Do You Have a Book, CD and Other Educational Resources? Having sellable resources, books, CDs and/or other materials, helps to solve are two main problems. You can give your listeners an opportunity to continue learning from you and you increase your take home dollars from your speaking, training, coaching/consulting opportunities. Even preachers who have learning resources make extra income from the sales of those resources.

A book is the most effective business card. It is kept and talked about. Your work speaks about you in places before you go there and to people before they invite and pay you to tell them, in person, what they have read in your book.

Let’s first understand the perceived power of the word author. It comes for authority. It carries more weight than the word professor, pastor, father and politician. It says that you have something that’s worthy to be printed and preserved for the enrichment of human knowledge. People respect authors and want to own what authors have created.

About 33% of full time speakers’ income is from books, CDs and other materials. Your main challenge is to know what you can write about, how to do it economically and how to market it (over 99% of authors must promote/market their work). Don’t say because you haven’t climbed Mt. Everest or you didn’t walk 20 miles to school after milking 15 cows or because you always had three meals a day, you have nothing to write about.

Everyone has a story. The difference between you and those who are making money from their knowledge and experiences and are helping other people and organizations is that they have done something with what they have and you have not. However, here are a few insights to ponder.

1.	Getting published is not easy and is not a guarantee that you will become a national name, get invited in all kinds of places and/or make money. Yes, your work can be in all major book stores. There is also the creditability that you enjoy when a known publisher’s name is behind your work. But your work is not the only project the publisher has to promote. It is one of many. A lot of book proposals are rejected. Authors don’t control how the book will look, how much it will sale, when it will be printed and sometimes titles are changed to reflect a publisher’s perceived marketable attribute. Publishers today are competing with establishments that didn’t exist 20 years ago (on-demand publishing or downloadable books are just two examples). Today, publishers are only looking for marketable authors. An overwhelming majority of published books don’t sell more than 2000 copies in their life time—forever. I self-published my first book in 1996 and sold about 5,000 copies before a publisher decided to re-publish the book in 1997. They didn’t sell 5,000 in more than ten years. Regardless of whether you self publish or get publisher own the rights to your book, you are the main marketer for it if you want to recoup returns from your investment (knowledge, experiences and writing pains).
2.	If you speak, train, counsel, consult, coach, mentor, or teach, you can profitably self-publish your work, if you know how to market creatively. You control the destiny of your efforts, when and how your book or CD will be ready for the market and how many. It can be economically affordable, but speak with experts. I have had my top selling books printed for a fraction of what I used to invest in my negotiations and marketing formative years. Sellable books range from a collection of your works in a three ring binder to a hard cover. Workbooks for specific workshops are known to generate more than traditional books—it’s what buyers perceive and how you market that matters. CDs are so cost effective and easy to develop I have no idea why some speakers don’t have any. You can record and edit quality CD at a corner studio, get a professional cover designer and have it duplicated for less than $1/CD—depending on the quantity you want.
3.	Inspirational posters, calendars, and a multitude of other materials are resources that audiences want to take home. These items, books and CDs are also the main business cards for speakers.

It is astonishing to realize how prospective client are willing to invest in you, to speak to their group after reading your book.