While in Las Vegas for Lisa Sasevich’s Speak-To-Sell event crafting our signature talks, Lisa’s new book The Live Sassy Formula became a #1 best-seller in three categories in the US, three categories in Canada and one category in the UK. This makes Lisa and the 27 Sassies who co-wrote the book international #1 best-selling authors.

At the time of the event, one of the Sassy contributors, Sue Clement, had already gotten a client directly from the book.

Not only is it important to position yourself as a best-selling author, but that event made it evident that one of the most powerful ways you can push your book is to get out there speaking to live audiences.

The biggest tip I could give you from the weekend is to make sure your talk (and your book) is communicating the results or the transformation your readers or audience will receive from you. Instead of focusing on the problem, your book should focus on the solution, and be inbued with an uplifting, positive quality.

Coaches, Speakers, Entrepreneurs, Consultants, you don’t want to just write any book, you want to write a book that explains your methods, that’s totally congruent with your business and that will attract people you can serve in a deeper way. These people will want to take your information further.

Any book or memoir about what’s happened in your childhood cannot become your main focus, what you really need is a 3, 5 or 7-step system. Preferably you will want to give that system an acronym or something distinctive to really OWN IT. The idea is to make your book the only place where readers can get that information.

Whether it’s 3, 5 or 7 steps, your clients will not be able to get it anywhere else because it’s YOUR system. This means your competition becomes irrelevant.

Here are 5 tips to writing a successful book:

1. Don’t give everything away. Give valuable steps, but be sure to save enough content-rich information for when readers pursue you, become clients and sign up for the products or programs that are an extension of your 3, 5 or 7 steps.
2. You do want to showcase your personality, with your own personal stories of how you came up with this method because this helps your “know, like and trust factor.” It’s so valuable to resonate with your reader, but do not get too bogged down in your personal story.
3. Strike the right tone. You don’t want to come off as lecturing. Although you’re the authority, strive more for “I’ve been there too and this is how I rose above it.” In other words, be “relate-able.”
4. Include a call to action in your book. Have an offer or free gift to invite your readers to take it to the next step. Tell them how to get a free gift off your website, or how to have a session with you. It’s important to have a mechanism in place to get their email contact information.
5. Before, during and after you write your book, always be cognizant of collecting testimonials. At one of the workshops I do regularly, someone will come up to one of my authors and say, “Oh I read your book, it helped me so much with [fill in the blank]. Thank you.” And the author will say, “You’re welcome.”

They just missed a perfect opportunity. The person is right there with love ready to give them a testimonial. So when you get a compliment, don’t be too shy to ask for the testimonial. 99.9% of people will say yes.

Remember too, that if that person has their own book or business, they are getting name recognition from their testimonial in your book, on your website and other marketing materials.

Follow these guidelines and you’ll be well on your way to making a business out of your book.

As an Amazon Best Selling Author, you will enjoy 5 immensely important benefits:

1. Credibility and Exposure—Your book and your name are publicized, making it easier for readers to find you!
2. #1 Best Seller Bragging Rights—You’ll be able to add the “#1 Amazon Best Seller” designation to later editions of your book.
3. Professional Success and More Money—#1 Best Selling Authors tend to attract better, higher-paying and more seriously invested clients.
4. Increased Speaking Gigs—You’ll have more opportunities to speak at lucrative and prestigious events because you gain entry as the author of a #1 Best Seller.
5. Better Than A Book Party—An Amazon Best Seller campaign is a much better investment than having a book signing party. While the party is fun, if you were to apply the cost to a campaign, you’d gain speaking engagements and better clients who will invest in your book and the programs and products that come from your book.

We’ve got quite a success story to share with Marina Dufort’s book. Marina Mermaid, as she is known, had a bestseller campaign last week and here are the results for Aromatherapy Secrets for Wellness:

The book made #1 in the Aromatherapy category
#1 in Disorders and Diseases
#1 in Chronic Pain
#1 in Stress

On the day of the campaign, the book hit #3 in overall book sales for Amazon.ca (Amazon Canada) and #9 in overall book sales the following day.

Marina’s book surpassed even Steve Jobs’ biography and The Hunger Games!

Aromatherapy Secrets for Wellness also made the list of Movers and Shakers . . . Even the day following the launch, Marina took the #5 spot in Movers and Shakers and made the list of the biggest gainers in book sales ranked over the past 24 hours.

One of my clients called me from South Carolina, so excited that his book is finished. I asked him, “What’s the title?” He said “I Survived.”

“Wow, you survived. What did you survive—car accident, cancer, divorce?”

He said, “No, I survived depression.”

“Then why don’t you title your book How I Survived Depression, 7 Simple Secrets to Happiness and Bliss?”

People are looking for books on depression and they’re not searching for “I survived” hoping a book on depression pops up.

Quite often now people are using search engines like Google to search terms, but they also search online bookstores using keyword phrases. So if they are searching for a book on depression, most likely they will be searching for the word “depression.”

I spoke with another client who told me he was searching Amazon looking for a book on how to write screenplays. He put in the search box “How to write a screenplay” and the very first book that came up had the title How to Write a Screenplay. I asked him if he bought the book and he said yes. I told him, “That author is probably doing very well.”

If you can get your keywords in your title, it makes it simple for everybody. You want to have a hooky title to grab potential readers by the eyeballs. Remember, you only have 10 or 20 second to hook them in, and it’s incumbent upon you to do that, because if they don’t buy your book, they lose out on your information and you lose out on the sale.

The other part of titling is the subtitle. This should reveal the transformation or the results your reader will get from your book, also known as “the promise.” For my book, the subtitle is How to Make a Six Figure Income by Writing and Publishing Your Own Book.

Whatever your promise is, put it in the subtitle. If you can put keywords in there, all the better, because right now, as you’re reading this, people are searching for your book. Make it easy for them. Use keywords in your title and subtitle.

I had a recent conversation with a publisher who has a gigantic warehouse where he stores the books he prints for his authors. (One author ordered 30,000 books!) We chatted for a while, and even though we have different approaches to self-publishing (I believe print-on-demand books are the easiest, cheapest and smartest way to publish), we both agreed on many points:

• There is no need to print hundreds or thousands of books and then find a place to store them. When you publish your book with print on demand, a bookstore can look it up on their computer, and if they don’t carry it, they will order it for you. If any bookstore finds they are getting more and more orders for a certain book, they will start stocking it because it’s worthwhile having it in their bookstore for their customers.
• Writing the book seems to be the easiest part of the publishing process for many people. I have authors who say to me, “I love writing, but I won’t do any promoting or marketing.” The bottom line is it’s essential to promote your book. No one else can do it as well as you can.
• The absolute smartest way to succeed with your non-fiction book is to get out there and speak. Live speaking, where potential readers get to see you and meet you is the best exposure. You can also be a guest on radio shows, advertise your talks with social networking, and speak any way you can – on You Tube, on tele-seminars or on other people’s stages or online offerings.
• The major publishers, unless you are a huge name, really aren’t doing much to help promote books, and they don’t offer much (sometimes nothing) in the way of a publicity budget. Honestly, you’ll find that no matter what, you still have to promote your own book, but the good news is that’s the best way to sell products and programs based on your book.
• Even someone like Wayne Dyer travels and speaks and does publicity for every book he writes. Of course he’s got a name and his books have outstanding content, but publishers also know that Wayne Dyer is going to promote his books. Any publisher would jump at the chance of publishing Dyer because he’s a good promoter and an excellent speaker.

Smart authors know that print on demand and live speaking are two of the best and most economical ways of getting known, selling books and selling the products and programs that come from your book. It’s an absolute winning formula for success.

Say you want your book to look a certain way and you’re willing to pay for it. Here are some things to consider:

• Done right, you cannot tell a print-on-demand book from a traditionally printed book. If you do pay more for embossing, you’re still making $2 to $4 on your book just like every other author (even if they’re published by a major publisher). Are these embellishments really worth it?
• A bookstore is the worst place to sell your book. Many writers think getting into a bookstore is the key to selling their book, but unless somebody knows about you and they are heading to a bookstore specifically to purchase your book, chances are your book is not going to be noticed – fancy deluxe cover or not.
• Many writers are still in the old mindset of having their books printed and stored. Print on demand is so much easier and smarter. Plus, with more people getting content downloaded to iPads and Kindles, you won’t need as many physical books.
• The advantages to print on demand are that you don’t have to print and stock a huge amount of books. If you arrange print on demand properly, you stay available everywhere, in tens of thousands of online bookstore computer systems all over the world. It’s economical because your book is only printed when it’s sold. Everywhere you speak or talk about your book throughout the world, your book will be available. Any bookstore will find it on their computer and order it for your readers.
• Remember also you’ll be on Amazon – so you won’t have to ship the book yourself.
• When you publish through Expert Author Publishing, you can order 100 or 150 print-on-demand books when you have a speaking engagement (and the more you order, the cheaper it is per book).
• Ultimately, even if you have a vision of your book that’s unique and beautiful and costly, you can still publish that version when you’re making more money on your book down the line.

Self-publishing can be a daunting and confusing process. Next week I’ll reveal more insider tips to help you publish your book the smart, easy and economical way.

Speaking, becoming an author and putting on your own events are three of the most powerful, low-cost ways to draw people to you, to bring people into your programs, and to build your list. Hiding behind your computer won’t do it, having a human experience is priceless.

When speaking people meet you and form a bond with you. Another advantage is that you get immediate feedback from the audience – laughing, clapping, leaning forward in their seats and coming up to talk to you afterward all give you important signals. This means you can gauge the interest of certain products and programs before you spend time and money on them. And there are surprises because something you might say off the cuff gets a huge response and now you’ve got another product on your website making money for you while you sleep. Most test marketers envy these instant results.

The coordinator of a summit I spoke at told me sending e-mails resulted in two signups for his event, while live speaking garnered 30.  Although email and building your list can be one of the biggest assets in your business it just doesn’t have the same pull as speaking. Speaking is powerful because most people won’t do it. As an author, people listen to everything you say.

Even if you attended three networking events a week you would be amazed at what a difference it would make in your business.

As an author and speaker, the power increases exponentially. A book gives you celebrity, credibility and expert status, and published authors get booked readily into high-end speaking engagements and events.

Putting on your own events raises your profile the most because it establishes you as an expert in your particular community. This allows you to offer high-priced masterminds or intensive programs that run for months.

Events give you two or three days to really teach your methods and establish relationships with your participants. As people get to know you, they trust you to take them into your unique system in a deeper, fuller way. Your audience also gets to meet others they want to stay in community with.  It’s a bonding experience that often influences whether they sign up for your mastermind — because they want to be with their “tribe.”

As you can see, the willingness to get out there and speak opens a lot of doors – you’ll be invited onto other people’s stages, and your recognition factor will go through the roof. The possibilities, personally and professionally, that come from speaking can be life-changing. 

Now is the time to think about what we accomplished last year and set new goals.

Many people seem to do the same things day in and day out because that’s what they’ve always done. But if we set reasonable goals and make ourselves accountable, we can really start making quantum leaps in our lives.

If you pick even one to three reasonable goals you believe you can achieve this year, your life will start moving forward. If you don’t set goals, your life will stay the same.  Here are some tips:

• It’s important to have the accountability quotient, but it’s also important to make your goal reasonable. If you commit to something that you think is unreasonable, you’re already setting yourself up for failure. If your goal is reasonable and accountable, then your life can’t help but change in positive ways.  This applies to that book you’ve been meaning to write. Take a step today that will take you further toward your goal.
• Goals become realities when you have an accountability partner or expert or mentor – someone to keep you on track. If you know that daily you’ll be getting a phone call asking about the steps you took the previous day, you will not disappoint! Book mentors not only keep you on track, they also have all sorts of ideas to shape your work and get it out there in the world so you can make money from your expertise, instead of simply the $2 to $4 revenue from the book itself. You could spend 10 years and a lot of money, time and struggle searching for these answers, or you can find what you need in one place with Expert Author Publishing programs.
• Many people hesitate, asking: "What if I make a mistake?" Even if you pursue the wrong goal, the fact that you’ve achieved this goal shows you can achieve any goal you desire, so go ahead and write your goals down and follow through on them.
• Be specific. Give each goal a definite date for completion. If it’s not written down, it’s not going to get done. Put your list of goals where you can see them every day.

The whole idea of smaller goals and accountability is akin to building a building – it happens one brick at time – there is no other way. Each goal you complete builds your confidence so you can reach for even bigger dreams.

I help writers achieve their dreams and share their knowledge by teaching them how to become expert authors through my workshops and classes. I have just added a comprehensive Mastermind to help writers with their books. By giving them the “how” they can make money by signing up clients to programs based on information contained in their books. My methods are so sound that if you have a quality non-fiction book and you follow my formula, you will get results.

Most writers struggle and are disappointed when they finally finish their book and there is no money at the end of the rainbow. I tell them their life-changing journey has just begun.

In my previous article, I gave you some reasons why money is important to writers. In this article, I give you more reasons and concrete ways you can adjust your thoughts and change your prosperity quotient.

1. Money is an idea backed by confidence. How much confidence do you have in your book? How much are you willing to put yourself out there, back up your ideas and show your true face to the world? Is saying you don’t care about money really a copout? 
2. Getting out there with your book or having programs based on your book allows you to change other people’s lives.
3. More exposure brings more relationships into your life, along with the satisfaction of becoming a mentor and sharing your knowledge. 
4. Many writers hide behind their computers. Money gives you access to more resources. You get to know more people and more places, giving you more ideas and points of view for your writing.

If you do have limiting beliefs about money, what can you do about it?

1. Admit it, then see if you can trace it back to where you heard it. Dad? Mom? What did they say? How’s that working for them? Did their belief come from fear?
2. Realize you’re going to have to learn the art of faith and trust–trusting yourself, your book, the power of positive thinking and the process of life itself.
3. Determine if you are more afraid of success than failure.
4. Write down the ways success would change your life. 
5. Realize that most people fear change–period.  Any kind of change (even success).
6. Accept that success can mean tough decisions and growing pains, but the rewards include knowing that you did everything you could to live up to your potential.

Yes, you CAN make money from your book.  Curious? Go to www.ExpertAuthorPublishing.com and see how we can help you launch your new career.

I hold workshops and seminars on becoming an expert author, as well as Masterminds teaching authors like you how to parlay non-fiction books into profitable programs so you can share your expertise with the world. Realistically, most authors will not get rich from selling their books alone–many end up receiving as little as $2 per book, or make $100 for the entire life of one book. 

At times, I’ve gotten someone in my class who looks down their nose and says, "I don’t care about money."

If you don’t care about money, it won’t care about you.

Money is merely a by-product of giving value to your audience. No value, no money. If you give value, you won’t be able to avoid making money. Have you noticed that many of the wealthiest people in the world have given the most value to society from what they do? From Oprah (who has helped millions transform their lives) to Bill Gates (transforming the way we process information), to Warren Buffet (who has created thousands of millionaires by helping them invest their money) this holds true, as long as you ASK for the money. It is a universal law that if you give value you will have money, so if I hear anyone say they don’t care about money they are also saying, "I don’t care about giving value to my readers."

In addition, if you care about your ideas enough to want to share them with the world, you’re going to want to care about money or you won’t be able to fulfill your mission.

Here are some other compelling reasons why it’s not just okay to care about money if you are a writer, but vitally important:

1. You need to publicize your book. Publicity, from websites with functioning search engine capabilities to draw people to your site, to other effective advertising, costs money. Even "free" publicity such as speaking engagements, social media marketing, writing ezine articles, gathering testimonials and making connections for affiliate partners takes time. Time is money. If you’re just scraping by or working two jobs to pay for your writing habit, you’re not going to have the time to get your book into your ideal reader’s hands. 
2. Money means freedom–freedom to publicize your book and time to write.
3. Money is simply a measuring gauge of how you’re doing (with a lot of societal, religious and emotional baggage attached to it). As you make more money, it can become a pretty fun yardstick.

In my next article, I’ll give you more reasons you should care about money and some solutions to lubricate a stuck money mindset.

Yes, you CAN make money from your book.  Curious? Go to www.ExpertAuthorPublishing.com and see how we can help you launch your new career.