Author Entrepreneur – Turn Your Book Into a Business

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Are you a nonfiction writer who wants to build a business around your book idea? Then please consider joining me for an 8-week online course that will give you the structure and support you need to build a successful career as an author and entrepreneur.

What is an author entrepreneur? Someone who has as much business savvy as creative vision.

Why be an author entrepreneur?

  • You want to establish your credibility as a thought-leader within your community.
  • You need to learn how to market an idea that engages people, not just a commodity or product.
  • You want to build the platform you need for the basis of a successful writing career.
  • You have heard about the power of content marketing, and now want to jump in with both feet.
  • You want to build a business, but have the heart of a creator, not an MBA.

For writers, having a book alone will not give you the credibility you need to build a business. You need a proper economic backbone in order to build something of value. For entrepreneurs who want to connect their business to a thriving writing career, you need to understand how to how to create engaging content, and how to structure your product offering in a way that serves the needs of your audience, as well as you own.

Why take this class? Because it provides a structured curriculum, it provides a framework to build your business with actionable, realistic steps. But the course provides so much more: constant access to myself and a group of like-minded individuals becoming their own author entrepreneurs. This course is filled with interaction – real conversations, personalized attention, new ideas and feedback to what you are building.

You don’t need to be a published author in order to take this class? You simply need to have a passion for what you want to share with the world.
 
 

 
 

What you get:

  • 8 week online course.
  • A structured curriculum, with a new lecture delivered each week, taking you step by step through the process of how to develop your writing career and the company behind it.
  • Weekly homework assignments that I provide feedback on to ensure that you walk away from the course having executed on the ideas we discuss.
  • A forum where you can ask questions, learn about what is and isn’t working for the other class members, and get past the biggest challenges you are facing.
  • Weekly Q&A conference calls where I answer your questions and the entire class can share insight into their experience.
  • An online classroom where you can access the material and learn about the other students.
  • BONUS: Guest Q&A calls, where publishing, business, and marketing expert takes your questions.

How the class works:

  • Every Wednesday you get access to another lesson, which is available in the private classroom and consists of text, images, and video. A downloadable version is available as well.
  • You can ask questions at anytime in the private forum, and receive feedback and ideas from myself and other members of the class.
  • A weekly 1-hour Q&A phone conference call with the class gives you an opportunity to address questions, challenges, or successes you have had this week.
  • Homework is due the following Monday. I provide detailed feedback, and other students will as well.
  • Throughout the course, we will have bonus guest Q&A conference calls, where experts will be available to discuss specific challenges you are facing.

Why me:
I am immersed in these topics every day, and at the crossroads of two things:

  • I have worked with more than 500 hundred writers and spoken at some of the top publishing conferences, including AWP, Writers Digest Conference, Book Expo, and many others.
  • I am an entrepreneur, who has launched a successful business after years of research and interviews with business owners. I have multiple income streams that protect me from shifts in the market, and allow me to work with a range of clients: from large organizations to individuals just starting out. This is everything I have learned, and the course I wish I had available to me years ago.

Curriculum:

Week 1: Your Business Roadmap
Here we begin the process of giving your business a strong backbone, determining where you want to go, and what resources you need to get there. We outline your short, mid, and long-term goals, and do an inventory of your current resources. We map out the specific phases of how your business will grow, and align that to specific actions you will take at each step to move things forward. This is about getting specific, and breaking down a long-term vision into a manageable process. Inherent in this is creating timelines and a process for constant growth.

We analyze your current content and business offering, digging into how your book idea extends to a business, or how your business extends to a book and information products. The ordering here is critical, and unique for each individual. We have to craft this so that each step paves the way for the next one. Too many people jump ahead with ideas in the wrong order, wasting precious resources and time.

Week 2: Market Analysis
Now that we have a sense of your purpose and your goals, we need to look outside at those you hope to engage and serve. Understanding your market and audience is a CRITICAL process – who they are, what their needs are, what engages them, where they congregate, and how others are serving them. You will learn the structure of the communities you are targeting, and create a competitive analysis to understand where the gaps and differentiators are.

Everything we cover here is a process that should follow you throughout your business career. The best companies are constantly in a process of understanding their audience, of testing ideas, of never assuming that they know what people want. This helps form the backbone of great business practices for what you are building.

Week 3: Branding

Here we frame your brand based on two things:

  • Your purpose, your personality, and unique differentiator.
  • The needs and desires of those you are hoping to engage.

The mix will be different for each individual, but the overall result is the same: ensuring that you are not a commodity competing with others based only on price. That leads to a downward spiral and a business that is always in jeopardy as new competitors enter the market.

We craft your STORY – the idea that will engage others, not just a list of features around the products or services you offer. This also allows you to begin engaging with your community without overtly selling to them. You build credibility, find partnerships, and become a valuable INSIDER, not an outsider who always has a sales pitch that no one wants.

Week 4: Your Product and Service Offering

Too many businesses under-think their product offering – they create a single product or service, which means their business is like a stool balancing on a single leg. Any shift in the marketplace will easily topple it. We will review how to create a mixture of products and services, and various levels that help bring customers in a variety of ways.

We will review a range of product and service types, including books, information products, workshops and courses, in-person events, speaking, consulting packages and so much more. We will align the products and services you will offer to a pricing matrix where you can attract the most potential customers, and increase the likelihood of engaging them again and again, creating a loyal base to support your business.

Inherent in this conversation is revenue and money matters. For many writers, financial discussions are divorced from creative discussions. We address this topic head on, moving past any potential barriers.

Week 5: The Marketing Funnel
Here we create a marketing strategy aligned to your product and service offering, and ensure that your book and writing are key elements in building credibility and bridging the gap from attention to revenue. This is about creating a marketing STRATEGY before jumping into any of the thousands of tactics that you read about each day. We will link up how every element of your presence aligns to engage your audience and drive your business forward: your website, social media usage, online and in-person events, online advertising, search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, partnerships, email, and other topics.

We will discuss how different aspects of your business align to different business models, create communication channels, build revenue, and establish levels of interaction that extend the lifetime value of a customer.

Week 6: Getting the Word Out
Here we dig into specific marketing tactics, and discuss community engagement. This is not about just blanketing your message again and again in the hopes that some percentage convert to paying customers. This is about being a valuable part of your market, one who gives first, asks second.

We will differentiate and align activities that are branding, marketing and sales, and review powerful ways to build and engage an audience, and build a sustainable business. Topics include: content marketing, blogging, guest blogging, social media, speaking, and a deeper look at topics introduced in previous lessons.

Week 7: Managing Your Resources
Clearly, there are many elements of building your business and your career as a writer, not to mention the fact that you may have a day job, a family, hobbies, and other responsibilities, all vying for your time and attention. This week, we talk about how to maximize the return on investment of your resources, and look at how to not get stuck focusing on the wrong things.

There is an unending list of things you COULD be doing. As the primary driver behind your business, you are the biggest asset you have, and the resource that needs to be most carefully managed. When do you outsource, hire, or partner with others? We look at these topics in terms of your business and your writing.

Week 8: Measuring Success
Not everything you try will work. And that’s fine, there is a lot to be learned in small failures. The key is to establish a process where you aren’t making a single large bet, and how you can constantly be in a process of improvement via iteration.

We dig into analytics, how to measure and track audience size, engagement, revenue, profit, and resources expended. 
The process of testing and optimization is also covered – how you can constantly learn what works and what doesn’t for the smallest detail of your business and product/service offering.

We also cover some of those other “fun” topics in this final session: business basics, legal stuff, tax stuff, accounting, logistics of setting up a business, etc.

Want to learn more about me and my background, to see if we would be a good fit? Check out these links:

Have a question? Email me: dan@danblank.com or call me on my cell phone: 973-981-8882.

Thanks!
-Dan