- Are you thinking of writing a nonfiction book,
and wondering if you're gonna make any money on it?
Or maybe you've just resolved yourself
to the fact that you'll make nothing.
Stick around, this video is for you!
(upbeat music)
Hey, I'm Julie the book broad,
an award winning author
and the founder of a fantastic company
called Book Launchers.
We're your fabulous professional self-publishing team,
helping you write, publish and sell nonfiction books
that grow your business and make you money.
Authors making money on nonfiction books.
This is such a hard topic
because the answer is truly every single book
and every single author is different.
It depends.
It depends on your price point,
your distribution, your royalty choices,
how you're selling it,
what format it's in and on and on and on.
At my last count which was a little while ago now,
my first book, More Than Cashflow,
put money in my pocket, only from book sales,
more than $85,000.
But that's since 2013.
My first year was obviously the biggest and best payouts.
I think I had at least one five-figure check
and a few that were high four-figure,
like around $7,000 per check.
So that was super fun.
My second book sales, The New Brand You,
are nowhere near as impressive.
At my last count the number was somewhere around $10,000,
and that book came out in 2016.
But truly that one, other than about 25 podcast interviews
and some email marketing, I did very little to promote it.
(notification chime ringing)
I respect our clients' privacy,
so I'm fine telling you my numbers,
but I can't disclose details about our clients.
But I can tell you that of the last 30 book launches,
we have three that I estimate will do better
than my first book.
Most of the books are gonna be in the mid range.
But again, and this is so important,
almost none of my clients are relying
on the book revenue for their primary source of income.
They wrote the book to support
the other things they're doing.
They have other goals and reasons for writing the book.
But here's an important point for you.
In every case where a book
is selling high volumes right now at the start,
that we've been involved in,
the author has a following.
An audience on social media that's hungry and engaged
or a newsletter list of people
who are ready with credit card in hand
to buy the book when it's announced.
So if you have an audience and they're engaged,
unless you write a book that misses the mark
for them completely,
you're going to make money on your book.
One of our clients had a newsletter list
of only 1000 people, but that was all it took
for a pretty big launch with 500 books sold,
multiple high rankings on Amazon categories
and some great reviews and momentum.
They got great bookstore distribution,
and many big sales months after that.
500 copies sold in a month, by the way,
means you're probably getting a single check
or a single payment into your bank account
of $3,000, give or take,
depending on pricing and distribution choices.
500 books is not that hard to sell
if you have any sort of audience at all
and you follow a few proven steps for actually connecting
and communicating with that audience.
But you're sitting there thinking,
I don't have an audience, so am I up a river,
(water splashing)
without a paddle?
No, you still have two options.
Number one, your book starts slow,
but builds momentum as you work really hard
to get it in front of your ideal readers.
And if your book is great,
and people who do get it, read it and love it,
it will pick up steam and grow from there.
If this is you, you could set 500 or 1000 books sold
in 12 month period as your goal,
and be trying to increase your book sales
every month as you go.
The other option is you have
a strong network of people
who have your ideal reader in their audience
and they support you by promoting your book
in their newsletters webinars, social media events
and other medium that they have.
And if you don't know them,
you're working really hard
to get in front of other people's audiences.
You do this through podcast interviews,
speaking engagements, webinars, media attention,
live events, live appearances.
When you do this, it's hard to know how well you'll do.
But the right person endorsing your book
can lead to hundreds of book sales.
My first book launch that I already told you about,
I had a newsletter list of 10,000 people,
which easily led to more than a 1000 book sales.
But my friends, Nick and Tom, of Rock Star Real Estate,
helped me sell a few thousand copies
as well by marketing to their audience.
That combined with other smaller audiences
that promoted by book helped me sell
more than 3000 print books in my launch week
and built on it from there.
In all three situations,
there's a significant amount of work
that the author must do.
Your book doesn't just go on up and Amazon and sell.
So in the first situation, you have an audience
and you've probably worked really hard
to build that audience that you have today.
In the second situation you're working hard
to get in front of people,
which means you're doing at least one thing every day
to grow your book sales.
And in number three you've been either working hard
to build relationships or you're working hard now
to build those relationships to find those readers.
So how much money are you gonna make as an author?
I have no idea.
If you don't have an existing audience
and you're not ready to invest time, money,
energy, into finding your audience,
you're probably not gonna make very much as an author.
In almost every case I've looked at,
I can tell you the more time and energy you invest
into creating a well-positioned,
high quality book that focuses on
what's in it for the reader,
the better you set yourself up for success.
But ultimately your success is going
to be a direct result of what you've done
to build an audience and what you're willing to do
to make it happen when your book is out.
Being an author is a business.
(air whooshing)
You have to know your market.
Hire the right team.
Invest in that business before you get a return.
And that means you're taking some risk,
and you have to market that product to find buyers.
And the authors that really win
are doing that and using their book
to make money in other ways like speaking gigs,
lead generation, media, attracting capital and on.
Which by the way, I talked about in this video,
which will appear right here in about 15 seconds.
Just wait for it.
You can make money as an author.
Some authors make way more than I've made,
that is for sure.
But you can also make almost nothing.
So I think to answer this question
of whether you'll make money as an author,
you need to look in the mirror
and ask that person how committed they are
to writing a book readers want
and then telling them about it,
because that is going to directly impact
whether you make money as a nonfiction author or not.
Like this video, smash that thumbs up button
and leave a comment to let me know
what to think about authors making money on books.
Oh, and check this out.
(fingers snapping)
There it is!
And for contrast reasons to write a book
that aren't about money, right here.
Go ahead and click on one of these videos,
so we can keep hanging out.
I'm already so excited to see you again.
(upbeat music)