How to make money from a niche book

If you have expertise that is valuable to a narrow audience, this post is for you.

Here are some examples:

• You help financial advisory firms to navigate the competitive landscape of potential partners.
• You advise swimming-pool installers on appropriate techniques to coat the bottom of swimming pools.
• You coach CEOs of small technology consultancies how to grow their business.
• You create strategies for local communities negotiating with potential data center companies.
• You prepare business book authors for writing, promoting, and profiting from business books. (This is me.)

Thought leaders for these sorts of narrow audiences can certainly make money from their expertise. They can typically charge substantial consulting rates for access to their rare, focused collections of knowledge and wisdom.

But should they write a book?

Producing a book like this demands a customized strategy

People like this often feel the desire to collect their expertise in a book. With a book, you may be able to stake a claim as one of the world’s foremost experts in your narrow field.

Just don’t imagine that you’ll find traditional publisher.

Traditional publishers, whether large or small, make money in only one way: from book sales. If yours is a niche book, your sales potential is limited. This makes it virtually impossible to interest a traditional publisher in your book.

You could broaden your appeal beyond a niche — but this is the wrong strategy. You’ll be writing outside your expertise. More importantly, you’ll be losing the tightly focused signal to your niche audience that you are exactly what they need. If the path to publication demands diluting your expertise, you’ll have distorted your goals for no good reason.

You’ll need an alternate publishing path. There are three possibilities:

• Select a hybrid publisher like Amplify, Greenleaf, or Ideapress. Publishers like this will help you create a high-quality book that can impress your audience without worrying about the number of books sold. They will typically charge you $20,000 or more, so you need determine if this investment will pay off in consulting revenue.
• Use a self-publishing service like Gatekeeper Press or Endeavor Ink. The resulting book won’t quite match a traditional publisher in quality, but will still be able to be listed on Amazon and enhance your reputation.
• Write and upload a book (or ebook) yourself to Amazon or Ingram Spark. I don’t recommend this path, because there are a lot of potential pitfalls in self-publishing, and the resulting book is unlikely to be of high enough quality (both editorially and in terms of the way it looks) to impress potential clients.

Publishing a book can generate business

Your objective in writing a book like this is to signal to potential clients “I have impressive knowledge — I wrote the book on this topic.” But it’s not enough to just fling some text out there, because your prospective clients are likely to read it and judge your expertise based on what they read.

My niche book Build a Better Business Book sold less than 1,000 copies, but has still paid off handsomely for me. In one case a potential ghostwriting client comparing me to four other ghostwriter candidates ended up picking me, saying, “You wrote the book on this topic, so we’re sure you’re the right guy.” That ended up being a six-figure ghostwriting gig, paying off my expenses in writing and publishing my niche book with a single deal.

According to my recent survey of business book authors, the median hybrid published author spend $23,000 to publish and promote their book, but made $35,000 in revenue from it. The median self-published author spent $2,550 and made $8,000. The survey recorded a hybrid-published author who made $3 million and a self-published author who made more than $6 million. Among authors who did consulting, the median hybrid published author generated $50,000 in consulting fees and the median self-published author also generated $50,000. So these books can definitely pay off. Authors like this also generated substantial income from workshops, sales by their larger organization, online courses, and partnerships.

Revenues from book sales for these authors were typically less than $10,000. The median hybrid published book out at least six months sold 1,600 copies, and the median self-published book, only 700. Book sales are beside the point; the revenue comes from other sources.

Strategies for niche authors

If you’re considering a book of this kind, here are some tips to make it pay off.

• Build a web site listing your services. You’re going to a lot of trouble to make people aware of your expertise. They’re going to look you up. What they find online should reassure them that you’re set up professionally to do business.
• Invest in the book. Doing a crappy book is worse than no book at all: it communicates that you’re disorganized and sloppy. Work with a professional hybrid publisher or self-publishing service. Hire an expert editor or ghostwriter (like me). Make sure your publisher does a decent job on the cover design, too, because people do judge a book by its cover.
• Don’t hold back content. Readers have very little patience for “I know more about this topic, but I’m not putting it into the book, so call me.” They’re more likely to resent you than to call you. Anyone who can learn everything they need by reading your book isn’t really much of a consulting prospect anyway. Your client is the reader who reads the book, says “This author is clearly the expert,” and hires you for that expertise.
• Put your contact information in the book. One page at the end about how you help clients should tell readers how to hire you.
• Don’t pursue bookstore distribution. Your book is not going to be in Barnes & Noble; they don’t carry niche books. Don’t worry about that. People find and buy these books on Amazon and bookshop.org.
• Promote yourself. In the process of writing the book, you’re going to create a lot of content. Put bits of it it out there in the form of a newsletter, a Substack, blog posts, YouTube videos, or podcasts. You want to give your potential client every possible opportunity to discover you. For example, they might hear about blog post of yours from a friend (or from ChatGPT), check out your website, buy your book, become impressed, and then hire you. None of that happens if you just publish the book and then hang around waiting for people to notice.
• Invest in publicity. Book publicists are experts in broadening your reach, finding you opportunities to go on other people’s podcasts; publish bylined articles or op-eds; get quoted in news articles; or get television appearances. Organizations like Jane Wesman PR, Smith Publicity, Cave-Henricks, or Fortier PR can increase your visibility. You’re not just promoting the book, you’re promoting your expertise.
• Pursue speaking opportunities. Being an author also makes it more likely that events will give you a speaking slot. Getting on stage has three benefits. First, people who hear you are more likely to hire you. Second, it spreads the word about your expertise. And third, often events will sell your book in their bookstore.

Writing a book enables you to collect that expert content into a neat and powerful package. These other activities make it more likely that people will hear about you and your book. Put that all together and you’ll find the clients in your niche that need your help and will pay for it.

So stop thinking about traditional publishing and book sales — and recognize that a niche book needs careful, targeted nurturing to make it worth your effort.

Writers write. But authors make money — even if their niche audience is small and focused.