I have Just come back from day one at the Darren Stephens Seminar entitled “How to Write a Best Seller”. Darren has published over 21 books and each one of them has become a best seller. The book that he has become most famous for, was one he published with his business partner, Dr John Gray. “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” was first published in May 1992 and has been on the best sellers list for years. It has gone on to generate millions of dollars not just from book sales but more importantly from the follow up books, the board game, merchandising and licensing fees. In all that book ended up being a substantial business all of itself. This seminar was part of the “Our Internet Secrets” that is run by Andrew and Daryl Grant”.

Darren started the seminar by talking about the attributes of a good entrepreneur.

• Being Creative can make you lots of money – You should take time out just to think
• Adopt quickly to changes
• You should look at failure as just a way to grow, learn and ultimately succeed
• Constantly find ways to leverage yourself and your business
• By networking with others you will sell more and make more money
• Do something that you love doing (but make sure that there is a market first)
• Money is easy to make – All success starts in the mind

As a author you gain a number of benefits. First and foremost it gives you an enormous amount of credibility. The media will listen to you and you will benefit from a fair amount of free PR. Not only that but opportunities will present themselves to you just because of your increased profile. These will include joint venture deals where you may not even have to put any money down.

If you sell things having a book reduces the risk in the buyer’s mind and hence makes the sale easier. It also unlocks doors and gives you access to people who up until then were completely blocked to you.

Positioning Yourself as an Expert

If you are in the business of where you like to be seen as an expert then having a book is a necessity not an option. It commands a degree of respect. A book is a strategic business card. It portrays your brand in a constant form. It allows you to distinguish yourself in the marketplace and gives you much more credibility.

A book enables you to become a trusted advisor to cut through the overwhelming information available on the internet. With it you can educate your marketplace and point out to your clients the possibilities available to them. Through it you can offer other services including courses, audio and video products just to name a few. Here are a few success characteristics

• Have a burning desire
• Do it from a point of Value and Contribution for the Marketplace
• Have self belief and be confident in the outcome
• Make it your mission

Critical Drivers

• Find a Topic that you like that the market is interested in.
• Be the expert or become one
• Have a tight niche which is unique in the marketplace.
• Know the demographics of your marketplace

Planning with the End in Mind

Through out the day, both Darren Stephens and Andrew and Daryl Grant emphasized the importance of planning in the process. The main point they were at pains to make, was that the book when written was unlikely to make you money just by itself. The book was a stating point that made everything else possible.

To advantage then you have to have in place the “back end”. You need to think through the whole process and work at least two moves ahead. Start out by documenting (yes actually writing it down) your situation as you see it now. Then write down your future as you see it being as specific as you can and brainstorming to ensure your maximum potential.

A good tip that Andrew Grant pointed out was to write your goals in the past tense as if they had already happened. This will activate your “reticular activating system” in your brain and it will help you achieve those goals.

Once you have mapped your current situation and your goals then it is just a case of defining the things in your life that you don’t want to sacrifice and then planning each step to ensure that you achieve your outcome.

A Case Study – Creating a Compilation Book

A compilation book is one where you have a number of authors who each contribute a chapter each. Here are some of the advantages:

• Easy and quick to create
• A theme is defined for the book
• Each author writes their own chapter or they are each interviewed to and the results are then transcribed and edited to form each chapter.
• If you use the interview technique then you also have a an audio and possibly a video product that you can then also sell.
• Each author leverages the credibility of the other authors
• If you have 14 authors then by definition you also have 14 distributors
• You can offer a bonus via a link to a website which enables you to build a list buy Black Vigour online of readers
• It builds your profile in the niche
• It also connects you t key people in the industry

An analysis of the moneys

When you invite a person to become an author in your book you ask also ask them to buy a 1000 books each (at wholesale price) as part of the deal. If applicable you can also add a resource directory to the book and ask the companies listed as resources to each buy 500 books again at wholesale price. So here are the numbers:

• 14 contributors / authors @ $9 per book x 1000 books = $126,000
• 15 Resource Entries @ $9 per book x 500 books = $67,500
• This gives us a total revenue of $193,500
• The printing costs for 21,500 books is $99,000
• Giving us a profit of $94,500 before we even start.

Now because we have presold 21,500 books we instantly are a best seller and that too can be printed on the book. If you use your imagination you can also package the book with other items. e.g. a gardening book in a box with some hardware items can be sold in a hardware store as a gift pack.

That was it for day one. I think the main message was that a book can be a relatively simple thing to write as long as you follow a plan step by step, but it is not an end in itself, rather it is a passport to other things more profitable.

Enjoy the journey.

Mark