Another Chunk: How to Extend the Reach Of Your Work

2023-07-13 Invite Champions Weekly

Photo by Sean Benesh on Unsplash

Today I am starting a new series of posts on how to maximize your influence (and increase your sales) as an author and thought leader. I’m calling it The Formula for Influence.

Here is the bottom line of today’s post:
In today’s economy, don’t just think of publishing a book.
Think of creating a product line.

I work with lots of great leaders and authors. If I can speak broadly to you for a moment, what I see is that you spend quite a bit of time working on your original content. Your book, your video, your class, your message—your intellectual property (IP). But mostly, you aren’t maximizing the potential of your work.

The key to improve the success of your message isn’t more publicity or “marketing.” (I put that in quotes, because most of the time, when a book isn’t selling, people blame “marketing.”)

The key is to increase your market options.

Let’s learn from how people in the film industry think. The other day, I heard an interview with actor/producer Matt Damon. He is asked, “What are the macro Hollywood conditions right now?”

Matt Damon’s answer is a masterclass on the creative economics of not just Hollywood, but all content/entertainment/creative industries, including publishing. He offers an insight into how things work, and a takeaway for your work as a thought leader, as a writer, and as a champion of Invite Resources.

He says, “Well, so what happened was, the DVD was a huge part of our business, our revenue stream. And technology has just made that obsolete.”

Matt jumps in midstream to history here. DVD was once a new technology, of course, and it was a cash cow.

He goes on, “The movies that we used to make, you could afford to not make all of your money when it played in the theater. Because you knew you had the DVD coming behind the release, and you knew 6 months later, you could get a whole ‘nuther chunk. It would be like reopening the movie almost.” (Remember that phrase: another chunk.)

“And when that went away, it changed the kind of movies we can make.”

Damon is revealing the biggest problem with Hollywood right now, and why all we get are superhero movies even though most of us are sick of superhero movies: the loss of innovative delivery systems weakens the business model, which in turn restricts a producer’s options.

Streaming is a weak business model. It turns content into commodity, devaluing it, and turns streaming providers into utilities, like the water company. We did not used to say, I’m going to watch a DVD tonight, or even, I’m going to watch a Blockbuster tonight. We used to refer to our entertainment choices by their creative names, like a Spielberg or a Star Wars film. Now we refer to the utility provider. We watch Netflix. And this hurts creatives, in Hollywood and in publishing.

How does Hollywood overcome their problem? More importantly, how do we sell more books and change more lives? The challenge and the opportunity is to look for new innovations that extend reach.

This is one reason why Invite Resources is biased toward innovation. We are constantly experimenting with new ways to get your message out. I call it a “Book Plus” approach.

The book is still critical and is still the lead project, for reasons I will explain in the coming weeks. But the question is, what other editions and ways of packaging and presenting the same material can we leverage to extend its reach?

The takeaway: You’re not just writing a book. You’re creating a product line.

Think of yourself as both writer and producer. To continue the film industry analogy, think of Invite as the film studio, partnering with you to give you the resources you need. You’e a producer who is dreaming and developing a set of resources around your core idea. With your producer hat on, ask yourself, “book plus what?” What else can we produce together to extend the core value of the book into other products and services? Where can we find another chunk?

In the coming weeks, I will dig into this more, and offer a lot of ideas.

For today, here are three that are working:

Championing Invite: Three Examples of Another Chunk

Here are three examples of how to find another chunk. Not coincidentally, these come from our biggest sellers. The Invite Press top five all-time titles, as of today July 13, 2023, in reverse order, are: 5) Everything is Gonna Be All Right, 4) That’s Good News!, 3) Painting with Ashes, 2) Both/And, and 1) Dynamite Prayer.

Four of these five are back list (more than six months old). The only front list title, That’s Good News, is about to become back list.

There’s a lesson here: books need a great launch, but a great launch doesn’t create a bestseller. You need to thrive in the backlist.

Our top five are thriving because, one, they are good and worthy of sharing, and two, their authors have found another chunk in new markets.

Sue Nilson Kibbey and Rosario Picardo, the authors of Invite Press’ number one all time title, Dynamite Prayer, are currently working with United Methodist Annual Conferences to create conference-wide prayer initiatives, where every UM church in an entire state is being invited to participate and learn about “dynamite prayer” at the same time: September, 2023. The original book came out a year ago, and most titles have long since gone quiet by now, but Dynamite Prayer has sold 356 units in the last week alone. (For context, the average industry title now sells 500 units lifetime, according to Publishers Weekly.) Contact Sue or Roz to learn more about how you can join in.

Or consider Invite author Michael Beck, who is working with prisons so that incarcerated persons can get access to his book for free. Know a prison that could benefit from Michael’s story? Contact him.

Or consider our newest innovation, the Invite kit. Invite has partnered with author Shane Bishop to develop a plug and play kit to go with That’s Good News, to help church leaders turn the book’s theme into a congregation wide campaign. Each kit represents a whole church campaign, which is just getting started for the fall. One church bought 200 units yesterday.

And so on. Each title is getting another chunk, extending the reach of its live saving message, through entrepreneurial thinking. This is how you do ministry by publishing in 2023.

Invite is committed to helping you with a “Book Plus” approach. You’re not just writing a book, you’re the owner of IP and a potential product line.

How can you find another chunk?