Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people. I call the process of doing your art ‘the work’.
Seth Godin, in Linchpin: Are you Indispensable?
Your book is a low-cost gateway for readers to get a glimpse of you and your expanded business model. As you bring your book into being, you will begin to see the potential laid out before you.
As a business owner or self-employed professional who has been learning and improving as you trade your expertise for money, you are probably sitting on a mountain of value.
Use your book content as foundation for a more detailed publishing and marketing system that will bring even more value and information to people who now know, like and trust you (because they read your book).
Some will want access to a deeper level of learning and support from you, because not everyone can make big changes on their own. Don’t assume that because you explained ‘how to’ in your book, all readers will simply go do. Some will want more in-depth information, encouragement, accountability, a schedule, an ongoing cheer squad, answers to questions as they arise, and access to other ideas and skills. You can provide this in various e-learning formats, live interaction, and/or a combination of both, and reach a far greater number of people than you do now.
Some will also pay you to implement changes on their behalf – a much higher-value service.
PLAY BIGGER
You will have seen many business owners very successfully apply this strategy and create multiple streams of ongoing income, change the way they work, and simply play on a much bigger scale.
Others refine their lives after a high-pressured career, and create a new lifestyle and business they feel is more meaningful and rewarding.
I suggest that you find people doing what you would like to do, and apply some of their principles in your own world, at a level you enjoy.
Here are a few examples:
www.janeteresa.com with Jane Teresa Anderson, BSc Hons and dream analyst: Her interest in dreams grew from her study of neurophysiology, and her first book, Sleep On It, was published in 1994. Today she is a frequent media guest, podcaster, author of seven books, mentor, international consultant, educator, and creator of The Dream Academy.
www.changinghabits.com.au with Cyndi O’Meara, nutritionist, now filmmaker, author, international speaker, and life-changing coach: Her book, Changing Habits, Changing Lives, was first published in 1998 and her profile and business grew from that point. Today her online business sells food, health and wellbeing products; books; health programs; audios and DVDs … and more.
www.happylawyerhappylife.com with family lawyer, Clarissa Rayward: Her first book Splitsville raised her profile and began the transformation of Clarissa’s family law practice, while her second book, Happy Lawyer Happy Life, opened up another very successful business stream – her mastermind, life and business programs for entrepreneurial lawyers.
Get clear on your own dreams and accept that all of the supposedly successful names in the field of product and program publishing and marketing began somewhere. They started where they were, worked hard (and still do), made mistakes, lost money, picked themselves up, learned from others doing it right, invested in themselves, eventually understood their customers’ reasons for buy-in, made money, and persisted.
You too can persist.
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This is the final of a series of fifteen articles taken from the book, ‘Smart Women Publish – Write the book that expands your world’ by Bev Ryan. Each article in this series will present some of the key ideas in its fifteen chapters, from what a book can do for you, through planning, writing, publishing and leveraging your published book.
Bev is a certified non-fiction book coach (including memoir with a message) and book production manager, working with accomplished and interesting people as they write and self-publish their best non-fiction books.
Are you procrastinating or stuck in the planning or writing stages? Contact Bev to find out how she can help you with your book, and your publishing choices.