In this article, I’ll share the story of how I got started with independent book publishing, what I’ve experimented with, what I’ve learned, and then what I’ve learned about my work when I asked the publishing community for their feedback.
To date, I’ve published 21 books. In this article, I’ll ultimately share whether book publishing and is something I recommend.
My book publishing journey
I spent 12 months researching and writing my first book, Getting Shit Done: The No-Nonsense Framework for Closing the Strategy-Execution Gap. I did some research on the writing and publishing process and tried the expert advice. I put tons of effort into this book and hired a professional editor, illustrator, and cover designer to give it the best shot at success.
Before the launch, I tried to get a Beta Reader and Launch group together, but eventually, everyone ghosted. I got a handful of organic reviews and then had to follow up with other folks I knew to repeatedly ask them to share their review (it was like pulling teeth). Generally, the estimates are that 1% of readers of any book ever leave a review, making my experience par for the course.
I then spent the following weeks and months promoting my book to my sizeable LinkedIn following (10k+) and booked guest spots on podcasts and webinars. All these led to very little, where today, I’ll sell 10-30 books in a typical month.
The book is a decent size at 70k words, so I published the second book as a recap and summary of the 1st one to determine if the issue was length vs. the key messages. There were some sales, but generally, nothing there.
- Getting Shit Done: The No-Nonsense Framework for Closing the Strategy-Execution Gap 4.8/5 with 11 reviews, several detailed reviews
- 265 Strategy-Execution Questions: 265 Strategy-Execution Questions to assess your organization, function, team, and self 1 5-star rating
My initial hypothesis with book publishing was that strategy is such a niche topic with a limited audience, so I’d need to try a few different angles to determine if book publishing is and could be a profitable venture. In all, I’ve now published 21 books to test and validate or disprove various theories.
In this article, I’ll share each hypothesis, the preliminary results, what I’ve learned, and the value of writing and publishing.
A little About me
For background information, I have developed expertise and an audience for myself, primarily in the field of cost accounting, manufacturing profitability, strategy, and project management. I have established the EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authority, & Trust) factors, with 10 years of corporate experience, with my last role being FP&A Director.
- 12k followers- LinkedIn: Benjamin Wann, CMA, CSCA, MBA, PMP, CPA
- 1k followers Twitter
- 640 Medium
- While I’m not a household name, I’m not a nobody in my field, either.
As a side note, I’ve generally known and seen the most successful authors also spend much of their time speaking and consulting around their niche to build interest and get those sales coming in. I’m not a prominent speaker (yet), so I’ve looked for other angles to explore first.
As I’ll explain, I primarily use my successful and popular blog to identify topics resonating with readers. Rather than going all in on an unproven idea, I wanted to ensure that I would get something for my time and effort when I invested. I’ve been stung twice, putting lots of effort/investment into two books for little to show, so continuing down that path wasn’t something I was willing to do, despite being very proud of what I’ve produced.
The Book Publishing Journey Continues
After my 2 initial books, I paused and published a book on management accounting careers several months later, a topic near and dear to my heart and relevant to thousands worldwide, where no other book existed.
3. Your Career in Modern Management Accounting: Getting Hired, Promoted, and Achieving Success!
The result? Crickets for sales, mostly. It has 3 5-star ratings and 1 glowing review. I later recycled the content as separate blog posts on my site.
I decided to keep going and try a few other books that intersected with my expertise, interests, and experience. I wrote a book sharing the experience my wife, and I had at a timeshare sales event while explaining and applying the famous principles of persuasion to share how to identify and counteract each so you aren’t convinced to purchase something you don’t want. This was fun to write and is also an applicable topic for thousands.
4. You Should Go to a Time Share Presentation: Understanding the Six Principles of Persuasion Used to Sell Consumers On TimeShares and Learn How to Counter Them 4 ratings and a 4/5 Stars
Not much happened with this approach, either.
So, I stopped thinking book-first and started thinking article-first, writing a lot on my blog to reveal more data points, BenjaminWann .com.
A few articles I wrote received tons of interest and praise, so I decided to test whether they’d stand as their own compiled as shorter books. Would readers like this concept and delivery format?
6. The Great Resignation: Understanding and Adapting to the Forces Revolutionizing Work
7. Empathy in Business Leadership: Empathy & The Dark Side of Empathy
8. 130 Powerful Strategy Quotes Explained: Master Strategy By Learning From The Best
9. Strategic Questions to Ask Senior Leaders: Questions & Answers to Reveal Leadership Insights
I published each book, shared them with my networks, and embedded the Amazon links into each article to see what would happen, but nothing has really converted.
So, the next test was if I could focus on writing books that focused on providing deep practitioner insights around my core expertise, cost accounting. Would these do well? There are no similar competing books for these books, making them an appealing, maybe hidden opportunity.
12. Accounting Made Simpler: Accounting Explained For Beginners
The result has been nearly nothing for the first book; the second one was just published.
Before publishing Accounting Made Simpler, I used the Publisher Rocket tool to identify which books sell and earn the most on Amazon. The ah-ha moment here was that the best-selling books almost universally explain accounting to beginners in different formats.
So, I bought best-selling books, analyzed them, wrote a better product, and launched it. I will need to see how this performs and whether advertising/promotion is required to get it off the ground.
The next group of books is a little different in that they are textbooks, essentially. The books for the CSCA certification help me sell access to an exam prep service I’ve developed, maybe 4 a month, where I include the book for free.
The CMA exam guides are new and will help me test the concept and promise of developing a new CMA exam prep service.
Generally, nothing here, either, in terms of standalone sales, despite very few competing resources existing for students and professionals.
I have also published some other specialty books, like the one on Business Process Improvement book, which summarizes my best-selling course Udemy, that I include as a free resource, helping students stay on track and take notes throughout.
16. BPI Course Notebook: Notes for Business Process Improvement, Process Mapping, and Leadership
This is the only one where I didn’t plan to use it to sell standalone books- it doesn’t make sense in that use case.
Pivoting and reflecting once again, I’ve considered the fact that I’ve done pretty darn well building a business around writing & publishing blog articles and monetizing my website traffic.
So I shared a few books sharing my expertise to explain how anyone else would do something similar. The concept here was whether books that help people solve specific challenges tied to them earning more money would be a hit.
17. Niche Site Strategy: The best sustainable, real way to make money online
18. The Path to Online Profits: How to Make Money Online With Niche Websites
19. Writers’ Strategy Execution How-To Handbook: Turn your writing ideas into success
I think it’s too early to tell the outcome for these books, and I have high hopes, but initial testing hasn’t sent many positive signals. This is bizarre to me because I explain what I’ve done to earn money, and by reading the book, the reader could have a good shot at getting similar results. Beats me.
Towards the end of my publishing list is a children’s book I wanted to write for my daughter because my family has always enjoyed the company of beagles. I wrote this book and used a professional illustrator and a local bookbinder to complete it.
I also designed and contracted to have accompanying hand-knit beagle dolls manufactured. I went a step further and had professional pictures done of the book and doll, too. No expense spared. I primarily sell this one on Etsy, with an ebook on Amazon.
20. A Beagle-rific Day!: I Can Bark Bark Baroo- How About You?
Finally, rounding out my collection, I took two moonshots to see if there was any interest in bridging business and religion, sharing common principles, and explaining how some of the most devout business leaders attributed faith to their success, sharing their specific mindsets and experiences.
21. Leadership Through the Bible: 60 Inspirational Quotes From Scripture
Absolutely nothing here so far. That’s why it’s a moonshot, right?
My Initial Reflection on Independent Book Publishing
Then I test whether those will either succeed as standalone books or help me promote/sell other services.
The sales have been lackluster, at best, leading me to wonder if there is a better way to write, publish, and profit from books. So, I created and tested a few hypotheses.
My initial thoughts on writing and publishing books
Overall, my opinion from my publishing experience and experience is that if you are an independent, unknown writer without access to major media outlets and the ability to promote your books as a condition of your speaking events, book publishing isn’t a profitable venture. In the business genre, at least.
Over the years, I’ve read about individuals who have done very well for themselves as independent writers but are the exception to the rule. They write in the romance, hobbies, and self-help categories but never business.
What has made this experiment even more interesting is the variety of writing, publishing, and marketing tactics that have all pretty much failed. It’s still early for some books, with some experiments not having enough time to provide conclusions yet.
What is even more interesting is that I have built a social media following, built my own platform with my blog and its 80k visitors/month, and built a 1k email list; if you can name it, I’ve done it. But none of this has produced any noticeable sales volume.
Out of 21 books, 12 were written with no AI, other than Grammarly, whereas AI primarily created the remainder’s content. As these are all business-related books, I used AI to produce the meat-and-potato content I thought readers would want, adding in just human editing, organization, and compilation. My expertise was used to understand what belonged in each book and where.
Interestingly, human-written books haven’t outperformed. As an entire group, it’s pretty meh. I am entirely reluctant to invest time and energy in a concept that has proven unviable.
Seeking Book Publishing Feedback From Reddit
As with any experiment, it’s possible that bias can make us blind. So, I contacted the Reddit group on Self Publishing (R/selfpublish) to get a broader perspective from other writers and book publishers.
Here’s what I shared. And then waited for the replies to come in.
The post:
Below is their feedback and my response. Where possible, I condensed, shortened, or clarified the feedback.
Marali87- Book publishing feedback 1
Your website completely crashes on my devices. I get two cookie notifications on top of each other, and I can’t click “accept” or anything else.
Response: that’s the first I’ve heard of this; I contacted my ad network to investigate and resolve any technical issues. Helpful
weirdcorvid- Book publishing feedback 2
I saw the part where you were explaining EEAT — and that’s exactly what you should keep in mind when marketing nonfiction like this
Response: Noted & Agree- that’s what I shoot for. Helpful
comb over the covers, blurbs, and frontmatter of each book with an eye towards conveying that the reader has a problem and YOU are the professional who will solve it. i’m not a nonfiction writer, so my expertise here is very limited.
Response: I agree I need to go back and review each book to ensure it’s the best it can be. Helpful
a few glaring issues that stood out:
the blurb i read rambled for too long about general information before getting to “why you need this book”
Response: Worth revisiting. Helpful
some covers have “by Author Name” instead of just “Author Name” which screams amateur
Response: I don’t particularly buy this one. I can look at other books but I can’t say that’s a common opinion.
one book has a “let me know if i made mistakes!” section at the front. omg why would you suggest that this book might have errors? accounting is stressful for many people; they want reliable answers
Response: Disagree. This is common in business books- particularly some of my favorites
i’d also put more thought into your launch plan for each individual book. you need reviews as social proof. i don’t know how you get those for this type of nonfiction, but you need them.
Response: I don’t agree. Yes, books need reviews, but investing additional time and money for a concept that may never sell isn’t how I add value to my business. I am now exploring additional means to getting reviews, which are critical.
last month i was literally looking for tax/accounting help books on amazon lol, so i think im your audience. things i looked at were: does the blurb clearly describe it will tell me what i need to know, does the writer have credentials beyond “writes books”, what do the reviews say. i didn’t even click on books without reviews— which is very different from how i browse fiction
Response: Interesting. The catch 22 here is that to get reviews you need readers, but without readers you won’t get reviews. Amazon has strict rules that prohibit nearly every means of soliciting readers who don’t you know you already and compensate them for their time spent reading your book and providing a review. I will need to revisit all my book blurbs to ensure they are clear on what they offer.
ZeroNot- Book publishing feedback 3
nonfiction has a long history of acknowledging that they are not error-free, and Donald Knuth’s famous The Art of Computer Programming (see Rewards) has offered a financial reward for errata submissions from1968 to 2008. Soliciting corrections is common in technical and academic monographs and textbooks. It is also quite familiar to acknowledge the contribution of editors and proofreaders, while taking ownership of any remaining errors, as a matter of course in many forwards.
Response: Agreed and validates my preference on including the “contact me for thoughts and suggestions” piece in my books. Authors become blind to their work after a point and missing errors is just part of the process and it takes time to get them all.
Orion004- Book publishing feedback 4
I see you write non-fiction on different subjects. Pick a niche for which you have expertise, knowledge, or passion above that of the average person and stick to it. That is your leverage, and it will allow you to go deeper into the subject and write several related books. Make sure your niche is profitable on Amazon, meaning there are books on the subject from other authors ranking very well on Amazon right now.
Response: Yes, it’s I guess atypical for someone to have several areas of expertise, knowledge, or passion, but that’s me. My books offer deep practitioner insights, I just can’t figure out how to connect people who would benefit to buying and reading them.
Identifying and breaking into profitable niches on Amazon is a real challenge. That ties back to the importance and incredible difficulty in getting book reviews. You can have the best book but if you don’t have the network, process, and reach, you’re dead in the water.
Improve your covers and focus on paperbacks.
Response: a good portion of my book covers are professionally designed and high-quality. However, those books don’t demonstrate a correlation between good covers and sales. Btw, in business, some of the most famous books have bland, unappealing covers. For the remainder of my books, I use canva and AI tools and one of my team members to get these done. Unless the book sells, sinking money into a cover is a losing venture.
Research your chosen niche and ensure your content, covers, and blubs match or surpass those of the bestselling self-published books in the niche.
Response: I agree. I need to do a review of every book to ensure it’s maximized to appeal to the audience.
If the main subject you’re good at is not profitable on Amazon, then find the next thing you’re good at that’s ranking well on Amazon. Don’t just publish something because it’s your passion. There has to be a market for it. Likewise, don’t publish stuff for which you have no interest/passion/experience just because it’s profitable on Amazon. That ultimately fails in the long run.
Response: This statement reflects the incredible paradox of publishing and trying to make a business out of it. I’ve found it’s not just a matter of interest/expertise/demand but the ability to get reviews and eyeballs on your book. I’ve now done enough experiments where not one niche has taken off.
KTKT11- Book publishing feedback 5
Have you looked at the analytics of your website to see what people are looking at when they visit your site? What information you provide is most in demand?
Response: Yes, with a website, I have complete analytics on everything. I based my decisions on what to write and publish based on this.
However, when it comes to Amazon, publishers get access to basically no data. I can’t tell what books are clicked on, browsed, or added to carts. I can’t see which are appearing in rankings and for what keywords. I am blind to everything, making Amazon publishing more challenging. What seems to be a sure thing based on website data is a dud on Amazon.
You need to pick one area of your expertise and focus on that and be a go-to expert in that. Rather than being a jack of all trades, be a master of one. Seeing a kids book after books about accounting, productivity, and Christianity is jarring.
The idea of thinking of business in terms of religion will be a turn off for some (including me), but maybe there’s an audience for it that you could build on. Maybe you could pair it with a podcast and traveling lecture series at places of worship. Just one example of finding a niche, but making sure it has an audience, demand, and profitability.
Response: Interesting. Maybe I need to kill the Christianity/business combo, but with the exception of the children’s book, the rest are all related disciplines. And hyper focusing on a niche that isn’t selling, is the epitamy of the sunk cost principle, throwing additional money and time to justify the effort already spent.
I’d also invest in professional cover design. There was one cover that has a mix of fonts on it and it just overall looked confusing and not trustworthy. People do judge a book by its cover if they have lots of options to choose from.
Response: Good point, I’ll have to review all book covers, especially the ones I designed, to ensure they appeal without spending more money to do so, using my team and tools.
Botsayswhat- Book publishing feedback 6
polish your branding, your packaging needs a go-over too. basically, you’ve got what looks like it could be a solid foundation, now it needs a good deal of polishing up
Response: I agree this is worth looking into. I need to understand where, if anywhere, the potential lies. If I spend more time and effort and that still doesn’t convert to sales, then I’m a bit reluctant. This may be something I revisit in a few more months.
sonjafebruary- Book publishing feedback 7
When you hear advice like “you have to publish x books before you can expect to be successful” it’s assuming that all x number of books are in the same niche, serving the same audience. That if I as a reader like one of your books, I can be confident that I would enjoy other books.
Another thing on the “15 books” – my initial impression of your amazon page is that some of the books look more like pamphlets or extended essays; the “x number of books” advice applies to full books, with the expectation that, as well as having x number of books, you would also have shorter side material for various reasons.
Response: Disagree. If I can’t get people to read 1 book, 14 related books won’t do much for anyone. Some books are full books with months of my full attention, while others are experiments. I have to validate what works before I do more of it.
Cara_N_Delaney- Book publishing feedback 8
With that many visitors on your website and so few sales, you’re probably dropping the ball at the point where you get your visitors to buy your books. Why are your visitors on your website? I assume your SEO is at least vaguely connected to what you write about. But nobody bites. Why?
Because who the hell is going to find your books under “Meet Ben” -> “Writing Portfolio”? Your books need their own tab in the header menu (as “BOOKS”, not “Portfolio”), AND proper cover pictures linking to the Amazon listing. A light grey list on white background will not lure anybody in.
People are magpies. They want shiny, pretty stuff to look at. Give them that instead of a nineteen-point list of boring grey text.
Response: Very valid points. I have the data to know what people are searching for and what they read on my site. However, as you point out, I can’t get them to buy. We’ve experimented with all sorts of tweaks, message bars, email lists, pop-ups, and in-article embeds. But little converts. I’m a bit at a loss of what else to try promoting the books from the website.
For the second point on having the Books section buried in the navigation, this is a good one. I just fixed it after reading it.
Humbly_Pretentious- Book publishing feedback 9
Why does your website have ads on it? Do they generate any kind of meaningful income? I ask because it seems odd to have ads on this type of website. It may take away from your credibility.
Response: Those ads bring in $3500 a month. They pay the bills and are the core of my business. In contrast, books are a little more than an unprofitable distraction. They help give my site credibility by linking them to my blog. But the ads are the primary focus because they are a proven and scalable concept.
Kattscallion- Book publishing feedback 10
Your books are too expensive on kindle to be “an impulse buy” – and out of what people would normally pay in the genres you write in for a self-published book – especially your kid’s book.
Response: A low-priced business-related book is not generally appealing, giving the perception of low quality. Most business books are in the same price range I use. Perhaps the second point in the statement reveals the truth, my books are not impulse buys. They are for people who have specific problems to solve and want to use them to improve in their career and skillsets.
magictheblathering- Book publishing feedback 11
DISCLAIMER: I’m not saying you did any of the following, just telling you how your page/books/etc make me feel:
All these books feel like they were “written” by someone in a weirdo grindset pyramid scheme run by The Mikkelsen Twins.
Skimming a few of your books and their content, I think back to when I worked in finance/sales. There were books like these by Zig Ziegler and Tony Robbins and then there were the “wannabes” Who were in the process of building a brand so they could get on the motivational speaker circuit.
These books, your website, etc all feel similar to that era of my life, but they all feel like you heard some stats and numbers, and then worked toward those without any strong sense of substance.
As a web developer and marketing person, i have trouble believing some of your numbers. You’re making $42k/year from ads on your website with MediaVine but you only sell 15 books a month?! If this is true (and I suspect it’s not; when I lived and worked in the sakes & finance space there was a lot of “fake it til you make it” attitude) then you have a website that is premium real estate and should be either 1. Optimizing that to make more money(and creating sister websites that follow the same model) or 2. Replacing those ads with organic ads for your books and other services.
Right now, it feels like you subcontracted all of this work out: getting followers, writing books, building a website, etc. and you did it for Social Proof, but with an eye on quantity instead of quality. You can definitely improve the presentation and the branding strategy behind your work, but unless you refine, edit, and understand the content, you’re gonna fall short.
Response: Ouch. This is an interesting take, to say the least. For one, on my blog, I do use a team of writers and editors to help with the bulk of the content. All my followers, book layouts/content, and website design are done by me. Nothing is bought, faked, exaggerated, or omitted.
Why do I do this? Because it pays the bills. There is also a substantial section of content on the site written only by me, but the audience for this type of stuff is so micro it’s not profitable, but it leads to consulting. Being a business, I do what works.
As I shared earlier in this article, I have some test concepts in place for a few books and use AI in various ways. The site does bring in as much money and traffic as I claim. And as this reader points out, this is where I should be and am focusing. I have 10 websites at various stages because they make money consistently.
Books are a side-project I also hoped would bring in at least something, but overall, not the focus and probably too much of a distraction.
fanta_bhelpuri- Book publishing feedback 12
Non-fiction lives or dies on the reputation and brand of the author, not on the quality of the books. Market yourself more.
Response: Probably one of the best comments- This nails it. Selling business books comes down to being a speaker who does that nearly full-time. I know this and plan to build this out and get more involved in the coming months and years to now leverage what’s been built once it is polished and good as can be.
Raul_McCai- Book publishing feedback 13
Most people are not interested in the things you write about. Ya gotta admit, it is a boutique area of interest. And that’s probably the whole story right there. your audience is small and hard to reach.
Maybe try to become a convention speaker? that’d help you focus more precisely on the demographic of people who would gravitate to the material you offer.
Response: Another great insight. Getting someone to part with their money and spend time reading books about strategy and cost accounting is a super tough sell. That’s what I do, and that’s why I need to get more into speaking, monthly webinars, and build out a planned podcast later this year. Right on.
richgirlatgc- Book publishing feedback 14
Read the book Published by Chandler Bolt or give his self publishing school a try. I’m in the program, and it’s filled with authors like you trying to relaunch thier books. There are some marketing things you might be missing.
Response: Eh, guys like Chandler build their businesses on selling dreams to other people. What is often left out is the survivorship bias, where we only see the winners, and guys like him only tell the winner’s stories. I’m sure he may have some good ideas, but unless he is a successful business writer, I’m probably not checking him out too much.
OpaqueShadow- Book publishing feedback 15
You didn’t mention if you do any advertising, so that might be your problem. Website alone is not enough unless those 80k visitors were all potential book buyers, which I assume they aren’t. You need to run actual ad campaigns through Facebook/google/amazon etc.
Response: Great observation. I have spent $100-200 each on the three platforms, running advertising experiments. I noticed we were able to get clicks on the ads, but conversions were lacking. My guess is this ties into some of the other comments about ensuring my overall brand and every book is polished and the best it can be, which is my plan.
My thoughts from the Reddit Feedback
Reading through and understanding the perspectives of others related to my content was a worthwhile exercise. I find that I get so deep into what I do that I miss lots of things. From this information, I will put together a list of to-dos for my team to help me with to ensure we give all of my books projects their best chance at success.
I think the combined perspectives of improving the 1st impressions of my work and, importantly, getting more involved in public speaking events will eventually help some of these books bear fruit. The major hurdle I am also testing a few new ideas at is getting more authentic Amazon reviews- without them, everything else is a moot point.
For me, I’ve also come to terms with the fact that profitability isn’t all that matters with books. For one, I can use all of these books to demonstrate my credibility and help sell other products/services by including them as free giveaways and downloads at no cost to me.
Here’s my book publishing earnings since 06/2021:
