Have you noticed that today’s self-made business success stories all have books?
What you may NOT have noticed is that their first (and sometimes their second and third…) book is often self-published…they get out there and build a brand for themselves, use the book as their business card and launch themselves into massive businesses.
People like Gary Vaynerchuck, Grant Cardone, Mark Victor Hansen, Jack Canfield and even big names like Sir Richard Branson and Donald Trump have benefited greatly by expanding their sphere of influence via books, courses and programs.
Using books and information products to boost (or freaking launch) your business is not new – remember Tony Robbins, Brian Tracey, Jim Rohn and the tons of people that came before them?
What IS new is the changes in technology and distribution that allow you to
- Instantly go online now and pull together a plan for your book from direct market research
- Write that book on your laptop, ipad or even just through dictation anywhere in as little as a few hours
- Have that book packaged and edited for next to nothing
- Complete command and channels through which you can leverage an army of affiliates and list holders to create a massive launch into your marketplace
This used to be what people paid 10’s or thousands of dollars to do, all at your fingertips now – it would be CRAZY not to leverage this power.
Every one of you reading this MUST have their own book or information product working for you.
Branding you, elevating you above your competition, bringing in your first line of online profit and setting the stage for building a $100M + online business
Ok, so how do you get that first book written?
First, let me share a pretty incredible resource for you that will help guide you through the first 6-weeks of planning, writing and then launching and profiting from your own book or info product showing you exactly, step-by-step how it’s done, where you can take advantage of amazing shortcuts and where you want to avoid the mistakes – all with a private mentor’s forum for hand-holding and advice along the way.
Here are a few tips for you to get you started NOW!
1. Self-Publish Your Book Now
Forget about trying to capture the attention of traditional publishers UNLESS you already have built a big reputation, a big platform (public speaking, access to media, huge following online, etc…). Most people don’t have this in the beginning – in fact most top selling books published by traditional publishers today didn’t have that when they started so they also began with self-published books. The good new is:
- Self-publishing lets you keep control of the book and how it is used, what formats you eventually translate it into, how you price it, how you design it, etc…
- Self-published books make a LOT more money as you keep 10X the profit you would make if instead a traditional publisher was involved
- The world between traditional published books and self-published books is nearly even today – it’s hard to tell the difference for most customers
- You’ll have to do all the marketing anyway – traditional publishers don’t market your books. Â You can get into bookstores and gain the same reach self-publishing as you can with large publishers these days
- You get to do it NOW. Traditional publishing will take 1+ year assuming you are one of the 1% chosen – you don’t have time for that, you want to get rolling right now
Self-publishing is simple.
You have the book written in either MS Word, converted to Adobe PDF format – you can start with a template like the ones we provide inside InfoMarketer’sZone or simply pay a small amount to have someone format the material you have.
You hire someone to create a cover – you can auction out designs or simply outsource the work. A high-quality, soft-cover image design and creation will run you from $150-$400 depending on who you get, your timeline and complexity of your design.
From there, the content of your book comes from a combination of your own writing, outsource research/writing, dictation or can even be pulled from other content you have developed such as a blog or videos you may have created.
2. Define Your Space For Your Book
You will often hear marketers talk about “Niche” markets or markets – I like to have our InfoMarketer’sZone members start off identifying “spaces” – broad areas of the market where they have a passion and some experience or interest. So, if you are someone who has been a parent to troubled teens and your desire is to help others in the same situation – you are in the “space” of parenting troubled teens – from there you will further refine your “angle” or your differentiated approach
3. Define Your “Angle” or Your “Take”
Once you identify your space, the market you want to serve and roughly with what purpose, the next step is to hone in on the special value add you will deliver to the market. Here, you want to identify an obsessive desire your market has to be, do, have or become something they are not today. In other words, what does your market want more than anything else and how can you help them get there? You want your angle to meet the following criteria:
- Based on the top desire for transformation in your identified market niche or space
- Is more than a passing fad or trend…this desire has been around for some time and will still be urgent 5-years from now
- You can clearly articulate what that desire is, what it would mean to your target market to help them fulfill that desire and what frustrates them about where they are today
- You can identify other books, programs, courses, etc… that also aim to help people with this transformation (this is a GOOD thing) BUT you can also identify why they have not worked and why your treatment of the topic will be better
So many people struggle with this step because they believe they must find a NEW problem, a NEW desire when in fact focusing on desires and needs that have been long in existence is often better but do so with a new angle or treatment
4. Pour Out Content – Getting Your Book Written Is Easy
You need to now outline your treatment of the topic and begin to produce content around the outline.
What works for you?
If you are a good writer, then sit down and pour out written content for 1-2 days and you should have the majority of your book finished.
If you would rather blog – then post massively to a blog for 5-7 days and you again will have the majority of your book written
Are you better with audio or video?
Then produce a series of audios or video dictations and then send them away to be transcribed – that may cost you a couple hundred dollars, but your book will largely be done.
Once you get the meat of the book finished, you want to edit it down and then add in some bonus pieces such as:
- Stories from your background or third party
- Case studies from the past or that you create especially for this content
- Exercises that correspond to making your content usable and consumable (HINT…very important to turning out higher-end information/course products – we’ll talk about that in future blog posts)
- A few select, professional images – you can outsource this or go find them yourself online
- Add a bonus report, video or resource to help bundle value with your book or ebook – helps to differentiate you and sell more
That’s it – there is no reason why you can’t get through this entire process in 4-6 weeks, we have done it all within 1-week but that takes full-days and some obsessed focus.
The fast-track program over at InfoMarketer’sZone will take you through the entire process PLUS laying the groundwork for building a following, testimonials, traffic, a list, website, etc… so that when you are ready with your book you can hit the market HARD and become a major player in your space within a very short period of time.
