In this episode, Mel Edwards is going to share how to create multiple products from one book. When you put time and energy into writing a book, consider creating multiple products from that one piece of content. Not only will it multiply your impact, but it will also increase your profits from your work.
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In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
- How Mel was able to publish 3 books in 30 days after waiting 20 years.
- The different formats to consider once you write the content of your book.
- How you can profit multiple times from one piece of content.
Find out more about Mel Edwards here: http://www.msmeledwards.com/
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Godly Gain Segment:
Each week, I share a Godly Gain segment for entrepreneurs who want to keep Christ at the center of their business.
Today’s scripture: “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Galatians 6:9 (NIV)
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“Even the weakest light can hold back the darkness.” – Unknown
It’s time to let your light SHINE!
Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below:
SHELLEY. Welcome to “Author Audience,” where I’m on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. It’s time to let your light shine. Today I’m rolling out the red carpet and inviting you into my community for a behind-the-scenes look at what’s working for authors just like you. My name is Shelley Hitz. I’m the owner of Author Audience Academy, and the most rewarding part of my job is helping others get results and reach their goals. In this episode, I want to position the spotlight on one of my members, Mel Edwards. Welcome, Mel.
MEL. Hey Shelley, how are you today?
SHELLEY. I am doing great. I just want to tell everyone just a little bit about you from your bio. Mel Edwards has been a lifelong writer. How many years have you been writing, for most of your life?
MEL. Yeah, forty years probably? Since I was a little kid.
SHELLEY. She says she wrote her first song at age five. She also earned her master of arts in curriculum and instruction with an emphasis in storytelling—very interesting—from East Tennessee State University. Her personal interests beyond writing and education include performing and visual arts, bodybuilding, and anything with a heavy dose of nerdery. Yes, she made that word up. Writers do that. I’m so excited to have you here, Mel, and for this week’s Center-Stage Spotlight Training, I’m going to have you share a specific strategy that’s been working for you.
We talked a little bit about it beforehand, and just about how you’ve been able to take one piece of content and create multiple products. Before we get into the meat of today’s training, I just want you to share how you were able to finally reach your goal of published author recently this year after joining Author Audience Academy.
MEL. You know, it was one of those things where I thought, “Oh, I’ll get to it one of these days.” I was a public school teacher for many years, this past year I’ve been working in the university setting, and I’ve just always put it on the back burner. I had four file cabinet drawers full of my writing, so when I say I’ve been writing forever, I’m not kidding. I hadn’t done anything with it, and so I saw one of your webinars telling about Author Audience Academy, and I was interested and I still hemmed and hawed about it. Literally I was the last person that you let into your beta group. I just got in under the wire.
I’m so glad that I did because you said, “All right, you’re going to write something in a week.” And I thought, “A week?” I thought, “Oh, I’m just going to use stuff that I already have,” and that’s really what I was going to do. I was going to take something I had already worked on and just work it up and make it pretty or whatever. Then you started challenging us and getting us thinking, and I thought, “All right, I can suck this up. I’ve been an English teacher, I can do this.” I actually wrote The Bold Way in one weekend
SHELLEY. Yes, and that is awesome. You finally are a published author after years and years and years of writing; you’ve been able to give birth to that dream, and that was so rewarding for me to see you taking that step. You were really on a roll. You’re taking in the training and you’re applying it. You’re a lifelong learner; you’re obviously in education, but I just see you growing and blossoming so much. Tell us a little bit about The Bold Way and what has become of it in the last few months.
MEL. The focus of The Bold Way is about living your truth, who you truly are. A lot of people talk about living your passions, and working in your passions. People say, “Well, I’m passionate about a lot of things,” but who you essentially are doesn’t change, whether your passions change or not. The book was to help people address those, and the reason why I did that was because I see a lot of people suffering from depression and other problems, and those things often stem from the fact that they don’t know who they are, what they want to do. I thought I would start with The Bold Way and just learning to say, “This is me. This is what I do, this is what makes me what I am,” and then using that to guide them with their choices from there.
SHELLEY. Yeah, and that’s such a freeing thing to be able to come to that place of acceptance, “This is who I am.” You wrote the initial e-book. It was a Kindle book. Then what other types of products have you created based upon that one book?
MEL. Well, the next thing I did right away within a matter of a couple of weeks is, I did a workbook with that. One of the things you taught us is that even though you have one book doesn’t mean that’s the end of things, that you have to start all over and start a brand new book, that you can do other things that are iterations. Then I did the workbook, because a lot of people will read a book and go, “Oh, that’s nice. I should do something about it.” They’re like me with the four file cabinet drawers full of writing, and they don’t get around to it. I thought if they had a workbook that they could sit down and just spend a few minutes a day on, that they could get around to finishing and identifying who they truly are.
After that, I started thinking about who else can I reach, and who am I preventing from reaching? That’s how I got into the next couple of steps where I’m up to translation mode.
SHELLEY. Yeah, and that’s awesome. I think whether it’s a workbook, or a journal, or a discussion guide, or some of my books have a Bible study guide. There’s so many different ways we can have a corresponding book that doesn’t take a ton of extra writing, and you can just change the cover a little bit, and then you have a second product. You have it in e-book, and then you have your workbook.
MEL. Right.
SHELLEY. Are you working on an audiobook?
MEL. I am working on an audiobook, had a little hiccup there. I had it all under contract, and the producer did not deliver on time.
SHELLEY. Oh, wow.
MEL. Yeah, that kind of set me back, but I’ve decided actually I want to try to produce it myself. I spent a whole month waiting for somebody else to come through, and they did a wonderful sample, and I thought it was going to be fantastic, and then it just fell through. These things happen, and I thought, “If I really want to meet my deadline, I don’t want to have to wait another month.” So I’ve put together my own little recording studio, and I’m working on that.
SHELLEY. That’ll be interesting to see how it goes for you. I know for me when I record my own audiobook, it gives me so many more options. You may or may not already know this, but with ACX when you choose the non-exclusive rights when you have recorded it yourself, then you can use that audiobook in any way you want. You can sell it from your website, you can give it as a bonus to those who buy your book during a book promotion, or at a live event, or things like that. There are so many other things you can do with it. You can upload it for free to places like SoundCloud and different things.
That’s definitely something to consider if you’re willing to take a little less royalties. Since you’re recording it yourself, you can always do so much more with it and have so many more options. You have the e-book, the workbook, the audiobook, and now—
MEL. Spanish translation.
SHELLEY. Spanish translation, how has that been for you?
MEL. Really fantastic. I found a guy through what used to be Odesk, and he did a fantastic job. I am lucky enough that I have several friends that are Spanish speakers as their primary language, and so they’ve been reading through it and noting a few things here and there. Just little typos. Tiny stuff. It was really inexpensive to have him do that because it wasn’t a huge book to begin with. Now I went through Fiverr and have a cover that’s already made, and actually today it’s already up for pre-order.
SHELLEY. Awesome, that’s really exciting! Yeah, I remember when I did my first book and I only have one currently in Spanish; it was just such a fun feeling because it’s like, “Wow, my book is in another language, and it’s going to be able to reach a completely different audience.” That is awesome. Yeah, I used someone on eLance, which I think they’re both—Odesk and eLance are now Upwork?
MEL. Right. Right.
SHELLEY. Yeah, that’s a great way to do it, and I also had a friend that is fluent in Spanish that helped me with the proofreading, and so that’s really, really good. I teach all of these things in Author Audience Academy, and it’s so awesome to see you taking action and doing it. Now, are you planning on a print version as well?
MEL. What I’m actually looking to do is, a little bit down the road as I get more feedback on the book and the workbook, I’m actually thinking of combining them, because they’re both pretty short, and to print them as two separate short editions may not be as much value to some readers as having it all printed together. I’m thinking of adding updates, because another thing you taught us to do was to create quotes from our books. I have about thirty different quotes that I have created, and I thought, “You know, those would be fun pictures to put in a print version.” That’s what I’m thinking of doing next.
SHELLEY. That is actually a really good idea. I like that idea of combining your e-book with your workbook in one print book. I love the fact that you’re getting feedback, and that’s the great thing about Kindle books. You can put something out there, get feedback, update it, improve it, and then when you’re ready to release that print book, you have a really good, polished book. It’s a business card people won’t throw away, it’s something that you can hold in your hands, and it’s just a really great feeling, but that definitely does take a little bit more work. It’ll be exciting to see the full continuum. E-book, workbook, and the workbook’s an e-book as well, right?
MEL. Right.
SHELLEY. E-book, workbook, audiobook, Spanish translation, and then a print book. That’s really exciting, and I just love hearing all that you’re doing.
MEL. It’s all been within five months.
SHELLEY. Yeah, it’s amazing. It really is. How many books do you have published now?
MEL. The print book, the e-book, a poetry and photography book, I have a fourth book in progress due out in October called Depression Smackdown, which is related to this. I believe that we all have bad days and that if we keep smacking down the bad days and focusing on the good days, we can live our truth. I am looking at with that also having a podcast and a blog. I’m looking for this to be my full job.
SHELLEY. It’s definitely exciting to see what you’re doing, and are you working on a product too on the back end for this?
MEL. I’m looking at a course for the Depression Smackdown.
SHELLEY. Yeah, so you’re just going to have the whole continuum, and that’s another product based on this same information, right?
MEL. Right. They piggyback and fit into each other, kind of like pieces of a puzzle.
SHELLEY. Yeah, and I love that. I love that. That is exactly what I hope for members of Author Audience Academy to do: to take the whole continuum, publish the books in multiple formats, have the marketing that will be your blog and your podcast, and then create the backend products to be able to have more income to be able to support yourself. It’ll be so exciting to continue to watch you in these next few months and years. What is your one Take Action Tip for our listeners today?
MEL. That when you’re thinking about all these things that you can create, whether you want to do workbooks, or quotes, or podcasts, or whatever, to think about your audience and what do they need to achieve what you want them to achieve with your work? Especially if you’re looking at nonfiction, which is my area. I want people to be able to physically take action and to move ahead. For a lot of people, they need different tools to do that, so of course Depression Smackdown would work really well for some people. For other people, they just want to do it on their own, so the workbook was a good answer for them for The Bold Way. Just to pay attention to your audience as you’re making those choices, and they’ll come naturally.
SHELLEY. Yeah, that’s a really good tip. Just take a minute and brainstorm. Do what I like to call brain dump, and write out all of the ideas that you have of how you can provide value to your audience and what could help them the most. You may also want to consider a survey, or surveying people on Facebook, and finding out what is it that they like to consume most: e-book, print book, audiobook, what are their needs too. Thank you so much, Mel. This has been really fun to hear your progress, and where can people find you if they want to connect with you or find out more about you online?
MEL. Thank you, Shelley. Anybody can reach me at MelEdwards.com, and I’m also on Facebook as Ms. Mel Edwards.
SHELLEY. Awesome, Ms. Mel Edwards. Well, it’s been awesome to have you. Before we end, I want to give you a backstage pass in this week’s Godly Gains segment. Mel talked about creating multiple products from a single book today, and I highly recommend using this strategy. It’s one I’ve used over and over again. It reminds me of planting a seed and reaping a harvest for multiple plants, vegetables, fruit, and so forth. A fruit tree will yield fruit for years to come. When we write a book, it’s like planting a seed where we will reap a harvest, and we can reap it in many different ways and many different formats.
Galatians 6:9 says, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” I think the same is true for writing and publishing your books, or creating your book in multiple formats. I want to encourage you not to become weary in doing good, and doing the work that God has called you to do, then sharing the message that he has given you to share, for at the proper time, you will reap a harvest if you do not give up.
Thank you everyone for joining us for another episode of “Author Audience.” This was a special episode, a behind-the-scenes look in what’s working for authors in my community, and I hope it’s inspired you. I hope that what Mel is doing and all the different things she’s doing with that one book has inspired you that there is so much more than just publishing a Kindle book or a print book, but there’s so many more options for us. Thanks again for joining us, and we’ll see you next time.
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