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MAKE MONEY BY PUBLISHING
Two of the most commonly asked questions I get asked all the time are firstly "How old are you?" and secondly "Why did you become The Publishing Queen?".
I am writing this article to both answer your questions and let you in on some of my publishing secrets along the way.
Before I created The Publishing Queen I opened a graphic design studio (at age 22) where I designed whatever my customers required. What was interesting was the large quantity of them who required something to do with books. I had requests which started from could you design my book that went to could you register my book, could you print my book and even could you even sell my book. I fast became knowledgeable about book publishing out of necessity in order to meet my customers ever changing requirments however I just as quickly began to fall in love with the publishing industry.
As a result I was increasingly asked by people could I publish their book and I began to realise that while the answer was "Yes I could" I needed to change things in order to do so in the easiest, most efficient, most econical and most effective manner and in order to help as many people as I possibly could.
So (at age 25) I took a risk and decided to make a drastic change. I closed my graphic design studio down, got rid of all services not related to publishing, published my first book, rebranded as The Publishing Queen and reopened as a publishing studio with a difference. They key difference was The Publishing Queen (the business) was not just going to provide publishing services but The Publishing Queen (the person) was going to provide education so that people not only had their dreams fulfiled of publishing a book but understood the whole process and were equiped to go out there and ensure their books success.
Publishing a book (or in my case releasing books/DVDs, running seminars/bootcamps or providing publishing services) is first and foremost about helping your customer. If you don't genuinly want your book to help or bring enjoyment to your target market then you shouldn't be releasing it as if your heart is in the wrong place your book is very hard to market. If however you genuinely want to help people, are writing about a subject you know well and are passionate about the money will come as a natural result of the quality of the product being marketed. I already knew this to be true but in sharing this with others and solving the age old question of "How can I ensure my book sells?" The Publishing Queen was born.
Now don't get me wrong publishing a book isn't necesarilly easy nor will you necesarilly see the results straight away. There will be hard work up front eg. writing the book, sourcing illustrations, collecting testimonies etc. but this can be expressed in 3 months if necessary and on average it takes another 3 months from the release of a book to begin to see good financial returns. Eventually however your book will begin to take on a life of its own allowing you to market your book in as little as 5-10 minutes a day. Potentially if the average book costs around $6 to produce and sells for $30 you be making $24 a sale. In other words sell 1000 copies (standard initial order) and make $24,000 and all you needed to do for that was have an idea, genuinly want to help people and be willing to spend approximatly 3 months working hard on it, like I did when I wrote my first book to establish myself as the expert in my field and become known as The Publishing Queen.
I hope you enjoyed my story and I hope it inspires you to go our there and create your own success story.
To your Publishing Success!
Kylee aka The Publishing Queen
THE STORY BEHIND THE CREATION OF THE PUBLISHING QUEEN
People are always asking me 'Where did you come from?" or "How did you become such an overnight success?" when the truth of the matter is I was not an ovenight success but put in the necesary work up front to appear that way to the general public. But how did I know what the necesary work was in order to get me from where I was 5 years ago to where I am today. Simple - I listened to the experts!
Back in my graphic design days I attended seminar after seminar on anything relevant to marketing where I learnt a wealth of information. Seminars like this are great but the down side is you learn so much in such short spaces of time that you obsorb so little of it. Ofcourse the same can be said about eating we eat so much in a short space of time and obsorb so little of it before our body discards what it can no longer contain. Yet we continue to eat multiple times a day so it must be doing us some kind of good. So with that philosophy in mind I attended seminar after seminar, kept what my business needed and discarded the rest until I was equiped with the knowledge I needed to market my customers in the best possible manner. I remember when I attened my first "Think and Grow Rich" seminar run by Australia's foremost Think and Grow Rich Expert Stuart Zadel. I remember seeing all those experts on the stage and thinking "One day I will be up there. One day I will be running my own seminars". Little did I know how quickly that day would come.
The Publishing Queen was born by taking this knowledge I had learnt and applied to my graphic design customers and apllying it to myself and my own business. Taking marketing techniques to firstly turn me into The Publishing Queen (in what appeared like an overnight transformation) and secondly into The Publishing Queen the business to ensure my customers experienced the same success with their books as I had. I remember going into my BNI chapter, standing up to do my 60 seconds and announcing "Hi my name is Kylee and I am The Publishing Queen!". It was the first time I had ever said those words yet no one questioned me as if that's who I said I was, that's who I was. I had in theory become a so called 'expert' overnight what I needed to do now was live up to that name.
So that's what I did. I began promotting my new name and my new book and within 1 month I was already running my first seminar as The Publishing Queen. The bootcamps followed shortlty after and before I knew it I was being asked to speak on other people's stages as people has heard I was the expert in the publishing field and they wanted me on their stage. I remember being asked to speak at the very first Ask Her seminar series (when The Publishing Queen was less than 1 year old). I felt like a baby but when I turned up I found out it wasn't only the first time this 3 day event had been held but that I was the first guest speaker. Well honoured, shocked and scared I gave my first talk on someone else's stage introducing not only myself to the market and the seminar series for the first time but the whole expo itself. Once again though as I cristened my phrase that day of "Making Self Publishing as easy as 1, 2, 3!" no one questioned who I was. My talk started with an audience of one but by the end of my presentation their was barely a spare seat in the house.
That is how you become the expert in your field, say you are and live up to that expectation by fulfiling on what the public expects that expert to be time and time again.
THE PUBLISHING QUEEN REVEALS ALL BOOK SERIES
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I began my national tour at the start of 2010 (shortly after my second book had come out) and imagine my pleasant surprise when I went into Borders Brisbane store to do a book signing and found out what section my books were in - bestseller status already!
I wrote my first book over a 7 day period (24 hours in total) to prove my content for the second, which I set myself a goal of writing in less than 24 consecutive hours which I prodly finished in 5. Trying to beat that with my third book was hard but (as it was the shortest book in the series) I managed to complete it in 4 hours and on one night.
The complete series of 6 officially launches early next month and to think less than 2 years ago none of the books existed.
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Border's Bookstore - Brisbane CBD
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Publishing a book is all about having fun! - so make sure you do.
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WHERE AM I NOW WITH THE PUBLISHING QUEEN?
Well I am about to turn 27 and apart from being sick of being asked "How old are you?" I look back over the last 2 years and am still amazed by how much I have accomplished. I went from never having published my own book to creating a series of 6, from never having run my own seminars to creating 3 seperate seminars and running them multiple times all over Australia. I also released 3 bootcamps in order to help people get their book out of them and turned all 3 seminars and all 3 bootcamps into 2 seperate DVD series/at-home-study-kits.
I have people coming to me all the time saying "I never wanted to write a book before I met you and now I do but what do you think I should write on?". I am now able to break the writing process down for people quickly and easily and I have taken several people, multiple times from this statement to having a table of contents for their book in approximately 1 minute.
I have other people come to me and say "I don't want to write a book but can you help me write ..." and I have seen lived changed time and time again as I have the pleasure of empowering people to be who they want to be just by using the structures I have invented to make writing a book easy, to help them make writing anything else (they may want or need to) just as easy.
THE FUTURE OF THE PUBLISHING QUEEN
Earlier this year I took on my first international client which lead to me being able to extend my bookstore distribution outside of Australia and New Zealand to include all English speaking countries. Currently we service Australia and New Zealand and the future will involve both our publishing and education services becoming a lot more global. There is talk of even possibly franchising in the near future so keep a keen eye out for what The Publishing Queen will do next.
Remember publishing a book is all about having fun! - so make sure you do.
To your Publishing Success!
Kylee aka The Publishing Queen
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