Most business authors fail. Most successful thought leaders have books. How can both be true?
Authors dream. Their dreams are fueled by watching their peers with books achieving choice speaking slots, huge following on social media, successful and growing consulting businesses, and the like. So they plan to write a book.
Will they have the same level of success?
It’s possible. But it’s far from certain.
The bad news about business books
In 2024, with support from four sponsors, we set out to do a definitive study of business book ROI. I did much of the data analysis and wrote the report (free download here.)
Before you get all excited about writing a book, read this report carefully. If you take off your rose-colored glasses, you’ll see plenty of discouraging news in there.
Among those who answered the survey, 34% had no gross profit (and that’s counting increased revenues from speeches, consulting, workshops, and the like). Half the authors had a profit of $10,000 or less, which isn’t much of a return for the effort of writing a book. The median increase in revenues after publishing was only $18,000, which you certainly can’t build a career on. Median sales were 4,600 units for traditionally published books, 1,600 for hybrid published, and only 700 for self-published books; in all three cases, the median sales were far below what authors expected. Four out of ten authors spent more on the book than they expected.
We had about 300 respondents. I want to be clear: this report probably overstates the benefits of business books. People with pathetic failures aren’t highly motivated to fill out surveys about the dimensions of their failure. And we only captured published authors. We have no data on people who wrote a chapter or two and left it sitting on their hard drive, or created a book proposal that no publisher picked up, or wrote a whole book and never published it. There is plenty of survivor bias here, because lots of hopeful authors who didn’t realize their dreams aren’t visible.
If you find this information discouraging, good. If it stops you from writing a book, you shouldn’t write a book. Because writing a book is big effort with no guarantee of success.
Why books fail
There are many reasons that books don’t take off and accomplish authors’ goals. Here are the big ones:
- Unclear goals. If you don’t know why you’re writing a book, you don’t know what book to write. You can’t accomplish your goals without a plan, and you can’t plan properly until you know what those goals are.
- Lack of a clear audience. You want to write what you know about. But no one wants to read that. People want to read about how to solve their problems or seize their opportunities. Until you know which people have those problems, you can’t solve them in a book. Pick an audience and focus on their needs.
- Lack of differentiation. There are already countless books on strategy. There are a huge number of books about investing. There’s a glut of books on artificial intelligence. What sets your book apart? Can you truthfully finish this sentence: “This is the first book that . . . ” Until you can, you’re just another book. Somebody already wrote the definitive book on your topic and it sold 100,000 copies, so we don’t need your book.
- Lack of marketing. No book succeeds without a marketing plan. And no, your publisher won’t do that for you. You need to do speaking in support of the book. You need to publish in social channels or get podcast listeners or make videos or write op-eds or whatever you can to spread the word. You need to energize your fans. If you don’t do that, the book won’t sell and it won’t accomplish your goals.
Please take note that “lack of distribution” is not on this list. Self-published books can succeed. Hybrid published books can succeed. When they succeed, it’s because the authors had clear goals, a well-defined audience, a differentiated idea, and a great marketing plan. Conversely, traditionally published books can fail when they lack these qualities.
Why books succeed
In the Business Book ROI study, 89% of authors said writing a book was a good decision. I think most authors feel positive about what they created, regardless of whether it paid off in a big way.
A majority of authors reported increases in credibility to clients and prospects, the value of their personal brand, and social media followers.
But beyond those soft benefits, a solid minority of authors had major financial success.
One in three authors saw increases in speaking fees, and 31% boosted their consulting revenues. For traditionally and hybrid-published books, the typical increase in speaking fees was more than $40,000 while the typical increase in consulting was $50,000.
A healthy 18% of authors with books out at least 6 months generated more than $250,000 in revenues.
So success is possible. It starts with the factors I listed above: clear goals, audience, differentiation, and marketing. But big successes tend to have some other factors going for them.
Timing is a big element. If your book comes out right at the moment everyone has put their heads up and started wondering about a topic, you’re in a great position. (I’m betting a book on tariffs is about to pop up on the bestseller lists.)
A startling new idea helps. Atomic Habits was a stellar idea. So is The Let Them Theory. So is The Anxious Generation.
Obviously a monstrous social media following can boost your chances.
But above all that, I think you need a commitment to greatness. You need to believe in your idea. You need to do the research to back it up. You need to find and tell stories that will captivate people. And your marketing must be as brilliant as your writing. You need to invest in your idea — not just with your time, but with editorial, marketing, and promotional help. All of that will create a book people love. They’ll read it, talk about it, and enable it to reach the largest possible audience.
Can you do all that and fail? Sure. That happens all the time.
But if you do succeed, it will be because you did all that work. And because, in the end, your dream was worth dreaming.