strategy is to “play the lottery.” In fact, your odds of winning most lotteries are better than selling a million copies of your book. What’s even worse, even if you sell a decent number of copies, you can’t charge enough for books to generate good revenue. The high- est you can charge for a book is usually about $25, give or take. Even the greatest book ever written, if priced higher than that, won’t get picked up. People have a low limit on their perceived value of books. There is only one group of people who must focus on how many copies they sell: professional writers (novelists, fiction writers, etc.). They need to worry about selling copies of books because book sales are their main source for making money! They don’t have anything else to sell but a copy of the book. But this isn’t true for most authors. REALISTIC EXPECTATION: “MY BOOK CAN MAKE ME MONEY IN MANY DIFFERENT WAYS.” The good news is that a book can make you money, if you look at it from a different perspective. This is how most of our authors look at books: A book is a multipurpose marketing tool with the special ability to create authority and visibility that authors can turn into profit. For entrepreneurs, consultants, professionals, and other busi- nesspeople, the book itself creates credibility and authority that is the means to selling other, larger opportunities that can be very profitable. For example, if you’re a consultant and have a skill or knowledge that is very valuable to people, the best way to get more clients and charge them more money is by writing a book about what you know. This establishes you as an authority and gives you credibility, rEAliSTiC AND UNrEAliSTiC ExPECTATiONS fOr A BOOk · 365