Being Generous
Hey, you could be the greatest writer out there with the most insightful content that anyone has ever laid eyes on… But guess what? If no one is buying your books full of that amazing content, it’s almost like you never wrote it in the first place. Hey, come on… We’ve all heard that question of if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it really make any sound at all? Some would say, of course. But, when we look at this question a little deeper, we realize that sound is the vibration of eardrums. Well, if there are no eardrums around to vibrate, then there isn’t really any sound either, right? It’s kind of the same in some ways with all the great books out there that nobody knows exists or won’t read because they don’t have a relationship with the author.
So, how are we going to combat this lack of eyeballs on our books? Well, as self-publishing indie authors, we’re a little quicker and more agile than the big boys and girls of our industry. So, what we’re going to do is to be generous. We’re going to be way more generous than the big boys and girls. And we’re going to do this by slowly offering our best content for free. We’ll do this over and over again in wide-ranging channels of distribution.
We’re going to create our own traffic both physically with people walking into the bookstores to buy our book, and virtually with people going to Amazon to buy our book. We are going to create this traffic by being generous and in everything we do.
We’re not going to hoard all of our best content and tell people that they have to go buy our books if they want to know what we know. Instead, we’re going to spray our best content all over the place. We’re not going to hold back. We’re not going to be stingy or have a mindset of scarcity. Instead, we’re going to have a mindset of abundance and share everything we have for free with everyone we can. We’ll do this through our blogs, YouTube channel, newspaper columns, interviews, media appearances, and any other way we can think of. We’re all creative geniuses, so let’s use our creativity to get our best stuff out there for people to consume.
Don’t worry. People will still like your books even after all your generosity of giving out your best stuff for free. People enjoy the convenience of having one place to see a lot of your best stuff, like in your books. Trust me. They will buy your books. Also, people will forget much of what you tell them. It will be advantageous for them to see it again in your books, which they will buy.
This generosity of you giving away all your best stuff is going to help you build relationships you wouldn’t have had otherwise. When people have a slow, but consistent, drip of fantastic content from you, they get to feel like you’ve been helping them forever. It begins to feel like you two must also have been friends forever too. It’s just feels that way when people have contact after contact after contact with you. And if they’re positive contacts filled with awesome content that is solving their problems that’s even better. Through these relationships, they will buy your books over the years and tell others about you for a long time to come. That’s a very valuable relationship, my friend.
Try not to be salesy. Come on, you all know what I’m talking about. Every one of us has gotten an email from someone promising us that they are going to teach us some really valuable secret if we just sign up for their webinar. So, we sign up and sit through an hour webinar with them, hoping to gain this valuable knowledge that they promised us will change our lives for the better.
During our time on that webinar, we hear a few things that pique our interests, and we can’t wait for the ‘how-to’ that should be coming at any time now… Finally, just as the host is getting near the end he tells us that he will share the secret at the next training, which is going to cost $999. This drives us crazy. This whole thing was just an elaborate sales pitch. And it wasted an hour of our time. This makes us mad, and now we don’t trust this slickster anymore. We certainly won’t click on any more of his links… Nor develop a long-term relationship with him.
It’s about karma. Do the right thing by providing your best content free, and the universe will revolve around someday to repaying you for your favor to the world. Also, remember, information is always evolving. Your best stuff today will not be your best stuff later. People will always have plenty of reasons to buy your products and services.
Authorprenuers are generous with their time. They share their best content. Respond to emails and comments on their social media channels. They answer people’s questions and guide them to better solutions too. Authorpreneurs are generous people, and they build great relationships because of their generosity and adding value to people’s lives upfront.
In addition, when we authorpreneurs are putting out great free content through our blog and our YouTube channel for the world to freely consume, we are also doing ourselves a favor. We are actually bringing others along for the ride in which someday we’ll tweak our free content from our blog and YouTube channel and turn it into a book. And when our followers read our book, the information will feel comfortable and familiar to them like a comfy old pair of blue jeans. Pretty cool, huh? Yeah… And this feeling of familiarization also helps a lot with book sales.
*Watch this FREE video lesson on this chapter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ejft5XEOMZg&list=PL_-39bUXJitwL8cHUpiZ5mO0-JJuaPOVl&index=29
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