Most authors make one critical mistake: treating their book as a business plan. For a truly profitable launch and marketing, you can’t rely on royalties alone—which often net just $1-$3 per copy. The reality is you need a stable, income-generating business built around your book, and that requires 12 to 18 months of focused, strategic planning.
This episode is your call to action. Join Juliet Clark and learn how to start building an email list and audience now, diversify your revenue through courses and speaking, and use a four-pillar framework to turn intentions into profit. Stop just writing and start strategically planning your launch to ensure your creative work leads to a successful, scalable, and profitable business.
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Creative And Practical Ways Authors Can Prepare For A Profitable Launch And Marketing In 2026
Welcome to Promote Profit Publish. I’m your host, Juliet Clark. It’s me again, solo. We’re going to talk about an important topic for 2026. Before we get started, I want to remind you about a couple of events we have coming up. We have our book marketing innovators panel. Sure, I can speak. We have some great guests for that. We have Desireé Duffy from Black Château, Jared Kuritz from Zoundy, and Kathleen Kaiser, talking about Pro Book Launch. The book industry has needed a marketing revolution for a long time now. These are three people who were at the top of that. Also, with our Superbrand Audience Accelerator, we’re pretty much in the same boat.
AI is allowing us to create new technologies that streamline everything for you. If you’re an author or a publisher, or even an author who publishes your own books, this is something you should attend and learn more about what you can do to streamline and understand the industry and make it a little bit easier. Also, on the 18th, we have an event coming up, Go High Level. It’s going to be software consolidation.
I will be announcing in the next couple of days that we are going to have a Go High Level community with Rebecca Bertoldi, where authors can go and get help with what they need over there. For a lot of you, jumping into a system like Go High Level can be overwhelming. Part of what we’re going to talk about is the tech involved with building your author platform and launching a book. It is difficult to learn, and if you don’t start way ahead, your book launch could be a disaster.
Planning Before Writing A Book
Moving into that, what I want to talk about today is it’s December. Are you planning for your book launch, your book marketing, your course marketing, or whatever you have going on in 2026 that is your goal? The reason I want to talk about this is that so many of you bring us your books. You don’t have a platform. We’ve run into people lately who don’t have businesses set up. They have no email list. They have no courses, and they don’t understand that that book is not the end-all be-all for revenue.
Chances are you’re going to make anywhere from $1 to $3 a book. You have to have a plan to either sell a million books or at least a couple of hundred thousand, which is not super realistic without an audience, or have a business plan behind it. That’s what we’re going to talk about. How can you get that all in place?
First of all, if you’re not somebody who plans, don’t write a book because you need to plan so much, not only the platform building, but also the outline for writing your book, how you are going to pay for this adventure, because platform building cost money. Book, writing, if you use a developmental person to help you, that costs money. Editing costs money. To have a good editor, it costs between $2,000 and $5,000. It’s usually what our good editor costs, and he’s amazing. Several publishing companies use him, and then you’re publishing package.
All in, if you can spread this out in any way, it is super helpful. That’s where planning comes in. Not just planning the budget, but planning the activities, the tasks, and the marketing that’s going to get you what you’re looking for. When I say planning, I just want you to sit there and think about that for a minute. What comes up for? Does it feel uncomfortable? Does it feel, “Yes, I can do that. I’m an action person, and I need to do that.” Think about how that falls with you, because it is so important.
Now that you’ve done that for a second, let’s jump into step one in this planning process. Identifying and connecting with your ideal audience. What’s your plan to do that? Do you have an email list? If you don’t, you need to build one. It requires tech, of course, which we’re going to get into a little bit later. It requires a lead magnet, which we’ll get into a little bit later. You can’t just use social media alone, especially if you have a business or if you’re someone who’s going to be planning to do multiple books.
Author Success: Plan & Connect
I know some of the best people out there who are fiction authors have huge lists, and they’ve produced 20, 30, 40 books. They have a place to launch every single time. The first step is drilling down. Who is that audience? Where are they at? How am I going to connect with them? The next thing I want to encourage you to do is, once you have that in place, sketch out a six-month plan. I prefer that you have a year-long plan, but if you’re someone who doesn’t know where to start, start with that six-month plan.
Also, integrate that book plan with your business plan because it is all connected. I know some of you right now are sitting there and you’re saying, “But I’m a fiction author,” or “I’m an inspirational speaker. I don’t need a plan.” You need a plan because somehow you have to be able to sell books. Get that business plan defined. That is as important as writing the book, publishing the book. The business plan is important because it’s where your money is coming from to pay for this project.
Think about how you are going to get known. How are you going to get paid? I would say 75% of our authors who are coming in don’t have a revenue stream other than that book. If you listen to our next episode, not this one. I’m not going to address it. We’re actually going to talk about diversifying those revenue streams and getting them out there. What is your methodology that you’re going to use to get out there? Do you have that in place already and generating revenue for you?
Crafting Vision For Effective Marketing
You don’t have to be done with your book to start generating revenue. If you have a book that is around a course you’d like to develop, develop that course and get it out. Generate that revenue and use the book to nurture people into that course. There are several ways. You can go out podcasting. Part of that is you sharing your expertise. Not necessarily the book, but the expertise around it, so people know you. Getting that clear, compelling vision is crucial to this whole marketing system that you want to put together.
When you’re thinking about this, I want you to lay out four pillars right off the bat. Before you do anything else that’s related to how I’m going to encourage you to plan this, I want you to think about your numbers and the pictures. When I say pictures, what is the feel of the images that will appeal to your audience? What are the words, and what are the thoughts that you want to share? Make that into four categories and jot all of those down because you need to bring all four together. That’s how you vision craft your book. It’s your intention, your discipline, and your beliefs.
One of the things here is I can have an intention to do something, but if I don’t have the discipline, if I don’t make the time, and it’s not important enough for me to shatter my limiting beliefs and push through and act on those intentions, nothing is going to happen. Intentions do not bring in money when you’re doing this. The revenue comes from your action, and your action is how you are going to break through and make those intentions into reality.
Intentions do not bring in money. The revenue comes from your action, and your action is how you turn those intentions into reality. Share on XThe first thing I would do for this exercise is sit down, blank notebook, quiet place. I love to go out in nature, just throw it in my backpack with a pen, go up and sit next to a tree at the top of one of these mountains, near a lake, and be peaceful, still, and quiet. Start jotting those notes that come in. It’s hard sometimes to do this in your house because kids are running around, or you’re getting phone calls. Quiet it all down. Go someplace where there will be no interactions and distractions.
Once you get there, and this is the reason I love nature, it opens your heart and mind. What is it that you want to share for the year? I’m going to tell you something that we talked about in a call a couple of weeks ago with my community. We talked about how if money is your goal, it’s always horrible. Nobody ever gets anywhere with money goals. How are you going to help people? What’s in your heart? What’s your passion? If your passion happens to be money, great, but so many people get into coaching and book writing and all of this just for the money. It’s great, you can make money, but the money doesn’t come until you have the intention and the passion behind it. Think about that, and what you want to attract here in your life.
The reason I said go up to that mountaintop with a pad of paper and a pen is that heart-mind connection. When you’re writing this down, and you’re looking at it daily, and you understand, “This is my goal, this is my mission, and I’m going to be disciplined,” that connection sparks manifestation, so much more than just throwing it out in the world, “Yeah, I want this.” It never happens when you do that. Be sure you harness the power of the pen in the process because it is important.
It’s something when it’s in writing, you can hold yourself accountable for what’s on that paper. Decide how you want to feel in this process. Are you happy? Are you elated that you’re helping people? I have a scaling coach that I hired, and I had to let go of a lot of those things. I’ll be the first to admit. I’m a control freak, but there was a lot of frustration around that because I had to train people better. I had to learn some new disciplines, but once I got through that, the feeling was fantastic.
The one thing I thrive on is those appointments that I have with authors every week, where I get to help them. I get to teach them something. I get to walk them through. We get to discuss how we’re going to execute ideas. That’s what turns me on, and every scaling coach I’ve ever talked to, it’s like, “You need to get rid of those.” That’s where my passion lies, and that’s where I shine.
We sat down and figured out what else we could get rid of that somebody else could handle. Once I got past that first initial period, I have to tell you, I used to joke with my coach about, “I’m going to be appearing on Broadway and Frozen, singing Let It Go.” All I heard was, “Let it go. Let them do it. Give them guidance. Don’t micromanage.”
Building Success Beyond Book Royalties
The last thing you need to think about in this pillar is how you are going to get known and get paid. You can’t just be the invisible author. There’s almost this passive-aggressive thing going on with authors where they’re like, “I don’t want to go out and promote, but I want to be seen. I want people to know who I am. I want people to love my work.” It doesn’t work that way. You can’t be the invisible author and be well known. Figure out what those ways are that you’re going to get paid above and beyond the royalties from the book. More than likely, that’s not going to happen.
What I mean by that is once you get through all the costs involved with putting the book together, the platform building, if you start 12 to 18 months out, you’re going to have those costs out there instead of all at once after the book is done. If you’re working with the developmental editor or a developmental person, do that at the same time as your platform building. That way, you can test things. Again, the cash outlay is out over time.
The editor, that’s when you can start actually doing some of the things. That’s going to cost as well. That $1 to $3 or what you’re going to make in royalties is not going to pay for all that up front. You’re going to feel like you’ve depleted your cashflow. That’s why you need to start some of these other things earlier and figure out how you’re going to get paid and start getting paid. Is it a course? Is it speaking? It is a combination of all of these things. Whatever you do in this phase, remember that your actions have to be congruent with what you wish to manifest. There’s no way around that.
Your actions must be congruent with what you wish to manifest. There’s no way around it. Share on XI’m going to give you a great example. I have an upcoming book. I have a co-writer on it. We were working on it. I cranked out the first draft of the book. I had no problem doing that, and then my co-writer came back and he said, “You need to add some more case studies, and you need to add a little bit of this and that storytelling.” I haven’t picked it up since last week. I don’t have a congruent intention going on to manifest right now, and that was one thing. It’s Monday morning, when I’m recording that, and it’s on my list of things to do, and it will get done. I will go back in and add those things. I’m very unique in the fact that I’m super disciplined. That’s probably why I’m a control freak, so I know I have to get back into that.
Building Speaking & Marketing Strategies
The next steps in this are once you get all this started, once you get it all jotted down, start filling in the missing pieces. How am I going to get paid? What am I going to do? Am I going to go out and start speaking on this? I may not get to speak. I might not get paid for my speaking right away. What I can do is get out there and drive people to my lead magnet and have them follow me on social media, so that I have the audience when the time is there.
Start filling in those pieces? If I’m going to be out speaking, do I have a speaker sheet? Do I know who I’m speaking to? Do I know how to pitch? If it’s courses, do I have a webinar ready? How am I going to do this? Am I going to do a betta first? Start filling in those little things that are going to add to how this is all going to come together.
Again, it is not happening overnight because your next step in this is jotting down what those steps are that I’m going to need to take. If I want to be a speaker, then who is my audience? What are my signature talks? Do I have a speaker sheet, one sheet? Do I have a way to books? Am I part of an online speaker’s network? Am I networking with people I know who can get me these speaking gigs? Am I a part of an event panel? How am I going to do all of this? That’s important, too.
One of the things I used to see in the early days is I see some of the lead magnets, and I’d say, “How many people do you have in your email list?” They’d be like? “I don’t know how to use that.” You can’t just build the assets and then let them sit there because that’s not going to happen for you. That’s not being congruent with those goals.
Your next step is to identify those goals you want for the year. What do I want to achieve by the end of the year? I sat down in 2020, and I wanted to get more podcast views. My podcast coach said, “We’ll offer pod swaps.” I spent that year, I think I had 90-something guest appearances on other people’s podcasts. I did swaps with some of them. Some of them, I didn’t, but that got my name out there, and my podcast traffic started picking up. Guess what I needed for that? I needed a way to reach out to people. I needed an intro. I didn’t want just a canned, “Hello. Hi, I’m Juliet. I want to be on your podcast.” I had to have an angle, and I had to be able to ask my power partners as well, “Who do you know that needs a speaker?”
Strategizing Goals And Priorities
Be prepared to do all of that and have your materials ready to go. That means your media kit as well. No matter what you’re doing here, have a good media kit. Once that’s done, start writing out your primary projects. When I say that, how do you intend to reach those goals? What are those ongoing actions? What do you have to learn? If you have to learn how to build a lead magnet, then hire someone. Get someone to help you with your messaging. That lead magnet is going to help people and is going to get people on your list.
How are you going to disseminate that? Are you going to do it from the stage? Are you going to do it via social media? All of these are things you need to jot down. Who do you need to be in this process? A lot of times, we think, “I’ve done XYZ and it fails. Why did it fail?” Don’t be hard on yourself in that aspect. Think about, “Who do I need to show up? Do I need to be in the office from 8:00 to 5:00? Do I need to unload some work from my desk so I can reach these goals?” That’s what I wanted to do, while we were putting together the Superbrand Audience Accelerator and another program we have in the works right now to help you find your readers.
I have to sit down and say, “What is going away? What do I need to develop? What do I need to do to fit all my appointments in and continue the revenue for these ongoing?” That, for me, was getting rid of all that work and setting a goal to double my income. I was actually pleasantly surprised when my new scaling coach gave me a new goal. I gasp, but the next month I did it. The following month, it got better. I did even better numbers. It kept getting better, the better I got at scaling. Keep that in mind, too.
One thing about scaling that I’m going to mention is that if you don’t already have a business, don’t hire someone to help you scale. You have to have a solid, stable, consistent business before you start scaling. That’s just part of the process. Go through all this. My big ask on it is that you print out a couple of worksheets. Print out a worksheet with your yearly goals and write them all down, then print out four worksheets with your quarterly goals. Start taking those goals off your yearly list and break them down into quarters.
If you try to do all of this at once, you will fail. Break it out on how you’re going to do it in this process, and then take those quarterly and break them down into months. What do I mean by you’re going to be overwhelmed? Digital marketing. I have a client right now who’s part of Rebecca Bertoldi’s group. She comes to me constantly. She’s like, “I’m so overwhelmed. I don’t know what to do.” Is this a problem with Rebecca? Absolutely not.
When I took my year of coaching and learned digital marketing back in 2015, 2016, the first four months, I was like, “I don’t get it. I get that I’m supposed to do this, but how does it fit into this? How does it fit into that?” I had a webinar. My very first webinar was sort of an epic fail. That’s when I started putting other people together.
That’s why I say 12 to 18 months for this, because you’re going to go through these phases where you’re going to launch something and it’s going to fail. You’re not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. You’re going to go back and figure out, “What could I have done better?” You’re going to jiggle it a little, make some changes, and then you’re going to try it again. It’s probably going to fail again.
That’s why we don’t do this on the book launch because we don’t want to book launch to fail. We want all these lead magnet launches, and these course launches, and all of these other things. We want them. Not necessarily courses because we are bringing revenue, but the lead magnets, the speaking, and all of that. We want there to be a little bit of failure there, so that we can get them fine-tuned for the book launch, the course one, and those things that generate revenue for us.
We’re getting all of our bugs out in the audience building phase of this. I know what I’m saying to you seems overwhelming right now, but I want you to close your eyes for a minute while you’re doing it and ask yourself some questions. I’m putting this all together. Your first question. Does it feel fun? The work isn’t necessarily going to always be fun, but when we’re overwhelmed, we’re frustrated. That’s why we’re sectioning this out into bite-sized pieces. It is because we do want it to feel fun.
When I was doing this in 2015, 2016, I would literally throw something across the room after a failure. I’d be like, “I quit. I’m never doing it again,” and then I go out and hike. I’d have a good night’s sleep. I’d wake up the next day, and I’d start fixing it. That’s my personality. I’m action. Don’t be a quitter. Nobody does it right the first time. If somebody tells you, “We did six figures in six months,” don’t believe them. Ask them for proof because most of us have to try and fail repeatedly.
Align Actions With Core Values
I personally learn more from my failures than I do from my successes. I gloat a lot when I succeed, but I learned from those failures and make it right. Your second question is, is this going to give you an opportunity to grow? That is the one thing that I always look at before I spend money on a project. Am I going to grow when my business grows?” Whether it’s fun or not, I’m one of those people who will work it till it’s successful. Every once in a while, I stay too long and something, and I’ll be the first to admit that, but I do give it the good old college try because I want to make sure.
What is that book about gold? You’re 10 feet from gold, 1 feet from gold, or something like that. You’re on the precipice. You just don’t know it yet. Your third question. Does what you’re doing align with your core values? If it doesn’t align with your core values, don’t do it because you’re not going to do it. Number four. Will it move you closer to your vision? What is your big five-year plan? I know, for a lot of us, our five-year plan is difficult, but you have to have at least one sketched out, and at least a three-year plan.
Navigating Book Marketing Challenges
Is the opportunity cost worth the than the gain? Any time I fail at something, and I learned, the opportunity cost is there. I just learned a valuable lesson. I’m not afraid to share my failures with people because I think it’ll help you avoid some of your failures. Ask yourself that. Six. Do you have the capacity to execute? Many of us, at the beginning of this journey, have the mind. We have the will. We don’t have the money.
You’re going to need help on this journey. It’s a rare person who aces digital marketing on their own. That’s really what bookmarketing is. Your last question, number seven. Does the energy around it feel expansive, or does it feel constrictive? Am I frustrated? Am I scared? Am I excited about the opportunity?
Your subconscious ideas will come when you least expect it, so always have a notebook handy. If you don’t act on that big idea, the universe will give it to someone else. Share on XWhen we started the Superbrand Audience Accelerator, and I wrote the book that we wrote, my co-author and I, it felt very expansive. It felt constrictive when he came back and said, “You need to do X, Y, and Z.” I was like, “But I like X, Y, and Z,” but I have to do it, so it’s a reality to finish the project. Be realistic. If you’re frustrated, sit back and think about, “Why am I frustrated? What could I do to get myself out of this frustrated mindset?”
At the end of the day, when we’re sitting in frustration and we’re not grateful for the opportunities, that’s when things start going downhill. I find it myself. I have a daily practice that I call my 10-10. Every morning, what are the ten things I’m grateful for? Where do they take try out? I am manifesting. I find that when I’m frustrated, it’s harder to be grateful. I have to tap deep to get in that grateful space because none of this happens without gratitude.
I’m hoping that helps. I would love to see you guys go through and break out. Write down everything I talked about. You can watch this over on YouTube if you want. Start and stop it. Do one exercise. Sit with it for a few days, especially that first, defining those goals. I do like to sit in that quiet place. When I get home, I put it away, and take it out a few days later because my mind has been chewing on it then.
Your mind is an amazing place, your subconscious. Ideas will come when you least expect them, which is why I have a note by my bedside. I have one in my purse. I have them everywhere because I jot down ideas all the time. I see something, and I’ll write myself and email saying, “Look into this. Look at that. What about this? How could you implement that?” Always have something there because those ideas come and go very quickly.
Big Magic is the book by Elizabeth Gilbert. I am a firm believer that if I don’t act on that big idea, the universe is going to give it to someone else. I always jot it down, so I don’t forget to look into it. You guys, thank you so much for being here. Remember to go over to BreakthroughEvents1.com to look at our December events. I’ll talk a little bit about the new Rossen newsletter in the next episode. We’re going to talk more about diversification there. Thank you. Have a wonderful day, guys.
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