How to Make Money Writing Non Fiction Books

There is nothing wrong with wanting to make money as an author, even if you really want to have an impact on the lives of others. My belief is actually the more money you make, the more impact you can have. And when it comes to books, there are a lot of ways you can make money. So if you want to know how to make more money writing nonfiction books, well, then this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the book Broad, founder of Book Launchers Multi award winning author and and mom to this fabulous kid right here. Hi. Speaking of kids, when I was young I wanted to be a writer. I wrote all kinds of short stories and essays. I dreamed someday I would grow up to be a writer and maybe a teacher. But then somebody told me writers and teachers don't make money. And well, even at a young age, I liked money. I grew up in a 20 room motel on the side of the number one highway in Alberta, Canada. I watched how hard my parents worked to get money. I also watched how money bought things and couldn't buy things when you didn't have it. So naturally I wanted to pursue a path where there was money, which is how I ended up in business school eventually. My love of writing and teaching brought me to Book Launchers and to you today. And that is the beauty of the world we live in now. Any passion, any desire to have an impact can also lead to financial rewards, including books and being an author. But for most authors it's not write one book, hit publish and enjoy the money rolling in. I mean, maybe if you're David Goggins, that dude is selling books and running all around Las Vegas. But I'll come back to him and his millions of self published books that have sold in a second. First, let's talk about how you will make money with your book. Number one, plan to make money. I cry a little on the inside whenever someone says, oh, I know my book won't make money. I'm not doing it for money. It is fine to not have money as your first priority, but let's be real. Money is a measurement of success and of potential impact for the books that are truly done for legacy and only legacy. This is not relevant. And in 2022 we had two books that didn't get published at all. We got them print copies for the family and they were happy as can be and that is okay. That said, if you're publishing your book, if you're wanting to have impact, let's also plan to have that book generate revenue for you or at the very least lead to revenue from other ways. You know how the book will feed into your bigger picture goals in your life, your business, and your brand. I'm not doing these videos for money either, but I still want to set them up for success and have them serve a bigger purpose. There's no point in putting in energy, effort and financial resources into something that doesn't find its audience. So Tip one Rather simple, but Plan to succeed. Figure out what your big picture goal is for your book. If it's to get you speaking engagements or brand recognition or leads to your business royalties or something else, know that plan and have that be your goal. And so maybe your goal is not that you make money from the royalties specifically, but you want your book to make money by adding a zero to your consult fees. I mean, I was sitting beside a friend at dinner not that long ago, and he was showing me something on his phone when a Venmo notification flashed to tell him he just got a $25,000 deposit. He smiled and went, I just did a day of consulting for him this week. I mean, can we say hashtag goals one day? But he's a genius in his area of work, so it makes sense. I'm sure he gave the person 10 times, probably 30 times value in a full day than he charged. The point here is that if you can use your book to get four of those kind of consulting gigs, whether they're a year long or one day, like my friend, you've made a lot of money from your book. The next piece is to focus on the actions that use your book to move you closer to that goal. This means maybe you aren't as worried about book sales and royalties as you are about making sure you get exposure in front of the people who will hire you to solve their problem. And if you feel weird about setting financial targets, remember, the more money you make, the more you can spend on ads or the more books you can give away to people. And all of that leads to a much bigger impact with your book and your message, which is what's driving a lot of people to write books. Maybe you all right, number two, Write more books. In the fiction world, it's an accepted fact that the the more books you write, the more money you will make to make a replace your job kind of income. You will need word of mouth about your books. You'll need repeat customers. And of course, you also want to hit readers who are excited for what you're writing and they can't wait to gobble up everything you put out there. Now, as someone me who takes two to three years to write and publish a book, it seems. I realize this is not as easy for nonfiction authors, but it's a proven concept and it will make your book publishing experience less pressure filled. Because any one book doesn't have to be the one. If your book isn't rocketing to success, it's okay because your next one might be the one. Or something you do in the future may springboard one of your past books to sell more. With nonfiction, it can feel like you put it all into one book, but that's rarely the case. You can write shorter books, or you can take a topic from one book and turn it into a book of its own. For example. For example, I have a book on book marketing coming out this year. The title isn't finalized, so I can't tell you what I'm calling it yet, but the book is a bit of a gigantic almanac of tactics and strategies for book marketing. Almost every chapter, however, could become its own book if I was inspired to do so. There is so much I had to leave unsaid to be able to give you a comprehensive look at your book marketing and help you troubleshoot why your book might not be selling. You also might think about what comes next, like after self publish and succeed. Now you've written a book that's set up to sell, but now the real work of selling that book comes next. Which is why the next book I'm writing is a book marketing book. An alternative to consider is topics that are tangential. Tangent. Let's find a word I can actually pronounce, shall we? Take 2. Tangencial tan gensil tangential tension. Tangent. So no, you can't say it either. Take 87 an alternative plan is to consider topics that are, you know, parallel. This is gonna be author branding for me, I think. Unless a bunch of you comment in the comments below and say you should write a book about like how to sell books on YouTube or how not to pronounce certain words. I mean, both of those could be a book or a course unto themselves. You see what I'm saying here though? What does your ideal customer need to know to achieve their aspirations or move away from their fears? I'm sure you have more to say to help them, so say it and watch it boost your book sales on all formats and platforms. Number three Own your rights and keep your royalties. Self publishing does mean you have to invest in the professionals to produce your book to the best level. It also means you keep all your rights. That means formats languages, countries, including whether it becomes an app, a game, a movie, a TV show or anything else. Can you say multiple streams of income from one piece of intellectual property? Oh yeah. The opportunities are so much more than audiobook, ebook, large print of your book. If your book gets tractions and readers want more of it, you will have a lot of different opportunities and you get to keep all your royalties. That's a lot of money over time and if you're David Goggins, that literally translates into millions and millions more dollars in your pocket. If you're self publishing, you might make five or six dollars per book sold on average, depending on a lot of factors. If you have a traditional book deal, you'll be happy if you're making a dollar per book. Plus if you sell your books direct to readers, the payday can be even greater. Not sure how to sell direct? No worries. I have a great video on it that I will link to at the end and hit that thumbs up button if you like all this zero cost support over here on YouTube and after you do that, subscribe so we can become besties. My YouTube besties are a rather elite and magnificent group of folks like Stephen Serral, Bill Miller, Mojo, Caitlin Duncan, EZ Graphics, and of course Michael W. Cook. They comment, like and share on so many videos. Hugs to my besties. So rights and royalties is how you can make a lot more money if you keep them. 4. Build and use your author platform for revenue Much of what you should do as an author is focus your efforts on building a community. This community is your platform. Okay, let's go back to David Goggins and the post I shared at the start of the video where he's running around Las Vegas and I swear he runs and writes books and that's it because I know so many people who see him running around the city and I've seen him running several times myself. Anyway, his post talks about how it's not marketing money spent that sold his millions of copies, it's community. He he has more than, I think 7 million followers on social media and he's got a hardcore fan base. The power of your platform is that when you have something to sell or recommend, they buy. Your author platform, whether it consists of 100 or 100,000 people right now, is your community of people. Give them massive value. Send them noboringbookmugs because they commented on the day a video was released. We do that by the way, and of course course celebrate their wins. When you have something to offer them or you recommend a service like I constantly recommend publisher Rocket or ConvertKit. The people who need that will buy from your link and you'll make money from that relationship. Platform growth takes time and it takes consistency and it takes putting massive value into the world and eventually it does pay off. 5. Offer services around your book. This platform becomes ever so valuable when you have something to offer. Like at Book Launchers where we have courses are done with you and are done for you writing, publishing and marketing services that's going to help you write and publish and promote a nonfiction book. Of course selling books is fun and I appreciate every single book review hint. But all the books and all the video content I put out into the world is there to attract the perfect people to step forward and and want to work with us. Perfect people like Sean Hayes with his incredible book the Great Choice Lessons on My Journey from Big Time Banking to the Big House and Back. He found one of my YouTube videos several years ago and reached out so we could support him on his author journey. And what a journey he's had. By the way, this is a great book and it's the true story of entrepreneur and multimillionaire Sean Hayes rise to the highest levels of corporate banking and then his subsequent fall that led to 37 months in federal prison and cost him family, friends, freedom and a fortune. It's really a cautionary tale of success and failure. It's a page turning business memoir. So check it out. Someday his story could be a movie or TV show, but for now his goal is speaking and he wrote this book so he can speak to businesses about ethics. And what a powerful story about how slipping into ethical gray areas can lead in, you know, that slippery slope woo kind of way into the totally wrong choices. So he'll make money from book sales, but consulting and speaking will be the big money and maybe even who knows, screen time for him or his story. For other authors, the book might feed towards software sales, products, courses, workshops or other offerings. And your book helps you build a platform and establish trust. And that know like feeling you get when you've heard somebody's story and voila. Now you're making money from more than books. Now when I say voila I don't mean publish book and voila make money. I wish that was how fast it happened. The journey of making money from your book takes time and dedication. We do find a lot of authors will not persist long enough to really enjoy the fruits of their labor. So give it time, be consistent, keep going. Look around at the authors you admire. How are they making money. I didn't touch on Kickstarter but but that's also become a popular way to generate revenue and even pay for your book production. If you aren't familiar with the publishing world, you may not have heard of Brandon Sanderson who raised a record setting 41 million on Kickstarter for four books he wrote during the pandemic. Of course he has a following. So let's return to point 4. Build a platform because that is the path to making a lot of money from your book efforts. Whew. That was a lot. But it was a fun one. Now this right here is the video I promised on direct sales. It is a good one. And this one is on five Big Book Marketing Questions Answered because I think you might have a few of these questions next. Both are guaranteed good viewing and if you disagree of course you can let me know politely in the comments after you've clicked on over and watched. I'll see you there.