Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

I enjoy writing and I hope one day to write a book. While it’s not quite the same as creating a business, writing a book and publishing it for profit certainly have many similarities. Authors like most creative artists often struggle to make a living from their craft. An author that treats their book like a business person treats a product can leverage the same marketing techniques and tricks to spread the word.

Business author Seth Godin writes,

The return on equity and return on time for authors and for publishers is horrendous. If you’re doing it for the money, you’re going to be disappointed.

which does not paint a good picture for the struggling authors not lucky enough to be J.K. Rawling or Dan Brown. Seth continues by explaining an author should work on personal branding as much as possible in order to spread the personality and ideas of the author.

So, what’s my best advice?

Build an asset. Large numbers of influential people who read your blog or read your emails or watch your TV show or love your restaurant or or or…

Then, put your idea into a format where it will spread fast. That could be an ebook (a free one) or a pamphlet (a cheap one–the Joy of Jello sold millions and millions of copies at a dollar or less).

Then, if your idea catches on, you can sell the souvenir edition. The book. The thing people keep on their shelf or lend out or get from the library. Books are wonderful (I own too many!) but they’re not necessarily the best vessel for spreading your idea.

And the punchline, of course, is that if you do all these things, you won’t need a publisher. And that’s exactly when a publisher will want you! That’s the sort of author publishers do the best with.

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