Top 7 Different Ways To Make Money With Your Books

One of the most astounding discoveries I made while writing and selling books was the fact that the sales from direct book sales should not be the main or the only source of revenue for authors. This was new to me before I ventured into the book selling business. I used to think I can only make money with my books only if I can sell lots of copies of it. In fact, this misplaced thoughts actually deprived me of catching on some opportunities at the early stage of my book business.

I will be using this money making articles to show you Top 7 Different Ways To Make Money With Your Books. These are interesting ways you can use your books to rake in lots of revenue for yourself. The money from the sales of your book should actually be the least revenue source for your book.

I have practically used most of these book selling tips.

1. Direct Book Sales

This is very common. Most authors have relied on this as their main source of income. Just like I mentioned above this should not be so. However, this is still a good source of revenue for your book especially if you know how to distribute or market your books. Writing your book is the first step in your book business, publishing it is another step, distributing or selling it is another and it is a very important one.

You can't make money from your books sales if you don't have ways of putting it in the hands of people who will pay you cash in exchange for your book.

Strategies in direct book sales or book marketing are beyond the scope of this.

2. Distribute a Free Report

You can package your book and give it away as a free report or as a free book download on your website. Well you may be wondering how you can make money when you are giving out your book as a free report. There are simple and sure ways to make money using this strategy:

• You can use your free report to show your expertise and advertise your existing books or yet to be published book.

• You can use your free report to give publicity to your brand or organisation. You can visit our website to see what I am using free reports to do.

• You can include affiliate links in your report and encourage your readers to visit the links. An affiliate business is one that will give you the opportunity to sell other people's products to earn a commission on each sale. There are many website online offering affiliate opportunities to visitors to their websites. Most of them offer free subscription.

• You can use your free book download to build a customer base. Place the report on your website using an auto responder form. When visitors come to your website to pick the report, they are asked to leave their contact information and expect an auto response from you containing the link to the book. Though, they are collecting this report free of charge, they may become paying customers in the future. You can always contact them with the contact information they left with you.

3. Start a Blog

A blog is an online diary where experts put their thoughts for the people to read. Blogging is big business now. Authors are now running blogs to show their expertise to the public and to promote their books. People will readily buy from an author they have read from on many occasions and the one they know is an authority on his subject. If you have written a book, you can break the book down into several articles and place them on your blog to showcase your expertise and also to promote future books.

Blogging can be a very rewarding exercise if you can make yourself to post consistently on it and show to your readers that you are an expert on your topic. If you combine blogging with the idea in tip 2 above, then you will be having a great sales system for your books that will make you money for a long time.

4. Distribute Articles

You can also break down your book contents into articles that you will distribute on the internet free of charge. Webmasters have used article distribution to promote their websites, products, brands etc. on the internet. They have also used them to promote affiliate products.

Webmasters have visited article submission websites to pick up these distributed articles for use on their websites. If yours are picked, it presents a wonderful opportunity for you to obtain cheap exposure for whatever you have used your articles to promote.

Therefore, instead of selling your book, you can break it down into articles and distribute them free of charge on the internet to promote other products.

5. Open Doors With Your Books

I love this strategy. I believe my books should open doors of other opportunities to me. After I published my first book, Silly Mistakes in Mathematics, lots of parents contacted me for consultancy work for their children. I made more money from these consultancy works than the money I made from the sales of the book.

I have voluntarily given my books out to experts in my industry expecting a joint venture opportunity with them. One of it gave me lots of money even before I began to sell the book. Books show you as an expert (which you are if you are the author of the book). Other experts will be willing to do business with you if they have seen your expertise on the pages of your book.

6. Show Yourself As An Authority

Sometimes, you are not directly interested in making immediate cash with your book. You just want to push a book out and distribute freely to show you as a voice in your industry. So you are just going to be distributing your books in the right places to shout out your brand to the whole world.

This may not give you immediate gains of more cash but an increased recognition in your industry will eventually make you wealthy in the nearest future.

7. Website Exposure

Lots of businesses are now going online. Web designers are having a field day designing websites for business owners. Now it is one thing to have a website online, it is another thing to bring people to it. You can use a book to give great exposure to your website by distributing it as articles or as free ebooks.

You should ensure that you persuade readers of your book to visit your website. You can put other free resources like free newsletters subscriptions, free reports etc. in your book asking readers of your free ebook to visit your website to pick them up. Your website links should be conspicuously placed at strategic positions in your ebook.
This article is part of an interesting free book, 20 Ways To Make Money With Your Books which you can download free of charge at our website.