The most gratifying thing about being a publisher is the opportunity to meet and work with authors covering every possible topic!  I learn so much from being around them!

For many, the urge to write and to share their knowledge, experiences and creativity, is the driving force in their lives. Authors are far more than people who can write. They are people who are passionate about their specialist subject and who love to share it with others. Enthusiasm is contagious, and it doesn’t matter what the subject is!

One of my great pleasures is to read a new manuscript and to allow myself to be sucked into a good story.  In the days when I used to drive long distances, I would make sure I had a talking book in the car to get me through the journey. Many are the times when I would arrive at my destination and wait in the drive for the story to end. Always a bittersweet moment!

Authors are special people who are prepared to sacrifice their time in order to share their story. And this can take forever!  Writing can take months or even years.  It cannot be rushed. It also takes patience and tolerance from those close to you. It is a very lonely profession.

It is easy to forget, when picking up a new book, the countless hours it took the author to create.  It will never be the case that the royalties an author receives will ever go far enough to properly reward them for the time and commitment they willingly put into their writing. So why bother being an author?

The answer is ‘The Power of the Niche’.   From the most popular best sellers down to the smallest book of poetry, every title is in a niche.  This means that, across the world, there are thousands of people who share an interest in that subject. With the power of search engines, it is very easy for even the most obscure book to be located in a fraction of a second.  This has become even easier with the Long Language Models now being used by A.I.   If your book can be instantly found around the world, then your potential for making money is greatly enhanced, provided you make sure that your book metadata is as extensive as you can make it.

I have heard so many horror stories about authors who purchase an ISBN for their book but fail to upload any metadata associated with it.  The result is that the book becomes completely invisible to everyone.

To turn your writing into a business, rather than an expensive hobby, you need to think of yourself, not just as an author but as a knowledge marketeer.   A book is simply one version of your words. There are other manifestation of your work, and they are growing all the time!

Audio books are probably the fastest growing way of reaching an audience. The downside of them was the cost of production. Hiring a voice artist, producer and engineer has put many authors off from producing a talking version of their book.  But this has now changed, thanks to A.I   There are now a wide range of synthetic voices available which are surprisingly good.  If you have an eBook on KPD, Amazon can now access this file and use it to power an A.I voice. What is more, they have made this a free service!   Interestingly, many people will purchase an audio book first, before buying the printed version.

Another way to increase your income as a writer is to create a special limited edition of your book. In this version you can include all sorts of cover embellishments to make the book into a collectors item. The trick is to only make this available on your own authors website, and not through the book trade. This way you do not have to give a discount to any third party retailers, and keep the additional income for yourself.

There are many other strategies for increasing your income as an author.  Many of them are covered in our monthly  AuthorCraft Masterclass on Zoom. The next one is this Monday 18^th of August at 7pm on zoom.

Chris Day – Author Mentor 07802 211587   chris@filamentpublishing.com