Nicolas Cole's most profitable book made $400-500k in royalties over six years, but his favorite work is a memoir that barely sold. He argues that books often work best as springboards for bigger products: his writing book launched Ship 30 for 30, which generated millions.
When you talk about making money from books, this book that I wrote is a great example. The Art and Business of Online Writing. This is to date the book that has made me the most money. Now, to be clear, I love this book. This is great. I'm happy I wrote it. This is not in my library, my favorite thing that I've ever written. So the book that makes the most money is not always or often the book that is most fulfilling. The book that was most fulfilling for me to write is my memoir that almost no one has bought, but it is the best thing I've ever written. The two goals are different. And then second is, even though this book has made money, this book has probably made $400,000 $500,000 in royalties over the past 6 years, something like that. But this book was the foundation of all the things that we taught in Ship 30 for 30, and Ship 30 for 30 generated millions of dollars. Same ideas. And so I think it's important when writers say, like, "I want to make money from my book," you need to expand your scope and your definition of success. Because why are so many writers fixated on the book has to be the thing making the money, when the book could literally make you $0, but if you build something on the back of it that makes you 10 times are 100 times more money, that's not a bad outcome.
What Every Writer Gets Wrong About Their Audience #writing #creator #writingtips
