Yesterday, we began a new series on Making Money as a Writer. On today’s episode, we’re continuing by starting with the most obvious way to make money as a writer: book sales.

Book sales is probably the first thing you think of when it comes to making money. But let’s dig into this a little bit.

First of all, it presumes that you have books to sell. So, if you haven’t yet written a book, or haven’t even thought about it, get started on that.

Second, a book can lead to a lot of other things. A book basically proves that you can write a sustained piece and that you have the discipline and vision to complete a big project. One of the big reasons why having a book is such a special thing is not just because it demonstrates your writing skills. It also proves that you can tackle a big, complex project.

Most people are not willing to go to the trouble of doing that, which is what makes that skill rare and valuable. It’s also why authors who have written books can command much higher speaking fees.

In other words, by virtue of the fact that you have written and published at least one book, you are showing to the world that you have done the work and completed something difficult that most people want to do, but aren’t willing to actually put the work in to do.

Let’s talk about making money with books.

In order to make money with books, you have to embrace marketing. Good marketing is a way to serve people. A lot of writers don’t want to mess with the marketing side of things because they think they’re above that. They’re the “creative” type, not the business type. You need to embrace the business side because that is where the action happens.

Your books are not just going to sell themselves. The sooner you embrace that idea—that you have to be a business person as an author—the sooner you can get busy doing the marketing activities that will help your books sell.

What’s more, this income stream can be greatly expanded when you have many books on multiple platforms, and you create ancillary products related to those books. We’ll get to making products in a later episode.

But for now, I want you to get comfortable with the idea of not only WRITING and PUBLISHING books… but also doing the marketing work to MAKE MONEY with them.

Question: Have you embraced the idea that you are not only an author, but a business person as well?