Thinking Ahead With Publishing Your Book

When you choose to publish a book, you need to plan for the long term.

Unlike writing a blog, where everything is ‘now’ you have to think about your audience, and how you come across long before you have your book published.  You have to think ahead and think about what you have to offer to your potential readers and what they will see as your brand.

We can refer to brands all we like, but there is a lot of truth to it.  Writers are known for a lot of what they produce.  Most of my writing is non-fiction, and blogging, and I am known for this.  The problem is not so much the ‘now’ it’s the schedule and the planning which goes into a book.  I can sit down and write fifty pages of words, and they are words not a story, but then I need to go back and edit this, and make it interesting.

The social media and the blogging world help this, because it means

This is why publishing an e-book, or any book, is a long term investment. Money becomes an issue that many publishers talk to writers about, but for self-published or independent authors there is the very rare question of “seriously how much money can you make?” This is a great question, so I’ve done some number crunching, and put it into perspective.

You publish a book, and you believe it’s a great book, but it’s a niche market book.  You will eventually earn the income you want, but not right away.

How long would it take to earn one hundred dollars on this book? If you choose to sell your book at 99 cents, you will earn about 35 cents on each book through Kindle, this is the royalty rate at 35%.  There are different prices if you go through other e-book sellers such as Kobo or Nook, but for now, we can focus on Kindle.  In this niche market you will need to sell about 286 e-books to earn that one hundred dollars.  Not too bad and not too hard you might think, most people have social media on their side.

This is an great idea, but you have best have a good readership, not a following, on as many social networking sites as possible.

Take this same book, and sell it for $2.99.  Because Kindle Direct Publishing now allows you a higher royalty, which is 70% instead of 35% you will earn about $2.09 per book.  In a niche market, if you are well known, and have a strong readership, you will need to sell 47 books.  There is a big ‘challenge’ to this, and it is at a higher price, most readers a bit cautious with their money, and even some of the major booksellers point out it takes longer to make the same money because people will buy a relatively unknown author at a lower price.

The length of time it take to earn $100 can be years, unless you plan ahead of time and have the best book you can publish out there.

Outside of a niche market, the price and the numbers seem to be a bit different, however, the key to success is not how many books you can publish in a short time frame, but how you can build on the ‘now’ of your blog and social media presence (hint: act human) and plan for book signings and other events to get your name out there as best you can.

Thinking ahead with publishing your book means you take where you are and build more of a presence and over time, how well you price your books and what people see you as will determine how soon you will be writing for a living.  If you aren’t in a niche market, you will also need to determine how much effort it will take to build a profitable audience, and also who will follow you on Twitter, or Facebook or LinkedIn or the countless other sites you will need to be responsible for.  This is why it is important to think ahead.

It’s simple steps, you write, and the more you write the more chance your work will be seen by others, and you will be pleased with the outcome, but planning is a must when it comes to how much success you will have with your book.