Alternate Sources of Income for Non-Fiction - article

I have clients who get $20,000 as a book advance but make $30,000 per speech and do seventy speeches a year. Do the math. Of course, not everyone can be that kind of speaker, but even at more modest levels, an advance from a publisher isn’t the only—or even the primary—way to make money from a nonfiction book.

Right now, we’re selling a book on growing a manufacturing company in China. It’s what we call a midlist book. In other words, it’s never going to make it onto any best-seller lists. Even so, the author has an opportunity to make a fortune from it, because once it’s published, he can act as a consultant to companies who want to start manufacturing in China and charge very handsome fees. It’s a great opportunity for him. So is he going to make money from his book? Probably not very much just from sales, but it’s still going to be extremely lucrative for him because of the ways it can improve his consulting business.

I love working with entrepreneurs and business owners who see writing a book as a way to enhance their careers. Writing a book on a particular subject demonstrates that you’re an expert and gives you a way to create revenue. Consulting and speaking are the big-ticket items, but books can generate other kinds of revenue too. Workshops are a phenomenal way to make a few thousand dollars here and there. Webinars are another. You can work together with ten or twenty of your friends who can approach your subject from different angles. Get a lot of talent in one place, and lots of people will come hoping to learn something.

In conjunction with your workshop or webinar, you can sell e-books or specific chapters of e-books that go into depth about a particular subject. That’s something I see from almost everyone who is paying attention to the market. And then, of course, you can get people to purchase your work on a subscription basis. I used to be a speaker at events run by Jay Abraham, and he and another marketing guy, Ted Nickless, used to talk about the funnel. People might start out by paying twenty dollars for an e-book or a special report. Then they pay fifty dollars for a DVD, and then they pay a hundred and fifty, and then a thousand. Pretty soon, they’re paying five thousand dollars for a six-day retreat at a gorgeous resort just to stand around and learn from your wisdom. That’s a model that really works, but you’ve got to invest a lot of time and energy in it and know what you’re doing.

I’m really excited about a new program we’re instituting specifically for foreign authors. A lot of international authors have started to come to me, and we’ve had nine international best sellers now. So I’ve started consulting with foreign authors about how to get a platform growing in America. I use the same principles as usual, but they have to approach it from a different angle, because they don’t have the option a native author would of starting workshops within 150 miles of their homes to see how the market responds.

It’s a matter of being clever, paying attention, and being brave enough to charge what you’re worth. Hold to fee integrity. Don’t invite a hundred people for free from your church or your women’s group. Hold to fee integrity, because it teaches you a lesson and also teaches your market a lesson.