03 Aug How I Sold 32,110 Copies of My Books As A Self-Published Author
Would you love to get paid to write?
Writing is my passion and like most writers, we’d rather spend our time writing than marketing.
I get it. That’s the dream. Similar to someone wanting to create an online course, and not have
to do the marketing that sells the online course.
To be successful, however, it’s one part creation and one part marketing.
Either you have to do the marketing, or you have to pay someone to do it for you. And
honestly, no one is going to care more than you do. My philosophy is to learn it first before you
pay others to do it for you. This way you have checks and balances.
Before we get to marketing your book, let me tell you the secret to how I sold
32,110 copies of my books as a self-published author and get paid to write.
But first, let’s start with some data of my annual book sales:
- 2012 – 68 sales
- 2013- 29 sales
- 2014 – 24 sales
- 2015 – 153 sales
- 2016 – 193 sales
- 2017- 138 sales
- 2018 – 320 sales
- 2019 – 421 sales
- 2020 – 5,985 sales
- 2021- 13,233 sales
- 2022 – 7905 sales
- 2023 – 3641 (partial year)
Total: 32,110
So you’re probably wondering what happened during these years to increase sales; especially
from 2012 to 2019 where I never sold more than 500 books in a year; then there was a huge
jump in 2020, and then again from 2020 to 2021.
The story begins in December of 2019…
I read a blog post by Written Word Media that said the average self-published author who
makes $100K has 28 books published. I immediately thought, “I need to make a $100K with my
books! I’m going to write a book a month and see if I can create 6-figures in passive income
stream SOLELY from my royalties.”
At the time, I had published eight books since 2011; most of them were old, the information was outdated, and I had not been marketing them, so they died a slow death.
Starting in 2018, I spent more than a year writing the second edition of my book, “Quit Your Job and Follow Your Dreams.” I was earning a few hundred dollars per month from this book but considering the amount of time I invested in writing, editing, publishing, and launching this one book, the payoff wasn’t huge.
Seth Godin, who has published dozens of business books on sales and marketing, said:
One of my books took more than a year to write, ten hours a day. Another took three weeks. Both sell for the same price. The quicker one outsold the other 20 to 1.
When I read that quote, I realized I didn’t need to spend months or years working on one book. I needed to write short books (100 pages or less) and publish one book per month.
Since writing and teaching are my passion, I knew I could easily do this!
My books, on average, are 100 pages, and they fit nicely into Amazon’s “Short Reads” category.
I have focused primarily on nonfiction books.
I’m happy to tell you that after 12 consecutive months of writing a book a month in 2020, I was able to create $3,300 in monthly royalties!
My dream came true: I am getting paid to write!
I heard an author once say, “Nothing sells your first book better than your second book.” I’ve also found this to be true. In each new book I release, I include references to my previously published titles, which creates new readers for those books.
According to the website, Tagari, the average author only sells 250 copies of a book during its lifetime. No wonder there are so many starving writers.
It’s time to think outside the box if you want to be a well-fed author.
For my top 4 books, sales look like this:
- 28 Books to $100K – 2,096 sales
- Digital Retirement – 4,520 sales
- How to Find Your Passion – 3,434 sales
- Younger Self Letters – 6,265 sales
That’s over 16,000 sales on 4 books which means an average of 4,000 sales per book instead of the 250 sales which many books experience over a lifetime.
Here are the 3 pillars to replacing your social security income with passive income and creating your own “Digital Retirement” from writing books:
Pillar One: Write To Market With A High Profit Topic – You must find a market where there are readers searching for books on the topic as well as books making money on that topic and then write a unique book in that niche. You want high-profit topics.
Here’s a story of a client that came to me with a low-profit topic who had not done any research:
I received a strategy session application a while back from a nice couple in California who wanted to write a book about English Cottage Gardens. We had a lovely conversation, and I told them I would research the topic and get back to them.
It seemed like a good topic, but I had never done a book for a client in this genre, so I needed to do my research. I believe in data more than guessing.
I use Publisher Rocket for all of my research. It’s paid software, but it will save you a lot of money because it will help you write a high-profit book rather than a low-profit book.
My research on Publisher Rocket revealed few searches for this topic:
Additionally, English Cottage Gardens books on Amazon were not making much money either (I used KDSpy to get the sales numbers).
Now, these were very nice people and I could have signed them up into my high-ticket program and let them write a book on English Cottage Gardens (an area in which they were experts), but I don’t take on clients unless I feel strongly that they have a high-profit topic that can be positioned correctly that will do well.
I suggested to these potential clients that they instead write a book on raised bed and container gardening, as I discovered during my research, this was a very hot and high-profit topic.
My research on Publisher Rocket revealed there were many more searches for this topic:
These are much better numbers and results. Moreover, I found books on this topic making $25,000 per month. I was pleasantly surprised!
The potential clients agreed to write a book on “raised bed and container gardening”. And their book, Container and Raised Bed Gardening for Beginners and Beyond is doing very well on Amazon with over 175 reviews, hitting multiple #1 bestseller lists during the launch and now they are working on their second book in this series.
Do your research first and then write to a market that is actually seeking books on that topic.
Pillar Two: Write One Short Book A Month — Consistency is the key and going deep on a topic shows that you are the expert on the topic. If you think about fiction writers, they always write in series which has many benefits which include getting their readers hooked on their books, repeat sales and building a following. Many people asked me about my “system” to writing a book a month, so I created a DIY online course, 28 Books to $100K, to teach others how to do the same and I also have my group coaching program that I launch 4 times per year which is Digital Retirement Academy
Pillar Three: Create Income On The Back-End Of Your Most Successful Book(s). At the end of writing a book a month and creating over $3300 a month in passive income, I looked at the data and realized that 80% of my income was coming from 3 books. This is the 80/20 rules that seems to apply to just about everything. Turns out only 3 of the books I wrote continued to do well long-term. Those 3 books were:
Here’s a secret…
You don’t decide which book will take off and do well, the market decides. So once you have written a book a month for a year, you will see what your top selling book or books are. Then you can create a program to sell on the back end of that book like I have with 28 Books to $100K and Digital Retirement Academy.
If you want to get paid to write, create passive income and you love writing, I suggest following the 3 pillars above.
Writing is very isolating, which is why I created Digital Retirement Academy to give authors community, connection and most importantly accountability so they can achieve all of their dreams and goals! Get on the waiting list for the next cohort and it can change your life!