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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781683506553 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Morgan James Publishing |
| Publication date: | 05/15/2018 |
| Pages: | 74 |
| Product dimensions: | 4.00(w) x 6.00(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
WHAT IF YOU COULD RAISE $10,000+ FOR YOUR BOOK?
You've almost finished your draft and you start shopping around for publishing quotes.
One editor quotes $1,200 and another quotes $5,000. One designer will charge $500, while another charges $2,000. And then you approach an end-to- end publishing company who will charge $12,000 for the lot — editing, design, eBook, printing and distribution.
Regardless of where your suppliers sit, self-publishing a high-quality business book isn't cheap, with quotes ranging anywhere from $3,000 to $15,000+.
And yes, you know that the book is an investment. You know that the purpose of your book isn't to make a profit by selling books for $25 apiece. If you're like most of my clients, you're writing a book to:
• Build your credibility
• Connect with influencers and the media
• Generate leads
• Presell potential clients
• Charge higher rates
In other words, the purpose of your book is to create business opportunities.
"For me, one of the key things was getting my philosophy on the book right, and that is about leveraging your whole business. We're not in the business of writing and selling books; we're using the book for a broader purpose. As long as you're covering the cost of the books through the number of sales you are making, I'd rather be getting more books out there, because I think that is the longer-term objective."
– Geoff Green, author of The Smart Business Exit: Getting Rewarded for Your Blood, Sweat and Tears
But up to $15,000 to get published is a huge financial hit — especially if you're in your first few years of business.
Where most entrepreneurs go wrong
If you're like most entrepreneurs, you find a way to make it happen:
You put it on your credit card, saying, 'I'll pay it back when business picks up. After all, this book's going to bring in a flood of new clients!' All the while, you're paying 21% interest on those borrowed funds — for a book that cost $10,000, that's an extra $2,100 in interest!
You take the money out of the business, cutting back on expenses for a few months to get enough cash together. The problem? In most businesses the easiest expense to cut is you — this means months without a salary, and still having to figure out how to pay the mortgage.
You put off publishing your book until you get the funds together. Unfortunately, when an entrepreneur puts off publishing their book, they're unlikely to finish at all. I have one client who had his book edited three years ago, and it's still not in print.
But what if you could cover the costs of publishing before you went to print? And, at the same time, what if you could supercharge your marketing, helping hundreds of your books get into the hands of your ideal clients?
In this proven, step-by-step guide, I'll show you how to do just that by leveraging your most powerful business asset — partnerships.
The best thing is that this method works:
• Even if you don't have an email list of 10,000+ subscribers
• Even if you don't have a well-known brand and instantly recognisable logo
• Even if you don't have the money for expensive advertising campaigns
Let's get started!
CHAPTER 2THE POWER OF PARTNERSHIPS
Many of us imagine entrepreneurs as solitary creatures — the insanely successful ones speak from a stage under the worship of adoring fans, while those who are just getting started work from home on a laptop while wearing pyjamas.
And the rest of us? Whether you're a solopreneur or have a team, and whether you work from home or from an office, shop or factory, it can still be isolating.
After all, the business is your baby.
You are the one who comes up with the new ideas.
You are the one cold-calling potential clients.
You are the one managing staff and freelancers.
And you are the one who has to find a solution when something goes wrong.
It's no wonder that so many of us try to 'go it alone' when writing a book!
Yet there are a range of benefits in teaming up with other entrepreneurs and organisations that share your values and have access to resources you can't reach on your own.
Just some of the benefits of partnerships include:
Build your reputation. Connecting with a more established brand lends you some of that brand's credibility, which you can cash in on during sales calls or when pitching for speaking opportunities.
Extend your reach. One thing most small business owners struggle with is reach — we spend hours on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn trying to increase our following. We write blog post after blog post hoping it will grow our email list. Yet often the payoff isn't proportionate to the effort you put in. Partnering with a larger organisation can give you instant access to a database of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands.
Create joint products and packages. Often you and your partners will have complementary skills, where each of you offers one piece of the puzzle your clients need to put together to achieve their goals (e.g. a nutritionist tackles the diet piece of the weight-loss puzzle, while a personal trainer tackles the exercise piece). By joining forces, you can create complete and remarkable solutions for your clients, which can lead to exponential returns.
Access other influencers. When it comes to the key players in any industry, there is often a small group of people or companies who are getting the most opportunities, recognition and success. The great thing about this is that they often know each other, and when you partner with one, you can get access to the rest of that inner circle.
Access more resources. Maybe there's a product or service you've been wanting to invest in for some time that you know will grow your business. If your partner is also interested in the same resources, you could pool funds to increase your buying power. A common example of this is coworking spaces — many entrepreneurs can't justify the overheads that come with an office, so a coworking membership gives them access to a desk in a shared space and the overheads are shared by the members.
Increase your knowledge. Great partners are often doing great things, and building an ongoing relationship with those partners means you get to be a part of this journey. You can see what happens behind the scenes in a new product launch or marketing campaign, and apply those learnings to your own business.
Boost your profits. Yes, for the moment you're looking for someone to fund your book, but what about in future? The right partnership could lead to opportunities to be an affiliate, a keynote speaker or a consultant, all of which can add nicely to your bottom line.
And, of course, you can access thousands of dollars to offset your publishing investment.
"For a lot of people, publishing a book means you get hit with a lot of expense within a relatively short period of time, so you effectively end up with all these books and you need to figure out how you get back some money on them quickly. Being able to sell a chunk of them upfront was good because it defrayed some costs pretty quickly."
– Geoff Green, author of The Smart Business Exit: Getting Rewarded for Your Blood, Sweat and Tears
Beyond the financial benefits, though, other benefits of book funding partnerships include:
• Increased credibility as an author
• The ability to leverage the partnership to distribute your book to more of your target market
• The ability to work together on future projects
"If you're clever about achieving the right partnership, then you're able to leverage that sponsorship to get the book out to more people."
– Kate Christie, author of Me Time: The Professional Woman's Guide to Finding 30 Guilt-Free Hours a Month
"I've just come off seven presentations around Australia in four weeks, and every single person at those events got a book. Every single one of those events was hosted by a partner and the books were bought by the partner, which means I'm not actively having to promote my book."
– Carolyn Dean, author of Fully Booked: Dental Marketing Secrets for a Full Appointment Book
"My sponsors have also mentioned how we could work together in future — something I wasn't prepared for at this stage as the book isn't yet published!"
– Andrea Doyle, author of From Conflict to Consensus: Managing Workplace Conflict Well
And the best thing is that you don't need to be a world-famous expert or to have a huge email list to find partners for your book!
Let's look at the entrepreneurs I interviewed for this guide — Kate Christie, Carolyn Dean, Andrea Doyle, Geoff Green and Tamara Simon.
Have you heard of them? Probably not.
That's exactly why I wanted to speak to them.
Sure, it would be easy for a CEO of one of the big four accounting firms to find corporate sponsors for his book — he's the head of a brand that thousands are scrambling to be associated with.
What I want to demonstrate in this guide is that it's possible for you to find funding for your book.
How do I know this? Because even though the entrepreneurs I interviewed didn't have tens of thousands of people on their email lists or a global reach, each of them raised from $1,000 to $20,000+ for their books.
So how do you actually do it?
Let's move on to the two common ways partners can fund your book.
CHAPTER 3THE TWO WAYS PARTNERS CAN FUND YOUR BOOK
While the ways you can fund your book will be as varied as the partners you approach, most strategies fall into two groups — bulk presales and sponsorships.
Strategy 1: Sell your book before it exists
Preselling books is a strategy that has been used by traditional publishing houses and self-publishers for years to help build buzz about a book and ensure it has a successful launch.
As a self-publisher, an added benefit is that it helps cover your publishing costs — once you take off the cost of printing and posting the copies you sell, the rest can be used for expenses like editing, design, marketing and more.
To work out how many books you need to sell to cover your costs, use this formula:
Publishing costs / (Book RRP — per-unit print cost — per-unit postage cost) = required presales
For instance, if I was spending $10,000 to publish my book, was selling it for $25 and knew it would cost $5 to print each copy and another $5 to post each copy, I would need to presell 667 copies. (Technically I'd need to sell 666.67, but I don't think anyone would buy two thirds of a book, so let's round up.)
$10,000 / ($25 — $5 — $5) = 667
Is this doable? Yes, but to do it you'll need to run a very strong marketing campaign involving a large list of potential buyers (either your own list or one that someone else is willing to share with you).
I had neither of these elements. My marketing campaign involved asking people in my network to spread the word to their networks (about 45 of them got back to me and fewer than 10 actually shared the landing page on social media. Note to self: provide juicy incentives next time). I also shared the landing page on my own social profiles, told my email list about it (then I had a grand total of 101 subscribers) and ran a Facebook ads campaign.
How many books did I sell?
11.
Clearly I'm not an expert in this area.
Fortunately I was lucky enough to speak to two authors who were much more successful.
Geoff Green, author of The Smart Business Exit: Getting Rewarded for Your Blood, Sweat and Tears presold 350 books at $32.95 each, adding up to over $11,500 and covering his initial print run of 1,000 books.
"The key presale for me was through my strategic alliance with a local law firm. I have a very close relationship with their private advisory area and we do a lot of work together. So for them it was a very natural opportunity to be able to push the book out to a wide network of their clients and contacts, including private business owners, accountants, wealth managers, and so on. This led to an order from them for 300 books, which covered the cost of my initial print run."
– Geoff Green, author of The Smart Business Exit: Getting Rewarded for Your Blood, Sweat and Tears
Meanwhile Carolyn Dean, author of Fully Booked: Dental Marketing Secrets for a Full Appointment Book, presold 750 copies of her $29.95 book.
"The reason that I was able to presell was because I had really good partnerships. I ended up selling 500 copies to one partner, 200 to another partner, and 50 to another. So I sold 750 books before I launched. And part of the partnership conversations with them was that they would help me launch and promote the book."
– Carolyn Dean, author of Fully Booked: Dental Marketing Secrets for a Full Appointment Book
Strategy 2: Sell advertising in your book
Advertising/sponsorship is when you give other businesses access to your market in exchange for a financial contribution towards your publishing costs. This might include advertising in the back of your book, sharing their products with your email list, mentioning them from stage when you're running an event or giving a keynote, or including their logo in your marketing.
How much can you expect to get? Depending on how appealing your offer is, it can range from a few hundred dollars to several thousand — founder of Time Stylers and author of Me Time, Kate Christie, had one corporate sponsor cover the entire cost of her first book!
"I had one professional service firm that was interested in sponsoring me. In exchange for covering the cost of the printing, they would get branding on one side of my bookmark. But they've also gotten a lot of brand loyalty from me. Even though the initial print run is finished, I still get that same bookmark printed because they did me a really good turn. Now that my book's going out and I'm getting more coverage, it's a nice thing for me to do for them."
– Kate Christie, author of Me Time: The Professional Woman's Guide to Finding 30 Guilt-Free Hours a Month
Andrea Doyle, author of the upcoming book From Conflict to Consensus: Managing Workplace Conflict Well, had a sponsor offer to cover 20% of her editing and design costs in exchange for a one-page ad in the back of her book. (Unfortunately this agreement fell through due to internal policies at the organisation.)
And Tamara Simon sold two full-page and four half-page ads in the back of her book The Five Little RTO Pigs, which covered her first print run of 1,000 books.
CHAPTER 4HOW TO CREATE SUCCESSFUL BOOK FUNDING PARTNERSHIPS
According to Rosabeth Moss Kanter, the author of MOVE: Putting America's Infrastructure Back in the Lead, there are three fundamental aspects of successful partnerships:
They must deliver benefits for both partners. This is key, and you'll see a big part of the partnership process is not only deciding what you want from the relationship, but what you can offer your partner.
They involve collaboration, rather than just being an exchange. A collaborative partnership is where both partners create new value together, rather than each partner getting something back for what they put in. Collaborative partnerships tend to lead to greater returns in the long term, rather than just an immediate payoff.
They rely on personal connections. Most of the entrepreneurs I interviewed already had relationships with their prospective partners when they pitched them, rather than sending cold emails.
While this sounds great in theory, how can you create a collaborative partnership based on your personal connection with your partner that delivers benefits for both you and your partner?
It comes down to five steps:
1. Find potential partners
2. Frontload the work
3. Involve your partners in your book
4. Pitch for funds
5. Keep them in the loop
Step 1: Find potential partners
Unsurprisingly, the first step of the process is finding potential partners to approach!
This involves asking two questions: who shares your market and who shares your values?
It's only by addressing both of these criteria that you'll find a partner who is able to deliver a real business benefit (meaning, sending more clients to your business) and who you want to work with in the long term (which paves the way for future opportunities to help each other).
1. Who shares your market?
When brainstorming people and organisations who might like to help fund your book, the best place to start is with people who share your target market but who aren't direct competitors with your product or service.
In Kate's case, her first book was about smart time management for busy women, so she focused on brands, products and services that would make their lives easier and would help them manage their time smarter. The organisation she eventually partnered with was an organisation that provides advice to big companies that saw advertising in her book as an opportunity to get their brand in front of new audiences.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Fund Your Book"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Jacqui Pretty.
Excerpted by permission of Morgan James Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
What if you could raise $10,000+ for your book?,
Where most entrepreneurs go wrong,
The power of partnerships,
The 2 ways partners can fund your book,
Strategy 1: Sell your book before it exists,
Strategy 2: Sell advertising in your book,
How to create successful book funding partnerships,
Step 1: Find potential partners,
1. Who shares your market?,
2. Who shares your values?,
Exercise: Brainstorm potential partners,
Step 2: Frontload the work,
1. Build your credibility and profile,
2. Build the relationship with your partners,
Step 3: Involve your partners in your book,
Step 4: Pitch for funds,
1. Create your investment options,
2. Make the pitch,
3. Follow up!,
Step 5: Keep them in the loop,
Thank you!,
Meet the author,
Ready to write your awesome book?,