How to Become a Successful Author

34 Steps to Self-Publishing and Marketing Profits

By Dr Irina Webster and William Webster

When you discover our unique steps that we reveal to you in this book, you too can become a famous author writing and publishing your own book. You can earn thousands, even 10s of thousands of dollars for the rest of your life by following the steps in our book.

Hi, everyone

Dr Irina Webster and William Webster here, the founders of the Australian Self-Publishing Group.

We don't claim to be "know-it-alls." but the one thing WE DO know better than 99.98% of most other people on the planet is how to self-publish a book and profit quickly from it. In other words how TO MAKE YOUR BOOK SELL.

After all, that's what we have done with our own books and if we can do it so can you. When we published Irina's first book – the sales from this book replaced her salary as a doctor in a matter of 6 months and freed her from working in 12 months.

Now she has 4 published printed books with 2 of them became International best-sellers plus many eBooks that have rocketed to the top. One book Pregnancy A to Z has sold thousands of eBooks.

This particular book we co-authored together because this book includes all the steps we actually did to publish and market Irina's book in the first place.

However, becoming a successful author and publisher was not the result of some grand plan for Irina, or for both of us: It was more of an accident. We started writing and marketing eBooks, but had so many people requesting a printed book we had to publish.

But please don't take our word for it: type Dr Irina Webster MD into Google and see for yourself. You will see her books on Amazon and other sites all over the Internet. Other people have even made dedicated websites to sell her books. You can buy her books from any Co-op Bookshop and also order from Dymocks.

But first before we get into it read about where Irina came from and how we started.

Dr Irina's Webster story

"I love books. I love reading books but more importantly I love to write them. In March 2001 I came to Australia from Russia basically with no English at all, only a few basic words. By the middle of 2008 I had my eating disorder book written and published in English which quickly became an International Internet best-seller.

In less than 12 months the sales from the book replaced my yearly salary as a doctor at the Canberra Hospital. I quit my job at the hospital and wrote a few more books on the same topic. These were also very successful and became Internet bestsellers.

People often ask me how I did it and what made me write. I didn't write books in Russia- as I said I was a doctor – the job consumed all my time. It was a process and a whole series of events that brought me to writing and publishing.

My grandfather had a major influence on me and my creativity. He taught me a lot about literature, writers and poets. He read to me from a very young age, showing me books with photos of famous writers on them; not just the Russian classics but European and American also.

He made me learn all their names and the names of their major works; this gave me the desire to read them all when I got older.

In high school I really wanted to become a journalist but my parents insisted on me becoming a doctor. Consequently, at the age of 16 I had to change my values from creative thinking to being an intellectual thinker: a big task to conquer.

I became a "blocked artist", having my values incongruent to my soul. My soul wanted to create but I had to maintain a responsible intellectual job for 13 years of my life.

I continuously felt that something was missing in my life like most "blocked artists" do. I tried to express myself in different ways: I married and had my child very early in my life, got divorced early, married again, immigrated to a different country and learned a different language.

Luckily, I kept a diary for years and wrote everything that was occupying my thoughts – my dreams, the things I couldn't express and couldn't speak about because they were too personal. It was when I was reading over it one day I got an idea that I would love to write a book. I spoke about this in my diary as one of the things I miss so much in my life. But what should I write about?

The turning point for me was one night at the hospital; a patient came in and asked for help with her eating disorder. I tried to help her by talking and reassuring her that there was hope. I knew a lot about this problem as I was a sufferer once myself, even helping others in Russia to get better.

When the patient left I was berated by the doctor in charge for wasting time on people like that when there were "real" patients to see.

This was the wrong approach and I knew it. That was the episode that gave me the idea for my book. And it is how it all started…

People often asked us how we made the books so successful

Many people (including doctors) write books but they don't become very successful. This is because in general Authors do not know how to sell their books, so the books just sit there gathering dust in their garages. We will show you how to get your book out to the world.

So what did we do differently?

The answer is the way we marketed and promoted our books. We did it totally different to how the publishing industry did things 4 years ago: we used the Internet.

Now the publishing industry is going flat out to figure out what to do about the revolution that has hit the industry in the last 12 months. Who could have predicted the death of the bookshop?

The old ways of Publishing are gone, they are finished

The problem is most authors still want to try to get their books published in the "same old, same old" way, find a publishing house. The old ways are gone; the industry is in flux nothing is the same.

A new author basically has a very small chance of getting published by a publishing house under 0.5%. Publishing houses only want marketable authors or authors with a presence. They would much prefer to publish a not so good book by a famous established author, than a fantastic book by an unknown.

Sorry to burst your bubble but if you are still hoping for a publishing house to pick you up, then it will probably never happen.

But understand one thing: there has never been a better time for the unknown author to get their book published and out making money than today.

The grip on the book market that the large publishing houses had is broken. No longer do they dictate to the authors and control what books are printed and what books are not. The Internet as changed everything, social media is starting to become the new King.

It is the time of the Self Publisher.

But how to go about things today?

Discovering the 3 major publishing myths was extremely helpful for us.

You know, there are so many myths about publishing but the three most significant are:

1st Myth: Bookstores are the best place to sell books. Absolutely not true!!! Conventional bookstores are actually the least profitable way to sell your books. Bricks-and-mortar bookshops face a grim future nowadays with many of them closing down (like Angus and Robertson, Borders, etc.).

The fact is, only one out of eight people each year go to a bookstore to buy books! Most people nowadays are buying books from the Internet. This is a pure fact.

Even the CEO of HarperCollins has stated that the serious book buyers are leaving the book stores in droves. The CEO of Penguin books has publically said the days of the bookstore are numbered.

While another commentator said, all that is left for the bookstore to do is pick the colour and font size to put on their Closing Down Signs.

2nd Myth: To have a best-selling book you have to be a great writer. This is also not true!!!

We believe that there is at least one great book in every human being. The main point here is to put your ideas down and make them clear. Then you can use other people to help you write.

It is a fact that many best-selling books (not including Irina's, she actually wrote them herself) are ghost-written by others. We'll show you how to find the best ghost writers (at surprisingly low cost) if you don't want or don't have the time to write it yourself.

The beauty of writing this way is that all the rights of a ghost-written book belongs to you and you are the author (not the ghost-writer). Many business people, celebrities, sportsmen and politicians use this approach to leave their legacy and increase their popularity.

3rd Myth: The Publisher will do all the marketing for me. This one is the most hilarious! Conventional publishers do only the distribution of the books. They don't do marketing. You, the author of the book must do all the marketing.

And if you don't – your book will not sell and will go out of print in a matter of 3-6 month and you may lose all the right to your book, it all depends on the contract you sign with the publisher.

Just for this reason alone you should at least explore self-publishing. Since you have to market it yourself anyway, you may decide to keep 100% of the revenue rather than relay on 5-10% royalty a publisher will pay you, that is if you can find one at all.

You see the publishing Industry nowadays as we said before only want to publish books from authors who are known already and are marketable. They want books to publish which will make them money. This is what we teach too authors how to get that presence so the publisher chases you.

When we visited the London Book Fair in April we found out that many conventional publishers wanted to publish Irina's books because of her name on the Internet and her presence as an author. They saw that the books are already selling well so they knew they can't lose on it. In the end what publishers really want from books is to make money (by selling the book). That's why they don't publish books from new authors who don't have a presence.

We maintain that self-publishing is the first and the most important way of publishing for unknown authors. Selling rights to a conventional publisher we consider as secondary or a complimentary way of publishing to give your book more publicity and exposure later on down the track, but you should never sell all the rights – that's the key.

So, what's in the book to help you?

In our book "How to Become a Successful Author: 34 Steps to Self-Publishing and Marketing Profits" you will learn:

How to publish your book in the most profitable way.
How to create a title that makes all the difference in how your book will sell.
How to write and plan chapter names that are so strong and appealing they become a marketing tool. (Note: Most authors do it wrong)
How to make at least a 6-fugure income by writing and publishing.
How to get into the best-seller mindset so you can get the "Law of Attraction" to work for you. (Important point, missed by many authors)
How to market your book successfully on-line and off-line.
How to easily get on radio and TV shows to help sell your book.
How to choose the right topic for a best-selling book.
How to sell your book from the Internet: the most successful ways.
How to write a sales copy for your book.
How to create a book brand and personal brand as an author.
How to choose the correct book sizing.
How to find the best and cheapest book printers.
Book pricing. How much you should charge.
How to use the media for your marketing and promotion.
How to write and where to send a successful press release for your book.
On which stage of the process should you approach a conventional publisher and how (in order to expect a positive result).
How to become an International author and get your book translated into different languages: selling translation rights.
When you can consider franchising your book business and how.
Real ways to create your own best-seller.
How to work with your mind to produce more results while writing and publishing.
How to get free publicity in newspapers, magazines, radio, TV and the Internet.
How to use speeches and seminars to sell books like crazy.
How to differentiate your book from the competition.

Here is what people wrote about our book when we tested:

Why you should publish?

There are many reasons for publishing but the most important one and most used ones are: Fortune, Fame (or at least Credibility and Authority) and Legacy (some people called it Immortality) and Sharing knowledge with others.

These reasons are all true because a correctly published and well marketed book can bring you money, credibility and leave a legacy for future generations.

The most important reason you should have clear in your mind when wanting to publish a book and the most important thing for any author: the book should sell. The book should be actually read: If not, then why bother writing it in the first place?

This is what our book is about:
How to Get your book out to the world,
How to Sell, Distribute and Spread it out using the options opening up for the self published author of today.
In other words: How to Become a Successful Author.

Whether you already own a business, are a professional consultant, speaker, doctor, investor, or housewife from any walk of life with a love for writing or publishing, we'll show you how to turn your passion into profit.

What is in the book is what we have done to get to be a best selling author where publishers now chase and ask us to write books for them.

It is certainly a change and you too can have all the success you want, all you have to do is follow what we did.

Here is what you get in the book: