So many people come to me or join Information Marketing Zone and ask the question “How do I begin writing a book” thinking the answer will be insights on how to write the first sentence, paragraph or chapter.
Instead, I typically go back and clarify what their main purpose is in writing the book.Â
Why is that?
Because today we have so many options for packaging, marketing and selling our books and ebooks – we need to first figure out which one is best for our goals.
Let’s look at a few of the most common reasons to write a book:
1. To brand yourself an expert. If your main objective (over all others) is to gain market branding and you want to use bookstores and publishing companies to help you accomplish this objective, then you want to focus on traditional forms of publishing – either the big houses or smaller, niche topic focused publishing companies.Â
2. If you want to make extra money, create a profit center for you and build a foundation for a new career and business, then you will want to puruse one of two options…create course, ebook, membership site or other information product that you can sell for $47 or more and sell it from your own website with a focus on advanced marketing tactics where you can attract an army of affiliates to help spread the word with your new product. The advantage of this approach is that your profit margins are extremely high – anywhere from 60-90% you keep.Â
3. If your main objective is personal satisfaction with a little bit of cash incentive and some branding advantage thrown in…then you can pursue a self-publishing model where begin writing your book with the aim of having it printed on demand and sold through major online retailers such as Amazon and Barnes And Noble. While this isn’t quite as profitable as acting as your own publisher, selling digital or higher-priced physical products, you can still keep 4-5X more profit than you would get from a traditionally published book and you get to see your name in print!
Great non-fiction writers mix all three techniques together. They may begin self-publishing, creating a platform for themselves. Next, they put out “back-end” information products such as home study courses, DVD’s, ebooks, reports, paid membership sites, or personal/group coaching programs that really bring in the big profits to their company. Putting together these types of information products is often less work than writing a book – as we point out inside Info Product Creation Zone.
 Finally, they seek out a publishing contract to increase their reach, credibility and yes…so they can say they are a “published” author.
When you consider how to begin writing a book…your goal for how that book will fit with your overall business and lifestyle goals is critical. You have many options and your book should ultimately work to build you a high-growth Enterprise that funds an exciting new lifestyle where you can continue to be creative, solve people’s problems and get paid very well for doing it.
