Monetise Your Expertise Tip 18

30 Ways To Make Money Online

Strategy #18

If you are an existing Author or you are about to self publish your first book, this self publishing tip is for you.

I am not sure how well this works for fiction books, but it works really well for non fiction Authors. Especially speakers, personal brands and those who regularly run workshops or get paid speaking gigs for their area of expertise.

These days you can now do print books inside of KDP Select on Amazon. Recently KDP Select and Create Space merged to try and encourage more people to create print books on Amazon.

I personally use Ingram Spark for all my printing and it works best if you are based in Australia because the printing can be done in the US or Melbourne via Lightning Source.

How To Sell More Books Using This Self Publishing Tip

The Buy In Bulk Self Publishing Strategy

Do you have the words ‘This publication is available for bulk purchase and sponsorship orders”?

“Not Yet Pam!”

What most Authors don’t realise is that many companies, speaker bureaus and event organisers regularly buy books in bulk for their events.

I learned this strategy over 6 years ago when a digital marketer was telling me all the different ways they make more sales from their book and I could not believe I had not thought of it myself.

Who is likely to want to buy your book in bulk?

You never know who is reading your book, or who gets given your book by a friend. It could be a:

Publisher of a magazine looking for prizes
A radio announcer looking for prizes
A speaker bureau looking for speakers who have print books to give to their attendees
A CEO or Executive Assistant running a retreat or event and want to be able to have gifts to put in the goodie bag

Many of these people have no idea that you can buy books in bulk and it is something I highly recommend you add to the front of your book in future. Does not matter if you are only doing digital. When that order comes in you can just do a small print run [make a minimum order] and get the profits.

Buy In Bulk Tips

Always have a ‘minimum order’ in the copy so that it is worth your while to do the print run
Optional – add sponsorship volume orders also available for people who want to put their logo or business name at the front of the book as a gift or giveaway
Always try and have some sort of lead magnet in the book so that you can capture people’s emails and make them clients/customers
Have a prepared pricing strategy so that when you get that call you know exactly what your prices are depending on order size. The bigger the order the cheaper the price.

Buy In Bulk Pricing Example

Say someone is inviting you to speak at their event and you are the main guest speaker and they ask you if you have any books that they can buy to give out to the attendees. Let’s assume there are 100-200 attendees at this event.

You can give them two options.

Option 1 Buy In Bulk Minimum Order:

Book retail price $29.99
Book print cost approx $4.99 per book
Buy in bulk price
- for 50 books $10.99 – bulk profit $5 x 50 = $250
- for 100 books $8.99 – bulk profit $4 x 100 = $400
- 200 book 7.99 – bulk profit $3 x $200 = $60

Option 2 Buy In Bulk Sponsorship:

They pay for their logo to be added to the book
They pay for additional upload costs and mock book sample
They have to buy a minimum order usually 400 plus to make the effort worth your while
They pay for shipping
Normally you add $3-5 profit on the cost of printing