How Hiring the Right Partner for Your Book Can Save You a Fortune!

Just yesterday, we were on the phone with a potential client and we were discussing the value of an editor. This gentleman had just been burned by a writer who was challenging to manage, missing deadlines, making excuses and not turning in quality writing. And this man had already paid the writer $10,000!! So walking away from this negative experience was challenging for him…

Unfortunately, this is a story we hear nearly 50% of the time, and it’s one that breaks my heart every time. Wehate seeing someone invest their precious dollars only to be left with anger and sadness when they think of their book and what it could have meant in their life.

So today we want to discuss the value of thinking differently about your book and how that can translate to real dollars saved.

Let us be clear before we get too far here: our goal is not to convince you to work with RTC as we approach this conversation. Our goal is to help you make awesome decisions that help you get to the finish line with your book because we believe down to my toes that a great book can change your life and the lives of others!

So let’s discuss some simple math to begin our conversation.

First we have to understand how much your time is worth. When you’re the manager of your book process, you’re going to devote a tremendous amount of time to finding the right people, managing your team, ensuring that the essence of your project is being communicated effectively to all your vendors, and learning about writing, publishing, and marketing, not to mention executing on every aspect.

So what’s the value of your time?

Assuming a 40 hour workweek and you working 48 weeks a year:

If you’re currently making $25k a year you’re earning about $13/hour.

At $50k, you’re earning $26/hr.

At $100k you’re earning $52/hr.

At $250k you’re earning $130/hr.

Keep this all in mind as we discuss the time involved in doing all this yourself.

Here is what you have to look forward to!!

You’re going to invest about 25 hours finding the following people:

· Writer

· Editor

· Proofreader

· Cover Designer

· Formatter

A couple of them won’t work out, so you’ll need to devote about 10 hours to replacing those.

You’re going to spend around 30 hours investigating and learning about self-publishing and all the options for printing and distributing your book:

· Printing options

· Printer specifications

· eBook specifications for Kindle

· eBook specifications for Nook

· eBook specifications for the iBookstore

· Setting up through Amazon as an author or a vendor

· Where to print for bulk quantity (big $ savings)

· How to drop ship to your book buyers

· How to price for quantity sales

· Whether or not to offer returns of your books

Or you’re going to query agents and approach traditional publishers, in which case you’ll spend upwards of 200 hours doing the following:

· Researching how to write an awesome query

· Researching which agents to approach

· Crafting your 80 to 90 page book proposal

· Submitting to between 30 and 100 agents

· Following up with your submissions

Simultaneously, you’ll need to be learning about all the marketing needed to promote your book and brand. A fairly basic education here will take you about 50 hours.

Social Media:

· Facebook

· Twitter

· LinkedIn

· Pinterest

· Google+

Your book website:

· Who to hire to design

· Who to hire to code

· What pages to include

· How to make an amazing first impression with your site

· How to position the calls to action

· How to capture emails of your visitors

· How to drive traffic to your website

Your social media strategy will then require a minimum of 5 hours a week over the course of a year to have an impact. That’s another 260 hours.

You’re going to need to invest at least 100 hours into creating additional content beyond the book to drive people to your brand:

· Articles

· Tweets

· Podcasts

· Videos

And don’t forget that you’ll be doing your own PR (25 — 100 hours):

· Press release writing

· Press release distribution

· Researching outlets

· Submitting queries

· Following up on leads

And let’s not forget, that you have not written your book yet!

When we use our collaborative approach to create a book we take between 400 and 800 hours to write a book.

When writers use our editorial guidance service, we average 150 to 250 hours, not including the client’s investment of time which equals ours (150 to 250 hours).

As of right now, on the low end, you’re looking at an investment of 800 hours of your time. On the higher end, you could be looking at 1,545 hours.

So let’s go back to your hourly value.

· If you earn $25k a year, you’re trading $10,400 to $20,085 of your time for your book and very basic marketing.

· If you earn $50k a year, you’re trading $20,800 to $40,170 of your time for your book and very basic marketing.

· If you earn $100k a year, you’re trading $41,600 to $80,340 of your time for your book and very basic marketing.

· At $250k a year, you’re trading $104,000 to $200,850 of your time for your book and very basic marketing.

We beieve that you should be spending your time doing what is most within your zone of genius. Spend that time growing your business and spending time with your family. Why spend it trying to be a professional writer and publisher when you can hire the right experts to help you on your journey (and do it with brilliance!)?

You’re reading this email because you want to shift into the role of Thought Leader. Thought Leaders surround themselves with the right people and use their own time to do what they were born to do.

So go make good choices for the long-term growth of your brand. And unlike this gentleman who called me yesterday, go about it right the first time so you don’t waste your precious dollars on mistakes you could easily avoid by finding the right partners to begin with.

As always, if you have questions about writing or publishing, let us know. We are happy to offer whatever help we can. Contact Corey at corey@roundtablecompanies.com.