Why Bestselling Authors Invest in Book Deals with Dr. Erica Jordan-Thomas
You can have a powerful framework, years of expertise, a successful business, and a book idea that could change lives — and still not be ready for a traditional book deal. That does not mean your idea is bad. It means traditional publishing is a business, and publishers need proof that you can reach readers and sell books.
In this episode of Kind of a Big Book Deal, host Meghan Stevenson speaks with Dr. Erica Jordan Thomas — CEO and founder of Seven Figure Educator and forthcoming Hay House author of Seven Figure Educator: Turn Your Experience as an Educator into Income, Impact, and Freedom. They discuss the four-year journey from an underdeveloped author platform to a traditional publishing deal, a completed manuscript, and a major book-launch strategy.
What do you need before pursuing a traditional book deal? You need more than a good idea.
When Dr. Erica first began working with Meghan in 2022, she already had important elements in place. She had a business model, a framework, years of experience, a clear audience, and an ecosystem that could support readers after they finished the book.
But Meghan gave her direct feedback: her audience was not large enough for the kind of traditional deal she wanted.
That was difficult to hear. But it gave Erica a clear focus.
Instead of immediately moving into book-proposal development, she spent two years growing her audience strategically. By the time she began working on her proposal in 2024, she had built more visibility, tested her ideas with real people, developed stronger marketing language, and created proof that she could reach potential book buyers.
The takeaway is not that every author needs the same audience size. It is that your platform needs to be strong enough to support your particular book, business, and publishing goal.
A publisher is not only evaluating the idea. It is evaluating the economics.
For Erica, the realization was that a strong book concept alone was not enough. If the numbers did not show that she could reach and sell to an audience, a publisher would have little reason to take on the financial risk of a book deal.
She spent two years becoming more strategic about social media, but it was not simply about growing followers.
The content helped her understand:
What messages resonated with her audience
Which hooks earned attention
What problems her audience wanted solved
What transformation her audience desired
How to position her book in the marketplace
How to explain why the book was different and needed
Building an author platform is also marketing practice. The skills you develop while growing an audience can later support your book proposal, your publishing pitch, and your book launch.
Erica’s advice for growing your audience is straightforward: post three to six times per day.
Her reasoning is based on data. If you post once each day, you receive one new data point every 24 hours. If you post three to six times a day, you create three to six experiments and receive feedback much faster.
That faster feedback helps you identify what is working and double down on it.
Erica’s content strategy included a quarterly content day with a social-media strategist. Together, they recorded roughly 90 pieces of short-form content in a single day. But Erica emphasizes that she did not outsource her point of view. Before hiring support, she had already put in the repetitions needed to form an opinion about what her content should look like.
A strategist can help you execute and improve your process. But you still need to know your audience, understand their pain points, and have a clear perspective on the transformation you offer.
Writing a book requires more than writing time. It requires business infrastructure.
Erica runs a multiple-seven-figure business. She knew that working on a proposal and manuscript would require her to step away from client delivery and other revenue-generating activities at times. That meant she needed to prepare the business before committing to the book process.
She invested in team, infrastructure, and capacity so the business could continue operating while she dedicated time to writing, reviewing chapters, working on exhibits, and moving through editorial stages.
For entrepreneurs, experts, and creators, this is a critical question: Can your business function while you are working on the book?
A traditional book may create long-term value, impact, and revenue opportunities. But the advance is not necessarily designed to replace the revenue you earn while running a business. You need to consider the opportunity cost of taking time away from clients, operations, and existing offers.
Professional support can reduce the amount of time you spend on the publishing process. But authors still need to show up, provide expertise, review work, and make decisions.
Erica describes the value of collaboration as having someone help organize the forest she had already created.
By the time she began developing her proposal, she had eight years of content, frameworks, stories, business experience, and material to draw from. The challenge was not a lack of ideas. The challenge was determining how to shape that material into a focused reader journey.
Meghan Stevenson Books helped Erica:
Clarify the book’s intended outcome
Identify the reader and the problem the book would solve
Review years of existing content
Create a chapter structure
Decide what to include and what to leave out
Select stories that could introduce major ideas
Organize the reader’s journey from beginning to end
Preserve room for future books and offers
For an expert with a large body of knowledge, the hardest part can be filtering. You may have enough material for multiple books, but the reader needs a clear pathway through one book at a time.
Erica understood that Meghan and her team came from different backgrounds and had different experiences. She also had strong views about her voice and the audience she was speaking to.
Her experience was that collaboration did not remove her agency. It helped her protect it.
During the copyediting process, Erica remained clear about language she did not want changed or watered down. Meghan’s team could review hundreds of comments, identify the issues that actually required Erica’s input, and bring her a shorter punch list. That gave Erica the ability to make final decisions without spending her time reviewing every grammar question, apostrophe, spacing change, or editorial comment.
The author still owns the book. But a skilled collaborator can help protect the author’s voice while handling the parts of the process that do not make the best use of the author’s time.
Why does a literary agent matter?
The agent is the person pitching the book. Before an author is introduced to a publisher, the agent has already begun telling the story of the project, explaining the author’s expertise, and advocating for why the book should be acquired. That is why Erica believes it is essential to find an agent who understands the stakes of the book and can speak about the topic with real investment.
Meghan’s relationships in publishing helped create warm introductions. But the process also involved thinking carefully about fit: the author’s values, the book’s topic, and the kind of partner who could advocate effectively for the project.
A respected agent’s reputation also travels with the proposal. Their standing in the industry can affect how editors perceive the project and the working relationship that may follow.
Questions answered in this episode
Do I need a large audience to get a traditional book deal?
Is a strong book idea enough to get a publishing deal?
How long does it take to grow an author platform?
How can I grow my social-media audience for a book deal?
Why does posting more often help grow an audience?
How can social media help me test my book idea?
Should I hire a social-media strategist?
How do I prepare my business to write a book?
Can I run my business while working on a book proposal and manuscript?
What is the opportunity cost of writing a book?
Why should I hire help for a book proposal?
What does a book collaborator do?
How do I turn years of content into a focused book?
Will a collaborator make my book sound less like me?
How do authors manage copyedits and editorial feedback?
What does a literary agent do?
Why is it important to find the right literary agent?
Why are warm introductions valuable in traditional publishing?
Dr. Erica Jordan-Thomas is the CEO and Founder of 7-Figure Educator™, a business development company shifting power in education and closing the racial wealth gap by equipping high-performing educators to build 7-figure consulting businesses. Through her programs, she’s worked with over 20,000 educators nationwide. Her clients earn an average of $92,000 in annual business revenue outside their 9-to-5s, 42% more than the average teacher’s salary.
A former math teacher and school principal, Dr. Erica holds degrees from The Ohio State University, Relay Graduate School of Education, and Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she earned her doctorate. She’s also a real estate investor and CEO of Emma & Easter Realty Group, and the forthcoming Hay House author of 7-Figure Educator: Turn Your Experience as an Educator Into Income, Impact, and Freedom, available everywhere books are sold on June 16, 2026.
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