Therapy For Your Money

Episode 140: Behind the Numbers of Self-Publishing: Profit First for Therapists Turns One

• Julie Herres

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Behind the Numbers of Self-Publishing: Profit First for Therapists Turns One

In this Therapy for Your Money episode, host Julie Herres, an accountant and owner of Green Oak Accounting, celebrates her book's first anniversary, Profit First for Therapists. She discusses the comprehensive details of self-publishing a niche book, including the financial and time commitments required. Julie provides insights into the costs associated with developmental editing, proofreading, typesetting, audiobook production, marketing, and promotional materials for the all in total. She sheds light on the book's sales performance, revealing that despite the significant upfront costs, the book has sold over 8,000 copies, surpassing her initial goal of 5,000 sales in the first year. The episode also highlights the importance of aligning book projects with broader business goals rather than expecting direct financial returns from book sales alone. Julie encourages listeners with a book idea to pursue self-publishing, equipped with realistic expectations about the process and potential outcomes.

Episode Highlights

  • 00:00 Welcome to Therapy for Your Money
  • 00:49 Celebrating One Year of Profit First for Therapists
  • 01:00 The Realities of Self-Publishing a Book
  • 03:01 The Journey from Manuscript to Market
  • 03:45 The Hidden Costs of Self-Publishing
  • 12:32 Marketing: The Unexpected Marathon
  • 20:30 The Impact and Future of Profit First for Therapists
  • 24:53 Final Thoughts and Advice for Aspiring Authors


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Episode 140: A behind the scenes look at the numbers for self-publishing a book: Profit First for Therapists 1 year anniversary!
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[00:00:00] Julie Herres: You're listening to Therapy for Your Money, a podcast about all things, money and finance for therapy practice owners. If you want to feel confident and in control of your financial life, then you've come to the right spot. I'm your host, Julie Herres. I'm an accountant and the owner of Green Oak Accounting.

[00:00:20] Julie Herres: My firm specializes in working with private practices across the US and my team and I have worked with hundreds of private practice owners. I'm on a mission to share all the best practices I've learned along the way. Because I want you to have a profitable private practice.

[00:00:35] Julie Herres: My new book, profit First for Therapists is available at most online retailers. You can get it in paperback, audiobook, or ebook as well. Go check it out.


[00:00:49] Julie Herres: Hello, hello, and welcome back to Therapy For Your Money. Today is a solo episode where I'm celebrating the one year anniversary of my book, Profit First for Therapists. So I'm giving you a behind the scenes look at all the numbers when it comes to self publishing a book. So how much we've sold, uh, what kind of money I make on each book, what were the costs associated with getting this book, uh, to the market.

[00:01:15] Julie Herres: So I want to just. Pull back the curtain, give you a peek of what it takes to self publish a book in the hopes that it will be helpful for you. Self publishing is a really significant upfront investment, so I don't want to minimize that because it's really thousands and thousands of dollars. I'll show you, uh, the, the specific detail here, uh, but here's my, here's my opinion on.

[00:01:40] Julie Herres: Okay. writing a book. If you have a book in your heart, you absolutely should write it. If you are in the business or self help space, right? So maybe you're writing a book for fellow therapists, fellow practitioners, maybe for the clients that you serve, which would be maybe more on the self help side. Um, I don't think you should write the book to make money from the book.

[00:02:04] Julie Herres: Because unless you're one of the few, few authors out there that sell millions of books, you're just not going to make that much money from a book. It's just nice, uh, side money, right? It's nice to have. I'm not going to say no to it, but that's really not where you're making your money. So if the book aligns with your mission, if it can pay you back in other ways, such as, increasing your referrals for consulting.

[00:02:29] Julie Herres: If you can have a membership group on the back end of the book, if there are other products and services that you can sell on the back end of that book, then it makes a lot of sense to write it. But I just want you to go in with a realistic view that there's just not a ton of money to be made from writing a book in part because Uh, when you are self publishing, there's going to be a lot of costs.

[00:02:55] Julie Herres: So let's get into kind of the behind the scenes piece. And I think I've shared this before. It took me about two years to write the book and get it to market. So one thing that I don't actually have a specific dollar amount to put to is my time. Um, I do track actually my time really. closely. And I know that I spent well over a thousand hours on this book, but I'm not even including that, you know, quote unquote cost in the, in the cost of, uh, writing the book.

[00:03:23] Julie Herres: So I wrote, uh, while I was also managing my business, as I think many of you listeners will be doing as well. If you're writing a book, you very few people have the space, the time, and actually the money. To only write their book. Usually we've got to pay the bills somehow, uh, because again, writing a book is going to be very much of a, of a long play.

[00:03:45] Julie Herres: So once the book was written, once I had gone through multiple iterations and multiple drafts of, uh, of the book, I worked with a developmental editor. That was about, uh, 3, 500. So this is someone who went through, we made sure that. Um, everything made sense that the sequencing was correct, that I had explained things enough that I wasn't just making assumptions in multiple spaces in the book where, where I was making, making assumptions on what the knowledge level of the reader was.

[00:04:21] Julie Herres: So if I was using a term that I haven't explained before, I had to go back and kind of explain that. And as you're writing the book, you're kind of jumping back and forth, going to the end, coming back to the, to the beginning. Uh, and so making sure the sequencing of that really does make sense. That process was about six weeks long.

[00:04:41] Julie Herres: Once I turned over my final, final manuscript around week four, I received, uh, the developmental edits back. I had to review everything. Uh, make notes and make changes and then send it back for a, a final review. So at that point I knew once it came back from developmental edit, the book was not going to change anymore.

[00:05:02] Julie Herres: We were going to be done at that point. Once that was done, the book went to a proofreader. This was actually a surprisingly inexpensive, uh, phase of. book writing. So this was about 600 for me. I'm sure I'm giving you my specific numbers. I'm sure there's a lot of variety as you find vendors to work with, but that's how much I paid.

[00:05:23] Julie Herres: So this was actually a really short process. It was about one week long where once the book was final, it went to the proofreader. That's where they're looking for little Itty bitty things are super detailed. They're looking for any misspelled words, which, I mean, how many of us have read a book where we can still find a misspelled word, right?

[00:05:42] Julie Herres: It's really, really easy to do. They made sure everything that should be capitalized was capitalized, right? Just that kind of level of detail. Once that was complete, again, Every, every step here, the book is more and more final and there's less opportunity for making any changes at all. Then the book went to typeset.

[00:06:03] Julie Herres: So typeset, this is the person who is going to format the book so that it can be printed. So it's the format that you're going to, uh, Upload to your publishing service. They're also going to format it for Kindle and for other e readers as well. So they're going to format all the different things. So that's what you actually see in the pages of the book.

[00:06:26] Julie Herres: They're the person who's going to make sure the words line up properly, that you've got the right cover art at the beginning of each chapter. They're going to just type it out in a way that is exactly how it's going to translate. So I paid 2, 400 for this process, uh, so for, for the typeset and one of the tips that my, uh, developmental editor gave me was that when you get the typeset back, if you're able to then go to recording the audio book, because that will allow you to read every single word in your book.

[00:07:05] Julie Herres: And while you're doing that, you're making sure. That everything is accurate that you didn't forget anything huge that you don't find any other mistakes And so I actually did it in that in that order I had scheduled multiple weeks ahead of time the audio book recording So I had about four weeks for the typesetter to get me the Draft back then I went into the recording studio for the audio book where I read over I think it was five recording days across two weeks Where I read every single word of the book then gave just a handful of little edits to the typesetter And then we had the final version that was ready to be uploaded to IngramSpark, that's the service that we use to, to publish the book.

[00:07:52] Julie Herres: So IngramSpark is a service that is going to then distribute the book to multiple places like Amazon and Barnes and Noble and Walmart and Target, right? So it is the service that works with all of these vendors to then get the books to them when. Uh, when the businesses order. So when Amazon orders, they order from Ingram spark, it gets shipped to them, right?

[00:08:14] Julie Herres: That's ultimately how it works. So the typeset was kind of the final, uh, phase for the, for the written book, at which point it gets uploaded into the system. I'm going to circle back to the audio book recording here. Uh, there were a couple of different expenses when it came to that. So I personally worked with a, An audio book recording coach that also did the production of the audio book.

[00:08:42] Julie Herres: Um, and so this person helped me go through the manuscript, prepare ahead of time, how I was going to read the audio book. And I'm so, so glad I ended up spending some money on this because it was so incredibly helpful. I literally thought I was going to go into the recording studio and just read the book without any prep.

[00:09:03] Julie Herres: That did not end up being the case at all. I ended up doing for every hour in the studio, I did about an hour of prep ahead of time, which was just way more than I had expected. So I would read through Uh, every single chapter ahead of time and write notes to myself. So I had, uh, the book uploaded in an iPad and I was using a note taking, uh, app.

[00:09:27] Julie Herres: So I would put, for example, uh, a bar of where I was going to pause and breathe, right? Something as simple as that. I would underline which words I was going to emphasize. So I, I like to think I've gotten a lot of compliments on the audio book. And so I like to think that the work I did ahead of time with this, uh, audio book coach coach did pay off and made it just an easier to listen to.

[00:09:55] Julie Herres: So that process, um, the voice coach and the audio book production was about 2, 000 and the production piece is what happens after you go to the recording studio. So here's another cost about 2, 000 just for the recording studio time. Uh, so I went into the studio, uh, five times, as I mentioned. And we basically paid for blocks of time each one of those days.

[00:10:21] Julie Herres: So I personally chose to do no more than four hours of recording per day, uh, just because this is not something that I do often. And I knew that beyond that I would get tired. My voice would get tired. So I tend to do my best work in the morning. So we were doing typically early morning, uh, Uh, recordings here, but I had to pay for this space and also the audio engineer.

[00:10:42] Julie Herres: So the engineer was someone who was recording, who was listening for the quality of the audio. Uh, but I had someone with me who I'm going to talk about a little bit more in a moment, who's my, my book launch manager, uh, Abby, who spent all that time with me in the. Recording studio listening to make sure that I wasn't making mistakes.

[00:11:03] Julie Herres: Um, so she was the one who would say, Hey, you messed up on that word. Let's redo it. We ended up with about 14 hours of recording for what ended up being, I think just under five hour. Uh, audio book. So that gives you an idea of how much time we spent going over the same thing again and again, and again, we did a lot of retakes, uh, over time.

[00:11:28] Julie Herres: So audio book recording studio time, 2, 000 voice coach and audio production. Uh, that was about 2, 000 total. And so once it was all said and done, those 14 hours of recording went to the producer who then made it into the audio book. That is available now on audible or wherever you get audio books. Uh, so it was a long process to go through all of the edits, get the best version, make sure that it flowed.

[00:11:57] Julie Herres: And even then we did end up with a couple of mistakes in the. uh, appendix that a few of you reached out to me to say, Hey, some of your retakes ended up in the appendix. So it is fixed now. But if you had an earlier version of the audio book, there were a couple of little Easter eggs in there that we did not even catch everything.

[00:12:17] Julie Herres: Uh, there were a couple of places where you could hear me say, which is what I tended to do, uh, in between takes and just kind of loosen up my mouth. And so you can hear that, um, in earlier versions of the audible. Alright, now when it goes to marketing, here's, here's something that's, that's funny. I really thought that when I was done writing the book, the hard work was going to be over and I was 100 percent wrong.

[00:12:44] Julie Herres: One piece of information, I'm really, really grateful that my book writing coach, AJ Harper, had given me when I first started. Uh, the process of writing a book is she had said, you have to give yourself a nice long runway to promote your book. So while we were doing these items that i'm telling you about right like the proofreader the typeset the audiobook we were also Simultaneously working on the marketing of the book.

[00:13:09] Julie Herres: So I was already starting to record podcast episodes Uh going on other people's podcasts to To promote the book. I was already working on email copy and all the different things that we would do in the weeks leading up to the book launch. So all that was already happening simultaneously. But according to some statistics from Book Expo of America, each year, there's about 172, 000 new books published in the United States.

[00:13:39] Julie Herres: Um, of those, only about 1000 books sell more than 10, 000 copies. 50, 000 copies. That is not me. We did not sell more than 50, 000 copies, uh, but less than 25, 000 of the books that are published each year sell more than 5, 000 copies. And 93 percent of books sell less than 1000 copies. And so I knew I needed to have, uh, if I was going to have the impact that I had imagined and envisioned with this book, I needed to really be on my, my marketing game.

[00:14:10] Julie Herres: And so as far as marketing costs, we actually worked with a, uh, book marketing consultant. I decided to do a one time project with them so that my team and I could learn more about What needed to happen and that we could do it internally, uh, just because the costs of paying them to do it for us were astronomical.

[00:14:28] Julie Herres: And that was just not in the, uh, in the price range that we had available. So we ended up paying 4, 000 for that marketing consultant, which is a lot of money, uh, but it did feel worth it. So internally, then we took over all the tasks and all the things that needed to happen to To make the book launch successful.

[00:14:48] Julie Herres: We also ended up paying a third party about 750 to create a landing page or a book website for us. Again, worth it that we probably could have done internally if we had the bandwidth, but we didn't. So that's just one of the pieces that we decided, okay, let's have someone else, uh, do this so that it's done professionally and that we can just keep, keep moving along.

[00:15:11] Julie Herres: Another piece of marketing is we ended up sending to, uh, influencers in the mental health space. And then to anyone who had shared a story for the book, we sent them a book box, uh, with a beautiful, uh, a beautifully packaged copy of the book with a few goodies in there. Uh, but those boxes, which were branded to Profit First for Therapists were kind of expensive.

[00:15:34] Julie Herres: We, we ended up spending, um, a little over a thousand dollars for the boxes. The crinkle paper that goes in it, the bookmarks, the postcards, all the different things that went along with that. That doesn't even include shipping. We paid way more than that, uh, just for shipping all the books as well. Then we also paid, uh, for a Kirkus book review.

[00:15:54] Julie Herres: So this is a, uh, a book review system where you pay to have them look at your book and review it. So they will write a review. This is to guarantee that they will write something. Then depending on if the review is good or bad, you can decide if you're going to publish it or not, let them publish it, or if you're going to use it.

[00:16:14] Julie Herres: Um, and we ended up getting a really great review. So we have used it, uh, in some of our marketing efforts, but that felt like it was worth, worth doing since it was, uh, Kirkus is a well regarded. Um, reviewer in the book industry, and we, we thought that it would help us when it came to, uh, getting the book into libraries and, and other things.

[00:16:37] Julie Herres: And so, all that said, uh, if you're following along and adding up mentally, all of the costs that I've told you about, that's about 10, 000. 16 to $17,000 in costs. Um, one thing I, I didn't mention is the cost of just designing the, the cover. Uh, I ended up not having to pay for that because I was writing a Profit First book.

[00:16:59] Julie Herres: So there's a very specific look that it had to have. Uh, and that was included in my, my Deal with Mike Mcal. But usually you're going to spend 500 to a thousand, maybe a few thousand dollars for a cover as well. So if you add up all those costs, 16 to 17,000 is what I paid. directly just to get the book to market, right?

[00:17:18] Julie Herres: Having made zero dollars from the book. Some things that I am excluding here as well are the 10 to 20 hours a week that my book launch manager was spending on all the things book related, keeping me on track, writing emails. Like there's just a plethora of things that needed to be done over the Probably six to eight months before the book launch.

[00:17:41] Julie Herres: And so that time obviously costs money, right? So I was, I was paying for that, paying for that as well. Uh, and so. Launching a book is incredibly expensive. And even if you are getting a book deal with someone else, uh, with a, with a publisher, you're going to do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to marketing.

[00:18:01] Julie Herres: You're going to have to be the one doing the outreach, uh, going on podcasts, doing social media. Your publisher is not going to do that for you. So I want you to go in if you're writing a book with just a realistic expectation of. What are the things that that need to happen and in my case all this cash needed to be paid Before we made a single a single dollar on the book As I mentioned we use Ingram to publish the book Ingram pays 90 days behind so that means even though my book launched in May the first payment that we ever received was in August.

[00:18:41] Julie Herres: So you can kind of see how long that, that is. We were, a lot of these expenses were a year or more prior to the book launch and, uh, it took at least 90 days to get, to get paid. And then in August we got paid for, uh, the books that were sold in presale and in the first month. Uh, but then you're always 90 days in arrears.

[00:19:03] Julie Herres: We do get also other smaller payments from, uh, we use find a way voices for the audio book. So that is the system that distributes the audio copy to audible and all the other different, uh, audio book vendors out there. We get a little bit of money from Kindle as well, right? Those are just smaller numbers in comparison to what comes through, uh, IngramSpark.

[00:19:28] Julie Herres: But so now the nice thing is a year later, there's a little bit of money getting deposited every month, uh, for the book from all of these, all of these different places. On average, I make about 5. 25 per book sold. It can depend if there's a larger quantity one month or a smaller quantity the other month, but on average, it's about 5 per, per book, just based on the price point of the book.

[00:19:52] Julie Herres: So you can see just how many copies need to be sold to make up all of these expenses. And that's why I want you to know, like, There's, there's money to be made in the book and we're getting now, you know, one to 2, 000 per month, uh, for book sales, which is great, right? I'm really happy to be getting that, but it's not, that's not going to replace the income of my business, for example.

[00:20:18] Julie Herres: I told you I was going to. Peel back the curtain. So I'm doing that today. I mentioned earlier, 93 percent of books published sell less than a thousand copies, less than a thousand copies. So I went into a book launch with the goal of selling 5, 000 books. In the first, uh, calendar year. So in 2023 on 

book 

[00:20:41] Julie Herres: launch day, we had about 2000 books sold between pre orders and then orders on the date of the book launch and then in a really exciting way, book sales have just continued to grow.

[00:20:56] Julie Herres: I was really pleasantly surprised. I didn't really know what to expect after launch. Uh, But book sales have continued and they actually tend to grow from month to month, which is really, really exciting to me. And what I think this means and hope this means is that the book is impacting people and, uh, therapists who are reading it are then telling other therapists about it.

[00:21:20] Julie Herres: And that's how it continues to grow. And one of the signs that point towards this is what is happening is that we continue to get more and more and more positive reviews on Amazon and in other spots. But we have over a hundred reviews on Amazon now. If you've read the book and you enjoy it, I would love for you to leave a review on Amazon because it really helps the Amazon algorithm.

[00:21:42] Julie Herres: But I don't think people would be going To write a review if this book hadn't positively impacted, uh, their life, we also have a Facebook group on the, on the back end of the book, right? Which is intended to provide additional support, uh, for people who are implementing profit first in their, uh, in their practice.

[00:22:03] Julie Herres: And we keep seeing growing, growing, growing numbers in that Facebook group as well. Um, so if you are, again, if you have read the book and you want additional support. The Facebook group is profit first for psychotherapists. So go check it out. All right, going back to our book sale numbers. So 2000 books sold on launch day.

[00:22:23] Julie Herres: I was really happy with that. And then we ended 2023. with well over 5, 000 books sold. So I was really excited about that. I kind of felt like I was throwing, throwing a number out there, uh, maybe some wishful thinking when I set that goal. And I was really pleasantly surprised that my team ended up blowing it out of the water.

[00:22:46] Julie Herres: Another reason I think that's happening, I keep talking about the book. If you're attending anything that I do, any of the webinars, uh, or if I speak anywhere, I'm usually going to mention the book because it's a really. Important piece of what we do and it's a really easy introductory way for someone to get into our universe and see.

[00:23:07] Julie Herres: Uh, what we're about. It also works really, really well. So we have continued to talk about it, continue to be intentional about marketing the book. Um, and we will continue to do so for, I don't know, forever, for the foreseeable future because it, because it works. Uh, so where we are today, about a year and a half.

[00:23:26] Julie Herres: Later, I'm recording this a little bit before the, the one year mark, we are currently at 8, 000 books sold and I am really, really, really excited about those numbers. This is a very niche book. This book is just for therapists. There's a lot of therapists out there, but I feel like this is a really good reach considering.

[00:23:45] Julie Herres: This book is only for therapists. We are hearing consistently from massage therapists, occupational therapists, or people who have businesses who are kind of just adjacent to mental health that are saying they're reading the book, they're implementing, that it's really, really helpful for them as well.

[00:24:00] Julie Herres: I'm so, so glad To hear that because they don't have a book that's specifically for them. Uh, but you know, first and foremost, this book is for the mental health industry. So I'm really excited for those numbers. Uh, it looks like we're going to blow this year's goal out of the water. My goal was for us to be at 9, 000 books sold by the end of 2024.

[00:24:19] Julie Herres: I'm going to guess that we're going to end the year closer to 10, 000 books sold. That would be my, that would be my guess. And really the goal with the books sold is for people to read them. It does no good if someone buys the book and doesn't do anything about it. But if there is an impact that continues.

[00:24:37] Julie Herres: the impact of the book that continues the impact of my work. And that also makes these two years of really, really hard work running a business and writing a book and doing all the things to get that book to the market worth it. It makes it all worth it. So if you have a book in your heart or in your mind, um, I encourage you to go ahead and do it.

[00:24:59] Julie Herres: I think the market needs you, but where I hope this episode will help you is to go in. with a realistic view of your timeline, what it's going to take, the cash outlay, and then how you might be able to make money with that book. If you've made it this far and you still haven't read Prophet First for Therapists, I would encourage you to go check it out.

[00:25:21] Julie Herres: It's available as a paperback, as an audiobook, and as an ebook as well. Uh, and I encourage you to check it out because it is impacting a lot of practices out there and I think it could do the same for you as well. And if you have read Prophet First for Therapists, thank you. I would love it if you would take just a moment and go right to A nice short review on Amazon or wherever you buy books so that other people just like you can find it.

[00:25:47] Julie Herres: That's all for today. Take care, everyone.

The information contained in this podcast represents the host and guest general opinions and should not be construed as personalized accounting and tax advice. Listeners should consider all facts and circumstances before applying this information and seek appropriate advice from an accountant, financial planner, lawyer, or other professional.

Any info provided does not constitute accounting, tax, or legal advice.