Make Money with Your Non-Fiction Book — Part 2

In Part 1 we examined four essential questions to first clarify your message and why it’s important.

· Who needs to learn from your expertise?

· Where do these people hang out?

· What is/are the major challenges(s) your expertise can solve?

· What do you need to do to attract your target market’s attention?

Along with this thinking, it’s helpful to keep in mind what you want your book to do for you.

If you want to make money with your book you need to think way beyond just selling books in onesies and twosies. You need to think “bulk sales,” that is in the hundreds and thousands.

This article will give you a broad-brush approach so you can pick and choose what’s the right marketing technique for you.

Let’s look at four main approaches using BOOK as an acronym to build on your answers to the four essential questions:

Be the Expert

Observe and Respond to Pain Points

Open to Opportunities

Keys to Unlock Your Success

Be the Expert:

The “B” in BOOK stands for “Be the Expert.” If you want to be seen as the “go-to” expert authority in your field, you first have to believe that you’re an expert. For many, this may prove a challenge.

Why?

Because as much as people might tell you that you’re an expert, or you call yourself an expert or you have a certain expertise in an area, there’s often an inner voice discrepancy. What I’m referring to is the head trash that plays havoc with our thoughts.

Celebrities, entertainers, leaders, entrepreneurs, and many others suffer from what’s become known as the “Imposter Syndrome.”

What is the Imposter Syndrome?

According to Arlin Cuncic in her article on the “imposter syndrome” on Verywellmind.com, she says “You don’t believe you belong where you are, and you only got there through dumb luck.”

Over the years, I’ve suffered from these feelings. However, it’s comforting to know that I’m not the only one out there. In fact, Orpah Winfrey, Meryl Streep, Lady Gaga, and Tom Hanks claim to suffer from this as well, which means, I’m in good company, and so are you.

Embrace an expert mindset. Don’t allow feelings of being a phony act as an excuse, stumbling block, or anything else that stops you from moving forward.

Your courage comes through action, which in turn helps improve your skills and talent.

Observe and Respond to Pain Points

The first “O” in BOOK stands for “Observe and Respond to Pain Points.”

You need to observe your target audience. What are you looking for? You’re looking for information.

You’re looking for their pain points, challenges, frustrations, and specifically where they need your guidance and advice.

However, before you can do that, you need to fully understand who you want to target. You must know and understand the exact group of people you can and want to serve — your corner of the market. In marketing parlance, this is your niche market.

Open to Opportunities

The second “O” in our BOOK acronym stands for being “Open to Opportunities.”

Once you know and understand the pain points, challenges, and frustrations facing your niche market, it’s time to examine how your skills and expertise can zero in on problem-solving opportunities.

These opportunities often fall into four common categories namely…

1. Saving time

2. Saving or making money

3. Being more effective or productive

4. Minimizing risk or being safe

Then the big question to answer is “what makes you and/or your solution the best option?” Definitely a question worth pondering because it’s one your prospects will ask. What is it that you do that makes you the best solution for their problem? Think beyond the price and the quality of your service, anyone can offer a lower price and great service. You offer something that makes you extremely valuable to your niche market. Identify what that is.

Keys to Unlock Your Success

Finally, the “K” in our BOOK acronym stands for being “Keys to Unlock Your Success.”

Everything up to this point makes up the foundation to build your expert authority to your niche market.

There are four distinct strategies you need to build on this foundation. These include:

1. Speaking

2. Writing

3. Exposure

4. Informational products

1. Speaking includes keynote speaking, training, facilitating, and coaching. Whether in-person or live online, these opportunities abound wherever people need help, support, and guidance.

2. Writing refers to more than just your book. It includes anything that makes up content marketing and can show thought leadership and expertise, such as articles, special reports, tips, and much more.

3. Exposure means exercising your media muscle, not only on social media but also in industry or professional publications. You want to be seen in places where your “peeps” hang out.

4. Informational products include an array of products that address the wants and needs of your market. You develop these based on the observational research you conducted. Currently, creating online learning programs score well in many markets.

Base whatever you create on your research. Beware of falling into the trap of producing a product you think your clients need. Rather, build something that they want. Take this advice from someone (yours truly) who’s developed multiple products I thought people needed. However, they rarely bought them because it wasn’t what they wanted.

There are BIG profits in small niches, but you must know and understand your market. Get to work and don’t guess, rather do the research. You’ll be pleased you did!