Writing a work of fiction can lead to a new novel, but it can also become the cornerstone of an online entrepreneurial business. For instance, online courses are lucrative for nonfiction books. But fiction books can also be turned into a massively profitable online business with memberships, subscriptions, and paid speaking engagements.

The primary financial benefit for an author’s online business is collecting fans’ emails. When they buy a book, they understand that book distributors keep their audience’s contact information. Instead, if you collect those emails, then we can market your next book or other products to your audience.

What might fiction authors market? Fiction authors have the same products as nonfiction authors, apart from online courses. For example, you could sell your multi-step process for writing books in your genre, and your audience of aspiring authors would likely be happy to purchase it.

Ask yourself what you’d purchase from your favorite fiction authors to understand what your fans would want from you. Your products may center around the many questions you ask yourself as a fiction writer because your fans ask themselves those same questions. An author has fans who might reach out to you, but an online business entrepreneur has a community of fans who reach out to each other as well as to you.

For instance, how did you establish the timeline of your stories? Once created, when in that timeline do you write your first book series for a pivotal character? Do you then go back in time to the legends that the character was inspired by, or jump to the future where those characters are themselves misunderstood legends?

Once you start to think about it, you’ll have endless decisions to share with your fans, who will eat up every word. Here are a few more ideas. First, what are some of the difficulties you’ve had as a writer?

Second, tell a behind-the-scenes story from your life as an author. What’s your daily schedule like? What activities or trips do you take to rejuvenate?

Third, speak to your fans about where you get your inspiration. Was it a mentor from college? Or a family member?

The list of offerings continues, as I’ll explain. Consider each idea as the theme of a speaking engagement offered at a book convention. Because it is or could be. However, first, you need to build that website and create a strong online presence.

A strong website and online presence on social media open more possibilities as a fanbase grows. The following potential revenue streams are possibilities. Choose a few of them, perhaps only one, that appeals to you and your fanbase, then go for it.

Later, elsewhere, I’ll explain how to easily create, grow, and maintain each of these revenue streams. But here, next, I’ll define them. Welcome to being more than an author, but an entrepreneur, too.

Memberships and subscriptions give your fans exclusive access to you and your team via monthly or annual billing. Many services offer these arrangements, such as Patreon, YouTube (if monetized), your website, and others, including asynchronous messaging apps like Volley. Deciding which service to use will be your most difficult decision.

The intent of memberships and subscriptions is to offer a select portion of your audience premium content. What premium content, you ask? Well, isn’t that an interesting question?

You could post your regular content a week or so before posting it publicly. In this way, it’s no real extra effort on your part while still being valuable to that select audience. You could also consider it a dry run to determine if that content is much better or worse than your prior content.

But memberships and subscriptions can include two-way communication. Perhaps you can add live streams. But perhaps you already have regular live streams for everyone, so perhaps add weekly or monthly Zoom meetings so you can see and hear your premium audience members.

In your niche, do your fans physically gather somewhere with an auditorium where you could offer them an annual speaking engagement? Search for book conventions, get onstage, and speak to your fans. But make sure someone is recording your presentation!

What you want is to be paid for your future speaking engagements, and for that, you need a sizzle reel. For the next speaking engagement, ask to be paid, and as proof, offer your sizzle reel to justify the payment. A sizzle reel highlights your prior speaking engagements to demonstrate your value.

Unless your niche is you alone, partnerships and collaborations are an option. What’s the goal here? The intent is to reach another creator’s audience by being on their YouTube channel, podcast, website, and more.

And their intent is to be introduced to your audience for the benefit of both of you. You have a list of your competitors, right? So, send an email to each of them, approximately the same size as your channels, asking if they’d like to partner with you on a story or essay.

Avoid asking creators with far larger channels than your own. There’s no motivation for them to agree, same as if a channel a tenth your size were to ask for a collaboration. Sorry … email deleted.

Writing a work of fiction can lead to a new novel, but it can also become the cornerstone of an online entrepreneurial business. Fiction books can also be turned into a massively profitable online business with memberships, subscriptions, and paid speaking engagements. So, dream big!

• • Grow Your Book Business by Meeting Fans Where They Are!

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