
2 minute read
Making Money with Your Book by Speaking
As the price of paper increases, making money with books is getting more difficult. Distributors take a whopping 55 percent of your retail price to list and sell your book on their platforms. Relying on distributors to sell your book will result in two or three dollars in royalties here and there.
These variables leave authors faced with making new decisions on to sell books and be profitable. How do you cut out the middleman and sell books on your own? Here are some ways you can make more money from your book.
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Paid and unpaid speaking can generate more sales at a higher profit. Our authors frequently have books drop shipped to speaking events. This eliminates the 55% distribution fee and puts more money into the pocket of the author. Let’s take a look at the difference:
Retail price - distribution fees - cost to print the book = Royalty
Distributor sale: $20.00 (retail price) - $11.00 (55% dist fee) - $5.50 (cost to print book) = $3.50 royalty
Buying your own book: $20.00 (retail price) -$0 (dist fee) - $5.50 (cost to print book) = $14.50
A paid speaking model may allow you to negotiate a fee plus the purchase of a number of books for the audience.
Chase Cunningham, a cybersecurity expert and Women-in-Stem proponent is a perfect example of this. When his novel published with a female protagonist/ cybersecurity hero, he sold copies to several cybersecurity companies where he spoke.
I personally am a fan of non-paid speaking events. This provides an opportunity to sell your book and upsell into a product. This is what many of our authors do as well. The benefit is not only selling the book without distributors fees but adding a one-time offer (OTO) that brings in additional revenue.
Author Merrill Chandler does this well. When he speaks, he sells a low-cost workshop that the book is a part of. I have personally seen Merrill sell a room of over 100 people and have 97 of them sign up for the book and the workshop. The low-cost workshop is a gateway to providing extraordinary value and upselling into higher- ticket products and services.
Speaking can also include podcasting. Most guest appearances will provide an opportunity to pitch something at the end. Be smart and send your listeners to a landing page with a signed copy of your book and an OTO.
If you send people to a distributor to purchase the book, you not only lose 55% to the distributor but you also do not know who purchased the book. By providing a landing page with and OTO, you now have an interested person in your email list. This strategy is a win-win for cutting out the middleman and building personal relationships with your audience.
As authors become more creative about book selling, they also become savvier in revenue generation and making personal connections.
Juliet Clark is a six- time author, speaker and podcaster who has spent the last twenty years helping authors, coaches, speakers, and small businesses all over the world build expert audiences.
She started out as a mystery novelist and is best known or her books Gypsy, Granny Heist, and Dead by Dawn, and Pitchslapped. At age 46, she received a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and is an avid hiker and golfer.
