As self publishing becomes more and more popular, self-published authors are more and more likely to run into…well, let’s call them haters. They look down on self-published books, and they tell self-published authors that their book is never going to go anywhere. There are even a few traditionally-published authors out there who think they’re better than self publishers.
I’m here today to tell you to ignore all of the haters. Your self-published book can be just as important as any traditionally-published book. That’s especially true when you look at your book from the right perspective. Aside from a plethora of examples of very successful self-published authors, there’s one thing that I think you should focus on when you gauge the success of your book. Hear what that metric is in this episode.
TRANSCRIPT: TITLE
(This is a direct transcript of the episode. Please excuse any typos.)
Today I want to get on my soap box for just a couple of minutes and talk to those of you who are maybe deciding whether you want to self publish or traditionally published and to give a pep talk to those of you who have decided to self publish and maybe some days said something mean to you or you’re just starting to feel a little down about the fact that your book is self published and when I’m again give you a pep talk and tell you that self published books can be and are just as important as traditionally published books. But again, I want to go back to this idea of self publishing versus traditional publishing and there are some people out there who don’t have a definite chip on their shoulder and they think that, you know, if your book isn’t done through a traditional publisher, then it should be a total piece of crap.
First and foremost, that is totally not true. There are plenty of people and especially people in the business space who are using books to build their businesses. A lot of them, especially the big names, are deciding to self publish these days because they don’t want to wait around for, you know, the amount of time that it takes to publish a book with a traditional publisher. They know that they have an important message and they want it to get out now and then also they want to keep a larger percentage of the royalties to. They want to make sure that they are maintaining complete creative control of their books are a lot of reasons why people are choosing to self publish rather than traditionally published and I don’t want to knock traditional publishing, but I do want to say that you’re not a bad person in your book is not a bad book.
If you do self publish, that it can be very valuable. So one of the big points that I want to make is this one here that you need to figure out how you are judging the success of your book and what is really important to you when it comes to your book. Is making money important? Well then was it traditional, or excuse me, it was a traditional book. Yeah, you’re going to get paid less usually in royalties per book sold than you would with a self published book. So you know if you take, if you have a unicorn publisher who’s going to put a lot of effort behind the marketing, then yeah, absolutely. Maybe it’s better to work with a traditional publisher, but in most most cases, unless you are a really well known other publishing houses, not going to put a lot of effort into your marketing so it falls on you anyway.
And again, marketing really does lead to sales. So the point here being that if you want to make a lot of money with your book, you might want to strongly think about whether you’re going to make more with a traditional publisher or more self publishing. I start with that because they think that it’s not the most important reason and I really want to end on one. I do think the most important reason is why. If you’re listening this, you are writing a book and my guess is that most of you are writing a book to help people that it doesn’t necessarily matter how many copies of your book you’re going to sell because number one, you know that readers do turn into warm leads and they might be very well. They will be more willing to turn into clients for your higher price programs, packages, services, that sort of thing.
But beyond that, so many of us are passionate about what we do and I think this is true for every entrepreneur that yes, even if they want to make money, first and foremost, they want to help people. They want to help them live better lives or in the case of business coaches, they want to help people make more money so that they can live better lives. In terms of like my yoga books, I want people to live happier, healthier, more injury free lives with yoga and that’s why I wrote them and so really the number one thing that I try and keep in mind when I’m writing my books is my book helping people. If my book is helping people that I have met my goal there, and it doesn’t matter if I don’t have a contract with a traditional publisher or if I turned one down, which I have go watch that video, but the big take home message again is if your goal is to help people, then you’re helping people no matter what.
No matter if your book is self published or traditionally published, you are making positive changes in people’s lives. You are making their lives better. You’re helping them do some things. They’re important to them, important enough that they’re going to pick up a book and read through it as opposed to, you know, watching a YouTube video or reading a blog post like a book is a big deal because it takes somebody a while to read through it at least a couple of hours. And when somebody picks up a book on something, it means they’re serious about learning it too because it does take a little bit more time and they’re going to learn more information in it. So to package all this up, what’s the take home message? The take home message is that if your top goal for your book is to help people to help your audience, and I think that that’s just about everybody who will be watching this.
Then it doesn’t matter if your book is self published or traditionally published. You can edit your book and make it reader-centric and makes sure that it helps them in the ways that it needs to help them to get the transformation that you want them to have through your book. And you can do that as a self published author. You don’t have to have that traditional publishing deal. So if you’ve been feeling down about your decision to self or somebody tries to imply that your book isn’t important or that it’s not any good because it’s self published. Come back to this. Come back to this idea that your book does help people and I’m sure that you’ve gotten reviews or feedback from readers who will tell you that they loved your book and then it was really helpful and then it was just what they needed. And if that’s the case, then you have done what you set out to do. So let go of this comparisonitis between self published versus traditionally published, and instead just focus on all of the good stuff your book is doing for you and your readers and just the awesomeness brings here readers’ lives. And I think that that will ultimately help you get the right perspective when it comes to your book.
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