Writing Archives - Tom Morkes

Jane Duncan Rogers is an accomplished author, entrepreneur, and award-winning Life and Death coach. She is passionate about creating a world where dying, death, and grief are considered a natural, normal, and nourishing part of the conversation, with end-of-life plans becoming as commonplace as birth plans.

In today's conversation, we dive into Jane's journey from a self-published book to a thriving 6-figure business. We explore her experiences in the longevity space, her personal memoir, "Gifted by Grief," and the birth of her company, Before I Go Solutions. Jane shares her insights on end of life planning, the importance of leaving a legacy, and the training she offers for individuals interested in becoming end of life plan facilitators.

I hope you enjoy today's conversation, and if you do, please share this interview with others, and leave a review on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you're listening to this.

In this broadcast, Jane Duncan Rodgers and I talk about (timestamps):

[00:00:00] Introduction to Jane Duncan Rogers and the story of how she wrote and published her book “Gifted by Grief”.

[00:03:58] How her passion project educating people on end of life planning became her company “Before I Go Solutions”.

[00:08:04] On developing her legacy through courses, facilitator training, workbooks etc.

[00:11:12] Who is Jane’s clientele and how she defined the market for her business?

[00:16:03] Jane talks about what the End of Life Program is like and some of the unexpected planning and decision-making people might not know about.

[00:21:21] Jane talks about the future of the end of life market, as well as her plans for the future, both in business and writing.

[00:25:57] Where to get in touch with Jane Duncan Rogers - to learn more, get her books or work with her.

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Did you enjoy today's broadcast of In The Trenches? Please click here to leave an honest rating and review on iTunes. Your review helps me spread the word of this podcast, which allows me to line up amazing guests and continue to produce this podcast ad-free. Thanks so much in advance for your support.

Alinka Rutkowska is a USA Today best-selling author, a Wall Street Journal best-selling author and a top 100 Amazon best-selling author in business and money. She’s sold more than 100,000 copies of her books and her book creation process has been showcased in Entrepreneur magazine. She’s also the CEO of Leaders Press, where she turns entrepreneurs' book ideas into best-selling books. She has launched all its titles to best-seller status.

On today’s episode, I sit down with Alinka Rutkowska to talk about two things. The first is how to outsource your book and what that process looks like. The second is Alinka’s best tips on how to hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list.

During this conversation, we kind of break down her strategy for those two things with what worked and what didn’t. She will be sharing some practical and hopefully pragmatic tips on what you could do to implement for your own launch, regardless if you are shooting for a best seller list.

In this broadcast, Alinka and I talk about:

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I wish I had a 'before the project began' picture (note to self: do this from now on), but in a nutshell: it was an empty closet with a coat hanger and a wobbly top shelf.

We basically used it as a transitory drop off point for things we didn't want on the floor but weren't ready to bring up to the attic (or things that fell into the 'do we throw this away now or later?' category).

Here's the midway point and the "after" point (the real before picture would just be a pile of nothing in there):

I still have to stain the wood seat, fill in some cracks, do a final paint touch up, but it's basically there.

1. We probably quadrupled our storage space with this improvement, which is a big win because Blaise has way too much playdoh and we need a place to keep it.

2. We now have a new, beautiful space in our house where none existed before. You can just feel it - the energy has changed around this area.

That's because beauty has a physiological impact on the body. When you surround yourself with beauty, you will feel better, more energetic, and more connected to the world you live in. Fact.

When I first started getting into woodworking and carpentry, every piece of wood I cut or manhandled looked amateur (obviously). Now, my cuts are cleaner; I'm more precise; I see how things fit together better and I can plan multiple steps ahead much more efficiently than before.

Point is, my skills are growing each day, and I'm ready to move onto more advanced projects, to continue to improve and beautify our space.

You can read every blog post, watch every YouTube video, subscribe to every magazine, and buy every book you want to learn ABOUT a subject...

Until you start implementing; until you put saw to wood, pen to paper, phone to ear - until you put your gloves on and enter the arena - you don't actually know anything.

I get dozens to hundreds of emails every week, and within these messages I noticed a pattern (not for every email or every person, but for many).

Even if you could connect your brain to a machine to give you all the information in the world, you wouldn't end up like Neo, karate-chopping British clones like a boss.

It's more likely you'd end up like Bran Stark from Game of Thrones, with all the information of the ages and the ability to soar to great heights and look at everyone and everything through the lens of a bird...

...but when you wake up, you're still just a dude sitting in a wheelchair by a tree, next to a eunuch who recently tried to kill your whole family.

People say we're in the "Information Age" - as if information is the Holy Grail that defines this generation and the next (true story, I believed the hype for the last decade, now I'm over it).

If we're going to title this time period anything, let's at least name it something useful, like the "Creators Age."

These aren't questions you answer with an idea; you answer them with your hands, with your sweat, and with the work you put in, each and every day, even if you don't see the payoff for months or years to come.

Gregory Diehl has always understood the importance of universal ideals. Though he was raised in California, he soon embarked on a journey of global quest for learning, self-discovery, entrepreneurship, and inquiry. Since then, Gregory has lived and worked in 48 countries and continues to use his experiences to help others along the path of self-fulfillment through exploration. Gregory is the author of two Amazon bestsellers: Brand Identity Breakthrough and Travel as Transformation. His podcast, Uncomfortable Conversations with Gregory, taps into the core of people’s conceptions of self. He helps entrepreneurs prepare complex value messages across many mediums, and offers unconventional lifestyle coaching and brand identity consultancy for impassioned individuals.

I brought Gregory on today because he’s working on two new books, both of which I thought would be interesting to touch on. During this episode, we talk about writing and publishing and how to create meaningful books with meaningful ideas. Our conversation ends up going in the direction of meaning and how to live a meaningful life. My big takeaway from today’s conversation is that we all need principles and values to live by. We cannot navigate this world without a set of principles that guide us in the direction we want to go.

In this broadcast, Gregory and I talk about:

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There are more people online than ever before, spending more money than ever before on things that give them a leg up in the world. That means more money going to ebooks, ecourses, and other forms of online education; coaching, consulting, and advisory services; software solutions, and high quality implementors (engineers, designers, etc.).

This growth comes with a price: more noise (aka competing offers other than your own that are targeting the same market).

Are you positioning yourself and your business in such a way that you can profit from these changes over the next decade?

In this video, I'll show you how to make a profit from digital products during these changin' times.

What’s your “niche” or long tail space / area / topic? Have you considered going deeper / more narrow? Why or why not?

Today, I want to share some of my lessons learned (the good, the bad, and the ugly) from writing this book...

I started this project a year ago this month. I actually ran the Publishizer.com crowdfunding campaign in November and doubled my funding goal by early December, 2015. To be honest, with my small audience of about 1,500 subscribers, I wasn't sure I'd be able to hit my goal...but somehow we made it happen (thank you to all my early adopters - couldn't have done it without you).

The problem with crowdfunding campaigns, though...especially successful ones...is that you now have to make good on the promise.

While the campaign was hard work, writing and creating a book worth reading was the REAL hard work (young Tom would later come to find out).

And now, what started as just an idea about 360 days ago, has finally become a 352 page, beautifully designed and formatted book published by Insurgent Publishing, and is almost ready for hardcover printing and distribution.

Here's a mockup of what the hardcover will look like when it gets into your sweet little hands in January, 2016:

And I couldn't have done it without you, the reader (nor would I have wanted to).

As a way to say thanks, here are 7 of my biggest "lessons learned" from writing a business book:

7 Lessons Learned From Writing a Business Book

Lesson #1: If it's worthwhile, it will be hard to write

To be clear, Collaborate is not my first book and not my first business book, but it is the biggest, most bold book project I've undertaken , and dwarfs the other books I've written in terms of raw content and scope.

The idea for Collaborate has been incubating in my brain for the past 3 to 5 years. I wasn't ready to write this book for the longest time. Ironically, even after finishing it, I still don't feel ready to write it in a lot of ways...

Because I'm writing something that hasn't been written before...not in this way, not in this style, not for this purpose.

It's (generally) easy to regurgitate what others have said - it's much more difficult to develop a new framework by collecting, analyzing, and synthesizing hundreds of seemingly disparate ideas, perspectives, case studies, research, and more...and do so in a way that is easy to follow, to understand, to use, and to embrace.

Harder still to make sure that the majority of readers will actually benefit from the book (in other words, to avoid writing fluffy drivel...I HATE fluffy drivel...).

I pulled my hair out for the past twelve months writing and rewriting Collaborate.

I think I went through at least 5 unique drafts, totally different from one another. The current iteration, the one you will see in your hands in a few weeks, went through over a hundred iterations as the writing progressed.

If you're not up to the task, scrap the idea before you start; it will save you a lot of time, money, and pain.

Alternatively, if you're committed to your idea - if you know you have to turn this thing into reality....and you have the grit and hustle to make sure it comes to fruition, then make sure you finish and ship. Anything else is half-stepping (and nobody likes a half-stepper).

Learning Lesson: doing anything worthwhile is hard; don't run from the discomfort, embrace it.

Lesson #2: Whatever your estimated timeline, quadruple it

I know this from heuristics, but academic studies have confirmed it. From Wikipedia:

The funny thing is, no matter how well I "know" myself, I still make huge timeline mistakes on just about any project that will take more than a week to create and ship.

And I ended up not finishing Collaborate until November 2016, one year later, or 4x longer than expected.

Learning Lesson: The only thing I can say is that if you're starting a new project, use this rule of wrist:

Lesson #3: Nobody will write your book for you

And I'm certainly not one of those people who wears the word "writer" proudly like a piece of Chotchkie's flair.

That said, I recognize that writing is an important part of what I do - and an important part of what any notable entrepreneur, creator, or politician does.

I also learned pretty quick that, regardless of how much you might hate the writing process at times, nobody can write your book for you.

Mistake 1. I tried using old blog posts as the foundation for my new book. I really liked the idea of re-purposing useful, old (but still relevant) content. However, blog posts are blog posts and are not chapters in a book; they are written a different way with a different purpose. I ended up scrapping everything I pulled from my own blog and rewriting everything from scratch...this set me back several weeks.

Mistake 2. I looked for a co-author. I actually found a great one, a good friend of mine, actually, but after a few sessions, we parted ways because we realized the vision for the book didn't quite align. I could have looked for another, but after spending a couple weeks trying to make this work, I decided that the particular vision I have for this project is probably only one I can bring to light (no one else will see the things the way you do). While I love the idea of co-authoring a book, for something like this that had been incubating in my brain ball for so long, it was hard to work with anyone else on it (my mistake for not recognizing this from the start). In the end, I was left writing the book by myself.

Mistake 3. I hired someone to transcribe my interviews into working pieces of content. In other words, I didn't just want the pieces transcribed (well, I wanted that to begin with), I wanted them edited into a book-like style (with intros, properly quoting the interviewee in the context of the topic, etc.) so I could more easily place them into the context of the book. I put a lot of money toward this and what I got back were "articles" that were so incoherent with so many spelling and grammar mistakes that I literally laughed out loud. This was from a professional ghost writer, mind you. I tried to rectify the situation by asking for a rewrite...which I got, but the articles were still terrible...so I asked for a rewrite, and got back another terrible article, just with less spelling and grammar mistakes...

When I got back the third iteration of terrible, expensive articles, I was all like:

But regardless of how upset I was, there was still work to be done...and I was still forced to write everything myself.

Learning Lesson: If you're a picky writer (and you should be if you're writing something worthwhile...see Lesson #1 above), nobody can write your words for you. Suck it up and get to work.

Lesson #4: Create in the proper sequence

After my crowdfunding campaign I spent a lot of time organizing design notes, prepping my live webinars, outlining my course...

Which is all great, and still stuff I need to do, but these weren't CRITICAL PATH items, which means working on them in the beginning slowed my progress.

Every complicated project is the same. Many people working on many elements, some of which are dependent on others. I want a garden, which means I need grading, a bulldozer, a permit, seeds, fertilizer, irrigation, weeding, planting, maintenance and time for everything to grow. Do those steps in the wrong order, nothing happens. Try to grow corn in a week by giving it a bonus or threatening to fire it, nothing happens...

Critical path analysis works backward, looking at the calendar and success and at each step from the end to the start, determining what you'll be waiting on.

For example, in your mind's eye, the garden has a nice sign in front. The nice sign takes about a week to get made by the sign guy, and it depends on nothing. You can order the sign any time until a week before you need it. On the other hand, you can't plant until you grade and you can't grade until you get the delivery of soil and you can't get the delivery until you've got a permit from the local town.

Which means that if you're the person in charge of both the sign and the permit, do the permit first." - Seth Godin, Understanding critical path

Bottom line, whatever you are creating needs to be created in a particular sequence. That particular sequence should be developed by creating a critical path plan. That critical path plan should be developed at the start of your project by working backward from the ship date.

If you're writing a book, stop looking at interior design inspiration before the book is written...

If you're building a startup, stop analyzing competitor logos before you have an MVP...

If you're building a membership site, stop reading about "scaling" until you have at least 10 customers...

I know all this, but I broke my own rules (for the first couple months at least).

Eventually, though, I defined the critical path and stuck to it. And finally, I was all like:

Learning Lesson: the hardest work you can do as a leader (solo or collaboratively) is defining the critical path and sticking to it. It's the hardest because it's the most important. Don't skip it.

Lesson #5: The Enemy will try to make you fail

Seth Godin calls it the lizard brain; Steven Pressfield calls it resistance; Winnie the Pooh calls it Heffalumps...

I like to refer to those things that keep us from doing our great work as the Enemy.

All the ups and downs of writing Collaborate came from the Enemy; it was never any external forces that kept me from writing faster or better - it was the Enemy trying to stop me from reaching, expanding, and stretching my boundaries.

Lesson learned: if you're trying to do something new, different, outside your current status-quo or paradigm, the Enemy will sabatoge, prevent, and slow your progress every step of the way. Accept this. Keep moving anyway.

Lesson #6: Every book is a collaboration

I mentioned earlier that nobody will write your book for you. That's still true. But, if you're a writer (and if you're the author, that's what you are), then stick to writing. Get experts to edit, design, market, and sell.

I had multiple editors, a great designer, and have a team that's ready to market and sell the book when I pull the trigger. I would not attempt any of this alone.

Lesson learned: make sure you're not going it alone. No matter how small your project, it could benefit from creative collaborators. If you aren't sure how that works or where to start...hey, look at that! A new book on the subject:

Lesson #7: I'm never writing a book again...until the next one

And my final lesson learned is that I don't want to ever write a book again because it's hard. Really hard. So hard I think I started to go a bit crazy:

Lesson learned: once you finish your first book (or 50th), start on the next one; momentum is on your side - take advantage.

In Summary

Writing Collaborate has been an adventure with a bunch of ups and downs, but the book is finally (almost) ready to print and ship (finalizing the design right now).

I've made some clicktotweets to make this easy (they may or may not be appropriate, I'll leave that to you to decide).

Hat tip: Nicolas Cage for the inspiration and giphy.com for all the amazing Nicolas Cage gifs

Fact: 1/3rd of all self-published authors earn less than $500 a year from their publishing efforts.

That’s not even enough money to pay for a single month’s rent in most major cities.

This makes sense when you consider that 80% of books tracked by Nielson Bookscan sold fewer than 99 copies in 2004.

The correlation is pretty clear: if you can't sell 100 copies of your book in a year, you probably won't be cracking $500 in annual income from your writing, either.

How to Make a ~~Living~~ Killing from Self-Publishing

I do it, as do many of the authors I work with and publish. Many make decent incomes this way, too (from $20,000 to $100,000+ per year).

The reason they're successful where most authors fail is because of two reasons:

The first part of this is a personal issue - are you capable of writing a book worth reading? For the purposes of this guide, I'm going to assume you are.

Book Marketing and Sales Channels Defined

A marketing channel is any avenue or outlet that lets you promote a message to your target market.

Podcast, radio, tv or magazine advertising; blogging or guest posting; billboards, sponsors, etc. Any of these can be used to market a product. Done the right way, they put the appropriate product in front of the appropriate audience (this is a billion dollar industry, so you can be sure they're getting better at this every day).

A sales channel lets you turn this awareness into a sale. So you might pay for advertising on a podcast, but you won't sell the product on the podcast. Instead, the advertising, if done right, will point the listener to the right place to purchase.

This could be Amazon, or your website if you’re selling via Gumroad, or a third party website where you can buy the product. In this case, any one of these outlets would actually complete the sale.

Why Amazon is Not a Sales Strategy

If the answer is Amazon, you're missing half the equation (and you’re probably one of those unfortunate people selling less than 100 copies of your book a year).

With very few exceptions, Amazon is a sales channel, not a marketing channel. Putting a book on Amazon allows you to "harvest demand" but it doesn't create it.

You've probably heard the philosophical question: "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it still make a sound?"

For self-published authors, it's more like "If a book is published on Amazon and nobody knows about it, is it really for sale?"

The Ultimate Book Marketing Channel

With an email list, you can promote and share new ideas, products, and services and then direct readers to a place where they can make the purchase (Paypal, Gumroad or Amazon).

Moreover, email is the fastest, cheapest, most powerful way to engage with your readers at scale.

No other service (not even social media) is as personal as email, and if done right, you'll sell way more books through email than you could any other way.

Proof in the Pudding...

I started this blog in late 2012. I wrote and published my first book, The Art of Instigating, shortly thereafter. I had no audience, so I decided to give the book away free in exchange for people signing up for my newsletter.

In 2013, I released my second book, Notes From Seth Godin’s Revolution Conference. I made this book free as well but with a twist – I let people contribute as much or as little as they want to my creative work. I shared this with 166 subscribers and made $492 in the first month.

Over the course of the next year, I experimented with many small guides, ebooks, and resources – all pay what you want.

In the fall of 2013, I released my third book, The Complete Guide to Pay What You Want Pricing (all the experimenting did not go to waste). This time I shared it with an email list of 467 subscribers and generated $954 in the first month (including presales).

In 2014, I launched my fourth book, Collaborate, via a crowdfunding campaign. This book raised $12,979 in 30 days from an email list of 1559 people.

As you can see, there is a very real correlation between subscribers (list size) and revenue. While the crowdfunded book is an outlier because I was selling more than just the book (consulting packages, for example), the results are still relevant.

Therefore, your best effort is spent building an email list so you can sell more books.

8 Steps to Building an Author's Email List so You Can Sell More Books

Note: In order to sell more books, you're going to have to invest in a few tools (sorry, sometimes you have to pay money to make money).

That said, I'm a bootstrapper by heart. So if there's a faster, better, and/or cheaper product or service available that does what I need it to do so I can focus on bigger picture stuff, then I'm going to jump on it.

In this guide, I’m going to share tools, software, and technology I use to market and sell books, my own and those that I publish or market through Insurgent Publishing. You can use them or find alternative solutions for your situation. I’m affiliated with several of these items, so if you do buy through me, I get paid a fraction of the price as a finder’s fee, which does not come out of your wallet, but helps me operate and pay for expenses around this free blog so I can keep making content like this for you.

Step 1. Build Your Author’s Website

#1. Choose your Content Management System

It's basically the backend piece you'll interact with on a daily or weekly basis to post new blogs, create book sales pages, reply to comments, etc. There are lots of options out there for your CMS, but I like to keep things simple, cheap, and proven, so I recommend WordPress (www.wordpress.org).

If you're just building a simple author's platform, WordPress will have everything you need and then some. Because WordPress is one of the most popular CMSs, they also have thousands of plugins available to tweak your site to your hearts content. Plus, you'll never find yourself without a designer or engineer to fix whatever problems you have because there are so many options available.

#2. Purchase your Domain and Hosting

If you want to be taken seriously as an author, you should have a website and you should own the url. Some big name authors can get away with a .blogspot, but if you're an unknown author, this will detract from your credibility.

Another option is www.newrainmaker.com, which is like the Lamborghini of WordPress frameworks and is an all-in-one solution (hosting, podcast hosting, SSL, ecommerce solution, Learning Management System, etc.). A lot of successful bloggers and authors are choosing Newrainmaker for their all-in-one solution, like Chris Ducker, Chris Brogan and yours truly, among others. That said, it costs a pretty penny, so if you're just starting out, you may want to start generating enough monthly revenue from book sales before switching over (at least $1,000 in revenue per month would be my recommendation).

#3. Pick a Compelling Theme

A theme is the skin of your WordPress site. You get professional looking themes for as cheap as $50 (sometimes less) through Themeforest. Don’t worry too much about flashy design. What matters is structuring your website the right way, which we’ll talk about later in this guide.

#4. Decide on Service Support

Every now and then you might run into some issues with your website. If you're not technically inclined, you should either invest in something like www.newrainmaker.com, which comes with unparalleled support (literally anything I need they either do for me or show me how - it's incredible) or go with a service like www.wpcurve.com, which allows you to make unlimited small fixes to your WordPress website for a fraction of the cost it would take to hire a developer.

This is particularly important if you’d rather spend time writing and selling books, and not fixing widgets on your site.

Step 2. Invest in the Right Email Marketing Service

An Email Marketing Service (EMS) is something that allows you to send bulk emails to people who have given you permission to stay in touch.

Remember, one of the keys to selling more books is engaging with readers. To do this, you're going to need an EMS so you can stay in contact, share updates about your book, or otherwise provide useful, valuable, relevant content your readers would like.

I started Tommorkes.com with Mailchimp, but after two years of pulling out my hair (and I have very little left) trying to do the most basic things, I switched to www.convertkit.com. I haven't looked back.

ConvertKit is the new EMS on the block and it does everything an author could want his or her EMS to do and more, with none of the headache of other platforms like Mailchimp, Aweber, nor the restrictive cost of Infusionsoft.

A lot of the Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures I'm sharing with you today are possible because ConvertKit makes them so easy, so while you don't have to invest in ConvertKit, it will surely make your life easier. Up to you.

Step 3. Choose Your Ecommerce Solution

Most authors immediately think Amazon is the only place to sell a book. Amazon is great, but it’s by no means the only place to sell your book, especially if you’d like to capture more revenue than the paltry 30 – 70% Amazon gives you.

As an author and blogger, my personal favorite ecommerce solution is www.gumroad.com. With Gumroad, I can easily setup a new product, in this case a book, and start selling it within minutes. The process is painless, simple, and fast. And while Amazon will take 30 – 70% of your profit (plus hidden charges, depending on how big your book is), Gumroad only charges 5% plus $.25 per paid transaction.

Paid transaction is the key word, because I use Pay What You Want pricing and this makes Gumroad a very, very powerful tool for building an author’s email list and selling books – I’ll touch on this later in the guide…

Step 4. Create a Compelling Optin Gift for Your Readers

In order to build a list, you need to give people a good reason to sign up and pay attention to you. One of the best ways to do this is through an optin gift (some sort of bonus you give the reader for subscribing). Here are a few examples:

#1. Free Chapter

The simplest way to encourage potential readers to sign up to your email list or to buy your book is to offer them the chance to read part of it.

Giving away part of your book, whether a chapter or the first 20% of your book, is a simple, fast way to start building your list. Not everyone is going to sign up for this, but you can bet that those who do are your target readership, which means you should make sure you have an autoresponder set up to email them several times after they receive the free sample to encourage them to buy (more on this later).

#2. Free Book or Guide

I did this with The Art of Instigating, which you can see above. It’s by no means the most compelling gift – after all, if you don’t know me, why would you care about my book? – but the act of getting a full book for free, especially if it has a price tag in the Amazon book store for $10, for example, makes it a much more compelling incentive and increases the perceived value of the gift (which is important to encourage email optins).

#3. Free Email Course

Hands down, the most effective way I’ve been able to get new subscribers and sell more books is through creating free email courses.

I’ve done this for The Complete Guide to Pay What You Want Pricing by creating a free course: Pay What You Want Pricing 7 Day Email Crash Course, which leads people through a series of training emails on how to use PWYW pricing. At the end of the ecourse, I share my book and ask people if they want to contribute. This generates several hundred dollars a month for me, completely on autopilot.

Case Study: How One Author Leverages Free Gifts to Build an Email List

Step 5. Put Your Optin Gift Front and Center

If you take a look at the analytics of most websites, you’re probably going to find that most readers land on a few select pages. These are usually the home page, about page, and the resources page.

As you can see, my top pages are my home page (www.tommorkes.com), my about page (www.tommorkes.com/about), and my books and resources page (www.tommorkes.com/cache).

Knowing this, these are three pages you should make sure are optimized to get subscribers.

#1. Home Page Optin

A strong home page is one where the experience is tailored to the type of reader you want.

The most effective home pages are clear, compelling, and make people want to sign up for your email list because they're getting something of value immediately.

My current home page is entirely geared toward building an email list. If someone doesn’t want to subscribe to my newsletter, I don’t really care if they hang around. On the other hand, I want to over-deliver for the people who want more writing / books / etc. from me. That’s why I create so many free and Pay What You Want products – to hopefully delight my readers and give them an incentive to keep coming back and to keep supporting my creative work.

#2. About Page Optin

The about page is usually the second most visited page on any website after the home page. This makes it an ideal place to turn readers into happy subscribers. Yet so many authors miss the boat on this one by making their about page about them, instead of the reader. Mistake!

For my about page, I tried to make it about my target reader – someone who has just stumbled over to my website via word of mouth referral (where most people come from). I try to hook the reader in a few sentences and then give him or her a lot of opportunities to sign up for my newsletter or one of my email lists, either directly, or by sending readers to my books (where their purchase will lead to becoming a subscriber), or by sending readers to particular blog posts with blog-specific optin incentives.

#3. Resources Page Optin

This is another commonly accessed page on a website or blog: the free resources / books / guides / whatever page. You should make sure this page delivers and gives away some compelling stuff to get people to optin.

Every book I sell is Pay What You Want and I set it up to automatically subscribe downloads to my “Gumroad” list, which is something I set up directly inside ConvertKit. Because of this, every book sale builds my email list – which is way better for my platform than selling on Amazon (one of the reasons I personally avoid selling most of my books on the platform).

Note: every reader can easily opt out of my email list after purchase, which means not every single sale leads to a new email subscriber (some opt out), but it's still incredibly effectiv.

#4. Blog Post Optins

Just like your home page, every blog post is an opportunity to build your email list.

The way I was able to go from 500 to 3,000+ subscribers in less than 12 months was from creating blog-specific optin gifts. This works the exact same way as creating a free chapter or book giveaway, but instead focusing on creating something specific for individual blog posts. This is incredibly effective because people reading a particular blog post might be interested in a certain subject, but not everything else you write. So if you sell lots of books in different genres, this gives you the opportunity to properly segment your email list.

Here’s a guest post I wrote that shows how to create blog-specific optins for your website.

Case Study: How One Fiction Author is Building a Massive Email List before Launching His Book

I find that a lot of fiction authors have trouble applying what seems like non-fiction-specific advice to their book marketing and author platform building. I’m not exactly sure why this is, but I have a feeling it’s because there simply aren’t enough good examples to reference.

That’s why I connected with Toby Downton, author of Solaversia, who is building a huge email list before the hard launch of his book this fall.

I knew right from the start that I faced a monumental challenge as a first-time self-published author; nobody knew who I was, yet I was asking for the most precious a person can give - their attention. And not just a few seconds of it either, like when you're asking for a retweet or a like, but 10-15 hours of time. That's a huge ask.

I'm building my platform by getting readers invested in the bigger picture - the aim is to create Solarversia (the virtual world the book takes it name from) for real, to launch in 2020 so that people can play it. I use the word "Solo" to identify players of the game in the book and people have already started to call themselves Solos when I talk to them on Twitter (I've also encouraged people to use the #Solarversia hashtag). In this way, readers are slowly connecting with each other and getting collectively excited.

Finally, I've created a promotional game that is themed to the book. Every one of the 100 million players of Solarversia has a number from 1 to 100 million, located in the Player's Grid. It's a central concept within the book, acting like a giant scoreboard, and it's even used in one of the later rounds. I've selected a 10x10 section of it, called the Golden Grid, and will assign the 100 numbers via a series of competitions starting on the launch date. A competition will run every month or so, meaning that the "story about the story" provides ongoing exposure." – Toby Downton

Step 6. Drive Traffic to Your Website

According to Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares, there are 19 traction channels (i.e. 19 marketing channels to find and acquire users). Not all of these are relevant for authors (billboards, for example, is only relevant if you have a lot of money to spend toward your promotional efforts, which I assume you don’t), so I just want to focus on a few high-impact, low-cost ways to acquire new potential readers or your books.

Note: for a full list of all traction channels, check out this great post on Zapier: How to Acquire Customers

#1. Content Marketing

This is a fancy term for writing blogs or creating other content that encourages people to come to your site. If you’re writing in a particular genre, writing about that genre is one way to drive readers to your site (in such a way that they may want to buy your book).

For example, I sometimes write about Pay What You Want pricing, which is the perfect content to attract my ideal reader (someone who would be interested in buying my book on the subject).

For a great example of a fiction author killing it with content marketing, check out Solarversia by Toby Downton. He is building a universe around his writing, and it’s captivating to say the least.

Advanced Strategy: Webinars

Ryan Hanley is the author of Content Warfare. He uses a combination of free webinars and an email autoresponder to automate book sales. Here’s what he says:

#2. Viral

Bottom line, your book should encourage word-of-mouth referrals. But your website and your sales funnel should also be optimized to draw in new readers.

A simple way to do this is by adding book-specific thank you pages that encourage your readers to share your book, free resources, free courses, etc.

Advanced Strategy: Viral Lead Magnets in Your Books

One of the best ways an author can drive email subscribers is to add a Call to Action inside their book. After all, if someone enjoyed your book, they probably want more books from you, right?

#3. Blog and Podcast Outreach

Here’s the deal – nobody is going to buy your book if they don’t know you. Yes, there’s the potential that a captivating cover, title, and description can encourage a stranger to part with their time and money, but it’s unlikely.

The most successful authors have readers that buy all their books. That’s why a sequel makes so much more money than the first book in a series – repeat customers (aka happy readers).

So the point is, you need a referral from someone your reader trusts, or you need an introduction to your reader if you want the best shot at building a relationship with your readers.

The fastest, cheapest way to do this is through guest posting or getting featured on podcast interviews.

Step 6. Engage with Your Readers

This is where a lot of people differ, so I'll keep it simple: you need to stay in contact just often enough so people don't forget you exist...and when you do get in contact, you need to offer something extremely valuable so people will allow you to keep sending them stuff. On that note - extreme value is relative. It doesn't mean you need to give out free gifts all the time, but you do have to provide useful or relevant content to your readers, otherwise, they will unsubscribe.

Step 7. Measure Results

Most people would create these types of optin gift incentives, then simply look at how many people sign up for their website every day. This is a good start, but generally useless. After all, how do you know whether the problem is the optin gift itself, driving people to the wrong page, or something else entirely.

For example, if you create an optin gift, you’ll want to know how many people look at it and how many people subscribe. If you just look at total subscribers, you’ll have no idea what your conversion rate is (how many people view versus sign up), which means you’ll have no idea whether you should try a new one, or keep going with what you have.

#1. Google Analytics

Google Analytics will give you a basic overview of traffic to certain pages on your website. You can learn a lot more from it, but honestly, I’ve lost too many brain cells from getting punched in the face, so figuring out Google Analytics just isn’t happening for me.

Luckily, my friend Dave Chesson, founder of Kindlepreneur, is really good at these things (and has more brain cells than me), so I asked him for advice. This is what he recommends authors do to best utilize Google Analytics:

"I use Analytics to tell me what pages or posts are getting the outside traffic (through either SEO, referral, or other means). To me, this traffic is the "initial views" - the people who are there for the first time. Therefore it is imperative to me that I get a second chance with them, which is through email.

So to ensure I get that, I will create blog post-specific optins. The way I see it, if they came to that post from an outside source, then they are super interested in that subject. So giving them an extra bonus on that subject really captures them.

This will let you know which blog posts are getting the most readers. Systematically create an optin bonus for each of these blog posts and you’ll start increasing conversion right away.” – Dave Chesson

According to this, I should be creating optin gifts for these top posts. This will lead directly to more email list signups with minimal effort (a great place to start).

#2. ConvertKit Analytics

ConvertKit has incredibly powerful analytics baked into the software (not to mention, very easy to use and understand).

As a point of comparison, with Mailchimp or Aweber, I can see how many people receive my email, open my email, and click through a link in my email. This is a good start, but it doesn’t tell me anything about what or why people are signing up in the first place. That’s why I spent the better part of 30 hours and hundreds of dollars on education to figure out how to track conversion rates on signup pages on my website via Google Analytics and Mailchimp.

The reason tracking this is so important is so that you know what people are responding to, positively and negatively. If one of my forms only converts at 5%, and a similar form but with different sales copy and images, converts at 55%, which do you think I should use?

With ConvertKit, I know what's working and what’s not. This allows me to fix, modify, and optimize my site to achieve my goal (more readers, more subscribers).

Note: It is essential to measure conversion rate properly because this is the start of your sale funnel. Eventually, as an author, you’re going to sell your books. But before you can do that, you need to see if the message you’re spreading is resonating with anyone to begin with. ConvertKit will let you do that out of the box very easily, which means a more lucrative sales funnel down the road (i.e. you will sell more books with a better optin form).

#3. Leadpages Analytics

Leadpages offers built in analytics as well. Not only can you see which pages and which Leadboxes (double optin subscription forms) are performing, but you can do A/B split testing with them to improve their performance even more.

Knowing this information, I can test out new optin forms, new headlines, new images, etc. in order to optimize and improve optins. For smaller authors like myself who are not driving millions of visitors to our websites, it is essential that we improve conversion as much as possible to capture the smaller amount of traffic we do get. Leadpages offers simple A/B split testing which helps dramatically, and makes optimization possible on a very limited budget.

Step 8. Modify, Improve, Optimize

Even once you have everything setup, you still need to put time and effort into improving your platform. This means taking the time to act on the results you’ve been measuring in the last step.

But whatever you do, make sure to measure the results so you can act on the information in a deliberate, calculated way.

This is the only way to improve your author's platform, build your email list, and ultimately sell a LOT more books.

Wrapping Up

Over the course of the next few weeks, I'm going to break down author's websites, show you how I would improve them to increase email signups, as well as show you how to create free gift optins, how to create free ecourses, and much more.

For now, though, leave a comment below and let me know what your biggest takeaway is from this.

What could you implement today from this article that would have the biggest impact on your success as an author?

While the book itself is simple (borderline elementary now that I've gone back to reread it years later), there was a single idea that I couldn't shake at the time; one that still sticks with me today.

I first read this book when I was a 20 year old West Point cadet. At the time, I was double majoring in Russian and Human Geography with a track (like a minor, but not) in environmental engineering.

By academia's standard, I was slightly above average in the brains department, and I was soon to be entrusted the lives of 30+ soldiers in combat, which I can only assume means that somewhere, someone thought I was a responsible adult (or perhaps I slipped through the cracks...we'll never know).

Yet here was a book that a middle school kid could understand (and really, that every kid ought to read) that said something I'd never heard before.

Everything in life is either an asset or a liability; it either puts money into your pocket or it takes money out of your pocket.

Of course, after finishing the book, I didn't put it away, smugly proclaim myself smarter, and move on.

Instead, I took a deep dive into the subject, spending years devouring more books in the same genre (finance and investing). More importantly, I took action on what I learned: I saved lots of money, kept my expenses down, invested in real estate and stocks, practiced options trading, and more.

Sometimes it worked out, sometimes it didn't - which was painful - but the important thing is that I gained an understanding of the material I was reading, not merely in concept, but in practice (this is the kind of experience that only comes from stepping inside the ring).

Finally, but no less importantly, this spurred my interest in other areas including business, publishing, and teaching.

It's hard to put a dollar figure to an idea, but I think I can safely say I'm thousands of dollars richer now than I would have been otherwise, because I read this book; because the idea resonated deeply with me; because it caused a spark...

1. If an idea is a spark, it is only as useful as your ability to make it into something more.

This requires resources (mental and physical - both of which you can create, grow, and increase over time) and hustle (accessible to every person on Earth at this very moment - if you choose to use it).

2. For an idea to reach us and cause an impact, it needs the right form and it needs the right conduit.

This idea didn't pass haphazardly to me through a college class (I took lots of those and was never taught anything close to this), nor YouTube, nor a podcast, nor a blog post, nor telekinesis (I'm not there yet).

For the purposes of message spreading, there is no better form than a book. And thanks to the internet, just about everyone in the world has the ability to reach just about everyone else in the world, making it the perfect conduit.

This means if you're in the business of spreading a message (and aren't we all?), you should sincerely consider writing and publishing a book; the impact you can create has never been higher, nor the barrier to entry lower.

But most importantly of all: there are people in the world who WANT to hear from you, who want your ideas, who need the spark...

And I think we do a disservice to the people who matter - not to mention, a disservice to ourselves - when we keep our ideas hidden.

P.s. next week I want to share with you the book I wrote about in today's blog post, as well as 10 other books that have caused similar sparks in my life, and I hope you'll share your most important books with me too 🙂

p.p.s. I'm creating a new, free course on publishing to help people create and spread messages that matter. If you're interested, sign up here.

UPDATE: thanks to all your support, I finished my crowdfunding campaign with $12,979.00 in preorders. The last few days saw the crowdfunding campaign skyrocket - something I did not predict happening at all. This has been a whirlwind ride and I'm so grateful - so thank you! If you're interested in being notified about the book when it releases, to hear about its progress, or be the first in line to order the book when it's in all major online bookstores, sign up here.

In July 2012, Seth Godin started a campaign to fund the production of his latest book: The Icarus Deception. Godin did this through a platform called Kickstarter.com, which allowed his loyal fanbase to pledge funds to the book before it was finished and ready for distribution.

Godin set a minimum funding goal of $40,000 (enough presales for a traditional publisher to take notice and sign the book for distribution).

This is crowdfunding. And crowdfunding is an incredibly powerful technique that any author can use to fund his or her book…

But only if you can effectively market and promote your crowdfunding campaign.

How Crowdfunding Works

Crowdfunding allows any creator the ability to pre-sell a product in order to raise the funds necessary to build and ship it.

In exchange for the support of early adopters, crowdfunding artists, writers, and creators have the opportunity to offer some pretty awesome rewards and discounts, exclusive for the length of the campaign (or until they’re sold out).

By crowdfunding, Seth raised $287,342 in just 30 days - before he had to print a single book. This was more than 7 times the minimum threshold required to fund his book production.

Ever since watching this success story in action (and many more just liked it), I’ve wanted to crowdfund a book.

But just because I’ve fully funded my project doesn’t mean the doors are closed. If you’re still interested in being a part of Collaborate and want your advance, limited edition hardcover copy (plus access to some over-the-top rewards), go here:

4 Reasons You Should Crowdfund Your Book (With Crowdfunding Examples And Success Stories)

Simon Sinek, motivational speaker and leadership instructor has a saying: “start with why.”

All great leaders and organizations - the ones people embrace and follow - have a compelling “why” or reason they do what they do.

In my opinion, this concept ought to extend beyond leadership to anything you and I do.

So before we get into the nuts-and-bolts of crowfunding, I want to show you why crowdfunding matters - financially, creatively, and otherwise - so we can better understand the how later on.

#1. Crowdfunding Lets You Activate Your Audience and Catalyze a Movement

Crowdfunding isn’t simply a pre-order process - it’s an opportunity to get your biggest fans and supporters rallied around a singular goal.

The power of crowdfunding is this: it gives creators a reason to ask for support, contributions, and sharing, because we’re not simply looking for sales (conventional presale), we’re asking for help to turn an idea into reality.

For those who leverage crowdfunding the right way, it’s a meaningful experience that lets your audience, readers, and supporters be an integral part of your project.

When AJ Leon turned down a traditional publisher for his first book, some people thought he was crazy. A traditional publisher is the holy grail for authors, right?

Instead, AJ decided to activate his audience through a crowdfunding campaign and inspired them to be a part of the book he (and his happy readers) originally wanted to create.

Could AJ have been successful if he simply offered his book as a pre-order? No doubt. But by leveraging crowdfunding, AJ gave his loyal readers (me included) a great opportunity to share and spread the word. If AJ didn’t hit his minimum funding goal, the book wouldn’t exist. What an excellent opportunity to help a creator who chose himself (instead of waiting for a gatekeeper to choose him).

#2. Crowdfunding Validates Your Book Before You Write It

Ryan Hanley, the founder of ContentWarfare.com, has spent the last several years building an audience of people around the subject of spreading powerful, relevant messages that change lives.He’s done this by consistently producing and delivering actionable content on a weekly basis.

So when Ryan told me he was interested in writing a book, I directed him to Publishizer.com - a crowdfunding platform for authors.

Because Ryan had an audience and had built a reputation for himself with the work he was doing…

What if he spent years writing the book only to find out his audience wasn’t ready to pay? After all, when you deliver so much high value content for free, there’s a chance that people won’t pay for your work when you put a price on it (or so some marketers gurus would say).

Now Ryan knows for sure his book is something his audience wants. Even better: he has the funds to create and ship it professionally (just check out his cover courtesy of Mars Dorian).

Books take a long time to write. Good books even longer. Who wants to spend years writing a book that no one reads?

When you crowdfund your book, you’ll know within 30 days whether your idea is something people care about it.

Note: I’m not talking about hobby writing here. If you want to write a book just for the fun of it, you should, regardless if people read it. However, if you’re in the business of writing (being a paid author), you can’t ignore reach and sales.

#3. Crowdfunding Creates Eager Anticipation

For the past several years, he’s built an audience of hundreds of thousands of loyal readers who resonate with his message of simple, healthy, better living.

Because Leo has created so much consistently impactful content for his audience (notice a trend?), many of them line up to buy anything he creates no matter what it is.

If there’s one person who doesn’t need to crowdfund a book for financial reasons, it’s Leo.

Yet Leo is leveraging the power of crowdfunding to launch his latest book. He’s already more than tripled his minimum funding goal, raising over $140,000 in a couple weeks.

In the same way that crowdfunding allows us to turn our book into an event that activates and catalyzes our audience, it also creates hundreds (or in Leo’s case, thousands) of eager fans, waiting for your book. The cool part is, the person crowdfunding can include his supporters in the process of creating, printing, and fulfilling orders.

Now instead of “Hey, here’s my book. Buy it.” you have an opportunity to share your story and journey, and to make your true fans a part of the process.

Would it be nice to have dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people eagerly awaiting your book before it ever hits the shelf?

#4. Crowdfunding Legitimizes Your Self-Published Book

If you say you’re a traditionally published author, peoples ears perk up. If you say you self-publish your own books...well, anyone can do that…

As a boutique publisher who has published multiple books, as well as someone who has self-published his own, I know firsthand this is an unfair response. The quality of self-published books are fast approaching the quality of traditionally published books. In most cases, there’s no noticeable difference (especially if the self-published author invests the time and money to hire the right people to make it great: editors, designers, etc.).

However, a successfully crowdfunded, self-published book receives instant credibility through social proof:

And this type of social proof can be leveraged in many ways to build your personal platform.

In 2013, Natalie Sisson, founder of thesuitcaseentrepreneur.com, successfully crowdfunded her new book (appropriately titled: The Suitcase Entrepreneur). Natalie already had an established platform with a devoted following, but crowdfunding her book gave her the opportunity to activate and catalyze this audience. Not only did she fully fund her book, but when it was officially released on Amazon, it became a best-seller almost overnight.

She has since leveraged this success into appearances in major press like Yahoo Finance (among many others).

Yes, anyone can self-publish, but how many can raise thousands from their supporters before the books been written?

The Best Crowdfunding Site for Your Book

The first crowdfunding platforms started in 2003 but really gained traction in 2008 and beyond.

These included: ChipIn (2005), EquityNet (2005), Pledgie (2006), Sellaband (2006), IndieGoGo (2008), GiveForward (2008), FundRazr (2009), Kickstarter (2009), RocketHub (2009), Fundly (2009), GoFundMe (2010), Microventures (2010) and Fundageek (2011). (source)

There are even more crowdfunding platforms today. In fact, it feels like there’s a crowdfunding platform for every person, every niche, and every purpose on the planet.

Just yesterday I found a crowdfunding platform for combat disabled veterans. It doesn’t get more niche than that.

When it came to crowdfunding my book, there were only three real options (since I’m not combat disabled):

I’ll briefly cover each and the thought process behind why I chose the one I did (Publishizer).

Kickstarter.com

Kickstarter makes the list for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that South Park ripped on them earlier this season.

In all seriousness, Kickstarter is one of the most popular crowdfunding sites on the internet. Like Google, Kickstarter is commonly used as a verb (“he kickstarted his latest book”), and has become synonymous with crowdfunding.

Every day, hundreds of new projects are started on Kickstarter. Of those, about 45% will be successful.

Lots of people and companies use Kickstarter to fund their projects, including many authors. The two books I’ve mentioned earlier - by AJ Leon and Seth Godin - both used the platform for their books. Leo Babuata is currently crushing his book’s funding goal right now on the platform.

Pros and Cons of Using Kickstarter.com to Crowdfund Your Next Book

Indiegogo.com

Indiegogo is a lot like Kickstarter - it’s a massive platform that allows people to crowdfund just about anything. However, while Kickstarter is fairly restrictive with what you can crowdfund and how you can do it, Indiegogo is much more flexible.

For example, with Indiegogo, you can set “flexible” funding as an option. So if your goal is $10,000 but you only raise $3,000, you get to keep that $3,000 (minus 9%).

Beyond the flexible funding options, Indiegogo is also known for being less restrictive when it comes to what you want to fund. Raising money for a charity? Indiegogo is fair game (Kickstarter would say no).

Like Kickstarter, Indiegogo is a popular platform and actually receives more traffic outside of the United States. A big benefit to those of us with large audiences outside the United States.

That said, for the same reasons I didn’t choose Kickstarter, I decided to skip Indiegogo. In addition, I didn’t need the flexible funding option (not my style) nor was I looking to make this a charitable fundraiser. Add to the fact that, statistically, much fewer crowdfunding campaigns succeed on Indiegogo than other crowdfunding platforms and I knew it wasn’t the platform for me.

Pros and Cons of Using Indiegogo.com to Crowdfund Your Next Book

Publishizer.com

Publishizer is my book crowdfunding platform of choice. The founder, Guy Vincent, is remarkably involved in every project. When I decided to launch my book through Publishizer, Guy helped me flesh out my crowdfunding campaign, making sure I didn’t miss anything along the way.

While this might seem like a small detail to a “pro” (if there is such a thing in the book crowdfunding space), it was a big reason I was able to successfully fund my book in two weeks.

Like Kickstarter, Publishizer doesn’t allow flexible funding (as of this writing). In other words: you either fund your project 100% or everybody’s money is returned. This was fine with me because I actually prefer this - the alternative makes it seem more about raising money than about having your audience play an integral part in the creation of a new project.

Another positive: I had full control over how I priced my tiers and what I offered. And if you’ve checked out my book on Publishizer, you know I offer some pretty wild rewards. This was crucial for me as I wanted to do a hybrid launch (a book / infoproduct / consulting hybrid...more on this later).

Insider Peek Into Publishizer.com Statistics

Publishizer is still relatively young in the crowdfunding space. That said, I asked the founder, Guy Vincent, to share some statistics for today’s blog post that haven’t been released publicly.

Statistically speaking, I’m much more likely to fund my book on Publishizer than I am Indiegogo or Kickstarter.

Further, on average, Publishizer campaigns raise more than Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaigns.

A quick caveat to these assertions: I don’t have “book specific” stats for Indiegogo and Kickstarter, I simply extrapolated out from the collective data. Also, the platform is young, so these figures could very well change over time.

That said, it was enough information for me to feel confident about crowdfunding on Publishizer.com.

Note: if you find book specific stats for Indiegogo or Kickstarter (or other platforms), please send them my way so I can update this article.

Pros and Cons of Using Publishizer.com to Crowdfund Your Next Book

*Since the original publication of this blog post, Publishizer updated their offer and fee structure. They now help authors find publishers, and they have a new fee structure. This info is accurate as of January, 2018.

How to Run a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign for Your Book

Once you’ve decided on which platform you want to use to crowdfund your book, the next step is preparing for the crowdfunding launch.

Quick note: everything I did for my crowdfunding campaign was based on backward-engineering successful campaigns, interviewing people who had successfully crowdfunded their books, and deep-diving into the statistics of what makes a campaign successful (as well as why campaigns fail).

I do my best to link to the source material so you can go deeper if you’re interested.

Step 1: Create Your Book Marketing Canvas

All successful campaigns have one thing in common: they’re planned and organized.

There’s no such thing as a successful but sloppy crowdfunding campaign (that I’ve seen or read about in my research - please share if you find one).

There are simply too many things that need to be done right, with the right execution and timing for someone to wing a crowdfunding campaign successfully (I’m sure outliers exist, but unless you’re an outlier, the better idea is to plan).

I went into this launch like I was planning Operation Overlord. That’s not to say everything was executed perfectly, but I did know all the variables and had a handle on what I should expect walking into the launch.

For books, I’ve developed my own one-page book marketing canvas, which was inspired by Ash Maurya’s Lean Canvas, but adapted for book marketing campaigns.

The Book Marketing Canvas helps me identify all the essential elements of launching a book from scratch. It starts with key administrative information.

Beyond the basic administrative information listed above, The Book Marketing Canvas clarifies exactly what our book is about (and why it matters), who it’s for (and how to reach them), and gives us a general idea of how we’ll sell the book (pricing options) and estimated overhead and expenses.

Who is this book for?

3. Writers, artists, designers and inventors who want to profit off of their art/work

Who are your early adopters?

These are the readers who will show up first to support whatever you create. If you don't have an audience yet, this is more difficult to define (also why I recommend building an audience before crowdfunding a book).

For Collaborate, I focused on two groups (essentially the same, but segmented for tracking purposes):

How will you reach your readers?

Crowdfunding campaigns are only as valuable as the readers you can reach. If you don't have a clear idea of exactly how you'll reach readers (words like "luck" and "hope" don't count here), go back to the drawing board.

3. Consistent social media presence with almost daily updates on progress and milestones. Leverage Facebook and Twitter primarily (the social media platforms I’m most active in).

What problem is your book solving?

There's no reason to write a book unless it's solving a problem. For business non-fiction, this problem needs to be something clearly defined (with fiction there's more leeway as fiction solves the problem of boredom).

How does your book solve the problem?

How do you measure success?

Too many people run into new projects with no way to measure success or failure. Luckily, for a crowfunding campaign, success and failure is pretty clear: do you hit your funding goal or don't you?

What makes this book unique?

Consider this the "UVP" (unique value proposition) of your book. Much like a startup, every book (especially nonfiction) needs a good reason for existing. This good reason should be captivating, original, and warrant peoples attention.

Pricing Options

This is the section where you want to outline the various pricing tiers and corresponding rewards for your crowdfunded book. Here's what Collaborate's initial reward tiers looked like (I'll explain how I came up with these prices and tiers later on in the article):

Overhead and Expenses

Here you want to itemize as accurately as possible the projected overhead and expenses from creating, printing, and shipping your book.

Step 2: Outline and Wireframe Your Book

Once we have The Book Marketing Canvas developed, we can extrapolate this into an outline and wireframe.

When I say outline and wireframe your book crowdfunding campaign, I mean outline and wireframe everything:

At this point, you don’t have to be 100% sure of everything. This is an exercise in thrashing and chunking (removing waste + identifying key tasks and timeline), and will help you discover what you need to do at a minimum to fund your book.

1. Outline the chapters and key topics of your book.

For this, I simply used Evernote to collect my thoughts, although I've had no problems using tools like Google Docs, Word, or Scrivener to do the same.

2. Create a working book cover design you can use for your crowdfunding campaign.

When it comes to crowdfunding a book, a cover is one of the most important element of the crowdfunding sales page.

To successfully crowdfund your book, you're going to need a finalized, or almost finalized, professional looking cover.

The benefit to crowdfunding your book: you can set up the funding to facilitate professional design, formatting, editing etc. S o to get my cover prepared, I sourced a great cover designer (he's actually technically a graphic designer, but I liked his style and thought he'd bring an interesting style to the book) and shared images of book covers that I liked. And these are just a few of the iterations I got back:

After a few more iterations, we ended up with the current cover - and even a name change. This is the cover I ended up going with and changed again before time of shipping the actual book, but it was enough to get my project up and running properly.

Step 3: Create a High-Converting Book Crowdfunding Sales Page

I'll go in more depth in several of these areas later on. For now, this is just an overview of the essential elements of a high-converting book crowdfunding sales page:

1. Book Blurb

2. Captivating Headline

Your headline is nothing more than a powerful hook to get people to keep reading (easier said than done of course). My leading headline / first sentence for the Collaborate sales page:

My hope: that this line would be interesting enough for readers to keep them moving down the page.

3. Sales video

Every successful campaign I've run into includes a sales video. Here are some key takeaways:

4. First main body paragraph

The first main body paragraph should introduce the book topic by speaking to the readers wants / desires

5. About the book

Next, you'll need to explain what the book is about. In reality, this part is more about the reader than the book.

6. Who it’s for

7. Reward tiers

At this point, it's helpful to have a graphic or something to help define your exact reward tiers.

8. About the author

This is where you give a brief bio about yourself...like the "about the book" section, this part is about the reader, not you.

9. Table of Contents

You don't need a finalized table of contents, but even an outline helps people get a grasp of what you’re building.

10. Expense itemization

People like to see where the money is going for projects like this, so be transparent!

11. Potential hurdles and how you plan to overcome them

12. Timeline for launch

When will the books and rewards be delivered? The more specific the better. Always leave room for error (generally about 3x the time you expect it to take just to be safe).

13. Final call to action

At the end of your crowdfunding campaign - much like any sales page - you want to end on a powerful call to action.

Step 4: Set Your Crowdfunding Goal

First and foremost: it was the minimum I needed to create this book the right way (designer, editor, high-quality printing service, and based on a minimum order of 100 books).

As you increase the price, your chances of success drop (at the $50k mark, your chances of success drop to 18%; at the $100k mark, it drops further to a 7% success rate).

While goals that are less than $10k have a greater chance of fully funding, there’s also diminishing returns when it comes to lowering the minimum funding goal. After all, what’s the point of starting a $1,000 crowdfunding campaign? Certainly you could reach your goal, but there’s no excitement from the point of view of the potential crowdfunding supporter.

I wanted to aim for a goal that wasn’t easy, but also didn’t set me up for failure.

And unlike Seth Godin and Leo Babauta who have hundreds of thousands of readers, my main list size is only about 1,500. It doesn’t matter if you have the best idea in the world: when you’re crowdfunding, reach is all that matters.

Based on my list size and the probability of success for crowdfunding campaigns less than $10,000, I felt comfortable I could raise $7,500 (with enough hustle).

Step 5: Develop your Reward Tiers

In this excellent interview, AJ explains how Clay Hebert helped him design his massively successful book crowdfunding campaign.

What Clay suggested was this: Your reward tiers need to be a “slippery funnel” where each incremental increase in price corresponds to a drastic increase in value. In other words, every reward should pack about 10x the value of the price you set.

I took this advice to heart. I made sure that not only would contributors get the products and services I provided at a reduced price to what I would eventually sell them for, but in many cases I offered services that I have never offered nor will again (like the opportunity to work with me on a collaborative project).

While the products and services I’ll be delivering on are a bit overwhelming for me, I can confidently say each level is 10x the value of what people are paying for (which makes the crowdfunding promotion process a lot easier).

Important Tiered Pricing Statistics for Crowdfunding Campaigns

Before I decided on what I would offer for early adopters, I researched dozens of other crowdfunding campaigns and dug up what I could regarding pricing tiers and rewards. Here’s what I found:

Before I decided on my project tiers, I wanted to see what was working for other artists and authors I admired.

AJ Leon Crowdfunding Statistics

I bolded the three tiers that brought in the greatest amount of revenue to see what people were willing to pay for great rewards.

Craig Mod Crowdfunding Statistics

I also took a look at Craig Mod's crowdfunding campaign. Here are his numbers dissected the same way:

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7 Lessons Learned From Writing a Business Book

Lesson #1: If it's worthwhile, it will be hard to write

Lesson #2: Whatever your estimated timeline, quadruple it

Lesson #3: Nobody will write your book for you

Lesson #4: Create in the proper sequence

Lesson #5: The Enemy will try to make you fail

Lesson #6: Every book is a collaboration

Lesson #7: I'm never writing a book again...until the next one

In Summary

How to Make a Living Killing from Self-Publishing

Book Marketing and Sales Channels Defined

Why Amazon is Not a Sales Strategy

The Ultimate Book Marketing Channel

Proof in the Pudding...

8 Steps to Building an Author's Email List so You Can Sell More Books

Step 1. Build Your Author’s Website

#1. Choose your Content Management System

#2. Purchase your Domain and Hosting

#3. Pick a Compelling Theme

#4. Decide on Service Support

Step 2. Invest in the Right Email Marketing Service

Step 3. Choose Your Ecommerce Solution

Step 4. Create a Compelling Optin Gift for Your Readers

#1. Free Chapter

#2. Free Book or Guide

#3. Free Email Course

Case Study: How One Author Leverages Free Gifts to Build an Email List

Step 5. Put Your Optin Gift Front and Center

#1. Home Page Optin

#2. About Page Optin

#3. Resources Page Optin

#4. Blog Post Optins

Case Study: How One Fiction Author is Building a Massive Email List before Launching His Book

Step 6. Drive Traffic to Your Website

#1. Content Marketing

Advanced Strategy: Webinars

#2. Viral

Advanced Strategy: Viral Lead Magnets in Your Books

#3. Blog and Podcast Outreach

Step 6. Engage with Your Readers

Step 7. Measure Results

#1. Google Analytics

#2. ConvertKit Analytics

#3. Leadpages Analytics

Step 8. Modify, Improve, Optimize

Wrapping Up

1. If an idea is a spark, it is only as useful as your ability to make it into something more.

2. For an idea to reach us and cause an impact, it needs the right form and it needs the right conduit.

How Crowdfunding Works

4 Reasons You Should Crowdfund Your Book (With Crowdfunding Examples And Success Stories)

#1. Crowdfunding Lets You Activate Your Audience and Catalyze a Movement

#2. Crowdfunding Validates Your Book Before You Write It

#3. Crowdfunding Creates Eager Anticipation

#4. Crowdfunding Legitimizes Your Self-Published Book

The Best Crowdfunding Site for Your Book

Kickstarter.com

Pros and Cons of Using Kickstarter.com to Crowdfund Your Next Book

Indiegogo.com

Pros and Cons of Using Indiegogo.com to Crowdfund Your Next Book

Publishizer.com

Insider Peek Into Publishizer.com Statistics