Writing and publishing a book is a great accomplishment, but it doesn’t have to end there. Books can be spliced, expanded, and distributed in new and multiple ways online.
Gordon Burgett wrote about how to multiple a book’s sales by turning it into six books. It works easily with non-fiction books, where you can separate the book by topic and publish mini versions (of just the topic). Each of these smaller books can help fuel the sales of the other books. Gordon’s example is for his book, How to Sell 75+ of Your Freelance Writing Almost All of the Time, which has the following topics:
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Why just sell your writing (idea) once? Why not sell it again and again, then once more—and once again…?
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Magazines and Newspapers: two magic systems with lots of sales in each
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Books: sell the original in 11 different formats and each of those in six ebooks
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Niche Publishing: where the gold is hiding in book publishing
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Topic-spoking: one idea exploded, then filtered through the hungriest buyers
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The roll-out: once the copy exists, why not make a lot more money from the idea by six other non-print information dissemination means?
But extracting topics from a book is not the only way to expand upon content. David Wilcockson wrote on Digital Book World about “modularity.” This means content in books can be regrouped and reimagined in ways to reach new audiences. Examples include expanding upon recipes, building communities around topics, and building apps, websites, and more.
What are ways you have or have thought of expanding upon your content? Please share in the comments!
Editor’s note: This post was originally published on April 16, 2015.
