How Writers Can Earn a Lot More By Offering these Scrumptious Products

Writing is a great vocation, but a hard way to earn a living. Let’s make it easier

I always laugh when I read about people trying to become writers for the money. There are so many easier ways to make a great income. If you’ve started writing just for the money, please put this story down now, back away slowly, then run the opposite direction. You’ll find what you need, but it’s not here.

Those of us who write, do so, because we can’t imagine not writing.

For a die-hard writer (no matter what you write), the process is like oxygen. If I don’t write every day I don’t feel whole. I’m serious. Runners must run. Painters must paint. Readers must read. Writers must write.

But (the big ‘but’), we writers aren’t altruistic either. Sure, it’s cool to journal only for yourself. It feels awesome to write a story for the love of story. However, as commercial writers we write as a vocation too.

We want people to buy our work for a fair price, so we can keep writing tomorrow.

There’s no shame in being paid well for the work we love. It’s a noble intention. Being paid well is never something one should feel bad about. It’s better to provide your best work to the people you serve than hating your life and digging holes for minimum wage.

So, here we are — the Great Divide. The dreaded wall between art and commerce. There doesn’t have to be a wall, but many of us build one in our heads. We feel gross about asking readers to buy our work. We feel like we’re begging. We don’t want to come across like we’re pushy.

There’s nothing pushy about spreading the word to promote your work. If every other business on earth is OK with marketing their products and services, writers can be cool with it too.

If you’re a commercial indie writer, you own a publishing business.

What else can we offer?

Books are tough. Although our fan base may reach tens of thousands of people, at the end of the day, the product we create — books — have very low price-tags compared to the effort required to create them.

You can’t charge $150 for a paperback. No one will buy it.

There’s a cap people are will to pay for books. Even if the knowledge inside is worth 1,000X the cost of admission. Sad or not, that’s the truth and there’s little we writers can do to change it. We won’t fight the facts. We’ll play along instead.

As writers we don’t want to abandon our craft, off on some course-creation tangent, but we can enhance our writing with more experiences for our readers.

Yes, you can make a full-time income with writing alone. Many have done it. But you can ease the burden of the endless writing conveyor if you develop some ancillary products to serve your tribe.

We can offer these to supplement our writing income:

• Merch — shirts and merch related to our books, characters, world, or ‘big message.’ Many have sold merch before you. You won’t be the last. Just look at Pottermore, J.K. Rowling’s flagship company. She’s got a freaking amusement park based on her books. You may not have a roller coaster named after you, but you can sell print-on-demand pencils and hats.
• Courses — if you write non-fiction, books make great courses. If we enjoy your work we might want more — a deeper dive into your world. Make videos, blueprints, and worksheets. We want it all. Take us by the hand and show us what you couldn’t in the original book.
• Mastermind groups — serve a small group of your super-fans with high-ticket retreats once or twice a year. Yep, this is real work. But these single events can keep you in paper and ink for a long time after the champagne settles.
• Podcasting — while a podcast is definitely the long-game, you can capitalize on your audience by serving the audio-seeking crowd who may not want to read your book. Repackage your book into weekly podcast lessons, interviews, and anything you can think of to continue to serve your tribe in a different way.
• Joint ventures — know another writer with a similar audience? Get together and offer a book bundle to each others’ lists. You’ll be instsantly-exposed to a new audience you wouldn’t otherwise gain from your work.
• Automated selling — by developing an automated email series, you can revitalize your back-catalog automatically, without having to remember which book you’ve promoted to your readers. Email is a great way to maintain a steady, predictable stream of income, once you get your copy figured out.
• Speaking engagements — not only can you get paid well to speak at corporate events (only if speaking is your jam), but you can also film the speech (with permission) and re-sell it to your tribe as a masterclass later. Develop a speech around your books and find a few speaking gigs per month.
• Audiobooks — pay someone to record the books you’ve already written, or record them yourself. As I mentioned, the audio-listening audience can be an entirely additional group of people who wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to your work. Plus, you already wrote the book. Why not add another income stream.
• Print books — if you are just a digital author, get print copies made ASAP. It’s easy with print-on-demand. There’s no excuse. Ebooks are a lot harder to share picture on social media. There’s a huge resurgence of print fans now that photos of books (and shelfies, yes, photos of book shelves) are such a hot thing on Instagram.

Additional streams of income don’t have to take-away from your craft. There’s a lot of time that goes into the initial set-up, but once many of these income streams are in place, they’re fairly hands-off.

No one said any of this is easy

Running your own publishing business is hard. Like, real hard. Everything is your fault. But what’s the alternative? Working in some cubicle next to Gladys in 4C? Or trying to share the copier with Larry and his permanent onion-mouth?

Writing = freedom. The cost of admission is a butt-ton of work, failures, and wins.

Our fans want more from us. If we’re a year between books, there’s a good chance we’ll lose a lot of our audience if there’s nothing more on the proverbial shelf.

Additional income streams (coupled with a solid email marketing plan), can make-or-break an indie writer.

We’ve all got something more to offer. Never let your tribe run out of things to purchase. Everyone is on a different path. Some folks want their hands-held while others choose the entry-level, do-it-yourself route. It’s important we have products that serve all types of readers.

We’re waiting for you.

(Enroll in My Free Email Masterclass. Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers.)

August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. A self-proclaimed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indie authors how to write books that sell and how to sell more of those books once they’re written. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.

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