Get Paid To Write – Chandler Bolt
SUMMARY
In this episode with Chandler Bolt, host of the Self-Publishing School podcast and author of six bestselling books, he’s going to give us valuable tips on how to leverage your book for passive income.
We often say “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” but the truth is we do. Everyone does it when buying books. He also emphasizes investing in a good cover because it helps convince people to consider your book in their choices.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
A book is like having one of the world’s best calling cards.
There are shifts in the publishing industry that make publishing easier and more profitable.
You no longer need a publisher to publish a book.
Before, when you publish a book, you make pennies on the dollar. Now, you can make good passive income.
You can utilize Amazon to sell books online to generate passive income.
Launching a book can help you launch your business.
Have a ‘launch team’ that will support your book by leaving a review when it comes out and sharing it with their friends.
81% of people want to write a book but only less than 1% of individuals.
Another launch strategy is a “stealth launch” where you can either launch for a particular period for free or launch for $0.99.
Draw all the way down to the smallest sub-categories as far as you can go.
Cross categorize and find two different categories; one that’s more competitive but has more visibility and one that’s easier to rank.
The keywords tool only gives you an estimation of what’s being searched.
Choose things that people are searching around your topic.
People do judge a book by its cover when buying.
When you’re pricing Kindle books from $2.99 – $9.99, you’re going to get 35% royalty and 70% if you do it from $0.99 – $2.99.
For hard copy books, the price range is from $12.99 – $18.99.
TRANSCRIPTION: GET PAID TO WRITE – CHANDLER BOLT
Luis Congdon
Hey Thriving Launchers, do you want to learn how to make some extra money with your books, leverage it for passive income, so your book is making money for you while you sleep or while you play in the sun?
We’re going to learn all of that and how to get paid to write on today’s episode with Chandler Bolt.
Kamala Chambers
Hey, we are here with Chandler Bolt. He is the host of the Self-Publishing School podcast and the author of six best-selling books. We’re thrilled to have him here today to talk about how you can get paid to write.
Luis Congdon
All right, Thriving Launchers, all of us should have a book written, and ideally, we should know how to utilize the book not so that we have a book written but so the book does something for us.
To help us get paid to write, we’ve brought on Chandler Bolt.
Without further ado, Chandler, are you ready to launch?
Chandler Bolt
Let’s do it!
Luis Congdon
All right, Chandler.
Everybody should have a book. A book is like having one of the world’s best calling cards.
One of the biggest things I see people do is they don’t know how to utilize a book, so it creates income for them and how to get paid to write and so it allows them to do stuff.
I’m curious from you. What’s one of the first things people should think about if they want to get paid to write a book?
Chandler Bolt
A lot of people think books don’t make money. That could not be further from the truth.
There’s a thriving ecosystem inside Amazon.
Shifts That Make It Easy To Publish And Get Paid To Write A Book
Chandler Bolt
The news just came out recently. Amazon is buying the Whole Foods for seven billion dollars. It’s a pretty thriving ecosystem.
Now, at the same time, there are radical shifts in the publishing industry that make it to where it’s never been easier to publish a book, and it’s never been more profitable because the middleman has almost been entirely cut out. You no longer need a publisher to publish a book.
Utilizing Amazon To Get Paid To Write
Chandler Bolt
The first thing is don’t go through a publisher. That seems elementary probably, but it’s essential.
Then, just know that you’re utilizing an ecosystem that is Amazon, and that is the other places that you can sell books online, and that is a great tool for generating passive income.
When a lot of people they think about passive income, they probably think of Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad. In that book, he says, “Hey, passive income is real estate.” That’s the only path. I remember reading that book, and I’m like, “Well, shoot! I don’t have a bunch of money to throw into real estate for big down payments. I guess I’ll never get passive income.”
Get Paid To Write And Have Passive Income
Chandler Bolt
Then, I also remember the first time I launch a book, it made $400 in the single day while I was snowboarding. Then, it made close to $7,000 in the first month, which I thought was pretty cool and then, that book continues to bring in thousands of dollars month after month, and passive income.
Launch A Business And Get Paid To Write
Chandler Bolt
But then also for me, it helped me started my business, which I think it would apply to your crowd. That was a jumping off point for me for more leads and more business.
Kamala Chambers
Let’s talk about some of those tools and strategies of how to get paid to write and to get sales on your book, so you are bringing in the passive income with it.
Chandler Bolt
Yes.
Get Paid To Write – Have A Launch Team
Chandler Bolt
Regarding the strategy perspective, my favorite strategy that we use to build sales and to build momentum beginning at the start is this concept called Launch Team.
Now, a launch team is a group of people. This could be family, friends, colleagues, or customers. Aside from me, it was just family and friends, and Facebook friends when I did my first book and I had no audience.
But it’s people who agreed to check out your book at a time and leave a review when the book comes out and support the book like share it with their friends and that sort of thing.
What we found is this is powerful tool to build support for your book.
Areas Inside Amazon You Can Optimize To Get Paid To Write
Chandler Bolt
There are three main areas inside Amazon that you can optimize not only for initial sales but ongoing sales.
- Reviews.
- Categories and the categories that you choose inside the Amazon ecosystem. That’s going to have a significant effect on the visibility of your book.
- Keywords that you target with your book.
It’s similar to Google in the sense that it is a search engine but I like to say that Google is a search engine of browsers, and Amazon is a search engine of buyers.
When people are on Amazon, they’re there for one reason and one reason only, and that’s to buy stuff. They had their credit card out. It’s in the system, which is very different from what you find in Google.
Focus On The Three Areas To Get Paid To Write
Chandler Bolt
Those are the three areas I recommend focusing so you can get paid to write.
- Reviews.
- Picking good categories.
- Utilizing keywords where you can rank highly in.
To amplify all those things, I’ll just circle back to the ‘launch team’ concept.
Get Paid To Write By Providing People The Benefits Of Being In The Launch Team
Chandler Bolt
Now, maybe people are asking “Why would people join my launch team?” There are a couple of the main benefits to them.
- They get a free digital copy of the book at that time.
- Their names will be written in the book.
I like to put people’s name in the book. I’ll give a shout out to my launch team, member by member. Like, just list all their names in the actual book and the digital copy, and people seem to like that.
There’s a New York Times study that says 81% of people want to write a book, but we know just from the stats that less than 1% of people do. A lot of people want to write a book, but they don’t have the courage to do so.
Get Paid To Write – Let People Live Vicariously Through You
Chandler Bolt
Now, by joining your launch team, they can live vicariously through you, and help support your book launch.
Kamala Chambers
That’s great stuff.
I love that you’re focusing on the reviews too, and you want those to be verified reviews, right? So you get people buying the book and leaving a review after they’ve purchased.
Chandler Bolt
Yeah, it’s a great and brilliant question.
Pretty obviously, you know what you’re talking about on the Amazon type of things because not everybody would know to ask that question.
Get Paid To Write – Take Any Reviews
Chandler Bolt
Yes, you would prefer that they are verified reviews. Amazon’s moving in that direction. Frankly, I’ll take any review verified or unverified.
One thing that can help is there are a couple of different launch strategies like sometimes, people would launch for a short period or do what we call a ‘stealth launch’ in Self-Publishing School.
Get Paid To Write By Doing Stealth Launch Strategy
Chandler Bolt
They can either launch for a particular period of a couple of days for free or launch for $0.99. That’s a perfect time where even though you’re launch seems gotten the book for free like the digital PDF copy; they can either re-download it or officially download it through Kindle or the Amazon store before leaving their review or whether it’s free or 0.99$ or whatever that little introductory price is.
Kamala Chambers
That’s fantastic.
I’d love to hear some tips on categories, and some categories are flooded, what do you recommend for choosing a category?
Choosing Categories With More Visibility To Get Paid To Write
Chandler Bolt
Amazon gives you two categories, and I recommend picking one with more visibility, and one that’s easier to rank in so you got both sides of the equation covered. I also recommend cross-categorizing.
What you’ll find when you go on Amazon is there are these parent categories. Maybe it’s self-help or business investing. There are other ones like education, fiction, and a bunch of different things.
But, these are big what I call ‘parent categories,’ and then you have the subcategories to those. You can draw all the way down to the smallest sub-categories as far as you can go.
Rank For Each Category To Get Paid To Write
Chandler Bolt
Then, if you rank sufficiently, you’ll rank not only for that category but the next one and the next one, and you go up all the up in the food chain depending on how high up in the category you get, which obviously depends on how many books you sell and how successful your launch is.
What I recommend:
- Cross categorizing
- Finding those two different categories.
Like one that’s might be more competitive but has more visibility, and then one that’s easier to rank because that you want to do is stay in the top three for at least one of your categories because there’s a stat. It’s like the major three books and the category sell. It’s like 50% – 60% of the books in that category, the next 4 to 20 or 4 to 10 like the first page is another 30% – 405, and the rest, just five for the scraps.
Get Paid To Write By Staying In The Top Three
Chandler Bolt
It’s important that you stay up in that top three. That’s where the visibility is, and that’s where the book purchases go.
Kamala Chambers
Let’s talk about different tools, tricks, tips on keywords that will help you get paid to write.
I know it’s a big topic but what do you recommend for guaranteeing you’re choosing some good keywords?
Chandler Bolt
Totally.
We’ve got a blog post on the Self-Publishing School blog that goes a little more in depth with this because this is pretty technical. It’s hard to explain this over a podcast, but there are a couple of things I will say.
Get Paid To Write By Searching Keywords In Amazon
Chandler Bolt
Amazon gives you seven keywords, and there are a couple of ways you can do this. Sometimes, I’ll go after one or two keywords pretty heavily.
We use all these keywords tools, and they’ll find out what’s being searched, which is just someone’s best estimation of what’s being searched. Apparently, Amazon doesn’t give over that data in the same way Google does and the Google search engine.
You can get these estimations but what people don’t do is search those keywords in Amazon, which you’ll be able to quickly see the top three books or the top five books, how many reviews they have, their sales ranking and things like that. It’s because what I want to know is how likely am I to rank for these terms?
Get Paid To Write – Go For Less Competitive Keywords
Chandler Bolt
If it’s pretty competitive, then there’s a bunch of books fighting for those top spots. I would rather go for a less competitive keyword that doesn’t have as many searches, but I can consistently rank for.
That would be one of my main tips.
Chandler Bolt
If it’s pretty competitive, then there’s a bunch of books fighting for those top spots. I would rather go for a less competitive keyword that doesn’t have as many searches, but I can consistently rank for.
That would be one of my main tips.
Get Paid To Write By Putting Keywords On The Description
Chandler Bolt
For example, Book Launch is the name of one of my books, and then I keyword load the description. Not in a way that it’s too much because then it doesn’t resonate with people, but it’s a good subtitle that also has good keywords in it.
I gave the shotgun answer all over the map to your question, but hopefully, that was helpful.
Kamala Chambers
Oh, it’s awesome.
One last question I have here is about reviving a book that’s been on Amazon awhile. If someone already has a book and they’re not going into the launch, what would you recommend to bring it back or boost the sales on it other than the things you’ve already recommended?
Chandler Bolt
Yeah, there are a couple of stuff that you can do.
Get Paid To Write By Getting A New Cover
Chandler Bolt
Number one, and this is most frequent is getting a new cover.
Most people will spend all this time running a great book, and they’ll spend five minutes and $5 on the cover.
Get Paid To Write – Make Your Book Jump Off The Page
Chandler Bolt
It’s just like this visual response of whether the book looks legit or does it not. I like to say that your book cover is like a headline.
People are scrolling through Amazon, and your book cover needs to pop off the page to them. It needs to jump. You can look at any of my books, and you’ll notice they pop off the page.
One of my litmus tests is you need to be able to stand back five to ten feet from the computer and see the title of the book. The title is very distinguished, and it’s in the upper third. There may or may not need to be an image or an icon on the book. There’s a good subtitle, and the name of the person is big. But it’s like a clean cover.
Book Launch; it’s an orange-yellow. It just jumps off the page.
Get Paid To Write – Invest Money In A Good Cover
Chandler Bolt
It needs to be visible, and it also needs to be a good cover. Invest money in a good cover.
Luis Congdon
That’s true.
As much as we say “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” we do.
Chandler Bolt
They do! Yeah, everyone does. You do it, I do it, and certainly, when people are buying books, they do it.
Draw People In Through Your Headlines To Get Paid To Write
Chandler Bolt
The Amazon ecosystem is like going to the supermarket, and you’re standing in line. Right now, the longer you stand in line, the higher the likelihood that you’re going to reach for that coke, you’re going to reach for that snickers, that gum, that People magazine, that Gossip magazine or whatever.
It’s pretty similar in the Amazon ecosystem. Pretend that People Magazine, those are some of the highest paid copywriters in the world. Their headlines are insane. They just draw you in. The curiosity driven hooks and those headlines are good. I’m trying to have a similar effect with my book cover, and with the title and subtitle of my book.
Compel People To Buy Once They’re On The Book Page To Get Paid To Write
Chandler Bolt
You job once you get them on the book page is to compel them with a good book description, good book reviews, title, and subtitle. All those things are in line because just like if you’re standing in line at the grocery store, the longer you stay on something, the more committed.
If you’re on an Amazon book page for five to ten minutes, you’re like “Okay, I’ve got to buy it now so that I didn’t waste my last five to ten minutes. You’re in deep.
That’s a very long-winded answer to say that the cover matters, and that’s one of the biggest things I do.
Get Paid To Write – Act It’s A New Launch
Chandler Bolt
Then, I act like it’s a new launch. I just do a lot of the similar things that I would do to launch a book, but just to re-launch it. I might do a 0.99 promo in the beginning. I’ll do a big push for reviews. If I’ve never done a launch team, then I’ll probably do that. There are a lot of the similar principles that apply.
Luis Congdon
That’s fantastic.
Last question here as we close out is about pricing. What should we price our books at? There’s a lot of debate on this. I’m sure you’re one of the best guys to ask.
Chandler Bolt
This is kind of all over the map, and it’s the worst answer to this question that you probably were imagining, which is it depends but I’ll give you something better than that.
Get Paid To Write By Knowing How The Pricing Works
Chandler Bolt
What I like to say is it depends on the market. I like to check the market and say “What are the prices that the market will bear?” and “How can I carve my niche into that market?”
If everyone is selling for $2.99 in that market, I will sometimes go up market. I’ll go $3.99 or $4.99 with the Kindle book so that I can differentiate myself.
If you’re writing a medical journal or a medical book or something where the books are like $10 – $20 and stuff like that, I’ll ebb and flow based on the market that I’m targeting.
Get Paid To Write – Pricing Kindle Books
Chandler Bolt
As a general rule of thumb, when you’re doing Kindle books, $2.99 to $9.99, that’s where you’re going to get a 70% royalty on your book.
So you make 70% of the money if you do it $0.99 to $2.99 or $9.99 and above, you’re going to make a 35% royalty. You want to be in the sweet spot there.
Get Paid To Write – Pricing Hard Copy Books
Chandler Bolt
And then, for hard copies or paperback books, I like to say $12.99 up to $18.99. That’s a good range for your general like self-help, non-fiction book, which is a lot of what I’m dealing with. That’s a good general range.
You go down to the lower edge if you’d like. You’re just going to cut some of your margins out. You could probably get as low as $11.99, maybe $10.99 for a super short book, but that’s pretty cheap. Then, if you go up on the higher edge of that, unless you’re a bigger time author, you ask people to shell out some serious cash for your book or for what they’re used to paying for.
And then, for hard copies or paperback books, I like to say $12.99 up to $18.99. That’s a good range for your general like self-help, non-fiction book, which is a lot of what I’m dealing with. That’s a good general range.
You go down to the lower edge if you’d like. You’re just going to cut some of your margins out. You could probably get as low as $11.99, maybe $10.99 for a super short book, but that’s pretty cheap. Then, if you go up on the higher edge of that, unless you’re a bigger time author, you ask people to shell out some serious cash for your book or for what they’re used to paying for.
Get Paid To Write – Pricing Audio Books
Chandler Bolt
And then, audio books, a lot of times when you submit through ACX or through Audible, a lot of times, they’ll price it for you based on the link and stuff like that.
Luis Congdon
Love it. Love it, Chandler. I love that you gave us the expected answer like, “Be confident. Just get out there and do it.” But you delivered and gave us some specifics too on how to get paid to write.
Thriving Launchers, this isn’t like the super easy thing to explain over a podcast entirely. I get that Chandler was trying to deliver and share with us.
Smart Way To Get Paid To Write
Luis Congdon
If there’s one takeaway I’ve gotten from today’s episode is that if I’m going to write a book, and I want to do it successfully, it’s smart to have a strategy. It’s smart to have someone helping us, and have somebody like Chandler on our side.
That’s why we’ve had him here today on Thriving Launch, and keep thriving you all.
