ALLi Exclusive: Going Beyond the Book
How Indie Authors at Every Stage Can Build a Thriving Author Business
Independent publishing offers authors unparalleled freedom, not just to publish books but to build thriving, diverse creative businesses. From offering courses and landing speaking engagements to pursuing opportunities for rights licensing, today’s indie author businesses can go far beyond the book. Here’s how authors at different stages can think bigger about their business.
For Beginning Authors: Laying the Foundation
Many beginning authors naturally focus their energy on completing and launching their first book. It feels like crossing a finish line, but in reality, it’s more like a starting line—the first step in all the opportunities indie authorship offers.
Publishing a book proves you can move a creative project from idea to completion. And by building relationships with readers, you also build a foundation for relationships with potential business partners: individuals and organizations you can partner with for mutual benefit.
Now is the time to investigate those opportunities and decide which are most aligned with your creative and business goals. A book might provide opportunities for speaking, teaching, content licensing, and collaborations, but pursuing all of these right from the start is a recipe for overwhelm. Dip your toe into each area. Give a talk at a local library to explore the possibility of building out a speaking career. Coauthor a short article for your writers’ group’s newsletter to explore the possibilities of collaboration.
Use these experiments to better understand which opportunities you find most intriguing and enjoyable.
“Most beginning authors get too wrapped up in checking off a list of tasks they ‘have’ to do and not finding things they actually like to do,” says ALLi Advisor Russell Nohelty. “Every quarter, try one new thing that sounds interesting, and hope that every year one of your four tests will bear fruit. If you can just build up one killer skill a year that reliably brings in revenue, that's really all you need to get started, and adding one more every year will make you a dynamo in half a decade.”
Become an expert in those areas that your investigations suggest are the best fit for you. Intrigued by the idea of selling merchandise with a tie-in to your book? Dive deep into the logistical considerations, such as researching the pros and cons of create-on-demand production versus stocking supplies produced by a local vendor. Want to double down on offering classes? Explore options such as using a third-party course hosting platform, building on your own website, or focusing exclusively on in-person offerings.
Beginning authors who shift their mindset from “I’m publishing a book” to “I’m building an author business” make smarter long-term decisions.
For Emerging Authors: Diversifying Income Streams
As your author portfolio expands, it’s time to act on the investigations you did as a beginning author and move beyond the book to add additional contributors to your indie publisher income. Lean into the idea that the work stemming from your book is intellectual property, and understand how to make the most of it.
ALLi Advisor Joanna Penn has long been a proponent of the value of multiple streams of income. “As a nonfiction author, I turned my books into online courses and also monetized my show, The Creative Penn Podcast, with corporate sponsors, all of whom are companies I work with and personally recommend,” she says. “I also make affiliate income from recommending tools and services. I have a Patreon subscription, a lively community of over one thousand authors, where I provide a monthly audio Q&A, as well as live Office Hours, videos, and tutorials on how I continue to adapt my craft and my author business in the ever-changing publishing ecosystem.”
Building a range of income sources not only provides security; it also opens doors to new ways to connect with your audience and expand your brand.
For Experienced Authors: Leveraging Rights and Scaling Up
Authors who have an established body of work and have already pursued and perfected book-adjacent business opportunities through a solo entrepreneur model can expand their reach by engaging with organizations on a larger scale.
Licensing translation, audiobook, film, TV, and merchandise rights can multiply your income without multiplying your workload. Joint ventures with other authors, publishers, or businesses can open new avenues; for example, you may choose to partner with a game developer to turn your stories into interactive apps or work with a course provider to expand into education markets. Focusing on making your adjacent content evergreen will lower the cost of maintaining that content and offer higher profitability.
You might also consider pursuits that require more upfront financial outlay, such as hosting a writers’ retreat—an idea that’s appealing to ALLi Advisor Anna Featherstone.
“‘Beyond the book’ is all about expanding on and bringing your book and the lessons in it to life, and a retreat might make the perfect vehicle,” Featherstone says. “Start small by attending a few yourself to see how they run, then pitch yourself as an expert guest, or plan and host an event yourself. Retreats can be held around any theme or subject matter imaginable and can run for a single morning or multiple days. Real-life connections made through attending and hosting real-life events can pay off in so many ways, from making rich friendships through to book sales, consulting gigs through to more fun and effective collaborations.”
Establishing and nurturing relationships with your fans and your colleagues ensures long-term sustainability and growth.
For All Authors
As appealing as all these options may sound, don’t try to do them all at once. Prioritize your efforts to go beyond the book by careful assessment of what offerings will most appeal to your existing fan base or to new bases you might want to reach. And don’t allow your enthusiasm for these adjacent offerings to lead to neglect of your core offering: your books. As ALLi Ambassador and Editor-in-Chief Roz Morris says of moving beyond the book, “These are all such exciting prospects. However, I have to think about my own resources. Do I have time to do a new thing well? I am already writing a free newsletter, Substack, and blog, which my readers appreciate—and these take time. I’m prepared to put that time in because I want them to bring people to my books, but nothing can be rushed—even a blog post. I’m also running a busy editing and writing business, and there’s no slack there, either. So at the moment, I’m not jumping into another new obligation, but of course, I’m eagerly watching in case something might be useful in future.”
Looking for more information on how to move beyond the book? Check out these resources from ALLi.
- ALLi’s blog post, “Maximizing Your Earnings: Speaking as an Income Stream for Authors,” shares how authors can present as subject matter experts on topics they research for their books, providing a new income stream and a chance to build their brand: https://selfpublishingadvice.org/speaking-as-an-income-stream.
- Read how ALLi Content and Communications Strategist and author Sacha Black expanded her sales opportunities by launching her own fulfillment center for printing and distributing her books: https://selfpublishingadvice.org/fulfillment-center.
- ALLi’s blog post “When Platforms Collapse: Authors Move to Diversify” explores how authors are expanding their reach into a broader variety of platforms for greater security and flexibility within their business: https://selfpublishingadvice.org/diversify.
- ALLi’s guidebook How Authors Sell Publishing Rights provides information on working with publishers and producers to distribute your intellectual property and is available on the ALLi Bookshop: https://selfpublishingadvice.org/rightsbook.
- The Creative Self-Publishing podcast stream, hosted by Penn and by ALLi Director Orna Ross, offers a range of advice, support, and guidance for every stage of an independent publishing business. Listen at https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/creative.
Matty Dalrymple, Campaigns Manager, Alliance of Independent Authors
