-esque numbers), you’re probably not going to make much money from book sales. The way the game is set up (see numbers 1 and 2, below), the odds are simply stacked against you.
But there IS good news. Becoming an author opens doors to many other ways to capitalize on your writing ability. Authors who think of their book less as the end of a writing process and more as the beginning of a marketing process and who plan and implement that process strategically have a much better chance of parleying their publications into some solid cash.
Let’s take a look at some of the ways (17, in fact!) authors today can capitalize on their writing ability.
17 Ways to Make Money as a Writer
1. Scoring an Advance
Some authors are offered a certain amount of payment up front as an advance against future book sales. This payment typically is paid half upon the signing of the contract and half when the manuscript is received (though the details vary from publisher to publisher and contract to contract). The original idea was that the advance would pay the author enough to live on while she was writing the book (yeah, right).
But there are many caveats to this. First, many authors don’t receive an advance at all. Advances are more common for works of fiction than nonfiction, and some publishers of professional nonfiction works don’t offer advances at all.
But here’s the “big if”: even IF you’re offered an advance, you have to remember it’s an advance—as in, an advance on future sales. This means that you won’t receive any royalties until and unless your royalties pay back the advance first—and most of the time, that doesn’t’ happen.
2. Earning Publishing Royalties
This is where most people believe authors make their money. After all, every time one of your books sells, you should make some money, right?
Right. And you do (unless you’re paying back an advance). But…
Unfortunately, you don’t make much. Most people don’t know that authors typically only make 10% royalties on the sales of their books (again, there are a lot of variations based on hardcover vs. paperback vs. audiobook vs. e-book, etc., but 10% is about average across all variations) while the publisher gets 90%, some of which they’re supposed to use to market your book.
So, let’s say your book sells for $25 retail. That means you get $2.50 for each book sold. Statistics show that the typical nonfiction professional book sells 250-300 copies in the first year and about 3,000 copies throughout its lifetime of sales (Iny, n. d.). So, that’s about $750 in its first year and $7,500 spread out over a number of years. If you can live off that, you’re more frugal than I am.
Together, those first two categories—advances (if you get one) and royalties—comprise all the money you’ll make directly from your book. Pretty bleak, am I right?
But remember the good news I mentioned at the beginning—that there are many other ways to capitalize on the publication of your book. So, let’s get to them…
3. Speaking Engagements
Being a public speaker—whether that consists of doing keynote speeches, workshops, serving on panels, or whatever—is much more lucrative overall than book sales. In fact, you can easily make several thousand dollars in speaking fees per presentation.
That being the case, you might think, “Well, then, if I can make so much more from my presentation skills than I can from publishing a book, why don’t I just focus all my time on my speaking career and forget about writing a book?”
Here’s why: publishing a book can be the key to raising your visibility and authority in your niche, which in turns can lead to more—and higher paying—speaking engagements. In fact, I know one consultant who raises his speaking fees by $1,000 per presentation every time he publishes another book. Now, that’s leveraging your writing!
4. Back of the Room Book Sales
If you DO use your book to get more speaking engagements, you can then “super-size” the money you make from your presentations by selling books at the back of the room (or in the exhibit hall) following your presentation.
Authors are typically allowed to purchase copies of their books from the publisher at 30% to 40% off the retail price. You can thus make the difference between your cost and retail, plus the royalties, off of each sale.
Often, you can even have someone at the venue sell the books for you (and they might even ask you to autograph them). Little to no extra work gets you a nice bonus on top of your speaking fee.
5. Consulting
Nothing raises your prestige in your field quite so much as becoming an author. And this added prestige, in turn, makes it easier to get other gigs, including consulting contracts.
Whether your consulting approach is on-site or virtual, and whether your go-to consulting model is one-on-one or small group teacher coaching, strategy sessions with school leaders, guiding curriculum work, or something else, you can use your book to demonstrate that you’re an expert in your field—the kind of expert school leaders will pay good money to help them solve their problems.
Just point out, in all of your marketing materials, that you’re the author of (title of your book), the premier guide to (subject of your book), then sell your consulting services based on the expertise you’ve already demonstrated by being the person who (literally) “wrote the book” on the subject.
6. Giving Your Book Away
When you saw that heading, I bet you did a double take. “How,” you might ask, “do you make money by giving your book away?”
Here’s how. Offer your book as a “lead generation magnet” on your website. Feature it prominently as a free offer. All people have to do is give you their name and e-mail address, and you deliver your book to them as a free PDF in exchange.
Sure, you’re not making anything on the book itself, but you’re getting a new opt-in for every copy “sold.” If you’re smart about how you interact with your list, you can then pitch other products and services through your regular e-mails to them.
If, for example, even one of your new subscribers is impressed enough by your book to contact you to come to her school district and do a presentation for a couple thousand dollars, you’ve just made the same amount of money as you would have by selling hundreds of books. Doesn’t sound like such a crazy idea now, does it?
7. Starting a Small Group Coaching Class
Once you’ve published a book, you have the opportunity to grow a “tribe” of followers who hold your work in high esteem. The key is to put in place some process for building an e-mail list.
The free book giveaway idea described above is one approach.
You can also, at the end of your presentations, give away some small freebie (a report, checklist, infographic, pretty much anything that you can come up with that adds value to the presentation you’re giving) in return for people’s e-mail addresses. There are many other ways to add names to your list; all you need is a little imagination.
Once you have built a decent-sized list, send out an e-mail to the whole list, saying that you’re starting a special coaching class on the subject matter of your book, but that you’re going to keep the class small. People will pay a decent fee to receive small group coaching from you.
You can take a cohort through your coaching program over 6-8 weeks, then turn around and make the same offer again. Wash, rinse, repeat. With each iteration, you tighten up your coaching program until it’s a killer. And the better your program is, the more word of mouth advertising from your previous attendees will spread, making it easier to sign up the next group.
8. Creating and Selling a Guide
Sure, when you wrote your book, you probably felt like you put everything you know about the topic into the book. But that’s probably not true.
For example, let’s say you wrote a book for K-8 teachers about implementing a particular kind of pedagogy. But what’s the school leader’s role in supporting his teachers in the implementation of the approach? You could write a guide for school leaders on the topic.
Or maybe your approach could be implemented at the high school level with some tweaks. You could write a guide for extending the approach into the upper grades.
You get the idea. You look at what you put into the book, then think about other audiences and other aspects of your book’s ideas that could be taken to a deeper level and produce a guide to show people how to make those extensions and adaptations.
9. Creating and Selling a Paid E-mail Series
As I’ve already stated, becoming a published author can raise your visibility significantly. People hear your name or your book’s title, and they want to learn more. Their next step will probably be to Google your name or your book’s title. When they do, your website should come up right at the top of the search results. (You DO have a website, right? If not, don’t do anything else until your get one up and running, as your website can serve as the “hub” for many of the money-making activities discussed here).
And once they land on your website, there are many ways to turn them into either leads (prospects) or paying customers. The “Giving Your Book Away” approach covered earlier is one way to turn site visitors into leads. The “Creating and Selling a Guide” approach above is one way to turn visitors into paying customers.
Another way to get your site visitors to hand over some of their cash in return for some of your expertise is to create and sell an e-mail series or course. This is comprised of a series of e-mails you write and queue up in an e-mail autoresponder program.
When someone lands on your site and reads your ad for your e-mail series, they can click to learn more. They are then taken to a landing page (also called a “squeeze page”). Here they can fill out the form and go through the sign-up process to join the list for the e-mail course—and, of course, pay you.
The really cool thing about an e-mail course is that you write the e-mails once and they are then delivered on a timetable you set up in advance in your e-mail program. Your work is done up front, but the e-mail series can bring paying customers in over many months or even years after you’ve written the course.
10. Making Money Blogging
Now that you’ve staked your claim to being an expert in your field, you have the right (some might say, the obligation) to opine about anything and everything having to do with your field. After all, you are now a “player” in that field and people are going to want to know what you think about the issues.
And one of the best ways to get your thoughts out there is to write a regular blog. Not only does a blog allow you to comment about subjects related to your expertise, but it also allows you to continue to increase your standing as a “mover and shaker” in your niche.
But you might be wondering how, beyond the “branding” effect, your blog can actually make you money. There are several ways, including ads and sponsorships (if you get really big), but one way many authors bring in money from their blogs is to write reviews and blog posts in support of certain products in the space.
The key is to find products in your field that you would willingly endorse, contact the producers of those products, and set up an affiliate arrangement whereby you promote their products in return for a cut of the sales. There are many details involved in setting up such arrangements and perhaps I’ll delve into the topic more deeply in future posts, but for now, I just want you to be aware of this pathway for making money from a blog.
And don’t forget that, while you’re blogging, you’re also generating content that you could use for your next book (that’s a little preview of item #17 on this list). To learn more about the “blog a book” approach, see our post on the topic.
11. Guest Blogging/Article Writing
In addition to writing your own blog, you can also profit from publishing short articles in magazines (print or online) or newspapers or from guest blogging on someone else’s platform.
This approach is more indirect than the previous items on this list, as you often won’t be paid to write such articles and posts (unless you’ve already become a “big name”).
But, just because it’s indirect, that doesn’t mean you should look down on this approach. It might take a little longer to pay off, but it can definitely lead to more book sales and an elevated standing in your field in a number of ways.
For example, you can turn an excerpt of your book into an article or guest post (double-check this with your publisher, as they may restrict how much you can excerpt, since, once your book is published, it technically becomes the property of your publisher). Then, at the end of the article/post, in the “author’s box,” you can give a link to your website, or to a landing page for a product, or to your lead magnet. This way, you can make sales or gain new opt-ins from each publication, in addition to continuing to elevate your status as an expert in your space.
In addition, if you’re preparing to publish a new book, you can use this approach to preview the book’s content and get readers excited about the book launch. If you go this route, one smart tactic to employ in the author’s box at the end of the article is to offer people the chance to get on a “launch list” to be first in line to get your book when it becomes available. How cool would it be to have hundreds of people already “lined up” to buy your new book as soon as it’s launched?
12. Podcasting
Perhaps the hottest new platform for experts is podcasting. The most popular format for a podcast is the interview format where you interview other experts in your field. You provide this service for your listeners and you get to “borrow” the credibility of your expert guests. And simply by being the host, you put yourself on the same level as the guests you interview.
As far as making money, podcasting is very similar to blogging in that you can grow an audience and use your platform to attract sponsors and advertisers. And of course, you can also use your podcast as a platform from which to pitch your books.
13. Creating an Online Course
Admittedly, this one requires more of an effort to put in place, but it could be well worth it.
Since you’ve already written a books-worth of content on a topic, you have plenty of material to work with. Now all you have to do is go a little deeper on each sub-topic and change the format from book form to lesson “modules” (either text or video-plus-text).
And since you’ve already earned a name as an expert on the topic by writing your book, you should find a ready audience to which to sell your course. Start with your list of people who have bought your book—the hottest buyers are always the ones who’ve already bought. Many of these people will jump at the chance to go deeper on the subject.
The best thing about an online course, especially if the content is “evergreen,” is that it can bring in a steady stream of passive income for years.
14. Selling Ancillary Products
Don’t let your book be the beginning and end of what you have to say on a topic. Rather, think of it more like a big blockbuster superhero movie.
The movie comes out first, but when that “first run” is done, the studio doesn’t stop marketing there, do they? You bet they don’t! They sell the streaming rights to Netflix or HBO to milk some more money out of the project. The actors show up on commercials and late-night talk shows. The stores are packed with T-shirts, action figures, and Halloween costumes of the main characters.
And you, too, can “spin off” a number of other products from the original book.
Technically, we’ve already covered some of the main types of ancillary products you could develop to expand on the topic covered in your book—a guide, an e-mail course, a full-blown online course.
But there are many other products you could come up with. Turn a process described in your book into a checklist or infographic. Create a reflection journal for teachers putting your strategies into practice. Write a parents’ guide for supporting their kids using your strategies at home. You are only limited by your imagination.
15. Raising Money through Patreon
If you aren’t familiar with Patreon, it’s a crowd-funding site that supports people in the arts and other “creatives”—and that certainly can include authors of professional books.
Think of this as the previously discussed building of a mailing list, but on steroids. It would take a lot of work to get this set up, but if you do go this route, you will have the backing—not just emotional, but also financial—of some of your “raving fans.”
Basically, it works like this:
- You set up several membership tiers of support.
- You then set up a set of rewards for those who choose to fund you at each level.
- You market your membership model and its privileges to your list and on your website to bring in members.
What kinds of incentives could you offer people to sign up? Here are a few:
- Public acknowledgement via e-mail, social media, or in the acknowledgements of your next book.
- Access to a private Facebook group, Instagram group, or LinkedIn group.
- Discounted pricing on all of your products.
- Discounted or free access to live or virtual events you lead.
- Discounted or free swag—T-shirts, book bags, etc.
As mentioned above, this is a “heavier lift” than most of the other strategies on this list, but if you enjoy building a following and interacting with that following regularly, this might be just your thing. Just realize that, if you go this route, you’ll be expected to be highly engaged with the group pretty much non-stop. It comes with the territory.
16. Editing/Proofreading and Other “Writerly” Side Gigs
This one is definitely less exciting than most of the other items on this list, but I include it because the reality for many authors is that there are times in between book ideas where you need to supplement your income with some of the “low hanging fruit” types of side gigs that come easily to most authors.
Editing, revising, and proofreading can bring in a little cash (most people charge $50 plus per hour) and the intellectual challenge is much less than when you’re creating your own work, so while the job is detail-oriented, it’s fairly easy.
The Big Takeaway: Publishing a Book is Just the Beginning
I think you can see now that becoming an author is one thing, but becoming an author who gets paid is quite another.
But if you strategize from the beginning and have a plan for monetizing your expertise with your book as the hub around which other activities revolve, you can definitely do well.
And yes, I know, I promised 17 items in this list and so far I’ve only provided 16 items. So, here’s number 17:
17. Write Another Book!
There are a couple of reasons I broke number 17 off separately. First of all, obviously, if you write another book, you can once again use multiple items from the list above to monetize it.
But even more importantly, each book you write after the first one builds on the expertise you’ve already demonstrated with that first book. Which means that everything should be just a little easier the next time around.
You’ve already established yourself as an expert. You already have an audience who wants to hear more from you. You already have an e-mail list to which to market.
This is what’s often called a “virtuous cycle,” a chain of events that builds on the preceding events, leading to better and better results. Obviously, that’s what you want to happen.
So open up that word processing program and get cranking on your next book!
If you found this list of strategies helpful, or if you have questions or comments, get in touch by commenting below or sending us an e-mail through the Contact page. We’d love to hear from you!
Sources
Iny, D. (n. d.). How to really make money as a book author (Even if you don’t sell a single copy). Inc. Retrieved from: https://www.inc.com/danny-iny/how-to-really-make-money-as-a-book-author-even-if-you-dont-sell-a-single-copy.html
