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Books are among the top three most profitable and most utilized tactics to monetize your already existing content. Having a book can help you land speaking gigs of your dreams, spark new funnels for prospective clients, or take what you already have and create a digital product.
But honestly, the book process can be super daunting. At a conference last year, Kate came across Lulu, an online self-publishing company. They shared all these examples of how content creators had used their expertise to create books, journals, planners, and more. This realization is what prompted the Simple Pin Planner to become a physical product in our shop. Lulu made it so much easier than what Kate had imagined. Whether you already have content prepared or you’re starting from scratch, getting your expertise into a printed book has never been easier and more profitable.
Lulu’s eCommerce plugins make it super easy for you to publish your book and sell it directly to your fans from your own site. While they handle all the printing and shipping on the back end, we use their Shopify integration and it is so slick and easy. You keep a hundred percent of creative control, a hundred percent of your customer data, and a hundred percent of your profits. Go create a free account at lulu.com to get started.
Today’s podcast is a little bit different, as we aren’t focusing so much on Pinterest. Although you can ultimately share this product on Pinterest, we are going to be talking about why adding a book to your business is a good idea. Kate sat down with Matt Briel, the VP of Marketing and Communications at Lulu, to talk about how they got started in the book business and why content creators can add more value to their business by turning their content into a book. He also touches on how to overcome hurdles that most people run into when it comes to book publishing.
Lulu: Online Self-Publishing
Lulu’s goal is to help content creators and entrepreneurs know how to better monetize their content and self-publish their work. They work to develop unique tools for authors and creators to sell their products direct, which are often the first of their kind on the market. The company is constantly investing in innovation and technology.
Lulu was started by Bob Young, who was the original co-founder of Red Hat, an old software company. The company was extremely successful and one of the biggest at the time for a technology company. People wanted to hear the story of how the company became such a success. So he wrote a book. Young thought it would be easy to get a publisher to pick it up, but that ended up not being the case. In turn, he decided to start his own online self-publishing company. In 2002, Lulu was founded as the first online self-publishing company at the time. Amazon didn’t enter the picture until many years later.
Why Book Publishing Is Great For Content Creators
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an influx of content creation happening. The creator economy is huge now, but really the only way people were able to monetize their content was through ads and revenue share. Lulu saw an opportunity to help content creators monetize on the content they were already creating. The focus from traditional publishing companies is typically on fictional authors, which is great. But there is a wave of content creators that are looking to make some extra money, who have already created plenty of content that people are interested in.
For some people, they choose to self-publish as a way to make money. Others do it to get their content into a larger audience or advance themselves in some other ways.
One thing to note if you are a content creator and aren’t sure if you are ready to take the dive into self publishing, is that your content on social media is temporary. For example, if you had built up your audience on Twitter and the sale of the platform to someone else who has now rebranded it to X changed the algorithm, now you’ve potentially lost your audience. All that time you spent building your audience, gone in a second. You have no idea what to do and you have no way to retain that audience or even the content you don’t technically own anymore. So monetizing your content through written form like a book, is a great way for you to own that content.
How Lulu Can Help You
If you are a content creator of pretty much any kind, Lulu can help you turn your content into a book. Some examples of content creators that Lulu has worked with:
- DIY tutorials
- Home & Garden
- Food
- Business and Economics
- Cookbooks
- Travel
You can turn just about any kind of content into a book. Lulu worked with a gal who had hundreds of videos showing people how to use cricket machines for different craft projects. You’re probably thinking video content sounds like it would be hard to make into a printed book. BUT it’s possible! This gal paid attention to the YouTube videos that were getting the most views and engagements. From there she put together a book based on her most viewed patterns and projects.
She created the book and the project on Lulu, and then added our Shopify plugins into her Shopify store. From there she started getting orders and selling her very own book.
Lulu Makes It Easy
Lulu makes it super easy to go back and update your content without wasting paper and having a bunch of printed materials that are out of date. That’s a big reason why a whole side of their business is dominated by the academic world. Nowadays lots of professors create their own textbooks. Let’s say they’re teaching a course on digital marketing. The minute they publish that textbook, it’s out of date.
With Lulu you have the ability to go right back to your file on their website and edit your content. So instead of printing content on your own, where you’d potentially have to store outdated copies, you can easily edit your content on Lulu and it will update instantly. Since Lulu only prints when a book is ordered, you no longer will have boxes of outdated books stored in your garage.
Every time one of your followers buys the book, the order gets transmitted to Lulu and they print and ship it. They’ll even white label it for your brand if you want. After that, you really don’t have to touch anything, making it easy for you to go back to focusing on content, building your audience, and then figuring out what your next product is going to be.
If you aren’t someone who is proficient with graphic design or you need an editor for your book, Lulu partners with specialized vendors. On their site you can find all their vetted graphic designers, editors, formatters, and proofreaders.
Determining the Right Book For You
Before doing any of that, you’ll need to determine what kind of book you can/want to create.
Simple Pin has tons of content related to helping businesses with their Pinterest marketing. One product in particular always seems to attract a lot of attention: our Simple Pin Planner. Originally the planner was only available online, but with the help of Lulu, we were able to turn it into a physical item. Workbooks are just one format you can use to create a book.
If you teach a course or masterclass of any kind, you might want to think about creating a book or notebook that people can use alongside the course. If you’re doing anything that’s educational in nature, most people want something they can write in and look back at once the course is over.
The one thing people don’t want from you is another crappy eBook or PDF.
As said before, Lulu works with all kinds of content creators from podcasters to YouTubers, creator makers to small business owners. They have found there’s truly no cap on what kind of content can be turned into a book.
Lulu has a bunch of blog articles on their website that break things down per niche/medium. Whether you’re a podcaster, a YouTuber, a blogger, they will walk you through the best way to create a book from your content.
Getting Started With Book Publishing
If you are considering hopping on the self-publishing bandwagon, head on over to Lulu. Follow these steps for getting started with your own book/notebook:
- Download one of their free notebook interiors (lined paper, graph paper, dot journal paper). That’s half the work right there. Lulu has done the hard part for you.
- Use their cover tool generator to create a cover for your project. Have fun with this part!
- Add in your own content. Use what you’ve already written/created to create the content for your book.
- Order a copy for yourself!
If you are unsure what kind of content to create for your book or just want to experiment with the process, simply skip step three first time around. Nine times out of ten the notebook you create to try this process out is only going to be a couple of bucks. Worst case scenario at the end of this experiment is you’ve got a notebook to write in.
Try It Out For Yourself
If you’re truly looking for ways to monetize your content, chances are you’ll be surprised at how easy the process of self publishing is. And the biggest win of all? You will no longer be relying on third party platforms, and instead can enjoy all the benefits of self-reliance.
Go try it out! Play around with everything they offer over at Lulu.
More Resources:
Watch: Pinterest Marketing 2024 – Why We’re Keeping it in Our Marketing Plan
