Ideas, Influence, and Income: A Guide for Aspiring Publishers
“Leaders are Readers”
One of my favorite books is Mortimer J. Adler’s book, How to Read a Book. Reading a book about reading books seemed a little counter-intuitive at first, but once I dove in I was delightfully surprised.
The same counter-intuitive feeling rose to mind when I first laid eyes on Ideas, Influence, and Income, a book written by a publisher for people who want to write books.
It is week 41 of 52 in the Tim Challies 2020 reaching challenge, and I decided on Ideas, Influence, and Income. The author, Tanya Hall, is the chief executive officer of Greenleaf Book Group, a publishing company founded in 1997 and representing over 1,200 active titles, including numerous New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers.
While Hall’s book is not Adler’s equal in a similar genre, nor even a close runner up, it is an exceptionally practical guide for aspiring authors. As someone who went the self-publishing route, I wish I would have read this book multiple times before the book launch.
Ideas, Influence, and Incomes reads much like a conglomeration of speeches, articles, and blog posts stitched together. In fact, it unashamedly hints at that very origin several times in the book. Throughout its 200+ pages, Hall provides helpful guidance for authors searching for the best course of publishing in an incredible age where over one million books a year hit the open market. Here are the highlights!
Self-Summary
“Ideas refers to the knowledge or vision you want to share through your content. Influence deals with building and impacting your audience. Income teaches you how to launch your book and monetize the idea behind it in additional formats to maximize returns” (p.2).
To make it simple, Hall walks her reader through how to explain their ideas to build influence that will drive income for them. Make no mistake about this book, it is written by the CEO of a publishing company and takes an extremely business focused vantage point on publishing your book.
Know Your Audience
“Job number one as an author is to know your audience and write to their needs” (p.32).
Admittedly, I wish I would have had a better idea of my audience when I first started on SOLD. Writing for all Christians is an extremely broad category. Narrowing the focus of a piece of literature gives the author the ability to provide significantly more value to their readers, while also increasing the chances of them actually finishing the book.
Self-Pub, Hybrid-Pub, or Traditional-Pub
With an incredible amount of new publishing platforms, authors have a wide buffet of opportunities to choose from. Here is the quick summary:
Self-Publishing:
There are multiple self-publishing companies out there. The biggest name in the business is Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. This is one of the few out there where you can publish your work in about an hour if you have everything already complete. However, self-publishing does have some drawbacks; like all marketing is on the author, quality control is minimal, and printing quality and options are limited.
Hybrid-Publishing:
Hybrid publishing is becoming increasingly more popular and is really a great path for most aspiring authors. This option adds the benefit of a publishing company to provide editing, quality controls, and assists with marketing a book launch. However, the drawbacks are increased costs to the author, restrictions on licensing, and at times limited control of the content.
Traditional-Publishing:
This is the book in bookstore type publishing. The down and dirty of traditional publishing is significant cost and restrictions to the author since the publisher is taking most of the risk in marketing, printing, and promoting the book. Often authors do not make more than 5% off the individual sales of the book, and in some cases, a much lower percentage. Publishers maintain the rights over the book and can adjust content in the editing process to help it become more "readable" to its specific audience.
In short, if you are looking to write a book, starting with Ideas, Influence, and Income is a helpful introduction to understanding the publishing process.
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John Owen came from Welsh descent, was educated at Queens College, and became a renowned Puritan theologian, Oxford professor, and passionate pastor who lived from 1616 to 1683. In 1647, he wrote the exhaustive treatise The Death of Death defending Limited or Definite Atonement against the Arminian view of Universal Atonement or Unlimited Atonement.