The Death of Book Publishing, Part II

I recently posted about why I’m leaning toward abandoning traditional book publishers, despite my status as a best-selling author. The reason is simple: The publishing world has changed to the point where publishers seek out large list owners to publish, and rely on them 100% to promote the book.

Update: I’ve finally made the decision to walk away from the publishing world, despite strong interest from a major publisher (larger than my previous publisher, Wiley), to publish my next book concept.

To shed some light on this decision, and why traditional book publishers are becoming irrelevant and obsolete, I’ll fill you in on a conversation I had with a friend a few days ago.

This friend is another well-known internet marketer and has a large email list. He was in talks with a major New York publisher to do a book deal. That is, until the conversation took a bad turn. Here’s what the editor he’d been working with had to say:

You will need to guarantee that you will promote the book to your list hard. On launch day, you will need to have at least 30 of your largest JV partners promoting the book, and they’ll all need to run contests and give out bonuses to get people to buy. You’ll need to guarantee a #1 best-seller day at Amazon. Put all of that into writing, and then I’ll take the book proposal to my board for approval.

In response to that very brazen and totally unreasonable set of demands, my friend said this to the publisher:

“If you require me to do all that, what the hell do I need YOU for?”

And that’s exactly why publishers will continue to lose large list owners as authors, and will lose more and more money as their antiquated business model continues to lose steam.

Here’s the singular concept that publishers do not understand:

To a successful marketer like myself who already has a large list, a published book is just another marketing tool to get people to my website and get them to opt-in. That’s it. Nothing more.

So, with that in mind, the goal of a book is to get it into as many hands as possible. Not only will that maximize the number of people who eventually land on one of my sites as a result of the book, but the more people who have it, the more people will talk about it and the sooner and more powerfully it will go viral.

With that end in mind, does it really make sense to sell a book with a $20 cover price? Wouldn’t it do it’s job as a viral marketing tool much more effectively if it were even cheaper… or even free?

Yes, it would. And that’s why I’ve made the decision to make my next book – my biggest, most comprehensive, and dare I say it, my best book – a free e-book that I will give away 100% free. With an option for people to buy a traditional hardcopy version at cost, say around $5.

The truth of the matter is that we authors really don’t make any money on our books. We make the big money selling products and courses online, and doing seminars and paid speaking. And that’s exactly why it no longer makes sense to work with publishers who do zero promotion (except for celebrity authors) and expect us to do 100% of the marketing.

To illustrate this point, let me tell you a true story: A few years ago, someone emailed me a copy of an e-book he’d bought for $30. (Yes, I know, I accepted and read a pirated e-book. My bad on that one.) This is an e-book that I would’ve never purchased on my own for $30. It just didn’t get my attention.

However, as a result of my friend emailing it to me for free, I read it, and as a result I purchased an advanced $300 course from the author, and several months after that I attended one of his seminars at a cost of $500.

So, as a result of getting the e-book for free, instead of paying $30 for it, this author eventually made $800 from me. If he would drop the $30 price tag on the e-book and make it a free download, he’d probably become a multi-millionaire rather quickly.

If I’m going to do all of the hard work in promoting my book, not only am I going to skip the publishers and deny them the lion’s share of the profits, along with an unreasonable amount of control over my book’s content, but I’m going to give the world access to my books absolutely free from now on. That’s what will really get the word out, make the books viral, and maximize my back-end profits.