Use Your Copywriting Skills to Start Your Own Publishing Business
By Sandy Franks

We all do it at one time or another.

You hear a success story about someone who, with very little money or know-how, suddenly becomes successful and you think, that’s just not possible. There’s got to be a catch. Or dismiss it as a matter of luck.

Yet when you dig a little deeper, you see it’s entirely possible. And that’s also the moment you realize the person in the story who became super successful could have easily been YOU.

Well, Dear Copywriter, the story I’m going to share with you today is no different. When you learn how Amanda Hocking took her passion for writing and became an Amazon Kindle superstar with her own line of self-published books, you’ll realize how her story could easily be your story.

I’m also going to show you how your copywriting skills are ideally suited for the self-publishing niche. But first let me tell you about Amanda Hocking’s success story.

All Amanda wanted to do was attend an exhibition about Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets, that was coming to Chicago in six months. But there was one problem: She didn’t have much money. The truth is, Amanda was pretty much broke.

She couldn’t afford a plane ticket and there’s no way she was going to miss the event. So instead she decided to do the eight-hour drive to get there. She figured it would cost her about $300 for gas and a few other necessities along the way.

She couldn’t borrow the money from family or friends. So she decided to raise the funds herself by selling some of the novels she had written over the past nine years.

Amanda loved writing. It is something she’s done since age 12. By the end of high school, she had written 50 short stories and started countless novels.

Although she worked full-time as a caregiver, she filled her free time with writing. All of that spare time writing amounted to a huge collection of books she tried to get published through traditional book publishing companies, but wound up getting rejection letters.

Since most of her manuscripts were sitting around collecting dust, she thought why not sell them on Amazon and other digital e-book sites? After all, she wasn’t looking to make a fortune, just enough to cover her trip to Chicago.

Now Dear Copywriter, here’s where her story takes that dramatic rags-to-riches turn. Amanda not only raised the $300 she needed, but an additional $20,000 selling 150,000 copies of her books.

That was just the start. She kept selling and selling those books. Over a 20-month period, Amanda sold 1.5 million of her books for a grand total of $2.5 million. All by her lonesome self. Not a single book agent or publishing house or sales force or marketing manager or bookshop anywhere in sight.

If Amanda could do this on her own, there’s no doubt you could create your own information products as well. Especially when you consider that self-publishing uses many of the elements that define good copywriting. For instance,

1. A Big Idea: All best-selling books share a common element. They are based on a one big compelling idea. The same is true with writing sales letters. All best-selling sales letters share the same thing … one big, emotionally compelling idea.
2. Headline (book title): Look through a list of top-selling books and you’ll find the titles are eye-catching. The same is true with sales letters. You can’t get your prospect’s attention unless you have a strong headline.
3. Body copy (the story itself): A book you just can’t put down is a well-written story. A best-selling sales letter tells the prospect a good story and is filled with facts, figures, and an abundant amount of proof.
4. Call-to-Action Close (the ending): Books we love have endings we find hard to forget. A best-selling sales letter has a strong call-to-action close that makes the prospect naturally want and need the product being sold.

And here’s something else to consider … something that’s similar to Amanda’s success story. She wrote in her spare time. Even if you have clients you write copy for regularly, you could use your free time to write your own info products.

This way, you aren’t “cutting” into your full-time income. In fact, by getting started on the side, you’re actually generating a second income. Whenever there are downtimes from not having a paid project or you need to take some time off, the money you make from your self-publishing business fills in those income gaps rather nicely.

Like Amanda had amassed a collection of stories she wrote, you probably have a vast amount of unused research you’ve done for clients that could easily be used for your information business.

I could go on and on, but hopefully you get the point. There’s really not much holding you back from starting your own self-publishing business … not when you already have the basic copywriting skills needed for success.