Peter Winick argues that authors treat their books as businesses when they should treat them as marketing tools. He's spent two decades with hundreds of creators and says the real money comes from building infrastructure around the book, not from the book itself.
Hi there, it's Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and here's the idea that I'd like to share with you today, and it's this: your book is not your business. What do I mean by this? In my work over the last 20 years with hundreds of authors and speakers and academics and such, I've observed patterns, and one of the patterns I see is that when you're in book mode, whether that's sort of finishing up the writing, getting ready to release it, and then that whole sort of marketing phase, authors and thought leaders and such will make, you know, endless investments into the success of the book— digital marketing, PR, designers for the COVID parties. The, the list is endless. If the line item on the P&L is for the book, the answer is typically yes. But then I take a look and say, well, what are you investing in for the business? What are your marketing efforts? What are you doing to elevate the brand? What are you doing on a product development standpoint? What are you doing to help better position yourself? Make sure that you've got what you need on the business side of the house. Maybe it's a technology upgrade. Maybe it's making sure you have some systems and resources. And all too often, you know, I get answers like, well, there aren't resources for that, or I haven't thought of that, or we haven't spent the time on that. So what I would ask you to think about is when making investments, don't confuse your business with the book or your book with the business. They're separate. They're definitely connected, but they're separate things, and how you allocate resources to them should be against a different set of metrics, not the same set of metrics. Love to hear what you think.
