One way to monetize a um curso em milagres is to develop different products that might be targeted to different publishing avenues, including traditional publishing, a distribution deal with a major publisher, and self-publishing and distribution. Additionally, some books lend themselves to licensed products and branding. A traditional publisher is great for retail book channels. But otherwise, you can market the book directly without having to split the royalties with the publisher or give them a cut of distribution. You can work with a fulfillment house to handle the details of orders. Also, you can base your print run on actual orders and go back for an additional print run, rather than planning for an initial print run of a large number of copies unless you make your sales target.
If you develop a niche version of the book, such as a how to guide or collection of chapters featuring profiles of different people in an industry, that can be most effectively marketed through direct selling and self-publishing, rather than through a deal with a traditional publisher. You will earn more and have more control, especially if you are already selling directly to this market. You don’t need to create an expensive PR campaign to reach this market, since such a campaign is much broader in scope than is necessary to reach a targeted audience.
You can reach this targeted market through obtaining lists of people in your field and doing direct sales through e-mails; participating in workshops and seminars for this market (and possibly getting paid for such participation); and doing an e-mail blast to the media interested in this subject, such as provided by PR Wire, Business Wire, and PR and Networking Connection, which can reach 20,000+ media contacts. Another approach might be working with a small PR firm, in one of the major cities or in your metro area. Retainers average about $2000-5000 a month.
You might also create a bulk sales plan, where you target particular companies or organizations in your field and get them to commit to a certain number of purchases for their employees or members. This approach is best for a self-published book, where you get the money for the sales and don’t have to share that with the publisher. If you have pre-sales, be sure to obtain formal commitments from those who have agreed to purchase the book and at what price.
Besides creating a more specialized niche book, you might create a version of your book with broad appeal, such as a popular business or self-help book, for the traditional publishing market. This way, rather than only having a specialized book for those in the field, this popular version would be targeted to a much broader market. In such a case, the publisher normally handles the publicity, and you coordinate your own PR efforts with the publisher. Commonly, publishers want and even expect you to do this extra PR.
The competitive and comparative titles are typically combined together in a market research section of the proposal. If you have sales figures or Amazon rankings for these books that would be helpful. Typically, it is best to focus on the most recent books organized in reverse chronological order, though include any books that are still selling well.
If you have any PR clips, you can include this. If you have testimonials from top people in your field, include them in your proposal, too, and in the promotional materials for the book. If you have published previous books, highlight their sales if they have done well, since traditional publishers are concerned with prior sales figures – and they will use that to help them estimate sales projections for your book. Then, include one to two sample chapters.
Commonly, the advances for most books are around $10,000-20,000, which includes the popular self-help and business genres. The royalties are around 10-15% on the retail for a hard cover, 8-10% of the net for a paperback, though you might receive more with a strong proposal. If the book does very well, you will get much more in the long run.
Generally, though the manuscript is first considered by an acquisitions editor, senior editor, or other type of acquiring editor, the most important review now is now by marketing. Essentially, the editors recommend what books they would like to edit. But the decision on what to publish rests with an editorial committee and marketing.
Even if you have outlined your anticipated sales based on your own marketing and PR effort in the proposal, the editors and marketing people will make their own analysis of how well the book will do. So, for example, even if you think the book will sell 1 to 2 million with all of your PR and direct sales efforts, the editors and marketing people will generally be much more conservative in their evaluation, and base their review on what other books in this genre more normally sell – more commonly about 5000-20,000 copies, or on what the author has previously sold. However, if the author doesn’t already have a very strong track record – say 50,000 or more in sales, that won’t count for much, and could even be a negative. Publishers may also want to test the waters with a limited marketing campaign and first run to see if this is going to be one of those break-out books, but the advance will be based on average sales of books in this category.
