My ears picked up.
He was an author, and had been traveling for the last 10 years, living in different places.
But it was only over the past 3 years that he started writing books on his travels, and earning from them.
I was amazed. How was he doing it?
Because I knew that I wasn’t even managing to earn as much money as him.
Despite spending $5850 on my first book Becoming Better, and then another $13,500 on Vault, I had only sold about $1303 of them.
It was a ridiculously low amount for how much I had spent.
Ads, ads, ads
The first thing he recommended was to start running ads. I didn’t know how much I believed him, but I did it anyway.
For the past week, I had been running more and more ads, but there was no significant uplift to the number of sales we were getting.
In fact, we were still not getting any sales from Amazon.
Despite the touted millions that were browsing everyday on Amazon for books, they didn’t seem to be wanting any of our books. What were we doing wrong? What could we improve on?
I had no idea.
You need to go long, and play this for the long term
Here’s a caveat before I start.
Writing books is not a get rich scheme. In fact, this is probably one of the hardest ways to make money, because of how consistent the work needs to be before you actually see a significant payoff.
Most authors don’t make it for years, before they finally have a break through.
Take for example the global bestselling author today, Brené Brown.
Take a bet on yourself first
She first self-published, and continued working as a professor, before Penguin eventually took on her first book.
For us, it’s been much the same. I’ve personally spent a bucketload of money just to push out my own books.
| Book | Spent |
|---|---|
| One Day At A Time (2020) |
$1050 for design $1500 for printing |
| Becoming Better: Every Social Worker’s Guide to Supercharging their Career (2021) | $5850 for design |
| Vault: Every Gen Z’s Guide to Adulting (2023) |
$2000 for design $11500 for printing of 500 books, editing |
| Take Heart (2023) | $8400 for printing of 500 books, editing |
I’ve not seen them work out fast, but I can only keep pushing for the longer term.
If you don’t bet yourself, why should someone else bet on you?
But over the years spent writing, I’ve come to learn a few things.
First write a must-read
That’s why one of my first advices, is the same as what AJ Harper suggests.
Write a must-read, before you try to get people to buy your book. Over the years, we have worked with a number of authors who want to write a book. When we ask them why, they often tell us that they want to increase their credibility.
But they want to do it fast.
Most authors who try to push out a book too fast, end up crashing and burning, and not seeing the fruits of their labour materialise. It ends up failing.
Miserably.
Just take the example of the countless books you don’t read. Just go to your bookshelf. How many of those have you actually taken in your hands, and read. Not many, I would bet.
Why?
Because they are just not that good.
Find something that interests you
Whilst some people recommend that you write into a niche, the beauty of the internet is that it connects customer demand to esoteric niches, wherever it is.
This means that whatever niche you write in, there will be a way for you to profit from it, if you’re able to make yourself discoverable.
That’s why rather than finding the next trending topic, I would much rather urge you to find a topic that interests you.
It’s then, and only then that you would take time to keep researching and finding out insights that change people’s lives.
Write the visionary book
If you’re going to write another book that’s going to be ChatGPT-able (meaning that the information there is not unique nor new), you’re going to fail. Over and over again.
You need to build something that’s new.
This is where the graph above works.
Asking a question that Google can’t answer, and answering it in ways that Google can’t yet find, is going to be the value add of you as a writer.
Other wise, you should just follow ChatGPT and let it do it faster.
Don’t try to make money first, write a good book first
Over the past 4 years of writing, I’ve come to realise.
Don’t write to sell first.
Write to write.
If you don’t enjoy writing, you will find it hard to ever enjoy it, even if you work very hard at it.
If you enjoy the right thing, the writing will follow.