The idea that authors can’t make money is bull****.
And no, you don’t have to be famous or have a huge online following.
In less than a year I’ve made over $150,000 from self-published books. Plenty of my friends have made far more, all writing on topics so small and targeted a traditional publisher wouldn’t consider it. Many of them started—just like me—without an audience.
After hearing enough of these stories I can tell you they aren’t a fluke. With a good topic and the right marketing tactics you can make a living from teaching as well.
“
Most people don't realize you can actually make a fortune from your
technical writing. Authority will help teach you how.
- Michael Hartl, author of The Ruby on Rails Tutorial
Convinced? Jump straight to the packages.
Writing a book isn’t just about the money.
Making money from book sales is wonderful—but it is only one benefit. Getting a raise, landing a new job, and having new clients come to you are all common side effects of publishing a book.
Brett Kelly wrote Evernote Essentials because he loved the productivity tool and wanted to help other people use it more effectively. Evernote offered him a job—his dream job—even before the book was published. Now he works from home for a company he loves while still generating over six figures in revenue from his book (a side project).
Rob Walling writes a popular software blog and hosts a podcast on startups, but it was his book that opened up opportunites for interviews and speaking engagements.
When I still did consulting work I was on a call with two people from a company that was deciding whether or not to hire me to design their new iPhone app. This was just after my book, The App Design Handbook, had been released and the junior person on the call had read my book and loved it.
The manager wasn’t so sure about hiring me. If my design was so good, why wasn’t I working in the Bay Area?
I listened to the two of them go back and forth for a minute before the manager relented and said, “Actually, of course he’s good enough, he wrote the book on the topic.”
How would you feel if you could say you “wrote the book on the topic”? Do you think that would help your career?
Writing a book is hard. Really hard.
Despite all these benefits I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea and think writing a book is easy. Nothing could be further from the truth. But what easy things are actually worth doing?
If you take the giant task of writing a book and just make slow, consistent progress every day it becomes attainable. When I started writing it was a struggle to write one blog post each week.
Now I’ve built up a habit of writing 1,000 words a day, every day. I’ve done this for over 275 days in a row, all tracked with an app I wrote called Commit. Those words have turned into over 50 blog posts, three books, and dozens of guest posts. Writing 30,000 words for a book may feel like an insurmountable task, but if you write just 500 words a day you can hit that goal in two months.
Slow consistent progress is the key to achieving any massive goal. Make a commitment to work on it every day—without skipping a day—and you will see success much sooner than you expect.
“But I’m not an expert.”
Neither am I. At least, not in the traditional sense. I don’t have a PhD in marketing or design and I don’t travel the world giving lectures–all things you would typically associate with experts. But I have designed a lot of websites and applications over the years and learned a lot in the process.
Plenty of people can learn from what I know about design and marketing. I’m not at the top of my field, but I’m also a long ways from the bottom.
Chances are there is a topic you know a lot about.
In fact, experts at the top of their field are often less qualified to teach than those who were beginners more recently, simply because those experts often can’t remember what it was like to be brand new in the field. Whereas someone who has learned the lessons and overcome the challenges more recently will have an easier time teaching at a beginner level.
No matter where you are in the learning process, someone always knows less about the topic than you do.
Finally, every successful person I know started before they felt ready. Embrace the fact that you aren’t quite comfortable and strive to become even more of an expert.
Follow a proven plan
People say, "sure, this works for you, but..." Now I have over 14 really good ways to prove them wrong. With this digital edition of Authority we are including 14 detailed case studies on successful books that follow the Authority method. The total book revenue from these 14 case studies is over $230,000!
And that's just a few of the success stories that were willing to share their sales numbers with you. There are many more who either we didn't have room to feature or they wanted to keep their numbers private.
All that to prove that this method works for anyone who is willing to put in the work.
Launch from nothing
Building a following for your blog takes time. It’s especially difficult when you may not have a clear goal in mind for your blog. But products change that.
Just the act of writing a book—and giving readers a way to follow along—will make it substantially easier to build a following. In July 2012 I had just 100 RSS subscribers to my blog, two months later I had a $12,000 book launch. That’s all in one day. By using landing pages and blog posts to build an email list—and keeping the subscribers interested—you can build a profitable following in very little time. I’ll show you how to do it step-by-step.
With the right audience, a solid launch plan, a little discipline, and a lot of effort, you can make a living from your writing. Interested?
About the Author
Hey, I’m Nathan Barry, a designer, founder, and author. I've self-published 3 books on design and marketing earning over $500,000 in revenue. Through writing and selling those books I created the systems spelled out in Authority. My goal is to help other authors make a living from their writing.
Since first writing Authority I founded ConvertKit, an email marketing company for creators. Over the last 7 years I've grown ConvertKit to over $22M in annual revenue and the #1 software company on the INC 5000 list.