Peaceful Profits Podcast Ep. 102 - Anatomy of An 8-Figure Book
Synopsis:
In this episode, Mike Shreeve dives deep into the financial success of his book One Book Millions Method and how it generated over $11 million in revenue over five years. From analyzing sales data to sharing lessons learned, Mike walks you through the anatomy of creating a long-term, profitable book. This episode goes beyond the initial launch, focusing on how to sustain book sales and maximize ROI through smart strategies like book funnels and offering additional products or services. Learn how a well-executed book can be a game-changer for your business.
Transcript:
Anatomy Of An 8-Figure Book
[00:00:00] Hello there. Hope you're doing well. Mike Shreeve here. Thank you so very much for tuning in to today's episode. This is going to be fun. We're going to be reviewing five years of sales data from a book that I launched in November of 2019. Today's date is July 18th, 2024. So it's just short of five years.
But we're going to be looking at revenue, how much I made, how much it cost, how many copies I sold, the total ROI, how I did [00:00:30] it, why I did it that way, and some things that I've learned along the way that we do differently for ourselves, for clients, for my other company where all I do is publish books in my other company.
Specifically, the book that we're going to be reviewing is the One Book Millions Method, which you can find, it's the one that's published under the Profits brand. You may or may not know that I have another company where all I do is publish fiction and nonfiction under various pen names. I've chosen to review [00:01:00] the One Book Millions Method simply because it's open and available to anybody who is listening to this particular podcast.
You know it's by me, you know it's under our company, you can go look for it, you can go read it, you can go study it, you can use it for inspiration, you can see how we've sold it. And, a real big reason why I want to do this. is one in this industry, in the publishing industry, there's a lot of focus on those first [00:01:30] few weeks of a book launch, all the pre order and the effort and the excitement.
And do we make a, did we make the best sellers list? And how many books did we sell in those first couple of weeks? And how fast did we recoup all that time and investment and all that stuff? And there's a lot of emphasis and focus on that. And, I think that's great. Those first couple of weeks are important when you launch a new book, but there's very little talked about after that.[00:02:00]
What happens after all the hubbub dies down? And how do you keep a book selling for months and years? How do you keep it not just continually selling, but maybe over time snowballing and increasing in sales? And what does it actually take to keep a book going and what does that mean in real dollars?
What is the actual [00:02:30] return on investment for these assets we call books? And so I want to walk you through the return on an investment of one of the many books that I've written. And we'll look at that data across five years and I'll show you how I've kept it going. But even more than that. Wanting to be able to give you that insight beyond just the first couple weeks.
I really want to try my best to do something for [00:03:00] you that someone did for me many years ago. So I've been incredibly lucky in my career. The people I've gotten to work with, That alone has been, the most, the biggest benefit of being in this world that I'm in of helping people turn their ideas into money and publishing and all of that stuff.
It's just the people I've been able to meet. And one of the people that I've gotten to work with is Brendan Burchard. And I got to work with him while [00:03:30] he was And it also just so happened that at the time I lived in Portland, Oregon, where his offices are in the Pearl District, I literally lived a couple of blocks down.
And so I got to go over to his office and While going through the launch process, meet with him many times and, by the time I worked with him, he was already multiple times New York Times bestselling author. [00:04:00] So I learned a lot. I learned a ton working with him. Things that he taught me we still use today.
But one of the things that I'll never forget. And as often as I can for our team, I try to do this to anybody I'm ever mentoring, things like that, clients. He gave me the ability to see what was possible in the most simple way. We're sitting there, we're talking about his [00:04:30] book and about his book launch.
He opens up his laptop and he says, take a look at this. And he just points to a number. It was a huge number. At that time in my life and that time in my career, it was one of the biggest numbers I've ever seen in terms of real dollars. I won't tell you exactly how much it was, that's his business. And he talked about how the books had made that number happen.
And he showed me how it was done. And the strategy [00:05:00] was wonderful and amazing, but just seeing the actual number, seeing actually how valuable a book was, it was. gave me everything I needed at that particular point in my life to completely commit myself to writing books and to helping other people write books.
So I have the company that I have now, which writes and publishes nonfiction and fiction of that's my own stuff. [00:05:30] under various pen names. I have this company, Peaceful Profits, which helps people to write, launch their books and use their books to grow whatever it is they're trying to grow, their speaking business, coaching business, professional practice, etc.
And it's all because I was able to see exactly how much a book was worth. So what I'm hoping I can do for you today is to simply try my best without having you [00:06:00] come over to my house, right? There's not, a ton of you, but there's quite, there's enough of you that if we all try to squeeze into my office, we wouldn't fit.
And so as best I can through this podcast episode, I just want to give you A realistic, solid, exact number picture of how much a book can be worth if done well. Now there's a couple of caveats. I'm not Brandon Burchard. My numbers are [00:06:30] not nearly as impressive as his. So hopefully that'll actually be somewhat inspiring to you in the sense that I'm just a regular person.
I'm not big and famous, I don't have a massive YouTube channel, I don't have a massive email list, I don't have all these things. And so We can look at these, these people with these huge audiences and look at their numbers and that's great, but I also just want to add to the conversation of here's what like a regular person can achieve as well.
So these numbers that we're [00:07:00] about to talk about, they may not be impressive to you at all. or they may be wonderful and awesome and inspire you to do something. Now, I don't know if I've said it already, but the book that specifically we're going to be talking about here is the One Book Millions Method, but the numbers that I'm about to give you track very similarly to nearly all the books I have ever written and published for myself.
Okay. So with that out of the way, and so that you understand what we're trying to do here, let's get [00:07:30] into the numbers. So first let's talk about revenue. This book has helped to generate 11, 306, 236. 91 over the past five years. That includes book sales, and everything that someone has purchased after they bought the book.
Now that's important for what we're talking about here. We're really [00:08:00] going to talk a lot about ROI and how to maximize the ROI of a book. But this is not 11 royalties, although that would be lovely. This is the book and the existence of this book was able to create the royalties, create the sales, and Create sales of the main thing that I was doing, which for me was services and coaching.
Maybe for you it's generating donations for your non profit. Maybe for you the other [00:08:30] thing is speaking. Maybe for you the other thing is getting clients for your law firm, et cetera, and et cetera. Now to get that 11, 306, 000, I spent in ads and marketing expenses, various types of expenses 2, 266, 290.
43. So that is a 4. 9x expense. Return ROI over the last five [00:09:00] years. Now that is really important to break down. So first off, that ROI has come over five years. And some of you may hear that and be like, Oh, that's a really long time to get the ROI. And I understand if that is your, the way that you're thinking about it.
But let me put it to you in a different way. This 4. 9X means every time I put in a dollar, I get 4. 90 back. This It has maintained that return [00:09:30] for five years. In other words, this podcast is not about the death of this book and now it's not selling anymore. We're just choosing five years because that seems like a good number.
This book will continue to sell. It's not, it hasn't reduced in, how easy it is to sell. It continues to hit the same general daily sales as it always has been. The return is still there. This is an ongoing thing that has been going [00:10:00] on for five years. Now you compare that to most business returns.
This isn't 4. 9%. This is 490 percent returns. This is 4. 9 times what I put into it, I've gotten out of it. And, I say this all the time, and sometimes people think I'm crazy, and maybe I am. [00:10:30] I'll take a 4. 9x return over almost any other type of investment. So when I'm looking at people bringing opportunities, or saying, Hey, you should invest in this.
Hey, you should invest in this. I just look at, or I could write another book, and it'll return 4. 9x for years and years and years. And so it completely has changed my decision making matrix. It's changed how I view the world. It's changed [00:11:00] even how I view my children's future. Because the way this is all set up is You could strip everything away from me, and it will still continue to produce a return even if I'm no longer around, like I'm no longer alive.
So my children, and that's why, I protect my other company under pen names and things like [00:11:30] that, because it's just completely separate from this particular business, and I have this whole legacy thing I'm doing over there. But anyways, the point is because this is a piece of intellectual property with a very real return, I'm not even thinking solely about the next five years.
You may have heard the saying, a lot of very smart people in business say, if you can start thinking about your mission, goals, desires, et cetera, not in what can I do next week to make money or what can I do next month to make money, but what can I do over the next [00:12:00] year, over the next five year, over the next 10 years?
When you introduce a book and you see an ROI of 4. 9x over 5 years, a consistent return over 5 years, you start thinking, what can happen even after I'm gone? How long can this thing keep going? And you see this already, it's just, people don't necessarily think about it like dead authors and the books that you know about.
That money is going [00:12:30] often to things like family trusts. And the family is simply managing the rights and working with people who actually specialize in maximizing returns for individuals who've passed on but their intellectual property is still relevant and, something that can turn revenue and income, in fact, twice.
I have been a part of those kinds of projects. , I got to work on John [00:13:00] Wooden at the famous college basketball coach. I got to work on John Wooden launching books, intellectual property, creating courses long after he had died. Passed away and we did really big numbers with that and it was for the family and that was what, that was a really cool experience.
Maybe someday I'll talk about that. We got to go down to UCLA and actually meet the family and eat with them at coach Wooden's favorite spot that he used to eat at. And that was just an incredible experience. So that was one project I did where we were basically managing [00:13:30] intellectual property, right?
The pyramid of success was the core of that. And then another instance is I got to work on all the Jim Rohn intellectual property. Selling his books, selling his courses, selling his seminars, long after Jim Rohn had passed. And that was really special for me. A little side note here, story time. In 2007, I was homeless.
And I was living in Washington Park in Portland, Oregon. And because of a really kind [00:14:00] librarian I was allowed to, use the computers all day. And for some reason, even to this day, I don't know why, I definitely was not looking for it. It just, I stumbled upon it. Early, early days of like online videos and stuff.
I found a Jim Rohn seminar that had been pirated and I watched it and it was like, that's what got me off the streets was listening it's the, your best, I think it's your best year ever seminar. I can't remember if that's the exact title off the top of my head but it was like a four hour seminar and he [00:14:30] was saying all sorts of things.
And then I went to librarian, I was like, are there books here that can help me get a skill? Cause that's what Jim said I need to do. And then within a couple months I was off the streets. And then years later, it was almost like eight or nine years later, I get an email from a really good friend and he's Hey do you want to work on some Jim Rohn stuff?
He had no idea that Jim Rohn had helped me in that way. And like I've said many times, I just have so much luck in my career about who I get to work with. I got to work on Jim Rohn intellectual property for a really long time and sell a bunch of it. [00:15:00] The whole point of all of that ramble, sorry for the side mission there, is to say that most people look at how much money can I make right now for my book.
When I do books, I'm looking at how much will this make for my family after I'm gone? And that is a very real thing. Additionally, so back to the numbers we have sold more than 60, 000 copies of that one book. Now, this is important. Because the 60, 000 copies, the way that I have sold this particular book, has turned into [00:15:30] 60, 000 customers for Peaceful Profits.
60, 000 people on our email list, our mailing list. 60, 000 people who know and trust us. And then when I say, hey, if you like that book, would you also like this thing? And so that has had its own separate set of revenue, which I haven't even added to this total revenue here. So it's almost like another stream of revenue.
We're just talking about [00:16:00] direct book sales and then people reading the book and saying, Hey, I'd like to, get your services. Now, how did I do this? First is I had something else to sell off the back of the book. Now.
Can you make money just writing a single non fiction book? And the answer is, yes, of course. Yes, of course you can. How much money can you make just writing a single nonfiction book and doing nothing else? So [00:16:30] you're not doing speaking. You're not trying to use it to grow your business. You just are like, I want a book and I want to make money.
If unless you're incredibly lucky Which, I've been incredibly lucky in my career, so I'll never say, you have a low chance of being lucky, but it is very rare for one non fiction book to ever amount to anything close to the numbers that I have just mentioned. Anything close. And I think that's important, because not everybody In, in my world and like the publishing world, my [00:17:00] competitors, for example, they're not always honest with buyers.
They'll tell you that one nonfiction book and you're set for life and you can retire. I've not seen it. I've just not seen it ever. I've heard whispers of here and there and the occasional story, which to be fair, honestly, usually has some kind of catch to it. It's Oh yeah, of course that person, their dad like put 2 million into a campaign and they just don't tell everybody that's what it was.
Or, years ago there was that guy who did a memoir and it turns out he [00:17:30] lied, but no one found out he lied about the memoir until after he was on Oprah and like all that kind of stuff. So there are exceptions to this rule. There are certainly instances where people can and have made a bunch of money off of one single book.
It's incredibly rare, and it's even more rare that there wasn't some catch. Like they had an audience, or they had access to audience, or something like that. I've not really seen anybody write one book with no audience, never heard before, and then they just retire off of that. What I see literally every single [00:18:00] day, this is like what I do for a living, Subs by www.
zeoranger. co. uk All of my clients are this way, whether they have audiences or don't have audiences. Is somebody who has a book That they use to build something else. Now, what do I mean by that? It means that when you get a reader, you have something else for them to do with you, or for you, or etc. For example, selling speaking, selling coaching, selling services, selling Maybe you're an attorney, maybe you're a heart surgeon, [00:18:30] maybe you're a an accountant.
Maybe you are trying to generate donations for a nonprofit. Maybe you have a mission where you just want to be invited to, executive like meetings and talk to them about how much more, effective they can be at taking care of their employees. Maybe you're trying to graduate yourself through the C suite.
Maybe you are trying to position yourself as an expert for whatever reason. I've, that's every [00:19:00] single day. Those people are turning a book into the type of revenue that I've talked about so far, right? And these are the individuals who are taking that, and it's not just happening in the first six weeks.
It's years and years and years. It's the asset that keeps on giving you. I mentioned Brendan Burchard. His books that he's launched, he's launched many books now. They're all years old. They still sell. They still, he still gets invited on [00:19:30] stages because somebody reads the book for the first time, discovers him for the first time.
He's still able to sell his services etc. Just really important. And I want to be, if nobody else is telling you this because they're just trying to sell you something, allow me to be the person that says, and give you, again, a realistic picture of what's going on here. A book that you use to accelerate something else is absolutely the best way to get a return on a non fiction book.
So we're talking about non [00:20:00] fiction books. Fiction is a whole different bundle of wax here. And maybe someday I'll do a bunch of trainings on fiction, although right now for Peaceful Profits specifically and the podcast series that we have here, our focus is on people helping, helping people write non fiction books.
The other thing that I did, which is really interesting because we don't do this, we don't just do this anymore, so I'll try and explain this, is I have sold the OneBookMillions [00:20:30] method only direct. Now, what does selling direct mean? I do not have this book listed on Amazon. I don't have it on Barnes and Noble.
There is no audible version, although there is an audio book that you get for free when you buy it. I have taken over complete control of selling this book. I'm not beholden to platforms. I get 100 percent of the royalties, et cetera, and et cetera. And we have done that by building a book funnel. Now there are pros and cons [00:21:00] to, Having just a book funnel.
I will tell you that moving forward and what we do for our clients is we no longer say only have it in a book funnel. There's so many other ways to monetize. And we'll talk a little bit about that. But one of the reasons that I wanted to do that is I just wanted to have the ability to maximize the return for every dollar that we spent.
I didn't want to have to pay platforms any fee or cut or et cetera. I wanted to own [00:21:30] all of the rights. I wanted to own the the ability to change price and not have to deal with any kind of, anything. Also in a very important part of the One Book Millions Method, we're was a bunch of additional stuff that we put with the book.
So we sold our book direct through a book funnel, and it was here's a book and a bunch of bonuses. Those bonuses, those additional things that went with the book, they were critical to people even understanding the book. And [00:22:00] there are some of you who are listening to me now. That you have a book and you're like, I didn't have a book.
And then I really need people to buy the workbook. Also, how can I do that? If I list them both on Amazon, some people are going to buy the book and they won't buy the workbook. That would be a really good instance of why, a really good example of why selling direct might actually be the best option for your book sales.
The book sales count as book sales, whether it's on Amazon or not on Amazon. You still get the same readers, you still get the [00:22:30] et cetera. Don't think that you're less legitimate just because you haven't put it up on Barnes and Noble. That's not true at all. But there are specific reasons why you may want to sell only direct.
I will say that selling direct does make offsetting costs a lot easier. So for example, when we sell our books direct, we also add the opportunity that when somebody goes to a checkout page Hey, I bought the book and we say, congratulations. So [00:23:00] glad you want this book. Would you also like. It may be this other book, or would you also like this little course, or would you like this little tool, or would you like this little, et cetera.
And so that when they're going to the checkout page, our book might only be 5, but they end up spending 20 because there was a little 19 thing that was also, for sale on order bump. They just, like when you go to a e commerce store online and you buy the sunglasses and they're like, Oh, would you also like a sunglasses case?
And you click the little button like, yes, and then you clicked another button and your order's done. Yeah. That's what [00:23:30] I do for these book funnels, what these book funnels are, and what that allows us to do is if you now make 20, when you sell a 4 book, you can spend a lot more on ads. Because the thing you're selling is more expensive, which means you get more money back, which means you can spend more on ads, and et cetera.
And if your goal is to use a book to scale as quickly as possible, to go from zero [00:24:00] to maximized your business, and you're using the book as the tool to get people into your business, then I absolutely recommend a book funnel because it allows you to push the gas pretty hard on ads, which is another word for ads is just attention.
Get that attention onto your book. People love you. People like you. They buy theirs. They, they read the book, they enjoy it. They buy whatever little additional thing that you're offering to help offset those ad costs. And then you can sell thousands of copies. Every [00:24:30] single month for months and months.
When the average nonfiction book sells less than 500 copies over its entire lifetime. So that's one of the key ways that we were able to sell 60, 000 copies and you've never heard of me before. It's because we sell direct. I'm not worried about being famous. I'm not worried about being all over. We don't have to do a lot of PR.
I don't have to do a lot of that stuff because I'm just going direct to the people that I want to buy this book. And that was the strategy. Now, [00:25:00] what would I do differently? And what do we do differently? And what am I going to be doing differently for the next book that we have for Peaceful Profits? So remember I'm over here publishing under pen names.
I've been publishing this entire time. I released several books a year over there, but for Peaceful Profits, we're working on our next book right now, the next sort of iteration and leveling up of Peaceful Profits. So we've got to make a really great book. What are some of the things that we're going to do different?
I'll tell you some of the things that we're going to do the same. First off, we're going to still have something to sell after the book because [00:25:30] that's just, you can't argue with a 4. 9 X return for five plus years, show me a better return on the dollar and I'll quit everything and do that instead.
I haven't found anything that's real or low risk or meaningful. And then we're still going to do a book funnel, right? So the next book that we launched, we'll have a book funnel and we'll run ads just like we have done as well. But here's a couple of things we're going to add this go around. And these are things we do for clients and things that I've learned in my other business.
I work really well. [00:26:00] So the first thing is, now I have a list of 60, 000 people who have bought the One Book Millions Method book, 60, 000 book buyers. What do book buyers like to do? They like to buy. the next book. When I launched this book back in November of 2019, I had a list of zero. I had zero people.
Now that I have this list, I can do [00:26:30] pre orders and I can have a proper launch, right? I can really put some steam and momentum behind this thing. And so for the next book here at Peaceful Profits, we're going to be running a Pre order launch for our clients who have email lists or audiences that they already have.
Absolutely. We run pre order launches to their existing audience assets. And as a result of that, that should [00:27:00] allow me to make a run at a bestseller list. Now, unfortunately, at the time of this recording, there's no longer the wall street journal. There's of course, the New York times, there's the Sunday times in the UK, there's the USA today, et cetera, et cetera.
We all know that the New York Times is it's called a curated list. So it's not just about book sales volume, USA Today is book sale volume, Wall Street Journal used to be book sale volume, but that doesn't exist anymore. So we're with this one, I think we're going to give it a shot to go [00:27:30] for the bestseller campaign.
Now there isn't really a lot of benefit. Not as much as there used to be and not, especially now there is no Wall Street Journal, the USA Today doesn't have the same ring to it as it does even the Wall Street Journal back in the day, but there is some validity in trying to maximize The number of sales you make in the first week or two when it comes to all of the other platforms.
The [00:28:00] Amazons and the Barnes and Nobles and the etc. Now please understand what I'm saying. I'm not saying that an Amazon bestseller is really like a huge thing. Especially nowadays, it's very easy to game. It doesn't hold the same weight that it did when it first started and most people who are in the know are okay, an Amazon bestseller, it's not really a big of a deal.
You just choose a really small category and then you get the tag. Having a USA Today tag is different. If you're in the speaking circuit, if you are trying to get [00:28:30] bigger stages, if you're trying to really build a strong brand, these bestseller campaigns do have the ability to unlock doors. It's a say for speaking, for example, it's a demonstration that you can pull audience numbers.
That you have enough people backing you to sell many thousands of copies in a single week that's attractive to people who are booking speaking gigs or want you to come to the mastermind because one of the reasons that [00:29:00] people will pay you a lot of money to be a speaker is not just for your speech, it's But it's because you bring with you an audience that may buy tickets to come see you speak.
And so the people putting on the events are like, let's get a bunch of famous people and they'll sell tickets for us. So there's that whole world and I've got a whole course on how that works and etc. Point is for some people, depending on what your goals are, the bestseller campaign is incredibly important.
For some people, it really doesn't matter. I don't have, under my own name here in Peaceful [00:29:30] Profits, I do not have bestseller tags, and you saw that over five years, the book has brought in 11 million dollars. So it certainly is not a prerequisite for turning a book into a multi million dollar piece of intellectual property.
But depending on what your goals are, it can be something that opens the door. Now, in my fiction specifically, I have hit the USA Today bestseller list multiple times with several pen names. There's lots of fun things that you can do in fiction [00:30:00] to hit those numbers because fiction is just a different volume game.
There's just so many more people are buying fiction than they buy non fiction. And so it's a little bit of a different game. Same tweaks. Thanks for watching! And again, maybe someday we'll talk about that now with that in mind, I want to go wide and distribute wide for this next book that we do here at Peaceful Profits.
And a big reason for that is simply because we don't have the same constraints or [00:30:30] requirements that we had before with One Book Millions Method of selling only direct. Remember, The whole idea of the One Book Millions Method was that I was going to write it, I was going to launch it, and I was going to use it to scale as fast as possible, so I didn't want anybody to even take away 30 percent of my book royalties from Amazon or Barnes Noble or whatever, because I needed every single penny to scale this thing as quick as possible.
Peaceful Profits is as scaled as I ever want [00:31:00] it to be. So now what I can do is I can start tapping into these other distribution networks because I don't need, I'm still going to sell direct, so I'm still going to have the direct sales option, but we're also going to add these other alternative traffic methods.
Selling methods, there's ways to use Amazon to push books for you in Barnes and Noble, and then you can use those to actually get into bookstores and get in libraries and all these things. And that's what I plan on doing with the next [00:31:30] book that we put out, which I'm currently working on and will be done with soon.
So that's gonna be fun and exciting. We're opening it up to More branded style selling and more branded based sales. Gather a bunch of social proof, tons of book reviews and, pictures of people with their physical copies that they bought from Barnes and Noble and all kinds of sorts of things like that library copies.
And we'll do that for the next book that we have coming up because we don't have the same constraints and requirements for the book as we did before. [00:32:00] Now, here's something that's really fun. And I've been doing this with my other company, with the fiction in particular. And we do this for clients all the time.
And this is most of this stuff that I'm about to tell you was not. even available in 2019 in the way that it's available now. So this is a new and emerging, very powerful way to sell books for a very long time with some [00:32:30] benefits that now that our clients get it and I have in my other company, I really wish we would have gotten.
Five years ago because it would have made the long term sustainability of the book sales even more effective But what are those things? This is you know, the bread and butter of what we do for clients these days in helping them to sell outside of a book funnel. One is something called book touring, which is you take the author and you put them on interviews.[00:33:00]
So interviews on podcasts, interviews on YouTube shows, interviews on TV, interviews on. You send them on a book tour. Now, 10, 15, 20 years ago, the only book tour you could do is a physical book tour, which had tons of expenses and maybe five people would show up to your signing and you'd do the lonely talk in Barnes and Noble.
I don't know if you've ever been in Barnes and Noble and the poor author has four people show up and it's, they have to give this like 45 minute talk to four people that's crazy. Breaks my heart because I know what authors put into their books and, and [00:33:30] honestly, whenever I see that, I try to sit down for at least a little bit of it just to, and I buy their book and all that kind of stuff because I know what goes into these things.
They work. What was the other day? There was one here in my local area where they had written this entire book about the local the water, the local waterways. It's actually really fascinating. I'm so glad I got a signed copy of it too. But that's the old way of doing book touring.
The modern way of doing book touring is you can do your entire book tour from the comfort of your home, and there's different speeds, right? [00:34:00] Typically, we'll put our clients on four tour stops a month, all from the comfort of their home. Showing up on TV, showing up on podcast, showing up on, four times a month.
And we usually like to do that a minimum of six months. Now, why is that good? Because you get the exposure to the audience at the podcast or the TV show is. And so you'll make book sales, but you'll also start getting like SEO benefits, search ranking benefits. When people [00:34:30] search you and they search your book, your interview pops up instead of nothing.
Which is terrible for book sales. If somebody searches your stuff and nothing comes up or they search you and somebody else, and they're like very confused. And, and so having book touring has the benefit of book sales has the benefit of search engine optimization and having rankings and branding for when you show up.
But also what I like about book touring is that if you're using a book to sell something else. Coaching services, whatever it [00:35:00] is, getting a, being, becoming a speaker book, touring is separately from the book, a mechanism to do that. So that means we have our authors out there selling books, increasing their online SEO, especially branding and.
Like landing clients and being booked as a speaker because somebody saw them on a podcast. That was so great. I'd love to work with you. How do I find out more information? Hey, you were really great on that podcast. I want to learn more. We need a [00:35:30] speaker for our event, that kind of a thing. So it's exposure.
The branding, the SEO and the book sales. So this is, we talk about, okay, let's write a book. What are we writing it for? Can we use the book to do something like book touring where the excuse to go on the podcast is to talk about the book, but the end result is not just for the book, but for the actual.
Purpose of the book, which is growing your business, et cetera, et cetera, getting, again, donations for your nonprofit or [00:36:00] speaking gigs or whatever it is that you do. All right. So that's a thing, that's been around for a while. I certainly wouldn't say that we didn't have that available in November of 2019, but it's become a lot easier to get on a lot better shows.
So in the past five years, the quality of podcast shows and audiences it's incredible. And they all need guests. And they're hungry for, if you heard the episode we did the other day, where I talked about profitable [00:36:30] thinking, and how writing a book, who you are at the start of writing a book, and then who you become by the end of writing that book.
You become smarter, more knowledgeable, you literally become an expert through the process of writing a book, is what it takes to create a book. If you write a book, and you go on these podcast episodes, I promise you, you'll be one of their better guests. Which means often what happens a lot for our clients is they get invited back and they get invited back And so they're getting in front of these audiences again and again [00:37:00] So anyways, that's book touring the quality of podcasts these days are incredible There's so many of them and the podcast listening audience is one of the best audiences to get in front of they tend to be bigger spenders bigger readers a lot more market sophistication, meaning they take buying seriously.
Your better clients and things like that will typically come from podcast appearances. Okay. So now here's the other thing that's really happening right now, which definitely was not as available in [00:37:30] 2019. And that's called book talk touring. So we have our standard kind of book tour that we do now.
We also now have what's called a book talk touring. And what book talk touring is where you have to show up for an interview in the traditional book tour. You don't have to show up at all because there are loads and loads of people on what's called book talk, which is tick tock. It's like a sub genre, like a sort of cultural phenomenon on book talk.
Tick tock of people who just want to [00:38:00] review books and talk about books and take pictures of books and recommend books and have discussions about books and make fun tick tocks and serious ones. And there are all these book influencers that you can tap into if you know how to do it and they will feature your book.
Now again, yes, you'll increase the sales of your book. But what else is going to happen? You're going to now have what my favorite is really well branded [00:38:30] collateral for things like sizzle reels and pictures of your books and all. If you think of a well launched book and all of the branded creative collateral that goes along with that, a lot of that is crowdsourced, meaning Something like reaching out to influencers and having the influencers create it.
You can get movements going So if you write the right book talk is a good place to get momentum going for an online [00:39:00] Movement people talking about it etc So yes, of course you make book sales while you're doing that because just you know, basic advertising your stuff is being exposed to an audience But there's all these again all these other second order consequences and benefits that occur so from book talking.
And again, this is something we do for our clients. We try to do it over several months, try to get 40, 50 different influencers to do something about their book. And then of course, partner promotions is something that, when we started back in November, [00:39:30] 2019, Peaceful Profits didn't have a lot of, connections.
This wasn't a really a huge business. And so we didn't have people we could reach out to and say, Hey, You've got an email list of 100, 000 people, and you've got an email list of 20, you've got an email list of 50, 000 people. Can we all combine forces and on launch week I'll send emails at the same time to promote the book that would have been helpful, that would have moved a lot of units But now we do now years later.
We have these relationships You may have relationships right now [00:40:00] And that's something that you should be tapping into and I can tell you for a fact that every single Non fiction New York Times bestseller that hits the New York Times bestseller list in its first couple of weeks has had massive partner promotions There is not a single New York Times bestseller that does not have partner promotions.
One time I got to work with a team that was working with Tony Robbins when he was launching one of his big financial books. And the [00:40:30] orchestration of putting together the size of partner promotion that they put together for, it's no wonder it was number one, New York Times bestseller. Like it was just, All the relationships that Tony Robbins had, they called in the favor.
Let's all promote this book all at the same time. And it was just, it was impressive. It was impressive and incredible and there were so many people involved. And that's what it takes to get these things going at that particular [00:41:00] level. If that's what you're trying to aim for. Again, my goal today is just to give you the real deal.
Some of this stuff you may be like, Oh I'm not Tony Robbins. Yeah, me neither. That's why we only did 11 million over the past five years from our books. And Tony probably does that by 12 o'clock noon. I don't know. It's a little bit of an exaggeration, but you don't need to be Tony Robbins.
I'm not Tony Robbins. You, I, I told you my numbers but you do need to have something. This idea of put up a [00:41:30] book and then just cross your fingers and hope it sells I don't really buy into that. I've been doing this long enough to know that's not a great way to do things. Again, oftentimes those stories that people tell about, yeah, I just put it up and I just duh duh.
And it turns out they already had a huge audience and, there's always some catch. So I found that rather than crossing my fingers, hoping I get lucky. And when I don't even know what the catch is from some of these other stories, I'm just going to go ahead and do the thing that moves the book units and sell the book.
And that's just my approach. [00:42:00] The other thing is an affiliate program. So one of the things that we're going to do moving forward, people have asked for our affiliate program for our One Book Millions Method for like years at this point. It's just been a matter of, I have three companies, I've got every single company has its own list of needs.
Get an affiliate program for our books was not. super high on our list because I was already selling a ton of copies. But moving forward, I think we're going to get someone on our team to be able to do that, to be able to run that and allow other people to get [00:42:30] compensated for promoting the book. That would be lovely.
I know that'd be, a really great thing. And I would love to see what kind of numbers we can pull in terms of just volume of book sales. And of course, The way that I understand it, at least in the way that we're planning on doing it is that we'll do that through the book funnel.
So again, it's not going to be like telling people to go promote our stuff with the Amazon affiliate link because they get such a tiny percentage or like saying, Hey, if you want to sell the One Book Millions Method or whatever our book is through our book [00:43:00] funnel, we'll just give you 100 percent of the proceeds.
Go sell it, go be an evangelist for our brand, that kind of a thing. Alright, and then the last one, and this is probably the most important, is that it has been five years since I wrote a book for Peaceful Profits. And that has been probably the biggest mistake and the thing that I would do much more mindfully and much more differently this time around.
Why have I only written one book? To be totally honest with you, we only needed one [00:43:30] book. We've built Peaceful Profits to a multi million dollar per year business off of the back of a single book. And it has cruised along for the past five or six years five, five years coming into six years just because of that one book.
And so that has been an excuse that I've told myself while simultaneously, aren't human beings so silly simultaneously. I'm seeing every [00:44:00] week in financial reports that the book is pushing a 4. 9x return, week after week, month after month, year after year, and it didn't, and it never really dawned on me, hey let's write another one and another one.
Part of that is because I own three companies. I don't have a ton of time to be producing a lot of stuff for Peaceful Profits and one of those other companies is already a company in which I write and launch books, fiction and nonfiction. So my advice to anyone listening to [00:44:30] me today, don't do what I did.
If you have books and they're working, get started on your next one. And your next one and your next one, our company could be so much further ahead and not that it really needs to be, but it could be if I had written a couple of books over the past five years, but at the same time, let this be an illustration of how powerful one [00:45:00] good book can be, especially if you have something else to sell after it.
And it will go for years, and the One Book Millions Method still sells today, and we will continue to sell it for years and years. That One Book Millions Method will put my kids through college, will help to establish our family's long term financial stability. Ability to retire in style, have monthly royalties coming in forever and ever, and et cetera, et cetera.
So I don't [00:45:30] want to downplay how amazing having this one book has been, but one thing that I will be doing different moving forward is definitely somehow etching out the time, right? So for those of you who are busy and you're authors as well, I totally get you, when you're already, if you're like me and you're already writing books, adding another one to your stack, It's tough to find the time.
Let me be the person to tell you it is worth it. Okay, so just to recap 11 million dollars 11 million three hundred six thousand two hundred thirty [00:46:00] six dollars ninety one cents over five years Took about 2. 2 million dollars to generate that we did 60 000 copies And we had an roi of 4. 9 x over the last five years.
It's really hard to argue with those numbers Especially because i'm not tony robbins I'm not Brendan Burchard. You probably don't really even know who I am necessarily. I'm not like a big famous online person. I'm just a regular guy and I use the book to [00:46:30] grow things that I was doing, services, coaching, et cetera.
And that's how effective it can be. And I'm personally looking forward to the next one. So hopefully this has been helpful for you and the transparency has been something that'll help you keep in mind what's possible with books. And just remember, don't get so hung up on how much money can I make in the first week of a book.
Because the real power of a book is this long tail stuff [00:47:00] and really start thinking one year, three year, five year, ten years out. That's when you really start understanding, oh, a good book that is written to be able to last for a long time will in fact last a long time and will continue to produce return for the entirety of that time, and that's really important.
If you'd like my team or myself to help you get a book launched, if you want us to sell your book [00:47:30] for you, please go to peacefulProfits. com forward slash call. We'd love to work with you. We have amazing clients. We do really fun things with our clients and our book clients. If you'd like to be one, please don't hesitate to reach out, and we will talk to you soon.
