Continuing with the book is your business model, I’ve categorized three paths to take your book and expand it to a full business where you have a better chance of gaining profits. Some people do make a profit with one book or ebook, but not the majority. So expanding beyond the one book is the best way to create an added income stream.

The first one I call the horizontal path: an example would be Chicken Soup for the Soul or the For Dummies books; you take a theme and write books on different subject areas with the same format: So you have Chicken Soup for the pet lovers, golf lovers, military, etc. You have the For Dummies format in a variety of non-related subject areas like wine, computers, and singing. Novelists with a recurring character would also be on the horizontal path. In other words, you’re building a franchise based on a similar format or character but on different subjects or situations. In this model you’d have different target markets or readers.

The second I call the vertical path. In this one you would write on the same general subject, such as pets, but on different niche topics like: how to buy your first pet; how to make homemade dog food; how to raise show cats, etc. Or your topic could be health and you could have a book on nutrition, a book on exercise, a book on weight loss—different focuses in the same overall subject. For novels, a vertical path would be a subject like time travel, but each story would be different characters. So in this model, you’d have the same target market or readers who are interested in your subject.

The third path is where you write on the same subject but create different formats. For example, I wrote a report on how to write and sell ebooks. Then I wrote an ebook, taught a live class, and I plan to also have an audio, a workbook, a home study course, a teleclass, and perhaps a retreat—all on the same subject. So in this scenario, you would add additional products and services to create what I call a profit pyramid offering your products as well as services to the same market on the same topic. You’re turning one book into a business by taking the same information and duplicating it in different formats since people learn differently.

Can you think of how you can turn your book into a business? Let me know in the comment area on my blog.

Happy writing,

Andrea
Andrea Susan Glass
www.WritersWay.com

PS. I’m offering a complimentary 17-minute consultation to help you figure out which of these paths works for you. Please contact me at www.writersway.com/contact to set up an appointment. This offer is good through January 31, 2012.