Getting Mileage Out of Your Book: Repurpose the Content

When I created the Write Your Life Program to help corporate professionals and entrepreneurs become self-published authors, my goal was to help them tell their stories and to build their brands. That is still the motive for what I do. I work most often with successful entrepreneurs who have a product or service to offer. They take the bold leap into author-hood and suddenly become AUTHORpreneurs. Their goal: to leverage their knowledge, brand their business, and upsell their expertise.  

What I tell these business owners is that writing and publishing the book is only the beginning. Establishing a solid reputation as an expert is an important part of becoming a successful author (and vice versa); as is establishing a stream of quality information resources that customers can reference. This serves two primary purposes: 1) it provides useful information to readers/customers; and 2) it creates another stream of income for authors. You see, successful authors understand the value of repurposing the content of their books as information products – CDs, DVDs, reports, ebooks, presentations, ezines, blog posts, social media information, and even other books. 

Why would authors want to repurpose their book content? We live in the age of information. Finding the answer to any question is a simple as Googling it. News and information are available at the speed of light. In fact, many people – myself included – often discover the latest breaking news and information from reading Facebook posts or tweets, rather than from watching the evening news. People are information consumers, and while much of the information we consume is free, there is an abundant market of information consumers who are ready and willing to purchase quality, accurate, useful information. AUTHORpreneurs can capitalize on this phenomenon and build their businesses at the same time.

Here are a few examples of how you can get more mileage out of your book by repurposing the content:

Start a blog. Be careful not to give away your full message in the blog, but use this outlet to share your expertise and inspiration, and to whet the appetites of your readers. 

Use social media. Send tweets from the main character in your book. Give advice or share ideas and tips. 

Make YouTube videos. Hollywood-style video is just that – for Hollywood. When it comes to YouTube, all you need is a Flip camera or Webcam, an interesting topic, and the confidence to share what you know on video. Creativity does play a part in causing YouTube videos to go viral, so try these ideas: have someone interview you, read an excerpt of your book, or provide off-camera instructions with illustrations for a do-it-yourself project. Use your imagination!

Start an ezine: If you have a list of current and previous clients and prospects, communicate your expertise to that audience through an ezine. Consistency and content are key here. Your ezine should be distributed regularly (once a month is too infrequent; daily is too often; choose something in between). Share key points from your book, explore concepts more thoroughly, introduce subscribers to related resources and experts.

Using these and other techniques to repurpose your book’s content will make it hard to forget your book!

In what creative ways have you repurposed your book’s content?