How To Be An Authorpreneur

How To Be An Authorpreneur

So you?ve written a book. You?re now looking for the best way to publish and promote it. Welcome to the world of authorpreneurship. Whether your book is about your experience in business or articulating strategies for playing the stock market, chances are there is a market for it. Your challenge is to get it to that market, and to sell, sell, sell.

The world of publishing has changed significantly over the past fifteen years. If you are thinking that contracting an agent will get your work published by houses seen as respectable and will therefore lead to higher sales, you?re laboring under a misapprehension. The size and reach of online publishing has dulled the advantages that traditional publishing houses once had.

Online publishers can now reach more people in more countries at a much faster rate than the old firms. And most of them don?t require that work be submitted by an agent. In fact, most online publishers insist on dealing directly with authors and tend to give them a higher percentage of the royalties.

This is the good news.

The more challenging part of this new reality is that you will be expected to do more to promote and market both your book and yourself as an author. The Economist has an excellent article on this particular feature of authorpreneurship. As the article rightly states:

Standing out as a book writer today requires more than a bright idea and limpid prose. Authors need to become businesspeople as well, thinking strategically about their brand, and marketing themselves and their products. There is more competition for readers? and reviewers? attention, and fewer bookshops to provide a showcase for new titles.

You must think like an entrepreneur if you are to make money from your book. Rather than dreaming of winning prizes and critical acclaim you should focus on more immediate and achievable aims. One of the best ways of bringing wider public attention to your work is to get on a bestseller list. The New York Times has expanded its bestseller lists to twelve different categories and twenty books, which makes it easier for authors from a variety of genres to make one of them. There is also Amazon. Getting on one of its bestseller lists is particularly good if you?ve published an e-book.

The Economist article has other helpful advice for those looking to do well as authors. There is a lot of money to be made from selling your ideas. Writing a book is one of the best ways to do it. Becoming an authorpreneur is the key to unlocking success in this field.