- What would you do with an extra $400 in your pocket?
I know what I'd do.
I'd probably put it towards marketing and promotion,
getting some new book covers,
paying for an editor to take care of future book projects,
or even ordering over a hundred tacos
and eating them all myself in one sitting.
All joking aside,
how was I able to save that much money,
in such a little time in less than a year?
Let me take you back to October the 3rd, 2019.
I interviewed a good friend of mine,
Michael La Ronn, the host of "Author Level Up"
here on YouTube and also the US Ambassador
for a company called
The Alliance of Independent Authors.
And before we jump into everything,
I wanna give you full disclosure, alright.
I am an affiliate for the Alliance of Independent Authors.
So that means that,
if you pick up a membership through there,
I do get a financial kickback,
but that doesn't change my opinion
and the fact that I did save a significant amount of money.
And that's putting the affiliate earnings to the side,
this is all in itself.
But first what is the Alliance of Independent Authors,
otherwise known as ALLI.
It's going to be easier
for me to say that throughout this video,
rather than saying the full sentence
that they have for their name.
In their words,
"the Alliance of Independent Authors
is a professional business membership
organization for self-publishing authors.
A non-profit,
we provide trusted advice,
supportive guidance, and a range of resources,
within a welcoming community of authors and advisors."
So essentially they're a nonprofit organization,
who is run by indie authors for indie authors.
They have your best interests at heart.
But the real question is,
and I'm sure you're probably saying this,
what's init for me?
Now, not me, but probably you.
So let's go through some of the bullet points
and some of the highlights, some of the features,
and we're going to really hang our hat
on one area in specific.
So, some of the things they have
is the advisory team,
you're going to get all your questions answered.
You get free author advice guides,
which they have dozens of these
that are just really rich with resources,
amazing, by the way.
Private moderated members forum.
Discounts for vetted author services,
now, we're going to put a pin into this one,
because this is how I was able to save all that money.
Affiliate earnings program.
Approved services directory.
Online advice conference,
daily blog,
twice-weekly podcast, which by the way,
so worth it, take your time to listen to it
because they drop a lot of serious 411 there,
an associate member website badge.
Now, there's additional perks based
on the level that you come in on
and we'll talk a little bit more about some
of those features as we go forward
and talk about the costs.
I'm not gonna go exhaustively into
every last little feature.
I just wanted to kind of show
the ones that are across all the tiers.
And the thing I wanted to focus on,
which this video is about, is just that
member-specific discount that you will get.
In fact, actually, there's a number
of discounts that you can use.
So let's take a look,
first of all, at the cost.
What you got to bear in mind is
Alli is kind of like Costco for independent authors.
When you really need to,
you're going to pay for a membership
and then you're allowed to have access
to premium discounts, to specific services.
And in some instances, get some free things in the process.
So they have a three-tiered system
and it starts out at the very basic,
a level that's called Associate,
and that runs about $89 per year.
Now, this is for someone who is
the aspiring author, hasn't published anything,
but is planning to publish something.
So at about $89 per year, really, really good.
If you're just getting into the business,
I highly recommend it because there's
going to be so much resources for you.
And of course, this discount
that I'm going to get to here in just a second.
The very next level is the Author level,
and that's about $119 per year.
And this is for an established author an established author.
If you've published at least one or more publications,
anything that's upwards of 50,000 words or more,
if you're doing children's books
this is probably for you.
If you've already published something.
Now the next step up is called the Authorpreneur.
There's a bit more of a
price increase there at about $149 per year,
but there's a little bit of an asterisk there
because it is for well-established authors,
who've had at least 50,000 book sales
over the course of the past two years,
which is a significant chunk, really.
So, a lot of people are gonna probably
fall into the Author tier.
So, I save $400 by being a member with Alli,
but how did that work?
I'm gonna break it down on the investment
and then the return on the investment.
So right away, I'm going to tell you
that I am in the Author tier.
So essentially, I pay $119 per year to be an author on Alli.
So the discount that they have,
and this is the part that I really love,
is that if you're an Alli member,
you'll get all upload fees
and update fees waived on IngramSpark.
Now, if you're not familiar with IngramSpark,
great print on demand distributor,
they have a wide reach
in fact, owned by Ingram content group,
who also runs Lightning Source,
who also oddly enough runs Expanded Distribution
through Kindle Direct Publishing.
So if you really wanna skip, Expanded Distribution
and get more of your money,
you can go directly IngramSpark, which is what I do.
So since September of 2020,
I've published over five books.
The IngramSpark upload cost is $49
and if you want to update a manuscript
that's an additional $25.
You could see how that would chip
away at your budget after a while,
but being an Alli member, bye-bye,
you don't need to worry about that
you could just get it waived.
Simply uploading five different books
to IngramSpark and using Alli
to waive those fees, I was able to save $245.
But as some of you know, it's not all rainbows,
unicorns, sunshine, and butterflies
because you're going to need to update your manuscript.
In some capacity, you might see a typo,
or maybe you forgot to put something
inside your manuscript.
Either way, you're going to end up updating it.
Now remember, it's $25 to update your manuscript
on IngramSpark, not with Alli.
Now, I roughly updated those five books
at least once in each one of them.
And I know one of the other ones I did a couple of times,
so it was about seven updates all together.
So the grand total cost
for the update fees would have been $175.
So the total expenses between the upload fees
and the update fees would come together at $420.
Now you're probably saying,
"Well that's all well and good Dale,
but you had to spend $119 right at the gate."
Okay, I'll give that to you.
$420 subtract $119,
drum roll please,
that's $301 in savings.
So that's not too bad,
not to mention it hasn't even been a full year.
I'm gonna be ending up publishing
more books over into IngramSpark,
saving even more money in the meantime.
And of course there's other discounts that are related
to this, it's not just IngramSpark.
But even if you were just to
look at it from a perspective of,
"Oh I plan on publishing to IngramSpark,"
then this is definitely the investment for you
because if you just upload two books,
or do one book, and update it four times
then you've just pretty much paid for your membership.
Visit dalelinks.com/alli,
Again, Dalelinks.com/alli
to get yourself set up with any of those three-tiers.
Hey, you wanna know how I wasted
a ton of money, in fact, thousands of dollars?
It looks like I'm starting to make up the difference,
but back in the day I wasted a ton.
Go over to this video right here,
where I talk a little bit more in depth
about how I wasted thousands of dollars in self publishing.
And in this very next video right here,
YouTube recommend you go check it out.
I'll see you in either one.