The ‘M’​ word

Here’s an extract from my new book for thought leaders and business authors coming soon… From Chapter 13: Getting support.

The ‘M’ word

It’s probably about time I mentioned the ‘M’ word. Money.

If you want help to write and publish your book, you will need to make an investment in it. Even if you get a publishing deal. You’ll be spending your time writing your book, publishing and marketing it, which means time outside of your business when you could otherwise be doing client generating activities.

If you decide to engage a book mentor, editor, proofreader, designer and/or marketing and PR help, there will be a cost involved, so I suggest you get clear on your budget before you get started.

If you’re an expert, i.e. doing the thing that you’re talking about in your book, then do more of this to pay for help with your book. When you put your attention on what you do well, you’re more likely to be paid handsomely for doing this, rather than spending hours learning Indesign, stressing about your editing, or getting frustrated when someone else does a bad job.

As it’s pretty standard to spend money on your book, on your business and on your brand, an important thing that I wish to mention here is that it’s important to see beyond your book. As Samantha Pearce says in her book, Stress-free Self-publishing “A common mistake that many authors make is trying to include their initial investment into their cover cost calculations. This can lead to figures just not adding up unless you set a ridiculously high cover price, which could price your book out of the market.”

How to get a return on investment

Although some people do have immediate success with book sales, such as one client who recently took over 300 pre-orders before she’d published her book, I’d like to remind you to start with the end in mind. Consider the best way to make back this investment and how you can measure your return.

I remember having a consultation with a client a couple of years ago who was thinking about signing up for our writing retreat and mentoring and publishing programme. She quickly did the calculations in her head about how many people she needed to book on one of her coaching courses to recoup her investment. For her it was a no brainer. She could see the value of her book for her business and the value of not having to do everything herself. She went on sign up for our full publishing package and also attended our writing retreat in Spain to get help and time to write it.

I recently had a call with a client who launched her book early 2019. It was some five months after this that we had an interview – as I do like to promote clients and their books after they’ve published. I asked her about the biggest impact her book had made to date. She told me how her book had already directly led to two corporate contracts worth thousands of pounds, which was well worth the investment in getting the book written and published.

Case study – Helen Monaghan

I’ve got many more examples in chapter 14, but for now, I’d like to give you another example. At the time of writing, I asked my colleague, Esther Harris to interview two of my clients about what had happened two and three years after publishing their books. Although clients do see some results directly after publishing, success often happens later ‒ as long as you take consistent action.

One of these was Helen Monaghan, author of Successful Business Minds. She held her book launch party that I was delighted to attend in Edinburgh in April 2016. As an accountant, Helen has not been averse to sharing some of her commercial successes with me over the years.

In Helen’s case, success wasn’t so much about business growth and client attraction, although her book helped her to define her message and USP, it helped her to achieve other goals. It was a lifelong dream, she was able to reach more people, and she could see how she could achieve other life goals, such as eradicating poverty, educating people about money and the psychology behind spending and saving. She said in the case study “There is no doubt that I wouldn’t have been able to articulate that big life goal if I hadn’t written this book. I’m about to publish my next book about how we feel about tax and how this impacts our business and financial goals.”

When deciding where to spend your money, think about the result that it will give you. Many clients put up their prices when they work with Librotas as they start to develop more confidence in the value of what they know. I’ve got many examples in chapter 14 of how clients have become savvy about sales and made the most of writing and publishing their book.

One last thing. It will probably take an expert 20 minutes to do something that will take you hours to learn. But they’ve also taken years to learn and perfect it 🙂

If you’d like help to write your book from an expert who knows what they’re talking about, then please do apply for a call here.