How to Write Less and Publish More - A Rich Adventure

Can you actually write less and profit more?

Introduction

Deep in the heart of the ever-growing Amazon Kindle jungle, there's a profitable under-served market which is not easily discovered. It sits in a clearing by itself, much like a massive stone temple rising above the forest. A temple with some gold-filled rooms.

Just my kind of area to explore. I've long been in favor of "find where everyone is going and go the opposite way." So this makes a lot of sense. And any adventure is always welcome.

We saw this expedition hinted at by Steve Scott with his non-fiction habits books. But he never really explored the opportunities this area has. In re-tracing Scott's own path, it showed me the turns he didn't take.

That inspired me to start my own journey around two months ago. I'm currently publishing an average of one short read ebook per week. And the results are promising, as the Christmas sales influence fades.

This path struck my fancy, as it told more about how to really use short reads as a business strategy. How to cement those 6-figures that Scott started having. What I've discovered accelerates that progress, perhaps even creating your 7-figure income.

(BTW, in Scott's recent videos, he points out that his income is still dwindling, down from a high of around $400K annually to an average of "just" $250K per year. While this is still great, it also shows that he's left tons of money on the table.)

One of the more profitable avenues is content writing as part of business publishing. A lot of businesses are getting into content marketing these days, but don't have a lot of thick texts sitting around waiting to be turned into Kindle ebooks.

What they do have is lots of shorter material which would be perfect how-to non fiction books about their particular industry. If these could also be quickly turned into small books to hand out at trade shows and by their sales people, a business could get a real marketing advantage over any competition.

And such production can be fast. The book you are reading (although more work could have been done in editing, to be sure) was created and published into four widely-distributed formats in only three days, at a cost of sweat-equity only. Imagine what could be done for your next product release...

This isn't just for fiction writers. It's for everyone with a message to get out.

So let's get started...

The Secret Map to Short Read Riches

Here's the secret map - How to Succeed with Kindle Short Reads, by Geoff Shaw.

There's a growing group of readers which Amazon has been catering to with their Kindle Short Reads. Shaw describes them like this:

"Introducing Coffee Break Readers

"There’s a new generation of readers.

"People who will download and read lots of books. They only have so much time and they want their fill of excitement in that limited time.

"We call them the CBR’s - the coffee break readers.

They’re not just people who have never read longer books before... They’re anyone who has limited time to read for whatever reason.

"These people aren't stuck into a certain author, it's more like the certain type of entertainment they want: short stories which they can read in their available time."

That idea opened my eyes quite a bit.

The price range for these CBR books is the same as Scott's .99 and 2.99, plus the 3.99 or 4.99 boxed sets.

But the trick is that you're having to write a lot less and profiting more from each bit you do write.

When we last left our hero, Scott seemed to be getting into longer and longer books as he went, but this is the reverse of where you want to go. You'll see shortly that this is more of a pioneer territory with a lot less competition and few tools to use to find your way. What Scott should have been doing is to figure out how to multiply his success in related genres, and stick to the short reads and box sets.

It's really all the "deep backbench" principle again. The more books you have up there, the more they can be recommended, the more chances you have to uncovered your room of gold.

Less Competition, More Profits

The great part is that this is still mostly virgin wilderness. Go look over Amazon short reads and you'll see there is a lot less competition, as the books are split up by length as well as genre. People can have 15, 30, 45, 60, and 90-minute reads. Your book still shows up in the regular categories. but the CBR's will specifically hunt up your books according to the time they have to read. So it's easier for them to find your books.

Basically, Amazon counts every 250 words as a page. Except for special instances, they generally only accept 2500-word books these days. So Shaw's chart shows the reading time category you'll fall into with your short reads, depending on word count.

Let's look at that competition you won't have:

For instance:

Literature & Fiction -

Kindle Books: 1,352,061
Kindle Short Reads (30 min): 48,093

Business & Money -

Kindle Books: 249,574
Kindle Short Reads (30 min): 15,937

Which arena would you like to compete in?

Another point is that there's higher turnover. People are basically consuming books like tasty snacks. This then leverages your writing far beyond anything we've seen before. They aren't looking for books they can read a bit of each day (munching all week long) but rather 5-10 books they can finish each week.

For the money they'd spend buying a traditionally-published big name author's ebook, they can buy just as much reading material for less than half - and it's all designed to be read in those tiny snippets of time they have available.

Shaw says that the bulk of the reads in this category are actually indie authors, so this means the Big 5 publishing houses won't compete with their big promotion budgets in this arena.

Shaw points out, as I did earlier, that you can publish a single 80,000-word book and take a month writing it. (And another month editing and proofing it.)

Or – write eight 10,000-word books and publish every two weeks. (One for writing at 2,000 per day - 10,000 words - and the next week for editing/proofing.)

In two months, the first author has one book, which will sell for 4.99 or so.

The second author has 8 books that can sell at 2.99.

The second author has roughly twice the royalties coming in, plus:

• the ability to get readers as email subscribers also from each additional book (with a Lead Magnet at both beginning and end)
• the ability to be searched for 56 keywords and in 16 categories, instead of just 7 keywords and 2 categories.
• the greater number of his books and his more frequent releases prompt Amazon to recommend these other titles.
• and you're making income while you are writing.
• then creating a box set of these (or even a couple) just adds to the above.

In this hypothetical match-up, you have the same amount of words for each author, a tiny bit more overhead in producing covers and descriptions for short reads each ebook, plus building that box set. But then the box set allows a longer-read customer to consume the full novel.

As a sidebar, the box set looks to be a better bargain than the 80,000-word single book. Would you rather buy a collection of 8 books for 4.99 or a single book for 4.99?

This starts to point out the factors in Steve Scott's system that he was missing.

What you've also done is to create 9 books (8 singles, plus the box set) in the same amount of time as the other author, but on your author page, you've got 9 books they can check out (and buy). And that's two months' work. The audience then doesn't question if you're a one-shot wonder, but will know by the end of just two months that you're a serious contender.

The other successes I've studied spent an entire year or more creating their bigger novels in order to have 5 or 6 books available (which was Scott's average, by the way, and he was doing short books.)

Again, you can have 9 books published in just two months. Instant legitimacy, with less competition.

Setting the first ebook as perma-free is an even better option. Plus, you can give it away from your site (and also from your box set look-inside) to get their email address. You aren't giving away your first 80,000-word book (which freaks most beginning authors out) but only 1/8th of your total work.

(One tip here is to tell them in the first line of each single book's description that a box set is also available.)

Shaw talks quite a bit about Kindle Unlimited here, but I still hold that you're throwing away income if you're not offering your works for sale everywhere possible (see Addendum.) The places you should publish in my opinion are Amazon, Itunes, and Lulu (both as an aggregator and hardcopy publisher.) This gives you the minimal interfaces to deal with.

Hook, Line, Sinker and the Lead Magnet

This is a tip Shaw gives which I've seen nowhere else: Inside your first book, it says: "Get the next book in this series!" and has a link which goes to a landing page opt-in. When they sign up, they go to a thank you page, which lists all the rest of the books in that series, as well as your other series - and they can buy each of the books through that page, directly from Amazon. That "thank you page" also has the free samples linked.

To my mind, this would be where you also give a link to sell a bundle for each ebook. It would include the PDF, epub, and mobi files as a download from your own site.

(Shaw does give a way you can help them side-load it with their Kindle email link. This builds relationship.)

Now, note that you will be building your ARC (Advance Review Copy) subscribers with your email. This segments part of them into a special list so you can sent preview copies in exchange for a review on Amazon. This is the key way to make "bestsellers" on Amazon. I did find a slightly better take on this from Mark Dawson, who has:

a) Tell your ARC about the release date.

b) Tell the rest of your list the day after, letting them know the price is going up.

c) Tell your entire list the day the price is going up.

d) Then (my addition) post to your blog/podcast with the release data and use IFTTT to syndicate it everywhere.

e) You'd then run Facebook ads about the book, particularly if it were a boxed set, where the increased book income would pay for those ads. ($4.99 or so.)

What that does, per Dawson, is to give you immediate reviews and sales, then gets continuing sales afterwards, as Amazon will promote books which are new and continuing to sell well.

Additional Short Read Marketing Tactics

Shaw comes up with some marvelous tactics with short reads, which are just as applicable to bigger books, but not as quickly or easily done.

1) Collaborations with pen names

This tactic can be used for testing other genres, but is also essentially brand-extension. Your first pen name is known for a certain sub-genre, then you write a book in a related sub-genre adding a co-author that is actually just another pen name. It's not hard to see the cross-selling aspects of this. You can now can have several authors with their own list segment, for each sub-genre you want to write in. Shaw explains this in more detail in his course.

Your emails then come from an embracive source (like your publishing house or an "imprint" of it) which then lists the books by each author for each sub-genre. Each author could have their own special offer going.

As you segment off your hotter audience (more opens, clickthroughs) then you can give them polls, in order to narrow down what they like most and so create a better experience for them.

2) Collaborations with other (real) authors

If you have a box set with books by several of your pen names, you can then offer other authors in those sub-genres a chance to get into that box set. Since you have several "authors" already, it's a no-brainer. And that new author then emails his list about that box set. This is an old standby of affiliate marketing. It builds both your lists.

3) Cloning

For fiction short reads this is a viable option. Taking your book outline (Shaw has a course on this as well on Udemy) you then get some ghostwriters to produce another book with the same basic plot. You then publish this under that pen name. Similar cover, similar title, cloned. It works because people want more of what they love.

4) Reverse Launch

You can also release the box set first, and then offer them your first book in that series as a sample - and put that in your "Look Inside". Then you can go ahead and release the other books on a schedule, getting people to opt-in to your list to get the "early bird discount" as each new single is released.

Non-Fiction and Public Domain Publishing

Amazon is seeming to do all they can to discourage any more PD from showing up there. I got reminded this last week as I had a special report (quick read) that wound up in their very slow PD queue because of its title alone. My other books were getting approved in about 12 hours, so having to spend 5 days getting a book out of that queue back into draft was really annoying.

So I will definitely avoid this route just because it slows the speed of publishing. This also points out that they are primarily working with a database of titles (and maybe authors) as opposed to any search of submitted content (which might occur later, once it gets kicked into human hands, but that's doubtful.)

Another cross-over point is improving your writing. Writing a good non-fiction book has a great deal to do with how they write good fiction. Mainly things like having a good hook, and using emotional descriptions.

Plus, fiction is more profitable in general than non-fiction. People like to be entertained and to escape. If you can bring these same writing styles into non-fiction, then you have a popular hit.

All short-reads do is to make your books more consumable, which is the same point of learning fiction-writing techniques.

The benefit of this strategy is to enable you to get more leverage out of the same amount of content that you're going to create anyway.

Pen names to fill space in a magazine is nothing new. Prolific authors have often resorted to these for any number of reasons. Being able to cross-connect these authors and their readers gives you new opportunities for income.

I just wanted to tell you all about these, as this is a breakthrough down this line of short reads.

And authors with existing books - depending on how they are written - can break up their books into a serial format and do this same thing. The first short-read excerpt becomes a sample, then release the other chapters along this same line. Gladwell's Tipping Point could have been released like this, if that were a publishing option at the time. Remember, it has to read like a serial to be successful along this line.

Leveraging Your Resources

Further, I still recommend coming out with both paperback and hardback editions to get the most out of your title. And don't forget your audio book.

Some tips came to light this last Christmas season. It turns out that Amazon will stop ordering books for certain titles if they come from Lulu or other publishers, but not their own CreateSpace (CS). You can see how this makes sense from a shipping point, but you'll also see that you just lost sales for the couple of weeks just before Chrismas. That means all the last-minute shoppers can't get your books if you don't publish to CS.

CS doesn't do hardbacks. Period. They do a lot of different cut sizes in paperback that Lulu doesn't, however. So you can make a pocketbook paperback version on CS, and a trade paperback version on Lulu, as well as a trade hardback version (both casewrap and dust-jacketed.)

Note, Amazon will show your CS version on the front page, and your Lulu version will have to be searched for. Having your expanded reach on Lulu gets your book into the other distributors with higher royalties and no Amazon stigma attached.

The general theory is this:

• You have titles which are selling as ebooks and long enough to make at least a 32-page book in print, or about 8,000 words.)
• Paperback version on CS, just to Amazon.
• Paperback version from Lulu with their expanded reach. - Casewrap hardback from Lulu with expanded reach.
• "Deluxe" dust jacketed version at a much higher price.

Work your books backwards in order of sales so that improved title sales pays for the proofing costs of the hardcopies.

Editing itself can give you an audio book.

You have four drafts of your book. First is your rough draft. Second is cleaning up your errors and inserting links, plus general formatting. Third is reading the book out-loud and correcting anything you find. At this point, you record everything you read out loud, with attention to reading the final version into your recording. You then send off that 3^rd draft to a proofer. Meanwhile, you edit your recording into shape as an audio book (or as a podcast.)

For instance. this podcast transcript is now over 4000 words in print. So it would qualify as a 30 minute quick read, but isn't big enough to print by itself. (I could add material to the end pulled from my other books, and also put in ads to buy my other books on Amazon.)

So we will probably use this as a test of this whole publishing scene

While your recording can become your audio book, it's also a podcast. Including that link into your ebook then gives you added value. I also include the link into the PDF version at the bottom as a footer. So when you submit the PDF to make your hardcopy version, they can always type that link into their browser and get the podcast.

Of course, that sends them to your podcast where they get your ads, and another way to get them into your membership/mailing list.

Quick Reads Other Than Amazon

Of course this strategy works everywhere else, too. Your ebook are the same. You don't have the "Look Inside" but all the ebook distributors enable previews - just make sure the PDF you upload has links to where you want readers to go. I'm also a fan of uploading the entire PDF, as it builds trust and encourages them to get a version they can read more easily on their smart phone. (But I do format my PDFs for 6"x9" as these are more readable on smaller screens.)

Podcasts and Keeping Updated

One final thought is to tell you to follow my Authorpreneur Flipboard magazine to keep up with all that I'm finding daily on book publishing and content creation.

I may work this up into publishing this as a weekly digest at some point, but don't know when. Let me know by return email or comment on this episode if you think that's something you could use.

This podcast was started as another self-publishing test, and it's succeeded far beyond what I expected. However, I have no need to simply work at finding more stuff to talk about just to have a podcast. I do like to share breakthroughs. But at this point, I've covered the bulk of the basics and have no reason to do like Steve Scott and others who are now trying to profit off selling courses to their list.

This is mainly as that market is so saturated, it's not funny. The ebook market is, frankly, glutted. The how-to books market for new authors is worse. Amazon is more the new-author graveyard than ever before. Most of this is because authors are following the followers rather than reaching for the top 5%. That's where the real creative energy is. Market leaders are constantly creating. And that's what makes them leaders. Everyone who tries to just copy what someone else is doing is just another also-ran.

Scott was onto something with his short reads. But he's another follower, even though well-paid. Essentially, he's always been an affiliate marketer. And that's always a follow-the-follower scene. It shows in his latest course in how to write and market books.

Any breakthrough in leveraging Amazon is in finding what are still niche areas, such as short-reads. Amazon is a complete pain to work with, as they nickel-and-dime your royalty income every chance they get. But they can be leveraged and they can be used to build your own list.

You do need your own site, and you should be able to sell your own books from your own site. I should finally have my own ecommerce site up later this month. You already see my membership site is up as a bare-bones operation, but I'm adding content to this each week. And my email lists are slowly building as I go.

Here's the minimum basics in sequence for a successful author, outside of their ability to write:

1) an autoresponder service

2) a domain of your own

3) a membership on that domain

4) your own hosted bookstore

Everything else is getting your books also offered by the main distributors so you can use those distributors to build your email subscriber lists.

If you don't have these four points above in, then you are just asking to be booted off Amazon at some point and left with no income, nothing.

The secret to profits from Amazon is to leverage their ebook sales into hardcopy sales, which are not subject to their money-grubbing policies on royalties. The real market for fiction and non-fiction, especially PD and PLR books, is in POD versions, not ebooks.

And those few comments above sum up my entire accumulated wisdom on selling books profitably. The rest is technical how-to which can be dug up just about anywhere (although the books I've already published in this area have been described as a Gold Mine with all those technical nuggets you can find inside.) My earlier books were to help anyone start with just the computer and Internet connection they already have, plus a common sense approach mostly lacking in the bulk of the other books in this area.

But I have no reason to revisit my own books. This scene is constantly shifting and evolving. I'd be forever just keeping these updated.

I'm not going to promise you that my podcast will continue. If I don't find anything really interesting, or a breakthrough, then it's just another day in the life. Frankly, these two Shaw courses on Udemy have inspired a completely new approach for me - but there's no reason to repeat what he's already written, other than this review.

I'm also studying Mark Dawson's course on Facebook advertising, but this is a back-up to having a lot of books out there already. Your sequence would be to study the two Shaw courses and then Dawson's free videos (until his pricey FB ad course opens up once again.) If you only have a couple of nickels to invest, then get my cheaper ebooks and work on building your backlist. Once the money starts dribbling in, then invest in the above - AFTER you have your own list, domain, membership, and ecommerce set up (which can be built with just Blogger, PayPal, and MailChimp - all free to start with.)

Again, before you start publishing your books (you should always be writing, every single day) get your basics in above. Then expand your training with Shaw and Dawson. If you go back through my blog posts, I've given you other downloads to study through. All free.

Your main focus is to thoroughly study and test everything for yourself, then throw away everything that doesn't work for you. Especially what I've told you. No prophet is sacrosanct, regardless of how many followers they have or how much money they make.

Your life is your own. Live it to the fullest you can. Enjoy every moment. Listen only to those who have escaped that bucket of crabs where everyone else lives.

While I'm way behind and underneath my production goals these days, I still work to see how I can help you with whatever you need. Your input helps and inspires me. Email me directly or leave a comment.

And, thanks for being there.

- - - -

 Would you like related books in this series?

Free ebooks (as well as links to paid versions) available in the no-charge membership.

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6 Simple Steps That Guarantee Your Publishing Success

Hello again,

I actually had a rant ready to spring on you, but decided against it. This is the holidays after all. And it goes against my grain to simply diss someone for acting stupid and selfishly.

So, we’ll leave that for another day.

I did find a great nugget for you. Unfortunately, I don’t have a transcript.

But you’ll want to hear this anyway. Joe Pilizzi of Content Marketing Institute was on Chris Ducker’s show at Youpreneur.fm. They are discussing his new book and lay out the 6 steps all the multi-million-dollar companies have been using to achieve their success.

Because if you want to be successful, you need to find what the successful people are doing.

That’s why I spent a solid week analyzing Steve Scott’s six-figure success and several days working on Mark Dawson and the half-million he’s pulling in – both are doing nothing but books, building on the sands of Amazon. Well, not entirely – and Joe’s 6 steps tell more about how these authors made their success. They both used the same 6 steps, although they actually did go through them in less than a year before they were able to branch out into other things.

I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Have a listen, and I’ll meet you on the other side…

– – – –

Always like listening to Joe. He comes highly recommended from Bruce Clark, so I try to catch Joe’s weekly “This Old Marketing” podcast when I can. Always interesting.

Our approach is to apply content marketing to book publishing – which is the business we are in, after all.

What’s the takeaway from this?

0. Follow your bliss and get into a very narrow niche with fits with your particular expertise. Double-down, as Scott found.

1. Get your list started today. Now is the second best time to start, best would have been 6 months ago.

2. Get your own site, whether it’s blog or podcast or whatever. Have a place you can build on which isn’t someone else’s. You have to be prepared for changes like Facebook has made, or Amazon nuking all your books (I just read about it again today.)

3. Get regular content out consistently and have your list popularize it on Amazon. Yes, that can be your own books, which is what both Scott and Dawson did.

4. Keep doing this consistently. Keep showing up consistently.

5. Then monetize by diversifying. Dawson started his FB ads course. Scott started a podcast and focused more on his site.

It’s just that simple. Six steps.

And that’s how we’ll leave it with you.

Here’s wishing you a great Thanksgiving and holiday season.

Here some links:

• I had to cut out the Youpreneur host’s interruptions from the audio you heard, but the whole podcast is at Episode 138 (http://www.chrisducker.com/podcast/content-marketing-entrepreneurs-joe-pulizzi/)
• Content Marketing Institute with “This Old Marketing” podcast. http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/pnr-with-this-old-marketing-podcast/
• Content Inc. – Joe Pulizzi’s new book.
• Steve Scott’s analysis of his last book launch. http://www.authority.pub/podcast/book-launch-strategy/
• Mark Dawson’s Self Publishing Formula. http://www.selfpublishingformula.com/

Originally published on http://livesensical.com/podcast/selling-books-online/6-simple-steps-guarantee-publishing-success/

Lessons Learned from Steve Scott

When I last left you, I was involved in an over-excited discovery about how to create an online empire from a single year's worth of concentrated effort.

Then I kept going for three more days, sorting out all the questions I had. 

These were all laid out as blog posts - and then I realized they were too wonky to podcast (would make a poor listen) and also, I resolved my own plan even more tightly as I went. So I pulled them together (along with the last post) to make a single PDF. This is available below for download as a free gift for you.

Today, I found "The Story Grid" which is a method to improve my non-fiction writing. I suppose that I'll never stop studying this area. (See my Flipboard magazine to keep up with what I find daily.)

View my Flipboard Magazine.

But this blog and podcast are officially done. 

Because I am going to be producing 50 books over the next year, one per week. (Wish me luck.) And that will include 10 collections of 5, 5 collections of 10, and an online course which anyone can sign up for - which sells all these books. Count those up and you'll get 65 books. Doesn't include peripherals like podcasts.

This is all a plan to promote livesensical.com - so people start learning to live and act better, and improve their lives meanwhile.

I'll be podcasting these books as I go, so that should keep you amused. Sign up there (or above, right) and I'll let you know when they're ready. (You get free access to my library when you do.)

- - - -

How to Sum Up Steve Scott's Success

My actions resulted in these:

• I figured out how to get more done faster, resulting in 76 books in a single year.
• I worked out how to earn more income from books by getting out of Amazon's walled garden.
• I did a complete statistical analysis of Scott's finances – charts and everything.
• And then a few dozen pages of text which really got into how this could be done and how it would wreck your life without the many vacations Scott took (and other distractions he felt were necessary.)
• The final point is working out a realistic approach and backing off the concrete schedule in favor of giving the best value to your readers and list.

The two conflicting ideals in this were my earlier tests of simply pushing PD and PLR books up to everywhere I could. The odd success of these tended to reward that behavior, instead of the ideal of building an audience and then finding what that audience really needed and wanted in books and study material.

Scott started out from Affiliate Marketing and carried more than a few of these bad habits over into his book writing and publishing. I pointed out some of the errors with this review, which he mostly covered in his blog post comments – as I finally got to them.

By the end of this basically 26 months of publishing, he stepped back and started becoming a real author with longer, quality books. Of course by now, he could afford to. Owed mainly to Matt Stone of Archangel Ink, plus his own efforts in getting foreign translations, he now had doubled his properties from the 21 Kindle books he did complete, and has stabilized out at about $31K per month.

He could raise that by another third if he would just start publishing outside of Amazon as well, and get off their merry-go-round of declining author royalties. (KDP Select, and their Unlimited slow-motion train wreck.) As well, his audiobooks are all seem locked into ACX/Audible, so he's not able to get them published anywhere else.

My interest in this is working out how to leverage Amazon.

My resources are all the PD books I've already published, even if not all on Amazon.

The approach I would use is in creating special reports which align this to my specific clients, which would be business people in search of motivational and inspirational materials. These special reports all link to the Amazon version of the book (except for those published on other platforms, which link to that book's landing page.)

Then I start to promote these books within the Amazon forest to encourage cross-sells.

Otherwise, I start up promotions via LinkedIn, Slideshare, YouTube, and my own podcast(s) to drive traffic to Amazon and so increase their recommending my books.

The bottom-line idea is to, again, use ebooks as emissaries. The main object is to get list subscribers so that I can enroll them in a membership and give them more of what they want. Part of what will be required of them is to “juice” Amazon for the new book releases so that these books then become “overnight” bestsellers.

Those books then raise the sales of all books I have there, and income is leveraged remarkably.

Now, as I start this, my list is puny – and I haven't been maintaining it.

So the first actions are then to create (even before the first ebook is released) a useful standalone report they can use to improve their lives with. That link takes them to a landing page on my site where I track what they do – and I can A/B test.

I'll also send out a broadcast to all my list members, letting them know what's up and what's coming.

Once they are in the membership, the dance continues as I give them more material and see what's interesting for them. Also, I then keep checking what they click on and give them more of that type of thing. Free ecourses are followed by paid full courses. Eventually, I also have a paid membership where I can pay closer attention to what they want and get some really valuable feedback – so I can again find and deliver the material they want.

Overall lessons learned

• When you can afford it (once you are making more than you need to live on) then invest most or all the excess into building a virtual team to help you with your workload.
• Always diversify as soon as possible. Of course, this is publishing everywhere at all times, but also into different formats and all possible distribution points.
• Leverage every product through re-purposing – and getting these all to either give you subscribers or income or both.
• Keep learning as you go – and this is by keeping your humility higher than your pride. Be transparent.

I'm going to keep this short – as we both have a lot to get back to.

My whole study is linked below as a PDF and also included as an enclosure for the podcast.

Do leave a comment on my blog or a rating on iTunes.

I also answer all my email personally, so feel free to sign up.

Oh – that includes going to livesensical.com and joining the membership there to get access to my complimentary library of goodies waiting for you there. (I'll be posting these new ebooks there and including special bundles of extras left on the "cutting room floor" as each book is created.)

So: get this download, sign up for my free library access, and have fun with all this.

Hope to see you all soon with this next installment.

Download link: "How to Publish 76 books in a single year - keep your sanity, and build a 6-figure passive income for life."

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I owe it all to you - Thanks. (Some notes on future-past.)

You are who I do all this work for. 

Really.

So this blog post and podcast is a thank you note.

What did you do to deserve this?

It all started long ago - or maybe a few minutes for some of you. You decided to click on a link with led you here, or bought one of my books, or otherwise set yourself up to hear from me.

My story started over 50 years ago, when I started wanting to figure things out around me.

Those two paths converged at some point. And I've been working to deserve you ever since.

OK, let's break that down a bit further.

There's this thing called a Golden Rule. You know: "treat others like you'd like to be treated." All those variations. Every religion and philosophy mentions that as a truth somewhere in it's texts or scriptures.

The funny thing is that this works as "As you give, so you get." or as Napoleon Hill had it: "You can't get without giving."

My bottom line is that to the degree I'd like to be successful, rich, and all that - I have to help you achieve these too.

What does all that have to do with book publishing?

Good question - I'm getting there. (Sometimes I can get long-winded.)

You know, if you've looked up my back trail, that I've been talking to you about how to make a success of it with book publishing. Nice passive income, financial freedom, take the day off to go fishing and still earn income while you've sat in the shade all day and drank your tea (or equivalent beverage.)

That type of lifestyle. Great, huh?

I did it with an assortment of books, but saw that if I wanted to take it to the next level, I was going to have to ask for your help.

So, thanks.

You're here, you're listening to this, you're aboard.

Where are we going, then?

Boy, are you right on the money with your questions today...

If you want to make a really decent income (like into the "getting rich" category) you have to open up and help others get rich on their own.

Looking around found that the best tool to do this was to form a membership where you could help people more directly than just anonymously selling them a book.  I mean to really help them.

Actually, that research found the model for all online passive income. It's true for spammers, it's true for their brothers, the Internet Marketers. It's even true for pure rip-off schemes like the Government and their cronies.

Advertisers use this plan, as does Facebook and any social media. Even our book distributors use this. They are all memberships after a fashion. Anyone who gets your email and sends you stuff uses this.

My approach is to find out why this works and tell everyone I can how to do this for themselves.

Of course, what I researched before this tells a great deal about how the universe works beyond this - and the tools which help you earn income online are the same which help you improve your health, lose weight, enjoy your life every day, live with no cares and a calm, cheerful expectancy that everything you want to be and have is coming your way.

That's a bit thick, you might be saying.

And you're right. Let's just stick to book publishing.

This new site I'm building is taking a bit of time. And while I have some other blog posts describing what I'm going through - this one is a filler for now just to keep you posted in general.

That's because the sawdust is still flying and you can still hear the distant noise of hammering and screwguns as all that construction happens.

We're standing over here to avoid all the trucks delivering material and the concrete being poured.

Go visit livesensical.com and you'll get a preview. No big deal. Your choice.

What I'm still going to give you - no strings attached.

Yes, we were right in the middle of a Case Study. And we'll get back to it - promise.

That case study led us to the brick-wall-solid fact that an author or publisher of any type needs to build their audience from square one - even before they create their first book.

And that's why I had to stop everything and get my own membership built.

You can count on me to eat the dog food I make - just to ensure it tastes good enough for your pets.

I'm into Rainmaker as the platform of choice (and that link should wind you up with a free trial, if you want it.) What I'm finding is that this really does have all the tools you need for publishing and a lot more.

Most of these, we've already covered. One example is putting all your links inside the book into Bitly links so you can track them better. In Rainmaker, they have this built in so that you can track where people come from and go to. In Bitly, you can't have several links going back to the same spot - but if you have several book versions pointing to one page (like the PDF, the Kindle, and the epub version) you want to know which one is bringing you the most traffic. That way you can promote that version more.

Can't we just do this for free?

Sure. I'll always tell you how to do the same thing for nothing but sweat-equity. If you want to do a membership with on-page sales, use Gumroad on a Blogger blog.  Lulu will still sell my hardcopy books and port my original works to all the main distributors. But I'll be selling books directly, where I can make 100% royalties.

The point is that you need to get independent from having to depend on distributors. You need to sell directly to the audience you serve.

And while you can create bundles on Gumroad (and BitTorrent, plus Sellfy, Ganxy, and Distribly, among others) - you can also do this directly from Rainmaker.

One last pitch for Rainmaker - and you don't have to use all sorts of different sites and logins to do the same thing. (OK, there - I'm done.)

What the future holds...

We're going to spend a few podcasts describing how to start up a membership as a complete unknown. You could set this up under an existing domain you already have, but we also need to take the idea of where someone starts from scratch.

At that point, I'll do a series on just how you start up from nothing - as these podcasts started in the middle of a project I was already on. So we'll just fill in the foundations as we go.

Meanwhile, I'll be busy in the background setting everything up on that beautiful new membership so you can find everything you need. (You're always moving furniture around in a new house as you unpack and put everything on shelves - and wondering how you ever collected so many knick-knacks...)

Once we restart that case study, then we'll open that up as a section of the membership all on it's own - and you'll be invited to try it out first and let me know what you think. Lots of wheels to kick and test rides to take.

That will pretty much wrap up that last book in this series about self-publishing. Of course, you'll be able to have access to the complete set, plus all my notes and everything.

Because you're worth it - aren't you?

After that, I'll test out that plan on a new book series and podcast that as I go. But don't be concerned. That next series has everything to do with how you promote your books and yourself and your business.

I can't see how I'll run out of stuff to share with you, as I'll be re-marketing all my books, series by series - and there is something to learn with each one. Things also change all the time - like right now, it's easier to have Lulu create your ebook than do it yourself. That throws out quite a few other datum's, and puts wrenches into some other works.

All you need to know is to sit back and enjoy the ride. I'll be doing the hard work of testing everything and you get to try out the streamlined, polished version for yourself - and let me know how it worked for you.

Which brings up - Let me know what you need.

The question is: What is the biggest problem facing you?

Just answer that for me, and I'll see what I can do to help you with it. I'm sitting on a half-century of research and I probably have something around here somewhere that gives a clue on how someone else made it through that particular problem already.

Very little of what we are doing currently is really new. Most of humankind hasn't changed in 10,000 years - so the answer to any particular problem was probably known in ancient Greek times, as well as in Victorian England, or maybe the Roaring 20's.

If it's something to do with publishing books, I'll probably have covered it somewhere.

Oh - and that brings up: Look for some Q-and-A podcasts coming up. They might be longish, like webinars, but I'd like to cover what people have as questions in this area.

Of course, you don't have to wait, you can just go ahead and email them to me (of course, you're subscribed - aren't you?)

When I get a big enough stack to make it interesting, then I'll throw one of those into the mix.

- - - -

Hope that brings you up to date. And that you're life is half as interesting as what is going on around here.

See you next time.

- - - -

Make sure you're signed up for updates through your email - so you don't miss an issue!

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I'm Sorry - Updates Galore Coming Soon!

I've been quiet too long. And I apologize.

It's not that I don't have stuff for you - I do. About 5 podcasts which have to be recorded and posted so you can be alerted by email or RSS feed/podcatcher/iTunes, etc. (You are subscribed, aren't you? Good.)

Because I do this all for you.

What's happened that I don't want you to fall into.

I went back to my hard-drives and pulled every backup I had. Of course, because I didn't always have this habit, they only went back to 2005. I look around old files and found that I'd been blogging since at least 2003, but they were on platforms which have since gone extinct.

Anyway, this gave me nearly 5,000 (yes, five thousand) blog posts to sort through. Taking out obvious duplicates narrowed it down to under 4,000. When I simply trashed or turned to draft anything you wouldn't be interested in (like the details of getting a refund from a scammer company that finally went under last year) - this pulled it down below 3,000.

Finally, I had to go through everything which wasn't assigned a category and put these where they belonged.

Moving back to Wordpress off Blogger

I've always liked Wordpress, but had a love/hate relationship with the free blog-hosting sites that used it. All free blog hosting sites have trouble with spammers. Some have taken fairly draconian (harsh) measures to protect their servers and financial backend.

Wordpress.com was one of these. I've had more blogs and profiles turned off on that site than I can easily count. They simply won't tolerate obvioius affiliate links. And will ban you at the drop of a hat. (While meanwhile labeling you a spammer - hope you're not using your real name...)

Since I need to make an online living by offering products (my books) - I had to get onto a platform that would not just tolerate this, but encourage it. So I went to Blogger.

And I was happy, overall. I knew it was more limited than Wordpress, but the minimalist simplicity of it didn't keep you from feeding your muse and working to get paid for it.

Blogger has one major drawback - it doesn't have categories, so exporting and then re-importing to a Wordpress platform leaves you with a huge stack of stuff which is "uncategorized."

Then the fun begins.

(I did see, after a couple of days at this, that it's possible to turn tags ["labels" on Blogger] into categories. And then within Wordpress, to move from one category to another, or combine them.)

Since "uncategorized" is a default on Wordpress, I had to move all these over into a new temp category, sort them, to where they needed to go, and then delete that temp one.

It took days, close to a week of my part-time schedule working at this (the farm chores and other duties still take their fair share.)

And Just When I Thought I Was Done...

...I found out how deep this rabbit hole goes.

Rainmaker is an amazing platform. Amazing. As I don't use that word often, it means a lot.

I was down to about 1200 posts (with at least that many as draft or trash to revive as needed.)

Unfortunately, it isn't really like Blogger or Wordpress, where you can pick out a nice template and just start in. It's way more powerful with built-in memberships, podcasting networks, online courses, and of course - the ability to directly sell digital products.

I'm getting this podcast out to you on the old system to let you know what's coming up. Because I've got a lot of work to do - still - just to help you get the data you want the way you want it.

The problem is that it's going to take some time before I can get a nice base set up and turn on stuff bit-by-bit.

There's no reason to have to have everything ready at once, but let me lay out what looks to be possible at this point.

The Grand Design Revealed

...drumroll, please.

You should really go over to livesensical.com to sign up. That's my new site. Nice video there that starts to explain it.

This site will really be in four parts, which is how I've organized my 50+ years of research and all the workable resources I've collected so share with you.

There are going to be both free and paid memberships, which allow me to fine-tune this material. To begin with, it will all be a free membership - but I'll have a lot of blog posts which live free out there to get people to sign up at all.

These four areas will each have their own podcast, probably bi-weekly, as that's a lot of work.

Just in the self-help area, I already have 4 or 5 ecourses which can be revived. In the online marketing area, there's another 3-4 or more.  This is just what I've found when I was moving stuff around. Other courses exist on video and PDF which can be brought in and connected. Then there are PLR video and audio courses which I've got stashed away and are still fairly useful.

I've mentioned before that I have a couple dozen-dozen books out there already. Some are very applicable to your studies, some were just tests (aka: cannon fodder). There are a great number of these I want to make available for free, and then offer the other version of them (epub, mobi, audiobook/podcasts, videos) for small fees - well, at least higher than they are sold on Amazon.

Eventually, I'll get onto some major projects I've been laying out and putting off - such as

• a set of classic evergreen fiction bestsellers made available to authors to improve their craft. 
• There's also an online marketing training course to enable people to really think with what they find online and be able to spot real winners and the scams. This has particular use to people who have been into Network Marketing. 
• My series on Masters of Marketing needs quite a bit more work - and porting to LinkedIn for their use.
• There's a final book on selling books online, which takes all the data I've set out here and packages it up in various formats. This also needs to be a course, plus bundled with audio.
• Eventually, I'll be caught up and will start in on Children's Books, both writing and illustrating them, but they'll have a companion set of books so anyone can train themselves on this genre. (It will probably be it's own site, although that's a future scene I haven't fully figured out as yet.)

The Rainmaker platform has built-in SEO scripting, so all the surviving posts need to be gone through and updated. That alone would take weeks if I didn't also have some forward progress to make (and bills to pay, and promises to keep.)

The backend bells-and-whistles to set this up take a bit of study - but there is an excellent set of tutorials and walk-throughs which tell anyone how to build their own stuff.

The great part of Rainmaker platform is that this is the same tools that Clark & Co. have used to build Copyblogger into a multi-million dollar annual income. Same tools - just like they use. In short: it's truly powerful.

What happens to these old blogs?

Well, they stay right there. One datum you must know is that you never, ever delete a blog once you set it up. Fill it with usable content, put an opt-in form on it, update it if you can here and there. But like vintage wine, it gets more valuable with time, not less. Google gives them more authority (meaning: higher rankings) the longer they are out there. Even free blogs. Put them on a spreadsheet and drop some content in on them from time to time. (If you can set up IFTTT to syndicate your content, that fine.)

You see, each of these free blog hosts have their own community. So they recommend your stuff to their followers differently. That means more people can find your stuff that you'd not necessarily connect with otherwise.

Meanwhile, the search engines can link all these in on very long-tail basis to help other people find your stuff. 

I don't really have a system in place to deal with all these. Like I said, I've got a spreadsheet which hs most of them on it - some will stay forever lost to my access, but will never be deleted.

In some cases, like that scammer content, this can be posted back to specialty blogs just on that subject - the history of a particular Utah scammer company. Might even become a book if I can ever get around to it. But having this content on a Blogger blog is a fitting bookend to this chapter of my own history.

You also never throw away old content - you just re-purpose it when you can.

Well, thanks - Gotta run.

I really, really appreciate the time you spend listening to these rambles. It's all designed to help you learn from my mistakes and earn your own extra online income faster. 

I've got a long post (just written last night) on free blogs all by themselves. Another on how to effectively promote on social media without having your time sucked away with no income. And some others I wrote last week about what I'd been inspired on through this journey. 

These are all waiting for me to find them, record them, and get them out to you.

Today, though, I though you deserved an update.

Let me know what you need covered in more detail. I'll get to it when I can - you can see above that my schedule is a bit packed now...

Luck to us all.

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