The first factor in measuring the success of your business is to assess your inner satisfaction to determine whether you are enjoying the process of being in business or even enjoying being alive. The second factor is to ascertain that your business meshes well with your life as it does with your essence—who you really are. The third factor is to determine whether or not you have balance in your life.

And there’s a fourth measurement of your success—after you’ve arranged to have enough free time, after you’ve found ways to contribute to your planet, after you’ve formed your connections, after your relationships are in order, and after your health is excellent. This measuring method should be part of your overall plan or you’ll lose your way.

The yardstick to which I refer is profit, the lifeblood of an author. Entrepreneurial Authors keep their eyes on that bottom line, but they never lose their awareness of their higher priorities.

Amazingly, some authors never address this crucial yardstick. Even more ridiculous, many authors make this the only criterion of their success. The way of The Entrepreneurial Author gives this measure of success a modified priority. Entrepreneurial Authors are inevitably interested in this measurement because it is an important part of why they are in business in the first place. But they never give profits the highest priority, because profits are neither the only nor the most important reason for being in business.

More Important than Profit

Here are ten things that true Entrepreneurial Authors consider to be more important than profit:

1. Their future
2. Their overall plan
3. Their readers
4. Their employees
5. Their prospects
6. Their families
7. Their time
8. Their inner satisfaction
9. Their integration of business and life
10. Their balance

Less Important than Profit

Now here are ten things that true Entrepreneurial Authors consider less important than profit:

1. Their sales
2. Their returns
3. Their response rate
4. Their store traffic
5. Their volume
6. Their gross
7. Their press coverage
8. Their ego
9. Their status quo
10. Their growth

Entrepreneurial Authors emphasize profitability.

The United States is in the midst of an entrepreneurial explosion, one of the most hopeful signs for the country’s future. As an author, you are an entrepreneur. Every book you write is a separate enterprise with its own fate and its own reckoning that balances income against expenditures. For Entrepreneurial Authors, the only business criteria that count are profits and relationships.

Today there are more authors than ever, but few are true Entrepreneurial Authors. If you are contemplating the life of an author, the way of The Entrepreneurial Author is the path you should follow. If you are already an author, that is the direction in which you should evolve.

Entrepreneurial Authorship did not exist for your parents or for your grandparents, because the path has only recently been blazed. Technology and enlightenment have marked its way. The Puritan work ethic of your ancestors has gone by the wayside, along with the Puritans. That work ethic had no place for balance, only for hard work. The Entrepreneurial Author’s work ethic includes both.

We all know the scene from The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy and her motley bunch of friends finally make it to the Emerald City in the enchanted Land of Oz. They have survived attacks from angry apple trees, a field full of narcotic poppies, and their own bouts of self-doubt. They have made it to the Promised Land, but the little green guy at the door with his shifty eyes and bushy eyebrows bars their way into the place they have fought so hard to get to. But he relents and lets them in because Dorothy has something he wants—the ruby slippers. They’re magical; they’re powerful. They protect people from bad witches, and they hold the key to Dorothy’s success.

Almost everyone in the world wants to write a book. Really. Eighty percent of the population thinks they have something important to say. And you know what? Everyone should be an author, especially if you’re a businessperson. Why? Because a book changes your life. No matter what you do in your business, whether it is taxidermy for turkeys or helping people market themselves on the Internet (both legitimate businesses with books attached to them), you want to be perceived as the expert, and there’s no quicker way of getting that “expert” tag than with a book.

So in other words, your book is your very own pair of ruby slippers. When you get to the door at Oz, and you don’t have a book, then the little guy says, “Why, you’re not allowed in. What business would the wizard have with you?” But when you knock on the door and he pulls back the little peephole and sees you have a book, he says, “Why, that’s a horse of different color. Come on in.” And in that instant you have gained access to the wonderful world of Emerald City, the land of published authors where everyone is rich, skinny, and has great hair—well, at least they have a better life.

With your book—your very own customized ruby slippers—you get to play with all the different colored horses. This is everybody in the publishing world: editors, agents, publishers, and people who are going on radio and television and could talk about your book. With a book, you’re in. You’re now a VIP, and you have all the privileges of a VIP: the networking opportunities, the joint venture and affiliate prospects. You also have access to a variety of smaller wizards: the TV producers, the radio guys, the editors in the top publishing houses. And sometimes you even get to see the Grand Wizard herself, Oprah!

I know all of this because I am a published author. I’ve made it into the inner sanctuary of the Grand Wizard, and I’ve promoted authors for thirty years. I’ve done all the things that I talk about—hundreds of radio shows, dozens of TV shows, write-ups in the New York Times, and a front page appearance on the Wall Street Journal. The company I founded more than thirty years ago, Planned TV Arts, helps writers of all shapes and colors publicize their books. I’ve seen it a thousand times; publishing can change your life. And as an Entrepreneurial Author, it is one of the essential items on your “to do” list that needs to be checked off sooner than later—because as an Entrepreneurial Author making your way through the minefield of marketing, you want something that makes you stand out from the rest of the folks out there who do what you do or make what you make.

Publishing as a Strategy

Entrepreneurial Authors are aggressive in their marketing because they find as many opportunities as they can to get their message out loud and clear to the world. What better medium to do this with than a book? A book presents many different marketing opportunities because of one significant difference. You get on radio shows and even TV shows—arenas that you don’t have to pay for, by the way—because you’re not talking about you; you’re talking about your book.

Books give you credibility. Think about it. When you see celebrities on a talk show, they’re there because they’re promoting their latest movie. Authors do the same thing. It’s always a much tougher sell to promote yourself. Your book is you once removed, and so it makes you more user-friendly.

Also, being an Entrepreneurial Author is about using your imagination to develop marketing strategies that will capture your target market. With the advent of Amazon, you don’t even need to be in the major bookstore chains to get your book out there. I know hundreds of authors who made it to the top of Amazon and their book never once graced the aisles of Barnes and Noble. And if you are marketing your book well, you can reach your niche public much more efficiently with a book than through any other medium.

And of course, the hallmark of any Entrepreneurial Author is to use your imagination; for books, especially small, “how-to” type books, are the best kind of business card you can pass out. You give them out to people just like you do a business card, and it gives your new contact a much better picture of who you are. This helps you to build a relationship with them—another hallmark Entrepreneurial Author principle—even before you sit down with them face-to-face, because they have read all about you.

Where Your Book Comes From

Now, don’t start thinking, I’m not a writer, how could I ever publish a book? This is the great part. You don’t have to be a writer. If you reread what I’ve said up to this point, I’ve been saying published author, not published writer. You hire someone to write your book for you. Ghostwriters and editors—good ones—are worth their weight in gold because they take your story and they make it sound good. I’m not actually even the writer of this piece, but I am the author. These are my ideas that are being presented.

To put a book together, all you need to do is gather up your content in some way. Have a friend interview you. If you know anything about Internet marketing, you record a teleseminar, or a series of them; have someone transcribe what you said; and then you either edit it into book form or pay a good editor to do it. Just know you are the expert at what you do. Tell someone about it, and then put what you said into a book. Yes, it will take time, not a small amount of energy, and definitely a lot of push to get it done. That’s the nature of putting a book together, and it’s part of being an Entrepreneurial Author.

The Entrepreneurial Publisher™

David Hancock founded Morgan James as a way to help authors leverage the power of their books to promote themselves and their businesses. It was created by an Entrepreneurial Author for Entrepreneurial Authors. From a publishing standpoint, he took the best of the traditional publishing world and combined it with all the best of the self-publishing world and made it into the best way to publish your book, with The Entrepreneurial Publisher™.

Getting a book published can be daunting. It requires work to get the book done and on the shelves of bookstores everywhere. But it’s as necessary for your business as breathing, because no other marketing technique can catapult you to the big time more than having a book. So get to work. You too can have your very own pair of ruby slippers. See you in Oz! Submit your proposal now, here.

Rick Frishman
Publisher
Morgan James