Authority by Nathan Barry
Step-by-step guide to self-publishing.
- On writing:
- Most well-known people in the industry share and teach things that they know, either through speaking or writing.
- To find a topic, ask yourself what people ask you for help with.
- You don’t have to be an expert to teach, though there are ways to establish expertise:
- Join official-sounding organizations.
- Talk about top-rated books on your topic.
- Write for other leading publication.
- Two main factors decide if your book is successful are:
- Does it teach a skill that people use to make money so that they can make more than they spend?
- Do they gather in any online communities that you can reach?
- Competition shows there is a market, a need.
- Make consistent progress everyday. Don’t break the chain.
- Self publish so you don’t have to depend on any firm.
- Basic marketing:
- A good way to market your book is to build up your audience by teaching.
- Before spending months writing, test the demand by creating a landing page and telling people about it.
- Have 3 good blog posts to demonstrate your expertise if you don’t have ones yet.
- Use email list to build your audience since social media can be distracting.
- Don’t let your list die by simply keep providing valuable content every week or every few weeks.
- Pricing and packaging:
- Price on 2 main factors: value delivered and your goals.
- The more value delivered, the higher the price.
- If your goal is to build a huge audience, a low price makes sense as more copies would be sold (hopefully).
- Use packages to charge more for more delivered value:
- Video tutorials
- Explanation screencasts
- Interviews
- Code samples
- Courses
- Workshops
- Price on 2 main factors: value delivered and your goals.
- Prepping for launch:
- Once you have a landing page, stay contact with your subscribers once every week or two.
- Get them excited about the incoming book.
- Gradually drip out a sample chapter, the book outline, other quotes…
- Try to be everywhere on the launch day by writing for other publications.
- Start building up a relationship slowly by helping them in some ways.
- Affiliates also work, though be selective since only a few affiliates can sell well.
- Give free preview copies and ask for feedbacks and testimonials.
- Once you have a landing page, stay contact with your subscribers once every week or two.
- The sale page:
- Focus on the pain.
- Talk to your customers and find out exactly what their pains are.
- Write them in a list and for each one, explain how your methods for overcoming each one.
- Basic elements:
- Why should someone care
- A sample chapter
- Table of contents
- Social proof (testimonials, featured projects,…)
- About the author
- Listing your packages
- Purchase options
- FAQ (file types, refund policy, skill-level expectations)
- Focus on the pain.
- E-commerce:
- Pros of Kindle and iBook:
- Support multiple platforms out of the box.
- Getting setup is easy.
- Indexed and searchable via popular search engines
- Cons:
- Pricing cut
- Control of subscribers
- Good alternatives include GumRoad, E-junkie, Space Box.
- Pros of Kindle and iBook:
- Launch day and beyond:
- Make sure your subscribers are clear about the launch date the day before.
- Make it easy to share by including sample tweets.
- Make sure your scheduled guest posts go live today.
- When sales drop, keep teaching and giving content away for free.
References:
Tagged: #writing, #self-publishing