I was speaking at JV Alert last weekend and a person said "I'm writing a book so that I can build a back-end series of products related to the chapters because everyone knows you can't make money from a book."
This is becoming a more and more common excuse for people to write bad books and it is ridiculous. Depending on your business model you may make more money from the business that the book brings you but there is a good living to be made from writing good books that people find interesting and want to read. The trick is that you have to learn the art of book promotion. Most authors won't . . . especially business book authors who hope that the book will be their golden ticket into high paid speaking events . . . the sad news for them is that it won't be if it is a bad book.
Here is the bottom line. You'll write a book for your own reasons, maybe you want to leave a legacy, you may want to share your knowledge and establish your credibility (it does), you may just enjoy researching and writing. Whatever your reason is, it shouldn't be to write a book solely to turn chapters into back-end information products. That strategy defeats the purpose of writing the book in the first place.
And never forget, people judge you by the books you write, if your book is average or worse, that is often their first opinion of you and you may not get a second chance.
Start out by writing a book people want to read. That means working on your writing and putting effort into creating a book that is interesting, compelling, and full of information readers can use.
A lot of people say that a book is a 200 page business card or direct sales letter which is a very simplified explanation of what a book can do for you as a marketing tool. When you write a book people want to read they will often want to do business with you. When you write a book that feels like a 200 page sales letter people feel cheated and manipulated, especially if they can see that it is nothing more than a 200 page sales letter.
If you are going to use a book as a marketing tool you start out with your best writing and your best information and you create a book that provides value and solutions to your audience. Then the marketing of the book starts. The purpose of the book is to get a wider audience (through bookstore distribution, Amazon, book clubs etc.) to read your book and become familiar with you so that you can create a larger, wider following. The book should draw in people who've never heard of you but whom now want to learn more from you as a result of having read a really good book.
There is a reason that people like Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss, Malcolm Gladwell and more get read and their audiences grow. The reason people read them isn't because they started out by trying to deceive or manipulate their audience. People read them because the content is solid, the books are well written and people begin to tell friends, family and colleagues about the books. Those people then begin to engage with the author which at that point likely does have a mechanism for getting them to purchase more of their products and services. And to the extent that they keep building a bigger following or Tribe as Seth Godin would call them or benevolent cult following as I would call them, they sell more.
I'm a big fan of writing books and fully monetizing them, but don't set out to write an average or worse book, set out to do your best work and then build your back end. The more effort you put in up front, the more you'll earn in the end.
