Note from Mack: ‘How much money will I make from writing a book?’ is a question I hear often. This post was written while I was writing my book Think Like a Rock Star. After I had finished the book, I wanted to share what I had learned about the process when it comes to securing advances for your book, royalty payouts after publication, etc. The goal of this post was to provide helpful advice for others, especially my many friends in consulting that were curious about the entire process of writing their own book.

However, I am not in the publishing business, I am not in contact with literary agents, and I really can’t help you secure publication of your book other than what I’ve shared in this post. I work as a digital and content strategist to help companies with their content and digital marketing as well as helping them build programs that better connect my client with their customers. These can include blogger or influencer outreach or brand ambassador programs.  Here’s where you can learn more about what I do and some of the results I’ve achieved for my clients.  Thanks for reading and good luck with your writing! 

I’ve always tried to be brutally honest with y’all when it come to money in this space because:

1 – It helps you trust the content I create here

2 – Being transparent is more comfortable for me than being vague

3 – Too many people in this space have wild misconceptions about how much money is or is not being made here, which leads to gossip and bitterness that’s a complete waste of time

Since I first mentioned that I was writing a book and then more so when it was published, people have been curious about the process.  How long did it take?  How do they get started?  And yes, how much money can they make?

I wanted to address the money part here, because again, I believe there are some big misconceptions.  There are three ways that an author makes money directly from their book(This assumes you go with a traditional publisher, as I did):

1 – The advance

2 – Royalties off book sales

3 – Reselling the book themselves (typically you can buy your book for at least half off cover price, and sell it anywhere your publisher isn’t.  Such as on your website, but not on Amazon)

The Advance  

In most cases, if you are writing your first business book, you can expect to get an advance of $4,000 to $10,000.  The key thing to remember about that advance is that it’s an advance, so you have to pay that money back.  And remember that if it’s your first book, you are largely an unproven commodity to publishers, so they are less likely to give you a bigger advance.

Royalties off books sales

In most cases, publishers will offer you a contract where you get 10-15% royalties off each sale.  Now there is a big qualification to this number.  Some publishers will offer you that rate off list price (Gross royalties), and some will offer you that rate off the amount of profit they make off the book (net royalties).  The net amount is typically 50% of the book’s price.

So for example, if a book as a list price of $25.00, that means that if your contract says you get 10% royalties off list, then you will get $2.50 per book.  If you are getting 10% of net profits, then you’d get around $1.25 per book.  From my experience talking to other authors and receiving multiple contract offers for Think Like A Rock Star, it seems that most publishers in this space prefer to offer net royalties.

Additionally, you will likely get a higher royalty rate for ebooks, plus you may be offered a higher royalty rate as your sales of the book increase.  You should ask the publisher for both.

So let’s do some quick math here:  Let’s say you get a $5,000 advance for your book and you get 10% royalties net profit, and the book’s list price is $25.00.  That means you are making $1.25 per book, and that you will need to sell 4,000 copies of your book just to break even.  Thus the averages say that you will never make a penny from royalties off sales of your book (earn out).  The average US non-fiction book sells about 250 copies a year and around 3,000 copies over its lifetime.

Scared yet?  We haven’t even covered the time commitment involved.

 

So how long does it take to write a book?

Publishers vary in how long they will give you to write a book.  Wiley and Que/Pearson seem to want most authors to spend 3-4 months on the actual writing process, then move to editing, etc (UPDATE:  Make sure you check the comments as QUE’s Katherine Bull chimes in with more information on how the writing process works for them).  One of the reasons I decided to go with McGraw-Hill was because they were willing to give me a bit more time to write TLARS, I actually ended up getting about 6 months to work on the writing until we moved to the editing process.  All told, the editing and writing of Think Like a Rock Star took nine months.

Here’s the big problem: The amount of your advance will not come close to covering the amount of time it will take you to write the book.  Let’s assume that you spend just 10 hours a week on writing your book, and that it takes you a total of 8 months to finish it.  That’s 320 hours you have invested in writing this book.  Assuming you get a $5,000 advance, that means your hourly rate for writing the book was $15.63.  For reference, I spent around 25 hours a week on TLARS, for 9 months.

So this brings up the obvious question: When are you going to find time to write this book?  If you already have a full-time job, then your nights and weekends are probably going to disappear for a few months.  If you work for yourself as I do, then you may have to make the tough decision to turn down some work in order to work on your book.  This is what I did.

Now another option is to bring on a co-author.  This halves the work for you, but of course it also halves the amount of the advance you get, and the amount you make from any royalties in the future.

 

But wait, what about marketing and promoting the book?

Yep, after the writing and editing is done (really it starts months before that), you then have to start marketing and promoting the book.  One thing I wanted to touch on is the quest to hit the bestseller lists that a lot of authors get excited about when writing a book.

The idea is this:  If you can sell enough copies of the book in one week (typically launch week is your best bet), then the book may qualify for bestseller lists.  How many copies you need to sell is a very vague and floating number, and can depend on several factors such as what other books are coming out during the same week. Medical books are generally difficult to sell now because there is a lot of information on the Internet on quality websites. In general it seems that at least 2,000-3,000 copies sold during one week is needed.   Since we’ve already established that the average non-fiction book doesn’t sell 3,000 copies over it’s lifetime, then you can work out the odds of your book hitting the bestsellers list.  IOW, if you don’t have 100,000 people on your mailing list, good luck.

This is where I really screwed up.  Now I started planning out my marketing for TLARS as soon as I started working on it a year ago.  I realized early in the process that this book likely wasn’t going to make any bestseller lists.  Again, I just don’t have a big enough platform to drive the needed sales in a concentrated period.  But, what I thought I would do is sell as many pre-orders as possible in the year leading up to the book’s launch.  Based on my research, I realized that Amazon will count all the pre-orders as ‘new sales’ during the launch week (or when they officially begin offering the book for sale).  So what I started doing last year was speaking and working in exchange for pre-orders!  For example, I might waive my speaking fee for this event, if they agree to pre-order 100 copies of TLARS.

My thinking was this:  Let’s say I sell 500 pre-orders of TLARS, and when the book launches in April, those 500 pre-orders will count as ‘new’ sales of the book, and push TLARS way up the sales rankings.  Unfortunately, it turns out I as dead wrong about how Amazon calculates sales.  The research on all of this seemed to be unclear about a few things, and one of them was how Amazon handles bulk sales.  So after months of accepting pre-orders instead of $$$, I finally found out that Amazon counts bulk orders as one sale.  For example, if you pre-order 100 copies of my book, Amazon will view it as if you only pre-ordered ONE copy, since the order is being placed on ONE credit card.

Which essentially meant in Amazon’s eyes I sold several hundred fewer copies than I actually did.  For reference, the book’s sales rank peaked at 20,600 on April 1st.  If the per-orders had each been counted as individual sales, the sales rank for the book would have likely been around 500 or less on launch.  Which would have driven many additional sales because it would have been featured far more prominently on the site, on the hot new releases lists, etc etc.  But live and learn.  The main reason I wanted to talk about trying to make the bestseller list is that it is really hard to do on your first book unless you have a huge promotional platform.

 

So then why in the world would anyone want to write a book?    

In my mind you don’t write a book to make money, you write a book to start a conversation.  You write a book because you have an idea that you are passionate about, that you want to share with the world.  If others find value in that idea, then you can make money indirectly off your book. I wrote Think Like a Rock Star because I wanted brands to learn how they could better create happy customers by learning how to be better marketers from rock stars. I wanted to give companies a complete blueprint for creating and launching a robust brand ambassador program, because there wasn’t a lot of information available on that topic.

The best way to approach writing a book is that you want to create something of value for others that will enable them to do something positive.  A book that will be a tool for them to help them reach their goals and have greater accomplishments.

If you can do all that, then the money will take care of itself.

UPDATE:  Getting some comments from others pointing out how a book gives you credibility and builds your awareness and how THAT leads to money for you.  All of this is completely correct BUT how you position your book is crucial.  If you are writing your book and at the same time thinking about how it will lead to bigger speaking fees and higher consulting rates for you, then it can easily impact your writing.  As Kathy was telling me when I was working on TLARS, ‘most of the things that authors add to their books to make them sound smart, makes the reader feel stupid’.  The point is if you are writing your book consciously as a tool to make more money, it’s probably going to make the book less valuable to the reader because it won’t be as focused on what’s best and valuable for the reader.

So write the book that helps the reader kick-ass at whatever they are doing, (like creating healthy meals for busy moms, or helping companies create amazing brand ambassador programs) and the money will take care of itself!

So in 2012 when I signed my contract to write my first book, I decided to write a post that would help my peers get a similar book deal.  It’s become one of the most popular posts I’ve ever written, but something unexpected happened as a result.  Every week I either get a comment or an email about this post from people that want to write a book.  Often, it’s from someone that shares a heart-breaking life story that they want to share with the world, and they are asking me if I can help them.

First, you have to remember that publishers are a BUSINESS.  They won’t publish your book or your story unless they believe they can make money off it.  That’s reality, and in order to get a publisher to buy your book idea, you have to make the case to them that it will earn them more money than they will pay you for it.

Let’s assume that when you approach a publisher that they have no idea who you are (don’t worry, most publishers my agent contacted had no idea who I was when she pitched Think Like a Rock Star to them).

That means you need to convince a publisher that you have two things:

1 – A story/book idea that they believe they can make money on by publishing.

2 – The ability to effectively market your book idea and sell copies.

If you don’t have both of these things, then you have almost no chance of getting a book deal.  I’m sorry, but that’s reality.

So you really need two things: A great idea for a book and a great platform for promoting your book.  A publisher will want to know what you can do to help promote the book and sell copies.

Will you be speaking regularly to promote the book?

Do you have an online following?  Are you active on social media?

Could your position at the company you work for potentially bring positive exposure to the book?

Do you have a huge marketing budget and can you spend a LOT of money to promote the book when it launches?

 

Let’s assume you said ‘NO!’ to all of these questions.  So what do you do if you have an idea for a book, but you have no way to promote it or market it?

Here’s what I would suggests you do: Start a blog based on your book idea.  Starting a blog is your chance to do two very important things:

1 – It helps you flesh out the idea for your book

2 – It gives you the chance to prove to publishers that other people would buy your book and that you can write it

 

If you can go to a publisher and show them that you’ve been writing a blog for the last 6-12 months based on your book idea, and that readers are regularly commenting on your posts and enjoy them, then you are proving to publishers that there is a market for your book.

So that’s my advice if you want to write a book.  Instead, start with a blog, make it successful, and then show that to publishers with your idea.  If the writing on your blog is generating engagement with your readers then it greatly increases your chances of getting published.

Good luck!

Note from Mack: This post was written in 2012 while I was writing my book Think Like a Rock Star. The goal of this post was to provide helpful advice for others, especially my many friends in consulting that were curious about the entire process of writing their own book. 

However, I am not in the publishing business, I am not in contact with literary agents, and I really can’t help you secure publication of your book other than what I’ve shared in this post. I work as a digital and content strategist to help companies with their content and digital marketing as well as helping them build programs that better connect my client with their customers. These can include blogger or influencer outreach or brand ambassador programs.  Here’s where you can learn more about what I do and some of the results I’ve achieved for my clients.  Thanks for reading and good luck with your writing! 

1 – Figure out what you want to write about.  This sounds very easy, but it’s not.  You need to figure out what book YOU were meant to write.  The book that no one else could write.  Four years ago I was approached by an editor to write a book on marketing on YouTube.  Remember this was 2008, and there were very few social media books at the time.  I was really excited at the prospect of having my own book for about 5 mins, till I realized that I wasn’t really interested in writing a book about marketing on YouTube.  And I also didn’t want to tour the country speaking on the topic.  I was pitched on a couple of other book ideas over the next couple of years, but I finally decided that Think Like a Rock Star was the only book I wanted to write.

2 – Figure out why your book is unique and fills a market need.  Once you figure out the topic of your book, you’re then going to realize that your book’s already been written several times.  You need to figure out what you bring to the table that hasn’t been discussed before. For me, there’s plenty of books on why companies should connect with brand advocates and evangelists.  The ‘Rockstar’ analogy helped me differentiate Think Like a Rock Star, but even that didn’t make the book completely unique, as there’s been a few other books written on what companies can learn about branding and marketing from the music industry.  I had to go deeper, and when I release the full outline of the book in a few weeks, you’ll see why Think Like a Rock Star is different.  But the point is, you’ll need to figure out what your ‘hook’ is.  What are you going to bring to the table that’s unique, but that will still have value for your readers?

3 – Find 3-5 books that you think are similar to your idea.  For each book, you need to explain what your book offers that the competing title misses.  And try your best to pick newer titles.  If you propose that your book idea will be competing against 5 books that were all written in the mid 1990s, that tells the publisher that your idea is dead, otherwise someone would have written about it in the past 15 years!

4 – You need to create an outline and table of contents for your book.  This is where it starts to get serious, and we find out if you really want to write a book, or if you are just toying with the idea.  This will be a lot of work, but you’ll have to show this to a potential publisher, plus it will make the writing process much easier once you have a gameplan to follow.  It will also be incredibly beneficial to you because it will force you to flesh out your idea into several chapters, which will help you better structure your book’s message.

5 – Write the first 1-3 chapters.  This is another good test to prepare you for the process.  If you can hand a publisher a solid proposal for the book that includes 1-3 solidly-written chapters, you’re making an excellent case for why your book needs to be published.  And writing those chapters will give you a great idea of how long it will take you to write the entire book.  For example, if it takes you 3 months to write the first chapter, that could be a big red flag.

6 – Create a proposal for the book.  Thankfully, you’ve already done a lot of this by simply completing the first 5 steps.  You’ll need to tell publishers who the market is for this book, why YOU are the person to write it, what it’s about, competing titles, etc.  You’ll also need to include the table of contents and any of the chapters you have written.  Also, you’ll need to explain to the publisher how you will market the book.  This is where you want to mention any speaking you will be doing on this topic over the next year, as well as your online profile, your following.

7 – Having a killer idea trumps your online presence every single time.  When I started talking to publishers about writing Think Like a Rock Star, I assumed that my ‘online footprint’ would be a big plus for me.  It wasn’t.  Most of the publishers I and my agent talked to had no idea who I was, in fact most of the rejection letters we got started ‘We think Mark has a great idea, but…’  If your idea is great and publishers think it will sell, that’s far more important than how many Twitter followers you have, so don’t think you need X number of followers/friends before you can talk to a publisher.

8 – Figure out if you need a literary agent, or want to go it alone.  I’ve been talking to publishers about Think Like a Rock Star since 2010.  For the first year, I didn’t have an agent, then I realized that I was spinning my wheels and needed to get one.  There’s only a few publishers whose editors are actively trying to connect with potential writers in this space.  If you can get a suitable deal with one of them, fine.  I could not, and decided to go with an agent.

There’s a couple of obvious differences in going with an agent.  First, you’ll have to pay an agent, typically a cut of any money you get from the book, including your advance, royalties, etc.  The huge immediate benefit is that you get access to several dozen publishers and these are publishers that the agent works with regularly.  The agent can also look over any contract you are offered, and help you with the terms.

9 – If you go with an agent, you will likely get a LOT more rejection letters.  This makes sense, if your proposal is going out to 30 publishers, expect to hear ‘No’ a lot.  For me, while a bit disappointing, this was also a big help.  Because most of the publishers would explain WHY they turned down the book.  Maybe they didn’t think the book covered something that it actually did, or maybe they didn’t understand the actual focus of your book.  As long as they explain WHY they are saying no, that gives you something to work with when you send it off to the next publisher.

10 – Don’t expect to get rich from writing a book.  You’ll likely get an advance of $5,000-$10,000 if a publisher accepts your book.  Remember this is an ADVANCE, which means you’ll have to pay this money back to the publisher.

EDIT: I should have been more clear here, your advance is against the money you will make from royalties on the book.  So if your publisher gives you a $5,000 advance, you have to pay that back first from your royalties.  Which means you won’t get any royalty payments until you’ve covered your $5,000 advance.  If you never sell enough to cover your advance, then you don’t get any royalty payments.  But either way, you keep the $5,000 advance.  Thanks to Andrew and Don for the clarifications.

So in closing, if you are serious about writing a book and getting a publisher’s attention, absolutely kill the first 6 steps.  If you can hand a publisher a well-organized and written proposal detailing what the book is, who will buy it, and with 1-3 well-written chapters, you’re in great shape.

UPDATE: Before you email me asking how you can get your book idea published or leave a comment here asking the same, read this post.  This is the best advice I can give you on how to get a book deal.

NOTHER UPDATE: I continue to get many touching and heartfelt emails from people that have read this post and want to write a book,  typically based on their life.  Let me be perfectly clear: I am not an agent, I am not a publisher.  So I am not the person to be emailing about your book idea because all the help I can give you is in this post.  I’d love to help you more, but I simply cannot.