If you really want your book to be the best thing that ever happened to you then it’s up to you to make your book the best thing that ever happened to you. Even though you may believe like the fate of your book is out of your control, nothing could be further from the truth. You can join the ranks of all the authors who make their books and dreams come true.
You can’t just write a book and sit on the sidelines and expect your book to be discovered and you’re being recognized as the prolific author that you are. I can pretty much guarantee that’s not going to happen. Oh, and those dreams about being a New York Times Bestselling Author? You likely have no idea how many NYTBS authors are unrecognizable and broke today? Believe me, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
But if you’ve written and book and you take full responsibility for doing so, you can turn your book into a money-making machine that will take care of you financially for years. The process is simple, but it is not easy. My friends and I have been doing this for years, and in the last 20 years, it’s only gotten easier to do every year.
If you want this, you must give up on treating your book like it’s a lottery ticket. Instead, treat it like a business, and that means making a business out of it.
Just like any other business you need a business plan. You must turn your book into a business. This is more intuitive for those of us who have been doing this for years but believe me, any book can be turned into a key component in a complete business model with the ability to take care of you financially.
It’s up to you to figure out how you are going to monetize it, so get to work on that one. If you have assembled a book of family recipes, you can turn this into a business. The most obvious might be traveling and teaching families how to cook these recipes. But if you push through the thought process, since you’ve already assembled and published your book of family recipes, you could teach other people how to make their own collection of recipe books.
Any “how to” book has a built-in business model, teaching and using the book as the textbook for your course. Even a novel, fantasy, or work of science fiction can be used as a text in a course. If you’ve written a novel, there’s a pretty good chance that there are lessons and hidden treasures embedded in the text, and your course could be about something that appears to be unrelated to what people think at first blush about your book, but you clearly understand the deeper meanings. Your course can expose these hidden treasures and inspire people who would have otherwise missed out on these inspiring messages embedded in the text.
Mission Plausible
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to find a way to monetize your book by creating a business platform for you to use your book as a text. This is in a sense the basic concept. You must write it out and allow for the growth and expansion of your vision.
What if your book inspired a movement?
What would that look like? How might fans of your project be able to increase their quality of life? How might they make a significant contribution to their families, their community, and the world at large?
Include these forward-thinking ideas in your concept.
Once you’ve worked through this process, you are ready to make a plan.