Traditional Publishing for Entrepreneurs: The ROI of Investing in Your Book Deal
If you want a traditional nonfiction book deal, your book idea is only one part of the equation. Publishers are not looking for a genie to find your readers — they want to work with an author who already has a credible way to reach them.
That means the work of becoming a traditionally published author begins before you submit a proposal, contact a literary agent, or write a manuscript. It begins with your author platform: the audience, relationships, visibility, and business foundation that can help sell your future book.
Hosted by Meghan Stevenson, a traditional publishing expert, professional nonfiction how-to collaborator, editor, ghostwriter, and founder of Meghan Stevenson Books, this episode explains the author-platform strategies that can help entrepreneurs, experts, creators, and thought leaders build toward a traditional book deal.
Meghan’s 3P Framework™ for getting a traditional book deal is simple:
Potential+Platform+Proposal=Traditional Book Deal
You need a book idea with potential, an established way to reach readers through your platform, and a well-executed book proposal.
Many entrepreneurs, experts, creators, and thought leaders already have a book idea — and many may already have an idea with the potential to become a book deal. The missing piece is often platform.
Your platform is your ability to sell books to people you are already in contact with and speaking to. For many people, that means growing an audience. And even if you already have a large audience, continuing to grow and invest in it can strengthen your ability to land a book deal and write a bestselling book.
The important part is that your platform must work for your actual business. Growing followers solely to get a book deal is not a useful strategy. Your audience-building efforts should also support the way you already make money.
Every author’s platform is different because every business, audience, and area of expertise is different. However, Meghan sees several common platform-building strategies across industries and business models:
Social-media followers and content
Email lists
Podcast appearances
Media coverage
Brand partnerships and affiliate relationships
Friends, colleagues, clients, and professional networks
Speaking engagements and facilitation
The best platform is not the one that looks most impressive from the outside. It is the one that aligns with your business model, your audience, and how you make money.
First on her list is social media. It can be a powerful way to grow your audience, test ideas, and build an author platform. But it has to make sense for your business.
If you dislike social platforms, that is your choice. If you love them and see how they can help promote your work, that can be valuable too.
The key is whether social media supports your revenue model.
As a general rule, an increase in followers should also lead to increased revenue. Meghan shares an example of a client who grew from fewer than 10,000 followers to nearly 200,000 followers while growing annual revenue from $750,000 to more than $4 million.
That growth worked because the client had a strategy for turning attention into business revenue.
Many entrepreneurs, experts, creators, and thought leaders use social-media content to promote paid offers. But social media may not be the best fit for everyone. It can be less useful for businesses centered on one-to-one services or businesses that serve people who are not actively using social media, such as CEOs and executives.
For social media to work, you need consistency and alignment with how you serve your audience.
Another strategy is an email list. An email list gives you a direct relationship with your audience. In theory, you are closer to the people on your list because you can communicate with them more directly.
Email can help you consistently share ideas, promote offers, build trust, and stay connected to the readers who may later buy your book.
Next, podcast appearances. These can increase visibility and help you expand your network organically.
The strategy matters. Rather than appearing on every possible podcast, focus on adjacent audiences: listeners who are likely to care about your work because they already follow related ideas, industries, or experts.
Seen less often than in previous years, brand partnerships and affiliate relationships can include sponsored content or mutual promotion of launches and offers.
These can still support business development and sales. Like other platform-building activities, the goal should not be only to get a book deal. It should also create real value for your business.
Next, media coverage. Media coverage can add credibility, but Meghan describes it as a nice-to-have rather than a necessity.
You do not need media coverage to build a platform. Your audience, relationships, content, business, and ability to sell can matter more.
Another way to build a platform is a broad network of friends, colleagues, clients, and professional contacts. It can be one of the most effective elements of an author platform.
These relationships must be developed well before you need someone to promote your book. They should be built through mutual benefit — not through transactional or “icky” networking.
Meghan cautions against relying on name-dropping or trying to secure support only from high-profile people. Big names can be unreliable, even when they genuinely want to help. She has seen clients with celebrity connections rejected by publishers because those relationships were not viewed as reliably effective at selling books.
A strong network does not need to consist only of people with huge audiences.
Meghan recently worked with a client who had seven pages of contacts she could reasonably ask to help promote her book. Only four or five of those contacts had more than 100,000 followers, while the majority had fewer than 10,000 followers. Yet, through those direct, real relationships, the client had what Meghan calls a total reach of 3 million people.
That is the value of an engaged, credible network built over time.
Are speaking engagements good for selling books?
Speaking engagements and facilitation can be especially important for authors who want to speak professionally or work with companies and organizations.
Publishers like bulk buys, and conferences, events, and organizational speaking engagements can create opportunities for them. That makes speaking and traditional publishing a natural fit for authors who already work in one-to-many environments, whether in person or virtually.
If your business involves teaching, facilitating, consulting, or speaking to groups, this may be the platform strategy worth emphasizing.
Your book can become part of a larger ecosystem that includes speaking engagements, workshops, client work, and broader business development.
Building an author platform should create value before you ever receive a book deal. Your content can promote paid offers. Your email list can strengthen relationships with future clients and readers. Podcast appearances can expand your network. Speaking engagements can support business growth and create opportunities for bulk book sales.
The goal is to grow your platform in a way that works for your business. Anything that does not align with how you serve people and make money may become a waste of time and money.
The same applies to investing in a book proposal.
Meghan advises entrepreneurs, experts, and creators to invest in help with their proposal because they have one opportunity to make an impression with literary agents and publishers. As of this recording, Meghan Stevenson Books’ proposal fees begin at $30,000. When an author expects a six-figure advance of $100,000 or more, that represents a potential 233 percent return on the investment.
But the advance is not the only potential source of revenue from a book. An author may also earn money through:
Recording an audiobook
Selling foreign rights
Selling subsidiary rights
Earning out the advance and receiving royalties
The larger financial opportunity can also come from protecting your time.
Meghan shares the example of a client who had to give up several clients while writing the first version of his own proposal, costing him thousands in revenue. Hiring help for the next version was worthwhile because he could earn more in his business than he paid for proposal support.
For corporate consultants who charge hundreds of thousands of dollars per client engagement, investing heavily in proposal and manuscript support can create leverage. Rather than stepping away from high-value client work to write a book, they can continue working in their businesses and pursue larger engagements.
A book should be viewed as one part of your broader brand, business, and impact. A traditional book deal can be valuable because it may create an advance, royalties, audiobook income, foreign-rights income, and subsidiary-rights opportunities. But a book can also support the larger work you are already doing.
It can help grow your audience, strengthen your authority, create more opportunities to speak, support client relationships, and expand the impact of your ideas. That is how a book can become a driver of business growth, personal wealth, and broader impact—not simply a product that sits apart from the rest of your work.
Questions answered in this episode
What do I need to do to get a traditional nonfiction book deal?
What is the 3P Framework™ for getting a book deal?
What is an author platform?
Why do authors need a platform before pursuing a book deal?
Do I need to grow my audience to get a traditional book deal?
Do I need social media to become a traditionally published author?
How can I make money while growing my social-media following?
What platform strategies work besides social media?
Why is an email list valuable for authors?
Are podcast guest appearances useful for building an author platform?
Do I need media coverage to get a book deal?
How can my professional network help sell a book?
Should I rely on celebrity connections to promote my book?
Why are speaking engagements valuable for authors?
Do publishers like bulk book buys?
Should I hire someone to help write my book proposal?
What is the return on investment of hiring book-proposal support?
How can hiring proposal support protect my business revenue?
How can a book generate money beyond an advance?
How can a traditionally published book grow my business, wealth, and impact?
Have a great idea for a book but don't know where to start? MeghanStevenson.com/quiz
