How much money will I make from publishing a book?

Seth Godin once said about book publishing: “If you’re doing it for the money, you’re going to be disappointed.”

Coming from an author of 19 bestsellers who’s worth a reported $34 million dollars, that’s pretty disappointing.

So if no one’s making any money from books, why do they bother publishing them?

Money isn’t everything

Maybe for many authors, money isn’t the driving force. There are many non-financial reasons for writing a book—it might be a life-long ambition, or something to show your family. You might have an idea that will change the world and you’ll kick yourself if you never get it out there. Or maybe it’s the process of writing a book that drives you. Going back to Seth, he sums up these reasons neatly:

“Writing a book is a tremendous experience. It pays off intellectually. It clarifies your thinking. It builds credibility. It is a living engine of marketing and idea spreading, working every day to deliver your message with authority.”

Back to reality

But let’s face it: we all want to make money. I encourage the authors on my online course to be brutally honest about their reasons for writing a book, and most of them admit they want their book to be a source of income. So how much money can the average business author like you expect to make?

Royalties

The most obvious way of making money from books is author royalties. If you’re lucky enough to be traditionally published, these are likely to be between 7.5% and 10% of your book’s cover price. However, if the trade discount given to bookshops reaches a certain level, you can expect this to drop to more like 5-7%. Many publishers will give you an advance on these royalties, and that can be anything from a couple of thousand pounds to a 5-figure sum.

Of course, if you self-publish you’ll keep more of your royalties—up to 90% in some cases. But unless you’re a brilliant marketing machine, you’re likely to sell fewer books, and you’ll have to pay for editing, design and proofreading yourself.

The middle of the road option is hybrid publishing, which generally pays around 50-60% royalties. But publishing packages will usually cost you around £2500-£3000. I’ll be explaining more about the different publishing options on this blog page over the next few weeks, so watch out for advice on choosing the right route for you.

Hidden money

So it seems Seth Godin’s right—if you think you’re going to make serious money from book sales alone then you’ve got another think coming. But like many other successful authors he knows the real rewards from writing a business book. The real money—the long-term benefit of being an author—is from the money your book makes you indirectly.

How much money has Seth Godin made from his podcast, his marketing workshop and his online courses? How much do people pay for him to speak at their event? The financial reward from writing his books is almost certainly outweighed by the value they’ve given his brand.

We’re not all Seth Godin. So think about this: a wedding planner whose target market is brides getting married abroad writes a book about how to plan a wedding remotely. The book makes her around £1900 in royalties in its first year—less than £160 a month. But four brides, impressed with her practical tips and knowledge of worldwide destinations, contact her via her link in the back of the book. Three of them become clients—worth a total of £21,500. If those three clients wouldn’t have come across her service without reading the book, who’s laughing now in terms of return on investment?

A book isn’t a short-term marketing investment like Facebook ads. It will carry on winning you clients for years to come—without any further outlay. That’s where the real money is made.

One final point: To make this return on investment more likely, it’s vital to carefully research your audience and what they need. You’ll also need to make sure you structure your book so that your reader gets the right information in the right way.

I’ll be talking more about how to identify your reader in my next blog, but if you want to make sure you position your book most effectively from the start, find out more about my online Business Book Kickstarter course.

What will writing a book do for my business?

Daniel Priestley built his first multi-million dollar business by the time he was 25.

He then went on to found Dent Global, a business accelerator programme for small enterprises. He’s helped build and sell businesses in the UK, Australia and Singapore. Today he’s a professional speaker who shares his wisdom and experience around the world.

But being successful isn’t enough to make you a household name. So what’s helped Daniel become the expert in his field? The answer is simpler than you think.

He writes books.

What Daniel Priestley understands about marketing is that it’s all built on trust. A tangible asset like a book is the ultimate way to get readers to trust you—and to turn them into clients.

He knows that the time (and money) he invests in writing a book will be more than repaid in benefits to his business, and that a business book earns its keep more than any other marketing asset—short-term, medium term and into the future.

A book is the most powerful way to connect with your audience—whether you use it to share your business philosophy or create a rousing call to action that inspires readers to work with you.

Here are some of the things writing a book can do:

Broaden your reach

Daniel Priestley uses his books to communicate with potential clients he’s never even met—and you could too. Sharing your thoughts and experiences in a book is a powerful way to build brand awareness and broaden your reach, and it makes you more discoverable in a saturated digital world. By making you visible to a wider audience, a book helps you connect with more potential customers in a meaningful way.

Harness your thoughts

Planning and writing a book is a clarifying process in itself: it’s your chance to think deeply about what you and your business have to offer.

To write a book you need to be clear and structured in your thinking. Otherwise how can you share it with your readers? By putting pen to paper to explain your values and processes, you’ll learn to articulate your core business more succinctly in person. And when it comes to selling your services, pitching for work or applying for funding, that’s an important skill to have.

Become the expert

A key benefit of producing a well-crafted business book is that it showcases you as a thoughtful, valuable contributor to your industry. Remember: short, snappy e-books can have just as much impact as longer printed publications—what’s right for you depends on what you want your book to do.

If you want to share bite-size information quickly and easily via your website, a free downloadable booklet could be just the ticket, as it’ll position you as someone who’s always ready with easy-to-digest tips. If you want to establish yourself as a thought leader in your field, sharing your expertise through detailed research and case studies in a full-size book might be the better option.

Start a conversation

Once you’ve published your book, you open yourself up for conversations about the topics it covers. This can be used to your advantage; being a published author gives you the perfect way in to speak on expert panels or at industry events. This can put you in touch with new potential clients or lead to conversations about partnerships with people you’d love to work with.

Writing a book could be the strongest marketing move you make this year. If you want to kickstart your book with an intensive two-week course on planning and writing, I’m launching The Business Book Kickstarter this September. See here for more information.

How long does it take to write a book?

One of the most common questions people ask me is ‘How long will it take me to write a book?’

The short answer is ‘How long is a piece of string?’, but that’s not going to help you make a decision about whether to invest your time.

The truth is that how long it takes to write a book varies from person to person. But there are a few factors that will influence your writing speed, and considering each of them in turn will help you work out whether it’s a commitment you can make.

The length of the book

It goes without saying that the longer your book, the longer it will take you to write. But many authors start to write without setting a target, leaving them an open-ended goal and no end date in sight. Let’s consider how long your book needs to be.

When I work with a new author, we spend time at the beginning to think about the reader. How long does your reader want your book to be? How much time do they have to read it? Writing for child-free millennials with plenty of leisure time isn’t the same as writing for high-pressured sales teams who are constantly on the road.

One method I use to discover more about what readers want is to research other books in the genre. How long are they? What do the reviews say about them? If Amazon customers criticise a 300-page book for being too long, that’s a clue that there’s a gap in the market for a shorter book on the same subject.

In fact, you probably don’t have to write a long book at all. Most business books are between 30 and 40,000 words—and many authors on my coaching programme write that in just 4 months. Think about what you have to say and what your reader really needs to hear. Chances are you can write a lot less than you think.

Your other commitments

Before I make a writing schedule with my authors, I always ask them about their other commitments. How many days a week do they work and what hours? What do they do on weekends? What’s coming up in their life and business?

If you’re wondering if you’ve got time to write a book, ask yourself this: could you write one page a day? One page in a Word document is around 500 words. That’s an average blog post. Could you do that 5 days a week? If so, you could be writing 2,500 words a week. After 4 months, that could turn into a 40,000-word book.

Of course, some days 500 words will take an hour and some days it’ll take 3. Your frame of mind and the subject you’re tackling all play a part. Try timing how long it takes you to write a blog piece. Could you write that 5 days a week? If you can, you’ve got what it takes to finish a book.

How much research you need to do

Research can kill books.

I know many authors who’ve never even started their book because they’re stuck in the research phase. So work out how long this will take before you start.

One way is to split the content you need to write into three groups: topics you need to research, topics you know so well you can just write, and topics you can re-purpose from material you’ve already written. This ‘Research/Write/Re-purpose’ method will show you how much new material you need to source. And that will give you an idea of how long your book will take you.

How long it takes to write a book varies. But by taking into account all the factors above, you’ll get a good idea of whether you can commit some of your time to creating something meaningful. If you’d like help to create a writing schedule, need some accountability, or just want to share your ideas, contact me here.