Write once, use many ways. Another popular term is repurposing.
Your book is just one way of organizing and packaging your writing. There are many other formats or ways to present your information, thoughts, and ideas.
What can you create that uses your book as a source?
- Workbooks and journals
- Bonus materials
- Excerpts
- Calendars
- Coloring books
How can you present it?
- “Mini book” size
- Hardcover (with or without dust jacket)
- Audio and video
- Online
- eBook
Create a “mini book” excerpt to promote a book (or business)
Revela Press needed marketing collateral to promote Nina Ansary’s book at media and fundraising events. We proposed a “mini book” that was essentially a repurposed appendix from her book, Jewels of Allah. Jeannie Lin’s “mini book” is a short story based on her full-length novel, The Warlord and the Nightingale.
Printed by our strategic partner Minibük®, a 3.5” x 5” book is an economical and noteworthy way to promote anyone’s book or business. Other application examples include chapters from fiction books and informational products that promote businesses and services. (Click here to learn more about Minibük.)
Create bonus giveaways and audio excerpts
To help promote AuthorImprints founder David Wogahn’s The Book Review Companion, we created two different pieces of digital collateral:
- A PDF download that readers get when they subscribe to the mailing list.
- An audio excerpt for “Chapter 6: Endorsements/Blurbs.” This is given away to new email subscribers.
Also pictured: a joke book (pink cover) that is given away as a bonus when someone buys Leslie Lehr’s full-length book, Wife Goes On.)
Create a hardcover edition to complement the paperback
This is perhaps the easiest way to repurpose a typical paperback into an additional product. The PDF file we create for the interior of your book can also be used to print the interior of a hardcover—there is no additional expense. The only necessary expenses are to reformat the cover (for a dust jacket, for example), obtain an additional ISBN, and set up the title for distribution.
In these examples, the clients wished to print a select number of hardcovers for personal use and gifts. All three formats—eBook, paperback, and hardcover—are available for online purchase, giving shoppers a full range of price points.
Create a workbook to accompany or supplement the primary book
Many subjects are better mastered when the reader can complete exercises after or while reading a book. It’s an opportunity to create an additional saleable product in less time than it took to write the primary book. Now you have the potential of selling twice as many books.
(Pictured: Accounting for Non-Accounts was traditionally published by Source Books so the author got their approval to self-publish his Study Guide and Workbook for Accounting for Non-Accounts. Megan Skinner’s Essence of the Tarot Journal and Coloring Book is a 8.5” x 11” up-sell to her full-length book, Essence of the Tarot.)
Create books from previously published content
Content created for another purpose, such as whitepapers, articles, manuals, and similar, can be easily adapted for publication as a print or eBook. They usually need only light editing and formatting for re-publication, and of course a cover. This is especially powerful when packaged as a series.
EBooks are uniquely attractive because they can be sold or given away free online. For example, Kindle eBooks do not need to be sold only on Amazon—you can also offer them on your own website.
