How To Make Money Writing A Book (And How Much You Can Make)

YOU ARE READING: How To Make Money Writing A Book (And How Much You Can Make) AT PhebinhvanhocEN

One of the most common questions I get from potential authors who are about to write a book is something like:

“How do I use my book to earn money? How can I make sure I get ROI on my time and money?”

You are reading: Fastest books to write for making money quick

is a reasonable question.

The bad news is that you probably won’t make (substantial) money selling copies of your book.

The good news: There are plenty of other ways to make money from a book, and usually a lot more money than you would by focusing on copy sales.

In this guide for scribes, I’ll cover 20 different ways you can leverage to turn your book into a profit-generating machine:

consulting services
paid speakers
professional services
coaching services
clients for your agency
sell a physical product
paid community/intellectual groups
self-employed clients
workshops and group teaching
raise money of investors
recruit people to work for your company
promote “done for you” services
sell a video course/information product
sell a software/saas product
change careers
get investment opportunities and get invited to join meetings
promote an installation or conference
attract high net worth customers
taxes and cancellations
book sales

I’ll go over the most common forms, with examples for each.

1. consulting services

At scribe, our largest customer base is consultants. once you reach a certain level of success, you really can’t go much higher without a book. A book is what establishes a consultant as an authority and increases her visibility over the competition.

ashley welch and justin jones were in this situation. They had taken their sales consultancy, Somersault Innovations, to a high level, but it didn’t really break out until they wrote their book. this got them a speaking space at dreamforce, where they signed up at&t as a customer.

kirk drake owned a successful consulting firm that helped credit unions learn how to market and sell better. he was doing well, but it wasn’t until his book came out that he was able to collect high six-figure fees and sign the largest credit unions in the industry.

joe mechlinkski used his two best-selling books, growing up independently and changing jobs, to sign major fortune 500 clients and be named ey entrepreneur of the year.

For a consultant, a book is the best marketing you can do.

2. talk paid

one of the main ways to make money with a book is through talks.

It’s a challenge to become a paid professional speaker without a book. People have started speaking careers without books, of course, but almost all professional speakers eventually write a book; And when they do, the fee they can charge typically triples.

john ruhlin is an excellent example. he was a successful corporate gift expert but could only charge around $5k for an engagement. he published giftology and now regularly publishes keynote speeches for $30,000 or more.

This is because a book is a credential for a speaker. It’s a basic necessity. A book is the way people know for sure you are qualified to speak to their group on your topic.

Kevin Kruse is another great example. his blog “an entrepreneurial author’s first $100k” details how he made money in his first year as an author. while he earned $70,000 in book sales, he earned $170,000 in speaking fees.

3. professional service (medical, financial, etc.)

One of the best ways to use a book is to establish its authority in your field of service and then use that authority to generate new customers.

The fact is that most people have no idea how to choose a doctor, a financial advisor or any other related professional service practice. they know nothing about the skills needed, what to look for, what to avoid, or how to think about service. A book is a great way to establish your authority and show people what it would be like to work with you. beyond that, he does a great job of educating his clients on what to expect, making their job easier.

dr. michael lewis has a specialized practice focused on traumatic brain injuries. His book, When Brains Collide, is a great introduction to traumatic brain injury and how to treat it, so much so that his practice has grown more than 30 percent in size since the book came out.

sam marrella saw something very similar happen to his financial planning company. after writing his book, he received a flood of local media and speaking requests, and saw his assets under his management double. this is quite common for financial planners as there is always a need for good financial advice and services.

4. training services

If you’re a trainer of any kind, people are likely to have trouble differentiating between you and any other trainer: what makes you an expert and why they should work with you.

A book is a great way to showcase your experience and explain what your job with them would be like.

a great example of this is ben bergeron. he’s one of the best crossfit trainers in the country, but he was a little under the radar. so he wrote a book on how to train the best crossfitters in the game, and now he has too many opportunities to keep track.

This is not just true for athletic coaches. Take Cameron Herold for example. He’s one of the most renowned CEO coaches in the world, and has clients like the CEO of Sprint—and got there by putting everything he knew about scaling and running companies into four different books.

5. clients for your agency

All agency owners know what troublesome client acquisition can be. A book doesn’t magically solve this problem, but it does make it much easier to find and close new clients.

deb gabor had this problem with her branding agency and she used a book to not only solve that problem, but to catapult her agency to the next level. He now works with companies like Dell, NBC, and Microsoft, citing his book as the reason his agency stood out from other agencies.

melissa gonzalez did the same for her retail and design agency. she put most of what she knew about pop-up stores into her book, and doubled her business in two years. Plus, it was the reason she was hired by so many major retailers: Macy’s, Chanel, and Marc Jacobs have all worked with Melissa since her book came out.

6. Sell a Physical Product

search amazon under the books “lose weight” or “eat paleo”. You’ll see thousands of books, and many of them are essentially buying guides for physical products like supplements, food companies, or unique products.

mark sisson is one of the best in this space. He started Primal Blueprint and has published nearly a dozen books on his version of the paleo diet. they are great books. he sells them on amazon and even gives many of them away on his site.

Not only do they help people eat right, but Mark also has a complete line of Primal Blueprint supplements and food that people can buy. They don’t have to buy these products, but they’re there and easy to purchase, and the books and products dovetail perfectly.

Think about it: would you respond to an ad about supplements? probably not.

how about a book that teaches you which supplements to take, when and why? if you trust the book, you’ll trust the recommendations in the supplement.

mark has great nutrition books that you trust, which automatically lends more credibility to his supplement recommendations.

7. paid community/intellectual groups

There are many people who have paid think tanks. many of their clients want to join because they have written books that show everyone how much they know and what they can gain by joining their group.

James Maskell runs the Evolution of Medicine Summit and mastermind group where tens of thousands of health professionals meet and discuss topics. His book The Evolution of Medicine has been a great way for him to find and recruit new members.

ari meisel leads the less active intellectual group. Many of his clients find out about him and his group through his books.

8. independent clients

If you’re self-employed, writing a book is a piece of cake. in fact, the problem is that as soon as you do a book, you get so overwhelmed with work that you can’t handle everything.

this is exactly what happened to david kadavy. he wrote a book called design for hackers. he wrote it for a very specific audience and ended up crushing it. he was inundated with design work. he had to create an agency and deliver everything by hiring someone to manage it for him (and he created a course that works very well too).

If you’re a great freelancer, if you have a specific skill that you sell, writing a book that explains how you do it creates an almost uninterrupted supply of clients.

Think about it: If I’m looking for a freelancer, I have no idea how to choose one over the other, I have no idea what I’m supposed to look for or how to decide.

why not choose the one who wrote the book?

9. workshops and group teaching

In addition to speaking, many consultants and speakers also do “group workshops.” a company brings them in to teach their method to employees and train them for a day or a series of days. it’s pretty easy to get relatively large companies to pay you to teach their employees what you know in a one-day workshop.

Most employers know that if they give out a book, their employees won’t read it. however, if they can get the author to come and give a presentation and answer questions for a day, they can teach things.

mona patel wrote the book reframe and now conducts workshops based on the application of the principles of her book. they usually sell out, and both the book and the workshops are mutually reinforcing. the book brings people to the workshop and she sells copies of her book to people who come to the workshop.

reframe

10. Raise Money from Investors

It is difficult to raise money for projects from investors. they are trusting you with their assets, so they want to get to know you and understand who you are and what you believe. once they do, they are much more likely to want to give you their hard-earned money. For Jorge Newbery, this was a revelation. he was a successful real estate investor who had fallen on hard times and then worked his way back to success, but he couldn’t get investors to understand this. so he wrote a book about his journey, burn zones.

It was so successful that Jorge now has the problem of raising TOO MUCH money. That’s a problem all entrepreneurs wish they had.

11. recruit people to work in your company

This only applies to business owners and high-level executives, but for them, there’s almost no better way to get great people to work with you than to lay out your company’s vision in a book.

stephan aarstol used his book, the five-hour workday, to lay out his vision for a different way of working in business. the sight of him struck a chord, and as a result, he was inundated with both attention for his company and product sales. but more importantly, he received an avalanche of requests. thousands of people rushed to apply to work with him.

Another great example of this is Jeff Kavanaugh’s book, Consulting Essentials. Jeff is a partner at Infosys, a large consulting firm, and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Texas, Dallas. He wrote this book to help his students understand what consultants did and how to do it, and it’s had the unintended consequence of attracting hundreds of very qualified applicants to his firm.

12. promote “done for you” services

frosting bob has an amazing company that helps big brands use affiliate marketing, but this is so hard to get across. so he put his ideas into a book. And in less than a year, he signed up dozens of major brands and grew his company to more than 100 employees.

same thing happened with phillip stutts. runs a marketing agency that helps politicians use digital marketing. She realized that his tactics work extremely well for companies, so she wrote a book on how most marketing companies fail to serve their customers and how a company can audit them for better results. what happened? the corporate side of her business more than doubled in a year.

13. sell a video course/information product

if your book teaches something for which the reader has a high return on investment, you can create what amounts to an advanced version that is delivered as a video course, charge a lot more money for it, and then use the book to empower people. to that course.

One of the main benefits is that while people won’t pay more than $25 for a book, they will often pay $500 or more for a video course of the same material.

This is rational, because many people learn more easily with video and audio materials than with books.

josh turner wrote a book called connect, which made it to the wall street journal bestseller list. his book is about how to use linkedin to drive sales at his company, and the book, in addition to being very good, ends up leading a lot of people to his advanced video course.

Jason Fladlien did the same thing. He has the very best video courses and online training in the world about webinars, and he used his book as a “top of funnel” lead gen to sell millions of dollars of his courses.

14. sell a software/saas product

A book is a great way for a company to sell software, especially saas software.

The best example is hubspot, the company that invented inbound marketing. what did they do to promote it? among other things, they wrote a book called inbound marketing.

The book minimally features hubspot and is instead a massive advertisement for their marketing method (inbound marketing), and guess what?

Using their software is the easiest way to do inbound marketing. Not only does the book provide real value to the reader, but it ends up converting many readers into customers.

another example is mark organ. This influential company helps businesses and brands harness the power of their fans to create new “promotion marketing” channels. the software they have created to facilitate this is very powerful, but it often takes a mental leap for people to understand how “promotion marketing” actually works. mark wrote his book, the messenger is the message to explain this, and it has seen incredible growth since its publication.

15. Change Careers

Even if you don’t have your own business or entrepreneurial aspirations, a book can help you substantially advance your career, either within your current company or by helping you make a career change entirely.

simon dudley did this with his book, the end of certainty.

was a huge influence in the video conferencing space, but due to various technological changes, he no longer believed in the field. he thought they were going to be interrupted and he didn’t think the companies there would change.

wanted to get out of video conferencing, so he wrote a book on his theories about technological change and how to adapt to it, never mentioning teleconferencing. That way, he could go to other businesses and introduce them, saying, “Listen, I know exactly how you’re being interrupted. I can help you.”

He created a company called excession events and is now successful as a consultant on technological changes. he essentially created a new career.

here’s the ultimate irony: no one in the teleconferencing business heard it before he wrote the book. ever since he wrote it, and although he never mentioned teleconferencing in the book, the parallels were obvious, half of his consulting business is made up of companies in the teleconferencing business that didn’t hire him before.

jeb white is doing the same. he was a very successful lawyer, but he was no longer of use to him and he wanted a new profession. so he wrote a book about something he did in his spare time: helping poor and disadvantaged children get into the best schools.

That book has led to now earning 6 figures a year as a college consultant and enabled him to quit his job as a lawyer.

16. obtain investment opportunities and be invited to join meetings

Consider cliff lerner’s book, explosive growth. Cliff was one of the original growth hackers, as he turned his small dating business into the fastest growing public company a decade ago.

He wanted to coach startups, but it wasn’t until his book released that people understood what a genius he was and how much he could help them. So he wrote a book explaining how to do what he did. Next thing he knew, he was being asked to join the boards of companies and to angel invest in hot startups: exactly what he was interested in.

almost the same thing happened with jonathan siegel. he had founded and sold nearly a dozen software companies and was looking to invest. so he wrote a book about all the mistakes and misinformation out there, designed to help new founders.

Now, you have your choice of investments and companies to help.

17. promote an installation or conference

The founders of the Kentucky Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame wanted to get more attention for their cause, so they wrote Unbridled Spirit, a book about all the famous Kentuckians who started great businesses. took off, they doubled contributions and increased media attention nearly 10-fold, just as a result of the book.

Books are an under-exploited marketing avenue for conferences. we helped a conference called ldv summit, which is about vision technology and pairs venture capitalists in that space with inventors and thought leaders, to write a book about their conference.

The conference host then does two things:

the owner of the conference (evan nisselsen) sends copies of the book to lps or potential employers, and he gets all the benefits of writing a book without having to actually write it himself.
includes a copy of the book when he mails out physical applications for each year’s conference. has tripled its renewal rate.

By spending $5 to send past attendees a good book, you get them to spend $500+ on a conference that’s more than six months away. very good deal.

TED does this as well. They even have their own publishing imprint.

18. attract high net worth customers

If you’re in the business of selling to high net worth people, you know how difficult it can be to attract and sell to them. having a great book makes that job so much easier. One example is Alex Andrawes, a high-end wine broker who helps people invest in fine wines. He was successful before he wrote a book, but after publishing his book on investing in fine wines, he doubled his incoming leads and tripled his highest net worth clients in just one year.

nik tarascio owns an aircraft brokerage business. there are very few people who can afford to buy a plane, and he used his book to help him attract and close numerous buyers.

19. Taxes and Write-Offs

This is a counter-intuitive way to make money from your book that very few business owners use, and you can use it in addition to any of the strategies above.

If you are using your book as a legitimate marketing tool to promote a business, the out-of-pocket costs of production are 100% deductible. that means anything you spend money on part of creating the book can be deducted, like:

book cover design
layout design
all printing costs
editing and proofreading
any professional services you use to help create it
etc, etc, etc.

everything is 100% deductible as business marketing expenses. just like you can deduct what you spend on facebook ads and website designers, a book falls into the same category.

20. book sale

I said before that book sales are not the best way to make money. I never said you can’t make money with them.

Once you have a book that appeals to a specific audience, there are many ways to help boost book sales:

Facebook ads can often be converted into book sales.
With bundled promotions, you can give things away to encourage people to buy books.
you can sell live at events (where you’re a speaker, for example).
Guest posts featuring key lessons from the book can also drive interest in the book.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about how to directly implement these things because, honestly, it’s not worth it for most authors.

If you placed your book correctly, you don’t need to worry about selling copies, you just need to worry about how the book becomes what really matters to you.

but hey, if people buy it, you have a marketing tool that makes you money. that’s great

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