Make Your Own Book and Add 7 Revenue Streams to Your Business

You should make your own book if you’re in business for yourself and want to take your revenue to the next level. A nonfiction book targeted specifically to your ideal audience will immediately turn you into an expert allowing you to leverage your new status to add multiple new revenue streams to your business.

Having a book to your name will open new doors and new markets that aren’t accessible otherwise, doors to new opportunities with strategic partners, doors to new lucrative contracts, doors to highly paid speaking fees, and naturally, revenue from the sale of books.

In this article, I’ll describe seven new revenue streams that you can expect to receive after you write and publish your very own book.

Revenue Stream 1: Public Speaking Fees

As a published nonfiction author, you’ll be able to develop a fast track to the world of paid public speaking. All you have to do is to find organizations with budgets for speakers that cater to the same audience that your book is targeted to.

These organizations, for example trade or professional associations, are constantly looking for new training and techniques to offer their members and they hold regular meetings at the local, state and national level to deliver this value to their members.

What kind of fees can you expect to generate from this activity? At the very beginning of your speaking career, you can expect to attract the interest of organizations at the local and regional level with fees in the $2,500-$3,500 range.

As you develop a track record at these levels, new opportunities will open up at the state level. Often times the event manager at the local level will recommend you for the organization’s state conference, and once you make it there you can expect to earn between $5,000 and $10,000 per talk.

As you gain more experience and publish more books, you’ll be able to attract the attention and interest of national conferences. At this level you’ll be able to command fees in the $10,000 to $20,000 range.

And if you’re so lucky as to land one of your books in the bestseller list, your fees will jump to the $20,000 to $35,000 range.

Revenue Stream 2: Back of The Room Sales

As you begin to make inroads into the public speaking circuit, you’ll have the opportunity to create a new revenue stream – monetizing your audiences.

If you provide a memorable experience with your presentation, if you are engaging, entertaining and provide high value, you’ll have created a direct connection with a captive audience who’ll be very willing to purchase goods and services from you. For example…

Books

The logical back-of-the-room purchase at your speaking events will be your book or books. Committed audiences who’ve been treated to a great public speaker typically convert into book buyers in large numbers, especially since you, the author, is right there.

Get your pen ready because you’ll be autographing a lot of those purchases! It’s not uncommon for a speaker who nailed their presentation to sell books to 50% or more of their audience, and if you are talking to 300-500 people that’s several thousands of dollars for a single event.

Professional Services

But there’s another potentially more lucrative type of back-of-the-room sales: motivated audience members who need to hire your professional services.

Now some of these folks will be ready right away to sign up with you – this is the low-hanging fruit. But there will also be audience members who aren’t quite ready yet and who will need your help in the future.

These people will become your pipeline of future clients from the conference, and you’ll be able to capture their contact information so you can follow up later. Now imagine the potential from speaking at a few of these events a year…

Revenue Stream 3: Domestic and International Book Sales

When you self-publish your book, you’ll have access to the two largest worldwide distributors to the trade:

• Amazon, with their multiple online bookstores around the world, and
• IngramSpark, the leading worldwide distributor to physical bookstores and libraries.

These behemoths in the book industry operate massive print-on-demand facilities around the world that allow them (and you) to skip the inventory stage and fulfil orders immediately after they’re purchased and money received.

So, you’ll be able to sell your book or books without having to invest into a single print run! Those distributors will simply deduct the printing cost from the book sale, as well as any discount required by bookstores and a small processing fee. The rest is yours.

Revenue Stream 4: Lucrative Contracts

Another great side-effect of becoming a published nonfiction author is that when you include your book as a calling card with contracts for services that you’re bidding on, your book will automatically become a competitive advantage.

Most entrepreneurs don’t publish books, so yours naturally becomes a differentiating feature that makes your expertise very tangible and very immediate to the decision makers that adjudicate the contracts.

Revenue Stream 5: Strategic Partnerships

Another great advantage of having a book to your name is its use as a calling card to attract and develop strategic partnerships with other experts who share a common audience with you.

When you have a book, other experts will assume that you also have a large following – this is especially true if you have a track record of speaking engagements and media interviews – and they’ll want to enter into a mutually-beneficial partnership with you so that you can both leverage each other’s audiences for profit.

Although it’s possible to enter into strategic partnerships without a book, you’ll be able to command a much better deal with the perception of public recognition and fame associated with a published book.

Revenue Stream 6: Lead Generation

Your book will also act as a calling card for prospects in your day-to-day business. Books are strong tool for closing leads, compared to company brochures and other sales literature.

Prospects don’t typically consider books to be a sales tool and as such they’re given much more credibility. Also, a book establishes your authority as an expert in your field, which increases your cachet in the eyes of the prospect.

Giving a $14.99 book away that only cost you $4.50 to produce for the potential of closing a lead for at $700 service, generates a tremendous return on investment.

Why does this work so well? Because even though your hard cost was only $4.50, the value received from your content by your prospect might have been $1,000 or more in their eyes, and you’re giving it away for free! The law of reciprocity usually takes care of the rest.

Revenue Stream 7: International Sales

Another great benefit of a published book is that, in this world of on-demand printing, online bookstores and near-free high-impact promotional tools such as blogs, Internet-delivered journalism and book reviews, you’ll be able to easily reach an international audience of prospects.

Nowadays it’s quite common for experts with published books who live in the U.S., for example, to get calls for estimates from places as far afield as Australia, Japan and the U.K. as a direct result of those international prospects reading your book.

Now, it’s possible that someone from another country may come across your website even if you haven’t written a book, but a website is understood to be a sales tool and it doesn’t necessarily turn you into an expert.

But a well-written and well-produced nonfiction book will give you a level of credibility and immediacy across borders that no other promotional vehicle can match. Expertise and authority is a human quality that is appreciated across cultures.

Next Steps

There’s no doubt that a book can turn you into an expert. This is well-understood. What most entrepreneurs don’t necessarily realize, however, is that there are multiple revenue streams that a book can generate for your business as well.

But now you know the secret! If you need guidance to get started on the right path to creating and publishing your book, read my companion article: How to Write a Compelling Book in 12 Steps – A Must-Read Guide for Nonfiction Authors.

All the best!

If you enjoyed this article and are in the process of self-publishing a nonfiction book, be sure to check out my free nonfiction success guide, drawn from years of experience editing books for bestselling authors (including a New York Times bestseller) and ghostwriting for CEOs and politicians. Simply click here to get instant access.

Ben

Leave me a comment below if you have any questions or a specific need that I can help you address – I operate an author services firm that specializes in helping entrepreneurs, professionals and business owners who want to publish books as a calling card for prospects, to establish their status as an expert or to just to generate additional leads for their businesses.

Here are some related articles I highly recommend:

How to Make a Book That Generates Speaking Fees

Write a Book and Dominate Your Industry: 11 Game-Changing Benefits

How Much Does it Cost to Self-Publish a Nonfiction Book?

Self-Publishing on Amazon: Everything Nonfiction Authors Need to Know

Bennett R. Coles is an award-winning author of six books published through Harper Collins (New York) and Titan Publishing Group (London). He is also the publisher at Promontory Press, editor for multiple bestselling authors (including a NY Times bestseller), ghostwriter for CEOs and politicians and the founder of Cascadia Author Services, a boutique full-service firm that specializes in premium author services specifically designed for busy professionals. Our end-to-end services include writer coaching, ghostwriting, editing, proofing, cover design, book layout, eBook production, marketing, printing and distribution.