The craziest thing happened to me in 2007: I won
$50,000.
(In those days, that was real money!)
I'd published a book, The Church and the Market. It was a mostly academic book, published by a distinguished academic publisher. I wrote it more for the personal satisfaction and intellectual pleasure I derived from it than for the meager royalties it would earn me.
But then something unexpected happened: the book
was nominated for something called the Templeton Enterprise Award. The top three nominees were invited to an awards dinner in New York City, and all of us were guaranteed some kind of cash prize.
First prize was that $50K.
One of the three finalists was an amiable fellow named Olaf Gersemann, who was affiliated with the Cato Institute; at the very least, Cato published his book.
When we arrived at the dinner, there was a
copy of Gersemann's book at everyone's place setting. That surely meant he had won first prize, I thought. But I'd still get something, and I was glad to have been nominated.
It came time to reveal who had come in what place. Third place was announced, and it was neither Gersemann nor I.
"I've won second place," I thought to myself.
Second place was announced: Olaf
Gersemann.
I had won the whole ball of wax.
I was so certain I wasn't going to win that I had prepared no remarks for the acceptance speech I was expected to deliver. I'm better when I'm spontaneous, though, so it went fine.
One of the lessons here is that a book can do a lot more for you than just the royalties.
You may not be nominated for a $50K prize, but a book can do so much for you:
-- It can position
you as an expert, which in turn can get you more clients or sales (and it can justify higher fees). Clients assume (often correctly) that if you literally wrote the book on the subject, you must be among the best people to hire.
-- It can get you speaking invitations, where you can get more clients or sales.
-- It can build you an email list, which is your most lucrative online asset by far.
-- It dramatically shortens the time it takes people
to trust you. If someone reads 200 pages of your thinking, they feel like they know you. That level of familiarity normally takes months or years of interaction. People often say, "I feel like I already know you" after reading a book. That's an enormous business advantage.
-- It becomes your ultimate business card. When you meet someone important, you can say: 'I wrote a book on this; I'll send you a copy." Not to mention, a book on
someone’s desk is a continuing advertisement for you.
-- It creates a scalable introduction to your ideas. Entrepreneurs spend enormous time explaining the same ideas repeatedly. A book does that work for you. Instead of explaining your framework, philosophy, or process over and over again, you can simply say: "Read chapter 3 of the book, which explains how I approach this."
-- A book can become the backbone of multiple products. A single book can easily spin off:
courses
workshops
speaking presentations
consulting frameworks
mastermind programs
-- And as I showed in my example today, books can produce opportunities you could never
plan in advance. Not just prizes, obviously, but also media appearances, strategic partnerships, joint ventures, investors or collaborators, etc.
I'll show you how to do it.
Very brief discount in effect: