You MUST Publish a Business Book on Amazon

I still have to pinch myself when I say, “I’m a published author of eight books, most of them bestsellers”. Trust me, I was such a dunce at school. I’m so glad I started to write business books.

Amazon has revolutionized publishing. Whether is this is good or bad depends on your point of view. But one thing’s for sure, the democratization of publishing has massively increased competition. Every year it gets harder to be seen on Kindle’s crowded platform. For this reason, if you haven’t started writing yet, this is the year you MUST write your first business book.

Not convinced? You want more reasons? OK …

#1 Writing a business book gives you kudos

If you’re an author of a book this affords you great kudos. It doesn’t matter that being a published author is as simple as uploading a Word document at the KDP website, people are still impressed with you when you’ve written a book.

People will look to you as an expert on a subject that you’ve written a book on. I’ve written eight books, that’s eight subjects I’m expert in. 😉

#2 Publishing a paperback and audiobook as well

This is not just about Kindle, although that’s a great place to start. Once you have published your Kindle, you must also create a paperback and audiobook version. This gives you even more credibility.

All you have to do is upload correctly formatted PDFs at kdp.amazon.com and anyone can buy a physical copy of your book and Amazon will print it out and send it to them. Similarly, all you have to do is get a voice-over artist to record a reading of your book at ACX.com and anyone can buy the audio file of your book.

You can then buy multiple copies of your own paperback book at only a few dollars each and gleefully hand out signed copies to impressed contacts at business events.

It’s a great business card. It’s the new business card. I gave a copy of my book to a famous podcaster at a conference and a few days later he invited me on his podcast. It opens doors.

#3 Building your brand

Publishing a book puts your name on the most famous e-commerce website in the world. Everyday, millions of people are on Amazon looking for books to buy. They will see your name alongside the names of famous business gurus. Your personal brand will grow by association.

#4 Increasing your email list

This is one of the most important reasons. If not, the most important reason.

The email list is the most crucial asset any online business has today. If you increase the numbers of people on your email list, you increase your bottom line.

So, if this is the case, why publish on Amazon? Doesn’t Amazon keep their customers email addresses to themselves? Yes, they do. But you can get a large number of them as well.

You can litter your books with extra online resources – links, video courses, more audiobooks, more e-books – and get the interested readers to sign up for these extras. They’ve already paid to read your book, so they will happily give you their email address for an extra free resource.

Always put one of these offers right at the beginning of the book and then people browsing Amazon will see the offer by using the “Look Inside” feature. They could sign up to your list without even reading the book!

#5 Passive Income

I don’t write books for the money. I have made over $13,000 in Kindle royalties alone since I started writing. It’s pocket money, to be honest, especially as I have to pay for editing and design services (about $500 per book).

I’m not including the sales of paperback and audiobooks in the above figures either. And the money keeps coming in regardless, even as I stopped writing books for the majority of 2016 – I still sold over 2000 Kindle books in that year despite doing nothing to promote them.

I hesitate to use the term “passive income”, but that’s what it is.

#6 Writing about other things / pivot your business

One of the many sad results of Google being the de facto world’s search engine, is that they like to pigeon-hole you. All the SEO-gurus encourage you to niche down to make sure Google knows exactly what your website is about.

It makes it difficult for bloggers like me who get bored easily. I like to write about different subjects every so often.

Amazon works very differently to Google. For example, all of my books have been about online business. But I’d always wanted to write a personal development book, so I did. My personal development book, called Mind Freedom, was just as successful as my other books. Amazon’s A9 algorithm didn’t bat an eye, whereas Google would give a business website zero visitors if it suddenly started talking about a different topic.

#7 Increasing your product portfolio

No businessperson ever got rich with their first product. Oh, apart from Zuck. Oh, and apart from and Larry and Sergey. Oh, and maybe Elon. OK, maybe some people get successful quickly. But none of my friends have. And I didn’t. And that’s the point. We’re not all superhuman. Most of us are hustlers. We get there by old-fashioned graft. And that means shipping a large quantity of products.

I’m an adherent of the “throw-enough-mud-on-the-wall-and-some-of-it-will-stick” business strategy. It’s not desperately scientific but it works for me.

9 out of 10 businesses fail. So it makes sense to create 10 businesses. If you are creating products, it makes sense to create a shit ton of them.

If, like me, you’ve created many different product types (one-off courses, membership sites, apps, PDF e-books, Fiverr gigs, t-shirt designs, etc.) then add a book to your product suite. By re-appropriating content, it should be pretty easy.

#8 Increasing the number of income streams

People will poo-poo the fact that I’ve only done $14,000-odd on Kindle in the last three years. It’s not a lot of money, certainly. But self-publishing isn’t central to my business. It’s just another lead generation tool. It exposes my brand to a new group of customers. It adds email addresses to my email lists. And … it makes money.

#9 Making new business contacts, meeting amazing people

This one maybe #9 but it’s one of the most important.

Authors like to meet people. (If you were holed up writing all day, wouldn’t you?) I’ve met some incredible people through self publishing. I’ve met amazing people through self-publishing meetups in London. I’ve met amazing people through Pats1stBook.com self-publishing Facebook group.

And, more importantly, I’ve met amazing people through the course of writing my books.

Amazing idea for business book writing: I prepare a Google Form questionnaire for a group of experts, influencers, and people that’ll have something interesting to share about the subject of the book I’m writing. I fire off a load of emails with a link to the Google Form. Half of the experts will reply. I mention them in the book. I link to them in a blog post. I let them know when the book’s launched. Guess what? All these experts and influencers promote the book on social media. And, it’s the beginning of a mutually beneficial business relationship!

Convinced? You should be … but the next reason’s the kicker… watch this video!

#10 It’s so feckin’ easy!

I’m not wagging my finger, I’m saying it only takes one hour a day for 2-3 weeks and you’ve written a book!

It’s so easy to write a business book. All you have to do is open up Word or a Google Drive doc and start writing. Here are the steps you have to take.

Idea – Some people pick low-competition keyword and reverse engineer a title but that would drive me mad with boredom. I would try to provide value. Write about what you know. But split your knowledge up into small sections. Don’t write everything you know.

Plan – Flesh out a mind map or a linear plan of what you want to say.

Research – Get all the facts, figures, and resources, you’ll need during the writing process ready at your fingertips so you aren’t distracted.

Write – Be really strict with yourself. Make sure you write a certain amount of words first thing each day (500 words, 1,000 words, for some, 2,000 words). Whatever word count is right for you, stick to it daily. Don’t let anything stop the writing process. This period is described as “the word vomit” by Paul Jarvis.

Edit – This is when the magic happens. In the first read through you will hopefully trim about 20-30% of the fat. Repeat this process again. And then repeat again, the third time reading it out. Get a “street team” to read it. Finally, send the text to a good text editor.

You can do it!

You can write a book and get it published in just few weeks. You can do it. I can help. Let me quickly tell you about my self publishing program …

If you want to benefit from this opportunity, I have created an amazing new program to get you publishing: Write and Self-Publish a Bestselling Book on Amazon – this is a short collection of videos (2 hours, that will be added to) and the inclusion to a private Facebook group where you can ask questions and gain encouragement and accountability.

The whole program will:

• Help you get an idea for your new book title
• Get you to write that damn book
• Teach you how to publish the book in e-book (Kindle), paperback, and audiobook formats
• Show you how to make your first book a bestseller! And tell you the secrets to book marketing that will grow your business and earn you passive income.

This program is for people who have not written a book yet but would like to. It’s also for people who have already written a book, or started writing books and want to learn more about publishing, marketing and getting bestseller status.

My course will give you a step-by-step guide to writing, self-publishing, and marketing your books. (I’ll even guarantee you a bestseller on Amazon!). We’re going to have fun in a Facebook Group for the course as well.

Self-Publish! – How To Write & Publish An Amazon Kindle Bestseller – jump on the course now and I’ll see you on the Facebook group and we’ll make this happen!