If I break even on 507 e-books, is self-publishing worth the investment for a business owner like me?

I break once  I sell 507 e-books. It has cost me less than GBP2k to publish the 244-page book, 'The UnNoticed Entrepreneur, ' and this is how I’ve done it. I mention the following platforms which I used in collaboration with my Philippines-based virtual author, virtual assistant, and Ukraine-based layout designer.

Pre-order the book here (please)
My Amazon Author Bio is here

Tools I am using:

http://www.descript.com

https://www.dabblewriter.com/

https://nielsenbook.co.uk/

https://www.ingramspark.com/

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/

http://www.upwork.com

Descript is what I use to edit the show.
All-in-one audio & video editing, as easy as a doc.

Brilliant copy writing tool
AI copywriting tool to generate unique copy, predict performance and increase conversions.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

0:00

Hello, and welcome to this episode of the unnoticed show. I'm back in sunny UK after my week away in Spain. And why was a way I was very fortunate in that work. We're still carrying on. With the book. Now the book then was sent to me as a proof copy. And I wonder on this episode, just to share with you some of the costs and the process. That I have used in order to write the unnoticed book. Because actually by doing the production and the editing and the layout and the publishing, the way that I'm doing it. It really creates an opportunity for any company. Or any business owner to write a book? So I wanna just dive in and share with you how I am creating the unnoticed entrepreneur. A collection of 50 articles for any business owner on how to get noticed. First of all the idea for the book. Is really around the need for authority. Now, this is not just for me, but companies themselves as well can gain a position of authority in an industry. If they have published a book. I've been wondering why that is. And I think it's just because it shows a breadth. And a continuity of thought. About a particular topic. That enables you to. If you like manage the conversation through several different parts so that you actually create an overall narrative. Around something. So as we know. The word or authority comes from the word author. And for those of us that are running companies. Demonstrating that we have more than just a tactical knowledge. Is really a value. As we know some big companies like IBM, Have their corporate stories and their methodologies written up. The same with, Kaizen, for example. And many other big companies have actually had books written about them. And it validates the culture and the processes within the business. But in the past, we've always thought that big publishing projects were the preserve of big companies or well-known authors. And that. The rest of us might have a great manuscript somewhere tucked away, but actually. Completely unable to. Create that well, One just dispel that for you, because me as a single business owner, Working out of a garden shed here in the UK. Have managed to put together a book of. 242 pages. It's some 82,000 words. It's a seven by 10 inch book. With a. Front cover back, cover in full color and an inside layout in black and white. And two-tone. And it's a perfect bound paperback. And it's a matte finish. And the overall weight comes in at 429 grams just underneath half a kilo. So as one person operating. Independently. I wanted to share with you what you could do, but also if you are managing a company. And your, for example, the owner of a bigger company. You could commission a book to be written by a member of your own team or by one of the many freelancers out there. And this is really the key, I think, to creating a book. The use of the different components. And the different people that are out there. Available through the internet to create books. And I'm going to tell you that in the end, my book. We'll have a break, even point of some 507 eBooks. Or 346. Print books. I'm going to take you through the costs. Of the book. And how we've worked out the revenue royalty matrix for these books as well. First of all, I'd like to just share with you the. The approach. So what I've been doing with this podcast? Is to interview entrepreneurs and experts and technologists. Around the different aspects of getting noticed. I've created over 340 episodes. And I've interviewed some 80 people. what I've looked to do with these interviews is to have people talk about one of. What I call the five areas of my speak PR program. So I've had at the beginning of the interviews. An idea of. How I want to structure the output. the information that I've got from those interviews into the five sections. So the first thing to look at is if you're going to write a book. And you're going to start to create content. What's the structure of the book going to look like. And I guess if you are an architect, You would be looking at the framework. and the structure. Of the house before you started any building and any quantity surveying, for example. So laying out the framework was the first thing I did and I wanted to have a book. That was about 80,000 words. The view is 60 to a hundred thousand is necessary to be. A sort of a serious book. 80,000. I feel is enough. So I then broke down my work in order to get the book written because for many people, the obstacle is actually the writing. this is where I cheated a little bit. Actually I didn't write 80,000 words. I worked with 50 guests. To prepare some 70,000 words. And 10,000. Or my own in the different introductions. And the section introductions and conclusions. I have created the unnoticed podcast through. A series of 20 minute interviews. The way I've done, this is because 20 minutes will render. About 900 to 1500 words. And that is a nice one and a half to two page article. I because I'm making a series of interviews. And a series of articles. If I have about a thousand words per interview. Then I have the beginnings of a nice sort of building block for each chapter. I decided to have five chapters for speak PR. So Storify personalize, engage amplify and to know. And then I look for people that I could interview for 20 minutes that might give me. An insight into one of these five areas that I wanted to cover in the book. By interviewing people. And taking 20 minutes, I've then been able to take that. Transcript. From the platform I'm using called descript, which is where I'm interviewing and record taking the audio in and making the text from the audio. I'm exporting the transcript from descript, and then I'm sharing that. With my virtual author in the Philippines. And for$20 us per 1000 to 1500. words article. She's fashioning that into something that could be read as if you like a word document. if you look at it like that, your making a recording, getting a transcript, getting someone else to do the polishing. Previously. I was making a recording in, Hindenburg. And then I was using. The export function, the audio and sending the audio file. The MP3 into otter.ai. And then I was giving concurrent access to my VA to auto.ai. And they were able to then listen to the audio. And check the text at the same time and make the article that way. So a couple of different ways to do it. Either way. It's just fine. What I like about using descript is that then I can. Takes the audio. And check the. The text at the same time. And because I'm able to import the zoom. video file. I'm able to actually edit a video. Through the text. And also get an audio file at the end. So it's a very efficient way. Of editing and producing because I get from a 20 minute interview on zoom. I'm getting a 20 minute video, I'm getting some short video and then I'm also getting my 20 minute audio file and I'm getting my transcript. So I like descript a great deal. It's proven to be really a great hero platform for me for production. So then what I've done is I've taken these. 50. Interviews. And sorted them. If I've got to confess, I didn't sort them. I work with my virtual assistant. Alex in the Philippines. And there is a platform. called dabble writer. A dabble writer. Enables you to. Share can currently a project. So all of the word authorizing. Tools are online. Now I was looking at some others, for example. I like Ulysses is very nice. There's Scrivener, which is another one, but they are desktop based. And as I wanted to collaborate or really share the work with my virtual assistant. Those failed that test. They're more fully featured and financially you pay for a license fee. Whereas with dabble rider, you pay a monthly. premium. If you want to have all the features that I wanted to have, it's only about$19 a month. But what it meant was that. Alex in the Philippines could. Sort all of the. Interviews. Which we've listed all on a Zoho spreadsheet in the sky. And cut and paste those articles that were written by my virtual author. Into dabble writer. And I was able to then edit those myself. When we finished. With dabble right-on we were able to then compile that by export and that as a word document and sending that to. A layout person. Called Catarina in the Ukraine who we found through Upwork. So for$200. You S and there were people that offered to do this for a hundred dollars, U S Catarina set about taking out 200 and. 30 to 40 pages in descript. Changing the font size. Adding in the headers. Making an index, for the back, for which we use the Adobe InDesign software for auto collating and index, and also creating a table of contents because. The dabble writer doesn't create an index, nor does it create a table of contents, both of which are required. Of course, in a book of this length. So we've taken our descript. We've taken it then too. dabble writer. And then we've gone to someone in the Ukraine who uses the Adobe InDesign to do all the formatting. Once we've got the different formats. We've got a print version in PDF. And we've also got an EPUB version. And the difference is going to be in the readers themselves. And the EPUB format means that it will auto resize depending on your own Kindle. If that's what you're using. For example, So different platforms, have different interactivity and different capabilities within them. And so what we've done is to create. Three different versions of the book. Each Ford site, different functions. Now, when it comes to distribution. Which of course is the next part of the publishing puzzle. I actually decided to contract a consultant because really. People come to me to help them get noticed. And I thought I should probably learn how to get noticed in print from a consultant. So I hired a lady called Sam from swap books. And, quite an investment because actually probably. Along with the editing of the articles, the most expensive part of the process. But what Sam did was to open my eyes to the different opportunities. So I had known already about Kindle. And have an Amazon account and had started down the path of creating a Kindle. desktop publishing. account and. I had gone to the Nielsen. ISB N store to, to buy the ESPN number than I needed. what Sam showed me was a new platform, which I hadn't heard of, which is called Ingram spark. as we know, Amazon goes to your Kindle, but Ingram spark. Goes to all of those other publishers that frankly I'd never heard of. They have global book distribution to over 40,000 retailers and libraries. So by working with Ingram spark, we're able to be on Amazon, but also apple Kobo, Barnes, and noble. And they have a very good package, either$49 for a print and an e-book or just a print book, 49 or just an e-book 25. And actually it makes it extremely affordable because you take the manuscript as it is as an EPUB or a PDF. And then you simply upload that. And what happens is that both Ingram, spark and Amazon. Allow you to print off a copy. To have a physical copy. So I got my copy. On the Monday, when I came back from my holiday in Spain. And obviously it's pretty exciting because we were working for a few months. In fact, On the production a few months, but on the podcast for now 12 months. So I have, in my hand, a physical copy with that, I actually was able to go. to a lady who's an author nearby and she had looked and she found another four or five. Hard to find, but significant typos missed an adjective, for example, and easy to do at the end of a page when it's, a PDF, it's easy to miss some of the smaller things. I was also able to just prove the cover. So I just did the graphics on the cover, increasing the point size. Of the subhead and also used, more, two-tone color. Online. It looked fine, but in print it didn't look fine. So I was able to change that and it only cost me six pounds to get that print. Copy. what we did then was to go back to cat, make a few minor changes. And then go back into both the Kindle publishing, but also the Ingram. Bark. Publishing to upload the refreshed. If. The version two. What happens is that you post your content online and you have some 30 days. To revise it. And that's what we've been doing is using this 30 days to revise it. Now some of the benefits that I hadn't ever thought of was this. With Amazon, for example. You one can create an Amazon author. profile. And so I filled that in today and what's really interesting is that you can actually add an RSS feed, the really simple syndication feed. For example from your own website. So I have been able to add to my Amazon author page. My east-west BR case study, which is a news page. My Jim James blog, which I've kept for many years when I was in China. And also my Buzzsprout. RSS feed for my podcast. So now when people find the book and find the author. They're going to find all the other content that I'm creating. Some more Mostly, I was then able to go to my LinkedIn and take my author page and add that under my profile and also add a link to the. To the pre-order for the unnoticed show book. Also within my sort of additional information about yourself. So on LinkedIn, you can have obviously your own. You feel like posts, but also you can make it under, for example, you've got the awards. And in that same category, there is a space for putting publications. Okay. So here we are getting to the end of the 12 month period where I started the podcast. Been focusing on getting these interviews in. I've now got 50 people in the book. And what we're going to be doing is sending those 50 people. The pre-order, but also showing them that they're in the book. And then asking everyone to start to pre-order and to promote to their various networks. Now in terms of costs, I want to share. This. So we've got a royalty matrix. And this book is going out on, Amazon. In the UK print, 1399. And in America, 1899. In Australia,$25. Now what's interesting about this is you can actually go in and change the price per territory. It doesn't just unilaterally. Alternate, according to currency, which is what I initially thought, which means that we can, for example, make it very affordable India in India. For example or in other countries, Where you might want to give a discount. In recognition of the reality of people's purchasing power. Now in terms of the royalty. If I managed to sell a book. On Amazon in the UK, I'm going to make five pounds 27. Realistically, probably more eBooks. And if I sell an ebook in the UK, I'm going to make three pounds 60 in America. I'd make four pounds 80 and the money. From this all goes directly into my PayPal account. So the book has cost me some 1,800 pounds. And that is with my ISP number. And with my publishing on, on. Ingram and my editing. my layout. I spent more money than I needed to on the ISP number, because if I bought a block of 10. It would have only been 16 pounds in the ended up at 89 pounds for one. But still you get an idea that for under 2000 pounds,$3,000. You too, can create a book. And publish it and have it. On. Amazon. Barnes and noble and have people buy it in print. Or in ebook. And if I can sell 507 eBooks. Or 347, 346 sprint books. Then I've made my money back. If I grew more than that, of course, I'm making a little bit of money. It's not a great money spinner the offering, but it will be long tail. But also if we just think about what we are trying to do, which is great or authority. Not just for me, but for my theory, Of speak PR, but also for those 50 people that took part in the book. These could be members of your staff. They could be customers. they could be partners. The point is that what we're doing is creating a whole new platform. A long form or authoritative platform for ideas and information that you and your company could share with the audience. thank you. I want to share with you my own journey. As I am building this book. from this podcast and I really hope that you find the serve use, because. I'm really a fan of using multiple channels and multiple platforms for getting noticed and writing a book. I'm finding it's both exciting and very rewarding and actually much more affordable than I ever could have imagined. And so I encourage you to think about it as one opportunity for you to get you and your company. I noticed. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the unnoticed entrepreneur show