Sharyn

I spent 20 years in the printing and publishing industry prior to 1990. Then after tackling entrepreneurship, I became motivated to write my first book in 2000 so that I’d be eligible to speak at convention in Sacramento.

The first book, Mixing it Up! The Entrepreneur’s New Testament took me five months to write. I wanted to be a speaker at an Entrepreneur’s Expo and wouldn’t have wanted to disappoint the event organizer so I had to finish the book in five months. It was a great experience to see how quickly I could get through the process. I had been talking about writing a book for two years.

The second, Making a List and Checking it Twice, only took three weeks to write, I went to Tahoe and isolated myself in a cabin writing 10 hours a day. Again, I had a speaking engagement so I discovered I work well under pressure.

Next I wrote a children’s story, The Adventures of Master Pineapple, or it wrote itself through a dream I had. It’s about children who have cancer and escape the cancer treatment center and the adventure they experience leads them through curing their cancer. All proceeds are dedicated to a cancer resource services for children.

My fourth book, Just Over Broke Syndrome, took three-and-a-half years to research. Believe me, it’ll be my last research work. That was very difficult with my right brain creative personality.

My fifth book is a business book, Strategy Outweighs Scarcity and is dedicated to all those companies who don’t exercise their options to formulate strategic plans to keep their companies profitable. I’ve not ever focused on marketing the book because I stopped working in the corporate environment because of the Dot Com Bomb.

Create Your Own Reality – The Ancient Wisdom is my sixth book and was inspired by my brother’s ten year battle with terminal illnesses as well as the many critical health challenges I faced the majority of my life.

I released, Be Your Own Boss Guide to address the multitude of employees who are facing layoffs and might be inspired to discover their entrepreneurial spirit.

In the early 90s I was given a journal which had quotes from women and I used the quotes to inspire me to write about my life experiences. I turned the journal, A Woman’s Rite to Passage into a book and include a second blank book with quotes to inspire other women to write about their life.

Once again inspired by a speaking engagement at a major bookstore, I wrote About Face – Traits Tell Tales in just a month. The book reveals how to improve communication and sales skills through the process of reading faces or the ancient practice of Physiognomy.

My tenth book is Neuro Emotional antiSabotage Technique. I spent most of my life learning how to neutralize the negativity I had been exposed to through a dysfunctional upbringing and an abusive marriage. I finally created a process which removes the negativity so it no longer holds people back from who they are meant to be.

In 1995, I started teaching other authors how to retain 75% of the book sales price and how to market their books to achieve a 6-figure income. Most authors hire an agent who takes 10% of their total income. The agent’s job is to find a publisher who will take 50% of their income. It’s a wonder authors have ever survived!

But it’s completely up to the author to arrange their own publicity and arrange all of their media exposure. When they get their book into a retail store or on an online store, that establishment expects 50% of their income, often leaving the author in the hole for all of their expenses.

So you might ask, why bother?

That’s what I wondered until I finally figured out that I could get Amazon to pay me $20 for my $25 book and including the cost of printing the book, I retain 75% of the sales price.

An author friend invited me to be on Oprah’s show in 1991. She has sold over 700,000 books and has made 35 cents per book. I have made more on my first book in the first ten years selling less than 10,000 books than she has selling 700,000 books. It is a travesty and an insult to her, but no matter how much I try to convince her that there is a better way, she’s still believes she is better off having that publisher.

The difference for her would have been $10.5 million being Independently published rather than $245,000 she has earned over 20 years having a publisher.

Which option would you prefer? Independently publish or spending upwards of two years trying to find a publisher who isn’t likely to take on a new author?

I’ll raise my hand for Independent Publishing every time!