WritingSpirit Blog

Book Biz FAQs: What’s the quickest way I can monetize my nonfiction book?

A coaching client who recently wrote a short non-fiction book that she self-published on Amazon as both an ebook and print book, asked me in our coaching session, “what’s the quickest way I can monetize my book?

Offer Coaching Services

The quickest way is to offer coaching services. You would need to add a coaching page to your book’s website describing what services you offer and put a short blurb about your coaching services in the back of your book. You’d also need to decide whether you want to offer potential clients a free strategy session, a low-priced introductory session, or simply an hour at your regular fee, and then add a PayPal link for taking payments.

The Pros: It’s easy. All that’s required is a phone and an hour of your time. It’s simply sharing your knowledge and experience with others, and the book will help people get to know you and your unique take on whatever topic you’ve written about, as well as inspire their desire to work with you. Depending upon your market, your experience, and the uniqueness of what you have to offer, you can charge anywhere from $50 to $500 an hour, and up. I would start on the lower end, get some coaching experience and testimonials, and then, when you're comfortable, increase your fees. 

The Cons: Coaching is a very different form of communication than writing. Being good at one doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be good at the other. If you haven’t coached anyone before, find a couple of friends who have at least a small amount of genuine interest in what you’re offering, and coach them. This will give you a sense of what coaching is like, and whether or not you have an aptitude for it. There are many coaching programs and organizations that can help you strengthen and refine your coaching skills if you’d like some support as you pursue this further. The other con is that the number of book readers who will want one-on-one coaching will be relatively small as it’s quite a jump to go from paying $2.99 for an ebook to $100 or more for an hour of coaching.

Write a Workbook

While writing a workbook takes more time than putting up a coaching page initially, once you’ve written it you can set a system up to sell the workbook automatically… forevermore. Your workbook will come together much faster than the original book, because it will follow the organization and structure of the book it supports, and much of the actual workbook will consist of empty space in which your readers will answer the questions you’ve asked, do some brainstorming, or gather the information that they’ve researched.

Even if your original book gives readers the steps they need to follow, your workbook will not only walk them through the steps of whatever you're having them explore, create, or do, it will walk them through the experience of it, as well. Think about what might come up for your readers as they're answering the questions you’ve asked or following the steps you’ve laid out, and several different ways they might handle what arises. When you add this information to the workbook, your readers will have a much richer and deeper experience.

What goes in a workbook:

• Simple and clear step-by-step instructions
• Tips and examples that make it easier for people to do
  the exercises, take the steps, or answer the questions
• Self-awareness questions
• Research based questions
• Brainstorming questions
• Worksheets
• Checklists
• Spreadsheets
• Plenty of white space for writing

The Pros: This will be relatively quick to write, will support and deepen the original book, and you can sell it as a PDF downloadable file with no printing costs. You can also use it to support your one-on-one coaching, as well as combine it with the book it’s based upon to create a four or six-week class or teleseries.

The Cons: Again, a workbook is a very different format than a book. If you’ve never done one before then test it out on friends and colleagues. It’s important to actually follow the steps in the workbook yourself because that will help you discover what you’ve left out or put in the wrong order, where you need to go deeper, and what other questions you need to ask to help people achieve their goals through your workbook.

Create your own "Magic Formula" to blast through writer's block and eliminate procrastination

Wouldn't it be wonderful if whenever your book writing stalled, whether through procrastination or "writer's block," you could simply pull out a piece of paper that had a Magic Formula on it--written just for you--that would help jump start your writing, again? Well, I'm going to show you how to create your own Magic Formula that will help you break through any writing issue or block you may have.

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Study Your Writing Habits

The first step in creating a Magic Formula powerful enough to banish procrastination and blast through writers' block is to identify the specific thoughts, feelings, and actions that help open up your creativity and inspire writing in flow, and those that get in the way of your creative process.

To do this, pick a period of time to study your writing habits. It could be a week, 10 days, or a month--the longer the better. For this period of time, it's important to:

• have a notepad by your side when you write
• journal every evening (or as often as you can)

When writing, or reflecting back on your day and journaling, be aware of and write down what thoughts, feelings, and actions:

• encourage you to sit down and write
• help you keep going when other ideas or interests try to pull you away, or you feel like giving up
• motivate you to push through to a deeper level of creativity and writing

Be as specific as you can. 

On the flip side, be aware of and write down what thoughts, feelings, and actions:

• seem more important (or immediate) than writing and entice you to stop writing or to put it off
• get you so frustrated that you stop writing or change projects mid-stream
• have you feeling "not good enough" to write or submit your work

Be as specific as you can.  

At the end of the month (or whatever period of time you choose) you'll have a detailed map of your writing life.

The next step is to go through your notes and journal entries, and pull out all the specific details you have about what helps and what hinders your writing. Make a list of each with your favorite writing encouragers or discouragers on top.

Once this is done, I want you to do two things: 

1. Keep the list of everything that helps and encourages you nearby whenever you write.  
2. Take the list of what gets in your way and create a "Magic Formula" for each item.

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Your Personal Magic Formula for Writing Success!

Begin your Magic Formula by saying, "Whenever I think, feel, or do this (what gets in your way)... I'm going to think, feel, or do this instead (its positive opposite or whatever would help you in this situation), BECAUSE... (your experience of how the positive thought, feeling, or action helps you or what it inspires you to feel). 

For instance... if you want to write, but have trouble getting yourself to sit down and start when you don't feel inspired (and you often don't feel inspired), then create a Magic Formula that looks something like this:   

• Whenever I want to write, but don't feel inspired, I'm going to WRITE ANYWAY for 15 minutes because when I do, the act of writing, itself, opens the flow of inspiration within me almost every time. 

The last part is what's called your "why." It's very important because just saying "when this happens, I'm going to do that instead" can feel like a rule, like something you SHOULD do, which often only inspires resistance. Adding the positive "why" changes it into something you WANT to do. It gives you a reason to feel hopeful and believe success is possible. Defining your "why" is often what makes the difference between spending your time dancing with procrastination or wrestling with writer's block, and actually writing your book.

Let me know how your Magic Formulas are working for you. 

Authors Amy Tan, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Isabel Allende on Writing and the Creative Process - 3 Inspiring TED Talks for Writers

Writing a book from beginning to end takes creativity, commitment, and chutzpah! After spending an hour with these three extraordinary authors you'll not only have insight into their creative process, you'll be inspired to dive more deeply into your own book writing journey. 

Enjoy... 

Amy Tan: Where Does Creativity Hide?

Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club (one of my all-time favorite novels), The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, and many other novels and children's stories, digs deep into the creative process, journeying through her childhood and family history and into the worlds of physics and chance, looking for hints of where her own creativity comes from. It's a wild ride with a surprise ending.

Amy Tan also wrote The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life, which takes readers on a journey from her childhood of tragedy and comedy to the present day and her arrival as one of the world’s best-loved novelists.

Elizabeth Gilbert: Your Elusive Creative Genius 

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed: A Love Story (which picks up where Eat, Pray, Love left off), muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses -- and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person "being" a genius, all of us "have" a genius. It's a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.

Elizabeth Gilbert has a new novel coming out in October from Viking Press, The Signature of All Things.


Isabel Allende: Tales of Passion

Isabel Allende, author of eight novels including The House of the Spirits, Daughter of Fortune, and Zorro, discusses women, creativity, the definition of feminism — and, of course, passion — in this talk.

Isabel Allende’s most recent novel is Maya’s Notebook.