Your Book As A Long-Term Marketing Strategy with Holly Ostrout

Most entrepreneurs think about their business book the wrong way. They count royalties, obsess over Amazon rankings, and then watch the book disappear from their marketing strategy the moment the launch hype fades.

When you're a business owner or a speaker, you're not writing a book to sell books. You're writing a book to build a long-term marketing asset—one that generates clients, visibility, and authority for 5 to 10 YEARS (not just 5 to 10 weeks).

In this episode, I'm talking with book strategist Holly Ostrout about what it actually takes to write a book that works for your business. We dig into the misconceptions that trip up smart entrepreneurs, the frameworks that make books convert, and why the funnel after the book matters more than the book itself.

In This Episode, We Talk About:

• Why 20% or less of your book revenue comes from actual book sales
• The biggest misconception entrepreneurs have about books (spoiler: it's not about bestseller status)
• Why most books fail to generate leads (and how the Heroine's Journey framework fixes it)
• How adult learning theory shapes a book that actually creates results
• The funnel strategy every business book needs on the back end
• The common denominator behind the books that keep selling.

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Transcript

What it takes to write a book that is actually a long-term marketing asset for you.

So welcome to the show. So glad to have you here.

Thank you. Super excited to be here. Okay.

So as you're talking before, I want to open up with, because I'm a data nerd, what are the facts and statistics behind the value of a book to an entrepreneur's business?

Okay.

This is my favorite part because I'm also a data nerd and the facts are really good. So 96% of entrepreneurs who write a business book see some kind of growth from it, like measurable growth.

And 63% of those see extensive growth, like really impactful growth to their business. So already out the door, it's a good thing to do.

It's a good thing to have as long as you do it the right way. I think for people that I work with mostly, though, what they want is more visibility and thought leadership.

And so what does that look like? And... For them, that looks like getting on more stages, being the person that people think of when they think of, you know, some topic.

And the numbers there are also really good. So people who are trying to get booked for stages in speaking, that they're maybe having some trouble or maybe having trouble moving up to a fee that they like, 72% of them start getting those speaking gigs after writing a book.

Wow.

That's significant. Yeah. That's a very high number, higher than I was expecting. So I imagine, and me with my copywriting brain here, I'm thinking, okay, so we write the book and I'm thinking like, if we kind of reverse engineer the success of this, it's not just about having the book, though that obviously has to be good and strong and get the people in the door.

But you really also need a funnel or some sort of email system, something on the back end. You

And so I call those strategy stacks because you can stack them up. And we look at those first because the funnel that you build on the back end of the book, what you do beyond the book, is super critical, as you said, but it depends on what you want the book to do.

And so I don't have a one-size-fits-all for every single person. I don't say, let's write a book to get you more clients because some people are like, well, I have enough.

I want to not have clients, right? I just want to sell a course. I just want to go speak all the time and travel.

And so we can build a book differently based on what your goals are. And we can publish and market and launch a book differently based on your goals.

So it will really start from there before we say, what's the next step? What's the funnel?

Yeah, that's so smart. And I really appreciate that you say that because I have a number of clients who come to me and they come from a coach who told them, oh, you just have to do this.

And you just follow these steps. And then like, there you go. And that's what happens. And that's like putting them into.

This cookie cutter thing. And like, I appreciate that you're like, well, it actually depends. There's nuance here. Like, is it, is, what is the role a book should play?

Is it credibility? Is it lead gen? Is it revenue? Is it authority? Is it a mixture of those things?

And like you said, it depends on, you know, well, what is your goal first? Are there any other like misconceptions that you think a lot of entrepreneurs have about the role a book should play in their business?

Oh, 100%.

A lot of people. So in different directions, one of the directions is that a lot of people think, well, a book's not worth it, because I'm only going to make like a dollar per book, you know, the royalties, they're looking at royalties only.

But for a typical nonfiction book written by somebody in business who is using this book as a brand builder, only 20% of the revenue from the book, or sometimes less, comes from the book sales itself.

And a lot of times you can make more money from a book by giving it away. And, and, I don't think that we should always give.

Again, this depends on your strategy, right? And who you are speaking to. But that is one of the biggest misconceptions is that you make your money from selling the book.

And if you're not going to make your money back from selling the book, then it's not worth it. And that's just totally not true because most of the money comes from these other factors.

The other big one is that a lot of people think, I've got to get an Amazon bestseller tag or a USA bestseller tag or a New York Times bestseller tag.

That, number one, is just not true. It's more of a vanity metric for the author. I don't deny that.

But it's just not something that people are looking at. And a lot of the authors you see who say that they are bestsellers, they just hacked the Amazon bestseller algorithm, which is super easy to do.

And we could do it. But it's just not a necessary part of having a successful book.

Yeah, it's nice for your ego, but is it necessarily like helping your bottom line? Yeah, exactly.

If you are brand new to business, you know, wait a couple years, test things out, try things out before you come to that.

But I would say that most of my clients do not come to me feeling 100% certain. And oftentimes the process of writing a book makes them understand their own expertise and value and depth even more, just the process of doing it.

And they come out on the other side even better at their coaching or their consulting or whatever they do.

But you should have a process that you have used and gotten results from. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

That makes sense. And I love that the process of doing it helps create more of that certainty and eliminates the imposter syndrome by just doing it.

Right.

Yeah, I agree that having a framework or methodology or process in place is absolutely necessary. And talking about results you've gotten with your clients, I imagine, too.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then something else that stood out to me about you is that you teach people to write books in a little bit of a different way.

And you say you call it you called it values first, I think. And was like, oh, wait a second.

That's me, too. We should chat. So what what is it that makes your process of writing a book different?

The biggest thing is that I start from the reader's perspective and we use a framework called that I've created called The Heroine's Journey.

And you might think of The Heroine's Journey. And that's like, you know, Lord of the Rings, all that. And what happens in A Heroine's Journey is that we are following this hero along along his journey and he's going about he's like saving the day.

He's like overcoming all these obstacles. And at the end, what happens? He goes and like defeats the villain. And then he either like dies during this experience and he's become a martyr or he just like ends up alone for the rest of his life, having saved the day for everybody else.

And frankly, I don't want that. don't think anybody wants that. So let's do a heroine's journey instead. And what does that mean?

That means instead of writing a book like we are the hero, the author, and we are just dragging people along on this journey where we end up alone and no connection, let's instead flip that and turn the reader into the hero or the heroine.

And that means that we need to make them feel like they are part of this process as they are reading the book, not a spectator watching your journey.

So how do we do that? So it's the way that I teach people to write books is based on adult learning and how humans in general just learn and how our brains work.

And so it has these what I call purpose points. And there are these specific moments throughout the book, when you put them together with the narrative, based on your heroine's journey, that guides the reader through making them feel like they're a heroine and that they're in they're achieving things as

As they read the book, not just reading a book, which makes them feel like, oh my gosh, I've gotten so much from this person already off of a $20 paperback.

This is amazing. And then you connect it with these purpose points, which is the education that you're giving them, what you're teaching them.

Then the way it's designed is that it anchors what they're learning with an emotional moment that makes it stick in their brain and then makes them feel so empowered.

And then when you make somebody feel empowered, then they are ready to do more with you. And that is the goal of the book.

Because again, books, royalties are only going to be 20% or less. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, so many things I love about what you just said. I feel like with my background as a teacher with a master's in education and the fact that you consider how adults actually learn, I feel like makes such a big difference from what I've seen in my own work as well.

And then just also from my copywriting perspective, like that. 10 years to come.

Yeah, a good book should generate clients for 5 to 10 years at least. So if it's spiking on launch day and then disappearing, there's a problem.

And the problem is that they had a great launch. They had good marketing. They had a nice cover. Somebody wrote them good marketing copy for their Amazon page or, you know, their Barnes & Noble page, whatever.

And then they probably had a good collection of friends to help them promote that book. And then people read the book and it didn't do anything for them.

And that's not to say that they aren't good at what they do. That's typically the problem is that people are really good at what they do.

And the way that we teach in a book is just not the same as we teach in a course or with a one-on-one client.

It's just a different experience because, you know, books are typically tangible, you know. You're sitting there. They're away from their note-taking ability.

They're not at their laptop with your course open in one page. And then on the other tab, like their Facebook ads manager or whatever, doing what.

Whatever you're telling them to do, for example, they have to remember it, which means that it has to be implemented internally first.

And the books that keep selling are the books that people get results from. And one of the books people get results from, the ones where they are able to take action during the book and after the book and remember it.

And in order to remember it, you need that narrative structure. And that's also one of the big things that I see is that people think that you can just write a book the way you would write a course, the way you would write a talk.

And it's just not quite the same because even nonfiction books need to be written like fiction. They need to entertain people too.

Yeah.

Yeah. I feel like I'm just identifying so many parallels between copywriting and like how you're describing books that actually work.

It's like a lot of the same principles of like how, why copywriting actually works. Like it needs, it doesn't also need.

But so if you think about the bottom tier of content, that's the how. That's like, sorry, that's the why.

And like, why do you do it this way? Why is this important? Things like that. And you definitely want to teach that in a book because people need to understand the context.

Then the next layer is the how. That's like your framework, your methodology. You can literally give them step by step how to do it.

But then if you think about the third level, that's the implementation. That's the personalization. That's the one-on-one or the group membership or getting feedback or something like that.

And people will always need that. And they will especially need it with their book because, again, you're not at your laptop when you're reading a book.

You're not taking notes. And so people are reading this and they're learning it, but they still want somebody to review it and make sure they're doing it right.

And of course, not everybody who reads a book is going to want to join your program or whatever. But that's also.

So good. Because those people who can complete your book and implement it, be scrappy with it, do it all themselves, and not even have to buy anything else from you, they are going to be your best referrals.

They're going to give that book to their sister or their cousin or their friend, and they're going to say, oh my gosh, you need to read this person, you need to learn from this person, and then you've just gotten a free referral.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. So good. Yeah, I feel like it's a good filter to qualify for clients, too, because they know so much more about you and their stage of readiness, and is this going to work for them or not, because you've given so much value away with the why and the framework, as you mentioned.

And I totally see this as well. Again, so many parallels with copywriting is so many people come to me to do it for them, because they're like, oh yeah, I've been meaning to rewrite my website copy for a couple months now.

Oh my gosh, it's been a year. How has time flying? And they're like, okay, so it's time to maybe just hire it out.

getting pushed off, pushed down your list. Yeah, exactly.

But I also think, like, those are better clients, right? Like, even if they, let's say they took your course on copywriting, and you taught them everything, they could go do it themselves.

But then they're like, I don't want to do it. You know, I'd just rather somebody else do it for me.

So when they come to you, they're educated, and they're aware, and they know how to communicate in a way that's going to make the end result even more effective.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So good. Okay. Okay. So I know we've been obviously talking about writing a book, making it a long-term marketing asset that you can really rely on for years down the road.

And so many parallels with writing a good book and writing good copy. So I want to get into our kind of rapid fire at the end of the episode here.

Um, and maybe this applies more to the funnel on the back end of the book, but what is your favorite part about copywriting?

Yeah.

Or I'm writing something myself. It's just, it's a different process. And I'll end up writing like a 3,000 word, like, Instagram caption, and it's just not workable.

And then I just spend too much time editing it.

Yeah, yeah, I totally, totally hear that. It's very, very normal. I think a lot of people come with like, well, I was, but I was good in English or have PhDs.

it's like, well, copywriting is just a very different style of, of writing. it's, yeah, when your brain is so deep into book writing mode to switch over, it's just like, wait, wait a second.

Awesome. Okay. And then I always love to ask, what is a small joy outside of business that is just fueling you right now?

Well, my daughter is seven.

And she is so funny these days. And a small joy that just happened yesterday is that she asked me like some other names that I was thinking of naming her.

And I gave her a couple of them. And I was listing them off. And the first one, she was like, no.

And I was like, okay, the second one, she's like, no, thanks. And I was like, wait, I liked these names.

And then she's like, is that really all you thought of? was like, well, there's one more. She's like, yeah, I got the best name.

I have the best name in the world. And like, she just tickles me all the time. And so she is always a joy.

Yeah.

Oh, that's so sweet. What a fun age and just the things that they say. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us.

I feel like we got through a ton of just good stuff to think about as people are thinking about what their next step could be.

Is writing a book for them? What could that look like? And if our audience wants to connect with you further, what is the next best step for them to take?

Yeah, sure.

So I recommend that they take my quiz. That'll help them find their most profitable book path that we talked about, the door they want to open.

If they take the quiz, takes two minutes. They will get a three-day challenge. During that challenge, they can get three free book coaching feedbacks from me.

And at the end of it, if they do it all, they will have drafted their introduction to their book.

So you've already made huge progress. So I recommend that. If you want to jump straight in, I have my five-star bookmark program, and it takes you from messy ideas to a dang good book, right, in as little as six weeks.

Awesome.

That is so great. 

So definitely go take her quiz. Only two minutes. Totally doable to find that profitable book path for you. The link is in the show notes.