The Million Dollar Author Formula

welcome to the best seller Secrets podcast where experts learn how to crush their business goals with their own best-selling book I’m Rob cosberg your host on today’s episode we’re going to talk about how to get unstuck in the writing process by using our million dollar author formula not just get unstuck in writing but unstuck in promotion of your book and the profiting from your book as well

[Applause] look writing a book is hard in 2008 or so the New York Times famously did a survey ask adult Americans if they thought they had a book in them and if they wanted to write a book and they found that over 80 percent of adult Americans want to write a book believe they have a book in them yet less than one percent ever actually accomplished that it’s hard but it’s probably a lot harder than it needs to be you see there there’s something busted in the model if you were going to get in your car and drive from wherever you live now to another place across the country for example uh right uh when the pandemic hit I was living in Southern California I had been there on and off for about 15 years and I owned a home on the water in St Augustine Florida which is actually where I happen to live right now and about two weeks in to the pandemic of course my office was closed down in Southern California we were not considered an essential business so my wife and I decided you know what let’s move across the country during this crazy time and let’s live in St Augustine let’s shelter in place there we thought okay why not when we decided to drive because we have two dogs and we weren’t going to fly and put them in the cargo hold we decided to drive across the country I wanted to get from Pasadena San Marino California actually to St Augustine as quickly as possible in fact we did it in two nights so I knew I had to map out every single hour of my journey or at least every day I knew I could get from one place to another and I was happy to drive for 12 13 15 hours we did it in two nights but that was because it was mapped out imagine if we simply got in our vehicle and started driving hoping that we would get to our destination well look that’s the way a lot of people approach writing a book they think I’m just gonna sit down and start grinding out 500 Words a day a thousand words a day and guess what they never actually accomplish it I’ve been the founder of bestseller publishing for over 11 years now I have heard all kinds of crazy stories I remember one time I got a phone appointment with a client who told me that uh he had had over had written over a thousand pages of content and he wanted me to help him to create a book from that I was in Pages what what in the world were we going to do with a thousand pages of his life story there was no way to condense that in fact it was just a lot simpler to start from scratch to get from where we are right now to the destination that we want to get to the old way of thinking what I call Author 1.0 is probably why you’re stuck if you’re stuck if you’re not stuck hey congratulations uh most people are stuck at one time or another author 1.0 is the idea that you are going to write your book by either a sitting down and grinding out content 500 a thousand words a day or B maybe go away to a cabin in the woods for six months at a time which by the way didn’t work out too well in The Shining as Jack Nicholson was writing his I believe it was his novel at any rate that didn’t work for me and that doesn’t work for most people at least statistically if that is the kind of individual that you are you grind out content you love to do that you write on a regular basis congratulations more power to you the average person that we work with does not create content that way and I have found that probably it’s in the 98th percentile of people do not create content that way whether it be because of perfectionism procrastination or because they simply don’t have the discipline to do it day in and day out without actually getting to their destination we need a new approach we created what we call the million dollar author formula it’s everything around what we call publish promote profit publish is everything having to to do with the writing editing and Publishing of a book promotion is everything having to do with the promotion of the book making it a bestseller really making it successful and then profit is really where the Revenue the impact and the income is coming from in fact it’s everything that happens after the writing of the book on through the entire history of your business and the use of the book hopefully forever because if you’re staying in the same business you’re in right now and you’ve written a book for that business there’s no reason why you can’t continue to use that same book over and over and over again to attract clients so we need a new approach let’s walk through what that approach could look like in each of these particular areas if you’re stuck in the writing process right now because you haven’t been able to grind it out and maybe even like me you tried working with a traditional Ghost Rider and you found that in traditional ghost writing the hardest part is actually capturing the voice of the author you see when I decided to write my first book back in 2008 for my financial services company I thought I felt that there were two paths that I could go down One path was this path of grinding out 500 to a thousand words a day and I didn’t think that path was for me the other path I felt like was traditional ghost writing the traditional ghost writing path was the only other one that I knew so even though I was on the cusp of a massive real estate business failure in 2008 because I had been in real estate on and off for 20 years at that time and you remember what happened around 2007 and 2008 if you’re like me it’s an indelibly etched on your soul I felt like okay I need to take what little money I have left after the difficulties and the the challenge that I went through in real estate and invested in a traditional Ghost Writer I did that very thing the way traditional ghost writing typically works is there’s a lot of question and answer you come up with what your table of contents is what you think the flow of your content is going to be and then the ghost writer is going to ask you questions about those things you go back and forth I did that with a Ghostwriter over a period of about six months and honestly I felt like it was going great because I can answer questions about my content I can give information what I found though when she finally got back to me with the 186 or so pages of my book is that it wasn’t in my voice at all in fact as I began reading it by the time I got to the first or second chapter I realized that I was going to have to start from scratch it’s not that it was poorly written it was written beautifully it’s that it didn’t sound anything like me it had content it didn’t have context so we need a process to create both content and context without doing this Daily Grind we call that enhanced ghost writing in fact even trademarked it because it is our proprietary process I’ll dive more into details incoming trainings but the basic is this we want to start with really mapping out just like driving from Pasadena to Saint Augustine we really want to map out who the audience is we want to map out a great hook for the book the title The subtitle the table of of the contents we want to make sure that we have a great flow within the book before we ever get started with the writing process in fact we want to make sure that every single chapter is built out with a great story with the hero’s journey meaning that there’s there’s points of conflict and difficulty there are open Loops we then want to make sure that the points that we’re teaching are are awesome and accurate and connect directly with the context of the story and then then we want to conclude it powerfully and give next steps so when you map out a chapter like that and again I’ll talk more deep in more detail about what this is going to look like in future trainings but when you map out things like that in advance then guess what you can simply get in front of a camera and do a training you can get on a zoom call you can create a 15 or 20 minute kind of mini Ted Talk and that becomes your chapter you tell your story you leave the dramatic points and open Loops you teach your content you conclude the story you give next steps and you’re done what a simple and Powerful way to create content in fact you can write blog posts this way you can write social media posts this way and it’s both interesting and intriguing because their story that gives context gives your voice and you create fantastic content very very quickly now look spoken word is different than the written word in fact I’ve probably been speaking in one long run-on sentence at this point but truth be told you can do that and then go back and edit later take long run-on sentences and create short Punchy sentences real introductions real conclusions bullet points Etc that’s what our enhanced ghost writing team does at bestseller publishing and this is something that you can do for yourself but oftentimes it’s that getting the content out of you initially and having a great workflow that really stops people so if you map things out beautifully in what we call Author 2.0 right get away from the grind get away from the traditional manner of ghost riding and instead use this enhanced formula to map out everything your hook your title your subtitle your table of contents and then every single chapter mapped out in a way that you can speak it effortlessly with story and content and you will capture the interest of people now this model doesn’t stop at just the writing process fantastic you have a book now you’ve created something that has your voice both context and content but guess what the average non-fiction book sells about 250 copies in its lifetime can you imagine working so hard to develop great content to have something that has your voice and then only a couple of hundred people are interested in it in its entire lifetime and by the way probably of those couple hundred most are family friends current clients acquaintances that kind of thing that’s not what we want we want something a book that is going to attract people that do not know who we are get them to fall in love with us or not right magnets attract but magnets also repel that’s okay you want to attract the right people you want to repel the wrong people we want a book that’s doing that in our audience and getting people ready to work with us maybe in bigger and better ways so the 1.0 version of this is thinking that to promote your book you already need an audience in place in fact if you talk to a traditional publisher what a traditional publisher will tell you is that hey Rob we would love to work with you we see that you have found the cure for cancer congratulations but tell me how many people are on your email list Rob or Rob how many people do you have following you on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook and guess what if the answer is none or very few sorry I know you have the cure for cancer and it’s amazing thing but we’re just not the right company to work with look I’m not down on traditional Publishers the truth be told is they’re making an investment in you because they believe that you can sell books if you can’t sell books if you don’t already have a platform in place why should they invest their hard-earned money in you and in your idea okay so we understand they’re business people but here’s the thing you don’t actually need a built-in platform to begin selling your book in fact the author 2.0 way r model is you can actually use your book to build your platform currently I have hundreds of thousands of social media followers I have over a hundred thousand people on my email list and all of these people came to me because of my book I used my book to attract them I used my book to get media PR speaking engagements and I sell my book and attract people to build my audience you can actually flip the script and say I don’t need you traditional publisher because I’m going to use my book to build my audience myself and the coolest thing is once you build that audience you can launch book two book three book four I’m currently launching my next book in about two or three months and guess what I’m going to be of course launching it to my list list to my social media following Etc is it going to be successful you know I believe so and I believe so because I already have hundreds of thousands of people that are following me and interested in me so flip the script author 2.0 the million dollar author formula is all about using your book to build your platform rather than thinking I need to have a platform in place now the coolest thing is it doesn’t end there it really never ends because the profit what we call the profit phase of the million dollar author formula is what you’re going to be doing from the time your book is done and launched to best seller all the way through the life of your business and the life of use of your book now if you change careers or you build a an entirely different business than perhaps that book won’t be as focused perhaps that book won’t be on topic for you any longer you know the very first book I wrote was for my financial services company that book still sells that book is still on Amazon but I don’t try to actively sell that book I don’t focus on that book at all because I sold my financial services company when I built bestseller publishing back in 2011 and 2012. fine now I have my other Wall Street Journal and USA Today best sellers and I’m building the business on that so the profit phase though the 1.0 version of The Profit phase is thinking that your book is going to sell and earn you royalties it’s the royalties where you’re really going to make the money the the impact and the income with your best-selling book and I hate to tell you but that is very very small thinking that’s not going to be the place where you make the biggest splash with your book now will your book sell will you make royalties certainly I’ve had months where I’ve done 2500 or 3000 dollars in royalties and that’s not bad on average maybe five seven hundred dollars per month hey that’s a nice meal out for my wife and myself maybe a really really nice meal out for my wife and myself but that’s not supportive of my business that doesn’t allow me to live in the home that I have Drive the vehicles that I drive and have the staff and the team to support all of our clients so what then is author 2.0 when it comes to profiting we focus on three things the three areas that we focus on are using your book to generate leads and there are a hundred ways to use your book to generate leads number two using your book to generate PR and media I have been on TV all over the country from the number two Market in the United States in Los Angeles KTLA to smaller markets in Wisconsin and Michigan and Vermont and Florida and other places me I’ve been on TV I mean do I have a a face for TV I don’t know I know that I’m not trying to be on TV but it gives me an opportunity to get my message out and to show people that perhaps are attracted to uh my company using my company it shows them that hey like we’re legit we’re credible look their founder has been on TV all over the country as well as blogs podcasts magazines Etc use your book for PRN media that’s number two and then number three if you’re interested and I think you should be use your book to attract speaking engagements I remember when we started working with Amy Dix who was a a dear friend and a client of ours we did two books for Amy and when Amy sold her branding company her desire was to begin a speaking business and she had never before earned a single fee as a paid speaker when she started using her book and a very simple process that we teach she went from never having been paid for speaking engagement to earning over a million dollars in speaker fees in an 18-month period she booked herself on over 98 paid engagements ranging from five thousand dollars to as much as twelve thousand dollars for single engagement and this was going from nothing from never having earned a fee by the way she started small her first speaking fee was 250 dollars so you have to start somewhere and you push it but guess what when you’re trying to be a speaker or maybe when you’re speaking like I do to attract clients in your business then understand that you you have to learn the process you have to compete with others that are also speaking or potentially speaking your best-selling book and your media TV radio appearances are going to be the very thing that helps you to stand out above the crowd so this is our author 2.0 our million dollar author formula it is not grinding it out but instead using a model that works to complete your book it’s not thinking the traditional publishing way of book promotion where you already need to have a platform in place instead use your book to build your platform and then finally not thinking that royalties are really where we’re going to make our income an impact but instead using the book in all kinds of ways to generate leads for your business to generate speaking engagements and to generate PR and media this is the million dollar author formula and this is a Formula you can use with your book to be wildly successful with it thank you foreign [Applause]