Publish to Paid: Turn Your Book Into Revenue in the First 90 Days

All right, welcome everybody to our BSPU call today. Excited to be with you. As always, of course, we’re recording this and I will open it up at the end for any questions that you have, not just on the topic that we’re talking about, but whatever it is that you might have questions about. So, today I want to talk about publish to paid. I want to talk about how to turn your book into revenue in the first 90 days. Okay? I’m going to give you kind of four steps, if you will, that you need to be taking to turn your book into revenue. And I hope that this is going to be applicable to all of you. I always say something that somebody thinks, “Oh, well that’s not applicable to me.” But if you’re an author, it is applicable to you. Okay. So, how to turn your book into revenue in the first 90 days. And of course, we are at the beginning of the year.

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So number one, the first thing you have to do is you have to understand your book’s role in creating revenue for you. Okay? Now, somebody’s going to say, “Well, I know my book’s role. Its role is to sell and royalties seamlessly come to me in my bank account via Amazon and KDP.” And any of you who have been authors for any length of time know that that may be true, but that’s only true for drips. That’s only true for the nickels and the dimes. You have to understand your book’s role. Your book should be producing revenue for you. If it cannot if it is not producing meaningful return on investment right away, like in the first 90 days, then let me tell you something. The issue isn’t the book. The issue is how you’re using the book or not using the book. Okay? For those of you who are influencers with millions of followers, God bless you. Happy for you. You can monetize your book quite easily by simply selling it and doing very little else. And I have a few clients like that. I have a few clients that we’ve done books for that we have they have millions of followers and they monetize their books and we’re working on book two and book three. Wonderful. But for the other 99% of the population of which I am included in the book, your book is part of your offer. It is not the entirety of your offer. Yes, it’s a big part. It’s a huge part. It’s a foundational and a fundamental part, but it is still just a part. So, if you’re struggling to monetize your book, then your issue is that you’re just relying solely on the book and you don’t have connected with it a clear offer, a clear sales path, and you’re not measuring the results of using your book in various ways. Okay? So, we need to understand first what our book’s role is. The book’s role is not as a sole vehicle to drive revenues. The book’s role is to be a part of the driver of revenues by creating opportunities for you by bringing people to a clear offer that you make through a clear sales path that you’re tracking the results of so that you can adjust and make it more and more successful. The rest of the points that we’re going to talk about are about how to activate your book. Okay. But first, we have to understand what our book’s role is. And if you’re if you don’t get that part of it, then you’re probably not going to do the rest of it anyway. So, let’s start by embracing that our book isn’t by itself a standalone object that is going to bring us revenue. Yes, it will, but a small part. But if we think of it as part of a team, if we think of it as part of an offer and a part of a process to bring people to you, then your return on investment will be significantly higher. Okay. Number two, the simplest offer that every author should start with as correspondence and in conjunction with your book is something that is going to be a simple high ROI, high ticket offer. You don’t need 10 offers. You don’t need a a value ladder. You don’t need to go from a $15 book to a $27 thing to a $97 thing to a$1,000 thing to a $30,000 thing. Yes, I have all of that and as an advanced technique, it’s a great idea, but that kind of complexity will really kill your momentum. So, if you don’t have all of that stuff built out already, good. You don’t need it. I didn’t have any of that when I started. I had my book and I had a simple offer attached to my book. And in one year with my very first book some 16 years ago now, we went in a terrible economy from zero to seven figures in revenue and then multi-se figures after that by just using the book to drive people to a phone call to an offer. That was it. Complexity came later and hopefully helped. Oftentimes it doesn’t help as much as you think. So, you need a simple, high ticket, problemsolving offer that’s tied directly to your book’s promise. What are examples of that? Some type of coaching offer. It can be an 8-w weekek, $3,000 to $5,000 program where you’re helping somebody to implement the things that you’re talking about in your book, changes that you’ve made in your lives, things that you’ve overcome. It could be a longer offer for coaching, 6 months, a year, etc., because it might take longer to get somebody results. It can be consulting. It can be that your expertise is coming in to a difficult situation and helping them to arrange that situation whether in a corporation or a small business or in a family. It can be an advisory role. It can be done for you services which it is with bestseller publishing. That’s what publish promote profit leads people back to. That’s what Bookfunnel Secrets leads people back to. It can be speaking. I end with speaking for this particular point because that’s something any of you can do. Now, you may not want to and I get it, but I have found that a pretty high percentage of people that are authors also want to speak. Good. Good. What a great way to get your message out and you can be compensated for that. By the way, there’s tons of training in the BSP membership area on how to use your book to attract speaking engagements and to get yourself booked and paid. So, we’re not going to talk about the details of that today, but the reality is that can be a high ticket problem-solving offer. The problem you’re solving is not so much for the audience as it is for the event planner or for whoever is putting the conference on. So, speaking you need to ask yourself like one key question in all of this. What problem does my book position me to solve? Now, hopefully you asked that question before you started writing the book and you wrote the book thinking in terms of you’re writing a book to solve a problem for somebody. I know not all of us have done that. Maybe you can still reverse engineer that. I hope that you can, but you need to think what problem does my book position me to solve and for who? And then that becomes your opportunity to create your high ticket offer. Now, I’m not going to give you all the details, but a high ticket office should be at least 3,000 bucks, can be as much as a h 100,000 or more, depending on the problem that you’re solving, but at least $3,000. And I’ I’d suggest higher. Understand that fewer clients are better than more clients in a situation like this. Having people make a high commitment with you is better than having a high volume of low commitment people. Why is that? Because with fewer clients that are paying you more, you can help them more directly. That’s number one. And number two, when people are paying you more, they’re more committed to the process. And guess what? Most people’s success is about their own personal commitment. It’s far less often times about all the magic that we bring because think for a moment about all the magic that you bring and then think about bringing that to somebody that is completely uncommitted to change. What good is your magic if they’re not going to make any adjustments? So, having high committed clients, which means high ticket clients, generally is far better than high volume. Think about yourself for a minute. How many of you have purchased a $7 thing, a $27 thing, a $97 thing, even a $1,000 or a $2,000 thing, and then almost never even open the box. And I I use air quotes with box because the reality is maybe these are digital courses that we never went through. I’m embarrassed to say how many $1,000 courses I have purchased and have barely gone through the first lesson before I realized I’m not going to do this. Why? Because I wasn’t committed. It wasn’t enough to really get me committed to making the change. Okay? So, you need to create a high ticket offer that’s not high volume, fewer clients that are highly committed to whatever your help is, whatever your process is. That’s number two. Number three, with that, you need to find one sales path that will work without a big list or a big platform or a big following or any of that stuff. One sales path that works for you. Look, I’m the BookFunnel guy. I love BookFunnels. I don’t write a book without building a BookFunnel. So, I think they’re great. The reality is that you don’t need a bookfunnel if you’re just getting started. Okay? You need a simple and clear path to bring the right person to you as an advanced technique. Once you have your process down, your offer down, then yes, a bookfunnel is probably a fantastic solution for you to begin scaling your business. But you don’t need it. And I’m the guy that helps build it and sell it. So, I’m telling you, you don’t need it. They’re great, and I don’t write a book without one, but it doesn’t need to be implemented until the fundamentals are implemented. So, what’s the fundamental? The fundamental is you need a clear path for the right people to come down. When I wrote my first book, the clear path was really simple. It was radio ads or my radio show to a phone call. Get a free copy of my book. Simply call our office or call the radio station. That was it. Now, I am dating myself, right? radio. Of course, there wasn’t social media at that time, or at least not in the way we think of it now. But that was the one clear sales path. Our clear sales path now is different, and there are multiple different sales paths, but you need one primary sales path. Here’s what it is in a general sense. It’s your book to a conversation to a client. Now, there’s going to be lot, you know, there’ll there’ll be lots of things to to fill in the gaps with, but your book to a conversation with the ideal person to that person becoming a client or a percentage of those people becoming clients. So, your book establishes authority. Your book invites people to the next step. And then your conversation with them is what helps them to decide, hey, I like this gal. I really think she can help me. I’m going to get started on this path or not. Right? Not everybody is a yes. If everybody is a yes, then you’re not charging enough, right? So, we know not everybody is going to be a yes. So, what do you need to do with your book? You need to look for ways to get your book to start conversations with people. Now, that’s very broad and very general. Why? Why am I not being specific? I will be in a second, but the reality is you can do this any way you want. Whatever like fills you up, whatever excites you. Way back when, Dave Ramsey started with his book and a simple radio show out of a basement of a radio station in Nashville, and it was a call-in show. So, he would offer his book. People would call in, they’d ask questions, he talked to people, he helped them, he gained their trust, and over time, what happened? more people listened, more people bought, they bought his programs, they brought bought his products, he aired on more radio stations, he started more conversations, and on and on and on. Something that we’re going to start doing. I’ve I’ve thought about doing this for a while because I had a call-in radio show as well a long time ago, and I always enjoyed it. I loved talking to people. I loved answering their questions. It was easy for me because I knew my subject matter just like you know your subject matter. And so something we’re going to start doing, maybe not weekly, but maybe a couple times a month is we’re going to do a version of this on Zoom to my audience just to help people that are not clients or they are clients, doesn’t matter to me with whatever their book issues are. You know, you’re having problems with your title. Okay, let’s talk about it. Your subtitle, you’re having challenges with book marketing, you’re having challenges with PR, just to have conversations with people. And then what will we what will I do? Well, we’ll repurpose that content. We’ll put it out on social media and hopefully will help a lot of people and start more conversations. That’s what your book can do for you. Get your book to start more conversations. So, where can they come from? Well, I already mentioned speaking. So, speaking is a fantastic way to start conversations. We’re going to be starting a new vertical to attract clients into bestseller publishing. And I say new because the way we’re doing it is new. But we’re going to be using speaking and we’re going to have speakers, clients like you that have come through bestseller publishing but are also seasoned speakers. And we’re going to be setting up speaking engagements at chiropractic events, financial advisory events, wealth planning events, medical events, etc. And having our clients go in give a presentation which will help to format for them and speaking on a stage, a literal physical stage. and we’re going to compensate them and they’re going to get a piece of whatever comes in from that particular event. Why? It’s speaking is a great way to start conversations. I want to multiply the opportunities for those conversations. And as you guys know, I like to speak right here, right here in my home. I don’t like to travel as much, but I am actually planning for the next 12 to 18 months to maybe travel more than I have in a long, long time to do these events and to train various speakers. Maybe one of you is interested in in doing that. I know Eddie is. Eddie and I have already talked about that, but maybe others of you are interested in doing that. We’re we’re moving like we’re moving full speed ahead. Amy is going to be Amy Dixs is going to be heading this up for us. We’ve already begun mapping it out. We’ve already begun looking at events. There’s only hundreds of thousands of events that we could speak in front of. This is an opportunity for us. What is your way to start conversations? Maybe it’s referrals. Maybe it’s through PR and media. You should be on podcast. If you know your material and you like to appear on PR and media, podcasts are fantastic, but so are TV, radio, opportunities to go into print, article writing, etc. These are conversation starters. Your existing network is a place to start conversations. If you have a big email list, even better. Any social content you create should start conversations. That’s the idea. And of course, you can even do warm outreach using your book to start conversations with people. So, what matters most in this and with this point? Well, you need a a clear path. That’s what we’re talking about, right? We need one sales path that gets people to start a conversation with us. We have that conversation and we see if things are a fit. So, we need some type of call to action. You need multiple, and I’ve always suggested and and said, you need multiple calls to action within your book for people to come back to you, come back to your website. You need a simple way for people to book a conversation with you. Now, as you get to the point where you’re starting to have conversations with people that are unqualified, well, you’re going to want to have an application process and things like that, but that’s okay. Start with the conversation. Start talking to people. And then you’ll need some type of consistent way to follow up with people. Your book’s job, your book’s real job is to start the right conversation for you. Now, it can do other jobs, but what a great job that is for your book. That’s number three. You need one clear sales path to get people on. Number four, you need to measure and you need to determine what it is that’s important to measure as you begin getting results or as you begin learning. We succeed and we learn, right? We don’t succeed and fail. We succeed and we learn. So, you need to stop guessing about what’s working and what’s not working. You need to start tracking. Most authors don’t like outright fail with their books. They like drift. They stop using their book or they they stop looking for ways to use their book to go deeper to get it into more people’s hands. the book that you wrote even five or 10 years ago. More than likely there might be some things that you should update, things that you know maybe there are new examples and new stories you would add, but more than likely the book that you wrote even many years ago is probably just as applicable today. Maybe just as many people coming into the your market today as there were the first day that you wrote the book. That’s true for me. the number of people that want to write a book from year to year to year stays the same because new people continually come into the market. So, if we’re finding new ways to use our book, then we need to track we need to measure what’s working and what’s not working. Some things that you might want to track, how many conversations did my did my book start for me? You know, we we track that like we track how many books we sell through our book funnel every single month. I know every single day I know. Every single week I know we track that. We track how many conversations actually get completed because sometimes people will book appointments and they don’t show. Is that crazy? People would actually go through the process of filling an application out, scheduling a time, confirming that time with someone on our team and then not showing up. We want to know that and we know that it’s about 60% of the conversations actually get completed that are booked. We want to know what conversion rate we have. We want to know what the average client value is. We want to know what kind of revenue can be directly tied to the book. That’s what we want to know because we’re using it. Authors often obsess over things like their Amazon rank or whether or not they got a onestar review. These are vanity metrics. It doesn’t matter. It only matters if your book is actually like leading people back to you and it’s helping them and helping you to grow your authority, grow your business, grow your revenue, grow your impact, make a bigger impact. That’s the idea. as it grows, as it becomes a bigger impact, if you don’t track, then you’re going to have a problem really scaling it. You’re gonna have a problem really figuring it out. You know, if a couple weeks go by and you’re tracking this and you’ve written zero every single day [laughter] in the number of conversations that have started because of my book, you’re either going to stop tracking or you’re going to say, you know what, I need to do something different. I need to figure out a new way to use my book to start conversations. It’s a little like getting on the scale, which is something that I avoid completely during the holidays. Why? Because I know what it’s going to say. But guess what? I got on the scale to start the new year. I’m like, “Okay, time to get back to work here.” The tracking of getting on the scale is what motivates me to stay in line, do what I need to do, do the things that are uncomfortable. You have to measure. You have to measure. What is my book doing for me? And if it’s not doing anything for you, don’t get mad at the book. Don’t get mad at Amazon. Don’t get mad at me. Like ask yourself, well, how am I using this? What what is wrong right now? What am I not doing that I should be doing here to make some changes? When you do that, it’s like, okay, you’re getting on the scale. You’re going, “Oh, okay. Scale doesn’t lie here. I’ve measured it. I’ve tracked it. And I need to make some changes and adjustments.” Okay, those are your four things. Go through them one more time. Understand your book’s role. That’s where it begins. Okay? Understand what your book’s role is to do. Number two, have a simple offer that you start with. A simple high ticket problem-solving offer. Number three, one sales path. Something that’s clear. You don’t need a big list. You don’t need a big following. One sales path, book to conversation to client, however you want to do that. However you want to have that conversation. And then number four, measure. Take a good look at it. No matter where you’re at right now, you know, Rob, I haven’t even done any of this stuff. Well, start figuring out what it is that you need to measure because as you measure that, that will motivate you. That will motivate you to do something, to do something about it. And that’s what I want you to do. It motivates me to do something as well.