Being able to live comfortably from the income of your book sales is a luxury only a few authors can enjoy. Many books do not last six months on the market. Profits from book sales are divided so many ways, it is difficult for an author to generate substantial income. Aside from the bookstore making their profit, the distributor, publisher, printer, and even the post office are going to cut into the author's profits. Any returns from the bookstore will be sent back to the publisher which will also cut into the author's bottom line. After all of this activity, the publisher gets paid about four to six months after the actual book sale. This is the reason why many authors only receive one royalty payment for the entire year. The bottom line is; the book industry is broken. The two entities who take the biggest kick in the pants are the publisher and the author. In order for you, the author, to make a substantial amount of money from your book sales, you need to create follow-up products that have a high profit margin.
Grab a pen and answer the following Yes or No questions:
1) Do I have the potential for follow-up books (i.e. updated versions)?
2) Do I have the potential for a workbook (many how-to books do)?
3) Can my book be adequately converted into an audio book?
4) Can my book be turned into an online training class or video (almost every non-fiction book can)?
5) Can my book be used as a tool to get hired as a professional speaker (most non-fiction books can)?
If you said yes to any of the above questions, then you definitely can benefit from follow-up sales. If you said no to every question above, than most likely you are not thinking closely about the answers. From my experience, less than 10 percent of books have no follow-up sale potential.
Let's use my first book as an example. In the first two years this book was published, I did not do any type of follow-up sales. Then, I wrote a second book that builds upon the lessons learned from the first book. As soon as this new book was published, my book sales nearly doubled instantaneously. The new book was merely an extension of the first book. What I discovered was that readers wanted to test their skills on the lessons they learned in the first book, and the follow up book gave them that outlet. Now, instead of 100 percent of the customers ordering just one book, over 70 percent of them order two books. Does your book have this potential? I will bet that it does.
