How to Make Money from Your Book Without Selling a Single Copy

Some authors will argue that they simply want to sell their book and make money that way, envisioning thousands of copies getting purchased on a monthly basis, yielding hefty royalty payments. The reality of that happening is next to nil. It’s not selling your book that will make you money. It’s what having a book means that will make you money. Music artists do not make the majority of their money from selling their music. It’s all the other avenues and doors that have been opened to them—concerts, merchandise, endorsements, paid appearances, and so on—as a result of being an artist that will net them large profits.

It was enough work just trying to write, edit, publish, and market your book, but I know you’re thinking...“The ink is barely dry on the pages from where my book was printed. Now you’re saying I have to think about doing even more with it?!”

In a word, yes.

However, if you are satisfied with getting your book written and published, and you have no interest in taking it any further, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Many authors take that route, wanting to leave a legacy, tell their personal story, add “published author” to their already impressive list of accomplishments, give their followers another way to connect with and learn from them, or make an impact, and that’s it. If any of those sound like you, then selling your book will suffice meeting your goals. Pay me no mind.

One of our authors recently told me "Bridgett, I have no interest in lugging around copies of my book, trying to sell them." And I told her I fully respect authors not wanting to pack the trunk of their Pontiac with paperbacks. There are alternatives. If you want to see 3, 4, and 5 figures generated from your book without having to sell hundreds or thousands of copies of it, then trust me when I tell you it's totally within your ability.

Avenues for Making Money

The options or avenues for making money from your book tend to fall into two categories: active streams and passive streams. Active streams are those avenues that require your active input, either as needed or on an ongoing basis, while passive streams require relatively little active input on your part after the initial launch.

Here are options for extending your book’s reach and revenue-generating capabilities. In addition to regularly marketing your book (because, remember, if you don’t talk about it, then people will forget about it), these are a few activities you should add to your plan for making money off your book.

Active Streams

Speaking Engagements

The beauty of this option is you do not have to worry about creating the content, which can be the most daunting first step to speaking—figuring out your topic. Take the content in your book, and you are ready to craft keynotes, workshops, breakout sessions, webinars, and more. You are at liberty to host these events yourself, speak at events that have already been established by large organizations and that will be marketed and hosted by those organizations, or reach out to organizations to pitch your speaking (and/or other) services. I do this all the time. Either I use my book to establish me as an authority, thereby selling me as the obvious choice for an organization to hire me; or I speak at conferences where my book is sold in the conference book store that my session attendees then purchase and take back to decision-makers, who then enter into conversations about hiring me. It's not the $20 or $30 book sale you want to focus on; it's the bigger opportunity to which that can lead.

Coaching

Coaching provides your followers with one-on-one direct access to you as an expert on your book’s topic, and you help those followers pursue their goals. Based on your expertise/your book topic, these goals can be professional or personal in nature. With coaching, you are guiding people to put in place what you discuss and teach in your book. You can charge by the hour or offer packages of one-month, three-month, one-year, or lengthier access. Or you can be a contractor and have an established coaching platform to do all the heavy lifting with prospecting, marketing, and onboarding new clients while you simply show up to facilitate coaching sessions.

Do not assume it was your book that led people to you. Reference your book in sessions, as applicable, and even suggest that the audience buy a copy if you know a coachee will benefit from its contents.

Passive Streams

Online Courses

You can have offerings for as little as $9 to hundreds or thousands of dollars. Your online course might be a self-paced experience for your participants, where you take them from A to Z on a topic and there is very little interaction with you, especially with regard to the offerings that are at lower costs. Naturally, you may opt to have a live, weekly, virtual office hour or check-in with enrollees, but that’s up to you. There is no right or wrong way for how you run your online courses (or any other offering you design). Just know that the less involved you are, the more passive the stream.

Mini e-Books

With mini e-books, you are taking full advantage of your book. What you do is take each chapter of your book and make it its own e-book, and this works quite nicely for those chapters that are how-tos or personal or professional development in nature. This also works nicely for those who do not want to buy your entire book but who find the brevity of a mini e-book more palatable and perfect because it has a targeted message, addressing a specific question or challenge the reader has. Instead of purchasing an entire book on marketing, for instance, a person may be drawn to the one chapter in the book that focuses on social media marketing and therefore more inclined to purchase the mini e-book of that chapter.

Don’t be afraid to take full advantage of your book. It’s yours to use as you see fit. Imagine that your twelve-chapter paperback retails for $19.99, plus you sell each of those chapters on your website as mini e-books, at $4.99 per download. It costs you virtually nothing to make the mini e-book files, and now your $19.99 book is making you $80.00 per copy!

Want more? My co-author and I go in more depth with these four avenues and give you four more ideas for how to make money from your book without selling a single copy in chapter 11 of our award-nominated Do Not Write a Book...Until You Read This One. Add a copy to your library today. You won't be disappointed.

Ready to get your book done? The team at the award-winning hybrid publishing company Press 49 is ready to make your dream of becoming a published author a reality. Click HERE to schedule your complimentary call today.

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