you would like.
Wait. There's more. For each book you sell, you now stand to make five to six times more money. More money per sale, no begging a publisher, not detectable by your average reader, and quicker to market are some pretty powerful selling points for self-publishing. So, what's the catch?
The catch has to do with distribution. With conventional publishers, you become partners with their marketing team. By self-publishing you are your own marketing team. Some self-publishing companies offer a marketing program, copyediting, graphics, and other options, but if you avail yourself of these services, your costs will rise dramatically.
There are wonderful stories of authors who could not get published, self-published their manuscripts, sold a lot of books, and then got picked up by publishers. Those are wonderful stories. Unfortunately, they are few and far between.
If your goal is simply to make money and gain credibility within your seminars, self-publishing may be the way to go. However, if you want to tough it out and take a shot at creating a book that can find its way into anyone's hands, the traditional publishing route may be for you.
Whatever decision you make, my suggestion is to write the book – now. The sample chapter and proposal idea is a good one. I just think it's the primary reason why 99 percent of the people who want to write a book never do. Once you write that sample chapter and send off that proposal, guess what usually happens? The publishing business chews it up, and you never write the book.
Write the book. In fairness to the publishing industry to which I personally owe so much, it's not all its fault. Imagine being an editor sitting in an office and having dozens of book proposals land on your desk on a daily basis. Tunneling through, here comes another proposal. It looks interesting, and then you get to the experience part: “Never written a book before and has 18 pages written for a 200-page book. Next.”
Write the book. When I wrote my first book, I decided to treat the book proposal much like a real estate proposal. It's not the price that holds up so many of these contracts. In fact, it's the contingencies. Sometimes it's a home inspection. Sometimes it's a contingency on the sale of the buyer's house, but one thing is for sure. The more contingencies that are attached to the contract, the worse your chances are of closing the deal.
Write the book. My theory is a simple one. When it comes to writing and selling your book, get rid of the contingencies. The first one to get rid of is the contingency that dogs both you and your publisher. “This person has never written a book before, and I've got to try to believe that with no track record, this person can hit every writing deadline and get me another 125 pages. Hmm…”
Write the book. If you do this, you get rid of the biggest objection and contingency your publisher may have. It's easier for you to sell and easier for your publisher to buy. The only negative might be that your publisher will want the book but will want you to change certain things. It might mean more rewrites than you would like. However, if you have a publisher that wants your book, nothing else really matters.
The most important thing to do is to write! Nothing else matters if you don't write! That's why when I work with new authors, I always have them print out this quote and place it where they intend to do most of their writing. It reads like this:
Planning to write is not writing. Thinking about writing is not writing. Talking about writing is not writing.
Researching to write, outlining to write – none of this is writing.
Writing is writing.
What happens if you write a great book and can't find a publisher to take it on? Simple, you publish it yourself. There are those in the seminar business who swear by this approach to publishing. Their arguments are good.
Publishing a book yourself can allow you to move from a 7.5 to 15 percent royalty, to a 90 to 100 percent royalty. Remember, you are paying to publish your own book, so most of the sales belong to you.
To me, distribution is the biggest downfall of publishing a book yourself. You will be able to get your book on a bunch of Internet sites, including Amazon.com, but the rest of your distribution is up to you. Self-publishers are working their way through this problem by offering their marketing services to you…for a price. It's not inexpensive, but the larger self-publishing companies have effective marketing departments. If I were to go the self-publishing route, I would engage their marketing programs. Remember, if you write a book and no one sees it, the book is not doing you any good other than establishing a perceived sense of credibility.
Funny that I should include the word “pride” as a factor to consider, but in fact I have a lot of pride surrounding the publishing of my books. I sold them myself and affectionately refer to them as my children. In theory, anyone can have a book self-published, but not everyone can find a publisher.
I have gotten into some pretty interesting debates with others in the industry over this publishing argument, so let's settle it this way. If you think you can sell more than 1,000 books a year yourself within your seminars, it might be cost effective to self-publish your book. You will certainly make more money that way. Of course, remember this: If within your proposal you can commit to selling more than 1,000 books a year by yourself, plenty of conventional publishers will sit up and listen.
So how do you go about selling 1,000 books a year? Well, there are two schools of thought. The first is to deliver seminars and to offer books at the back of the room at the end of your seminar. That's the conventional approach, and, boy, do I dislike it!
To me this says to your audience, “I hope you enjoyed our work together. Now, if you really liked what I had to say, for a few dollars more, I'll help you learn it.” If you are conducting general sessions, it might make sense to do this. Personally, I'd add the cost of your book to the tuition and make it a part of their seminar package.
If you are conducting closed-session seminars, it's a little tougher but well worth your effort to make the sale of books a part of your training routine as well. In seminars that are a half day or longer, it should not even be a topic of discussion. Any client who wants a half-day program or longer is saying to you, “Help us to make the cultural change you are teaching us.” That means the client needs participant guides and books – period.
For keynote deliveries, it's a little bit tougher. When you are speaking to 500 people for an hour, it's tough to add the cost of 500 books to the proposal without the client protesting. However, let me tell you a quick story of how I recently sold 650 books for a one-hour keynote presentation.
When I first approached the client with the idea, they immediately said, “No.” I mentioned I never charge a client more than the cost that I pay for the book. Even at $9.10 a book, the answer was still “No.”
My contracts typically allow me to fly business class. My next move was to offer to bump that $2,000 ticket down to an $800 coach ticket. I now had the books down to about $7.25 each, but the answer was still “No.” Finally, I offered to pick up the airline ticket myself. When you are in the seminar business, you accumulate airline miles. With more than 1 million miles in my United Airlines account alone, this was an easy thing to do. This brought the cost to about $6.00 a book. Most companies that bring in large groups of clients to meetings often put gifts in the hotel rooms each night. One of those nights became Rob Jolles Night, and the attendees found an autographed book of mine waiting for them in their room.
Six other professional speakers spoke at the meeting I'm writing about. Each set up a little table in the back of the room and hawked books at the end of their seminar. From what I could see, each sold five or six books.
One last comment on buying books and selling them to clients. I strongly recommend that you find a distributor you like, develop a relationship, and set up a distribution channel. The reason for this is a simple one but often is overlooked by those who conduct seminars.
It's wonderful to be published but even more wonderful to make your book a best seller. If you buy your books directly from your publisher, your discount will be deep.