Ready to learn something new?

It starts with an idea: everything does. The idea for my first published work began as a simple desire to tell others about me and who I am. But, my journey from idea to published book was not as simple as 1-2-3. However, here's what I learned about turning an idea into a profit.

Know your Market:

The first step in generating income from any small business venture is knowing where your main source of income will come from. 

1. Who is your audience? This is based largely on what genre in which you write. Who is going to read your book?
2. What does your audience want? This will depend upon the age and lifestyle of your readers. Are they looking for self-help, fiction, historical, travel, or research writing? 
3. Why should anyone buy your book? What's your catch-line, your sell-point? Why your book?

Ask yourself these questions before you start thinking about making money off of an idea. So that you can see some of this in practice, I'll use my book as an example.

"When You Live in a Bus"

Okay, so this is the story of my life. I wrote this book after my family appeared on TLC for a special called "Home Sweet Bus". 

First Question: who is my audience? All I had to do was look at my life. I travel full-time and sing gospel music worldwide. Now, I've been at this singing thing for 20 years, I've got quite a fan base. My audience is 45+ year old and will purchase anything I write regardless of the topic: they'll buy it because it has my name.

Now, my situation is unrealistic, but it's always important to look at the realm of influence you currently have before thinking of networking out of it. 

Second Question: what does my audience want? Simple, they wanted to know about me: how I lived, how I looked at life. They knew me for who I was on stage, but they wanted to get to know the man I was off-stage. 

Third Question: why should anyone buy my book? Okay, my main sell-point was the fact that I lived in a bus. Now, this is universal. If you have a different situation than most, write that. People are attracted to mysteries, things they don't know and don't understand. I live on a bus, what do you do?

Finding Your Demographic:

Your target demographic is based upon what age and lifestyle the genre you're writing already appeals to. What are the teens reading? What's popular in the romance world? To whom? And why? It takes some research to find your demographic, but it's necessary to finding your market and ultimately, making a profit.

What To Write:

Let the market make that choice for you. Look at what is selling and trending, then choose from the top several the genre or topic you like best and feel most comfortable with.  Also, note that simply because you're doing what everyone else who is successful is doing doesn't mean you will be successful as well, especially not immediately. This brings us to the next topic.

Networking:

It's all about who you know and who knows you. It has always been this way and always will be. Networking is creating a structure of friends and associates with yourself at the center and many interconnecting lines that cross paths from one person to another. 

How to Network-

1. Get your name out there! Get onto the social scene and engage people. A popular person = a popular writer. People will want to buy anything you publish if they already like you.
2. Get connected. Find ways to establish connections with people already working in your space, or the space in which you want to work. Sometimes it may even take climbing the social ladder to get connected with people who can help take you to the next level.
3. Find a niche, a passion that you can lean on and be known for that. Your identity is your distinction. Make your voice heard by being consistent and educated in a certain subject. Brand yourself and then market you.

Sometimes this is hard thing to do. Many writers don't want to "promote themselves", but let me tell you that you NEED to until you can afford to have someone else do it for you. You can't get to the top in one step; it's a long climb up many flight to reach the top.

Ways to Network:

• Get a blog. Wordpress, Steemit, Facebook, etc... find a place where people will come to read what you have to say. Build your base and popularity.
• Be active on social media. Don't isolate yourself to one place. Diversify yourself on many networks so to include as large an audience as you can and post often.
• Join groups of others like you. Get involved in conversations in groups of like-minded individuals and become known.

Publishing Options:

Once you have a story how do you get it into people's hands and starting making a profit on your idea? Well, first you need to publish it. There are several ways you can go about this and I'll run you through them briefly.

• Self publish. Do the work on your own: editing, cover design, purchasing the ISBN, etc...
• Sign with a publishing company. Let them handle all of the work and pay an upfront fee for that.
• Mid-term publishing. Self publishing initially, but taking on a publishing company afterwards.

Self publishing is the cheapest way to go, but by far the most work intensive. For one thing, the editing, cover design, and printing costs are all on you, as well as the research to locate places to do them. The price is less if you don't purchase an ISBN number, but then you have to worry about not having the copy writes to your own book.

Signing with a publishing company can be costly, it can also lead to the writer signing over the copy writes of their own book. However, there are companies that allow the writer to retain 100% of the copy writes.

Mid-term publishing is a consideration if you're looking for the professionalism a publishing company can offer without the upfront cost. At a reduced price certain companies will pick up your self published book and  do what they would do if it was a manuscript. It's a cost effective way to build some capitol by selling your book through your own outlets, then handing it over to someone who can take it farther than you are able.

How To Choose? 

With so many companies out there to choose from and most with comparable price-points, how do you decide? Shop around, look at the site quality, the authors they have on their label and their books. Another way is to use your networking connections. See who you know and who they've worked with, or if you have connections in a company. This is where networking can be handy on the front end.

Making Money:

This is where networking comes in handy on the back end. Take the fan base you've amassed and the connections you've made and utilize them to push your book as far as it will go. Make sure to connect yourself with distributors and people who have a voice in your work space. Also, if you're selling through e-book outlets, reviews on a book go a long way. Get your friends to read the book, perhaps make it free for a time and really push it for a week or two. Have people post good, honest reviews of your book and you might be surprised how far that will go.

The biggest thing is to know what your audience and provide them with something they want and will buy, then let them know how to find it. It's an uphill climb to get started, but once you do, it's all downhill from there.

Follow me @Ejaredallen