Dana Derricks was excited when his freelance copywriting business took off, but as he churned out project after project, he recalls, “I hit a fork in the road. I was getting burned out. I was trapped in trading time for dollars.”
The University of Wisconsin graduate, now 26, considered his options. Although he runs a small goat farm in Clear Lake, Wisc., a town of about 1,000 people where he lives, he knew, after growing up on a dairy farm, that he wanted a different type of career. He had studied business administration in college. “I always kept farming on the side,” says Derricks.
So Derricks decided to look for a way to make his writing business scalable. He’d soon decided to write a book telling business owners how to do their own copywriting, instead of handling that task for them.
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There was only one problem: “I realized that 90% of the people who write books don’t make any money,” says Derricks.
One reason became clear almost immediately as he continued his research. “Books are the only thing on earth not priced according to their value,” concluded Derricks.
Derricks was determined to break the pattern when he self-published his first book, Conversion Secrets, Optimize Your Business For Sales Workbook – aimed at Amazon sellers – for $400 a copy in October 2015. He sold it directly to his customers. Derricks found the readers very receptive and says he managed to sell 1,004 copies in in nearly 50 countries. His frequent speaking engagements fueled sales.
Not every author has a highly specialized expertise for which readers would be willing to pay several hundred dollars or more to read about in a book—or targets an audience that can afford to come up with that kind of spare cash. However, Derricks’ experiments with pricing raise some interesting possibilities for others hoping to earn a better living through self-publishing in a world where authors’ work is increasingly devalued.
With his first book taking off, Derricks decided to try writing another book for his niche audience, Ascension Secrets, Back-end Mastery Guide: Maximize Your Reviews & Profits, and published the book, focused on how to get positive online reviews, in September 2016. This time he priced it at $1,000 per copy and reports selling 167 copies.
He followed that book with High-Ticket Book Secrets: The Only Way To Publish & Sell Your Book For What It's Worth, priced at $2,500 per copy, in November 2017. So far, he says, he has sold four copies of the book, which was just released.
His latest work, The Dream 100 Book, comes out in December and has sold nine copies at $2,000 a copy on pre-order, he says. The Dream 100 approach, which may be familiar to those in sales, focuses on connecting with 100 key influencers in your field.
Tapping into his love of animals, Derricks also launched an e-commerce business called Pet Relief in 2015. He sells products for dogs such as sprays that help treat mange and relieve arthritis pain.
Derricks ran The Derricks Group, the holding company that owns his businesses, as a one-man operation from 2010 until January 2017. Now he has grown the business, which he says has seven-figure revenue, to seven employees as he sees how far he can take the idea of high-ticket books.
“It’s a movement,” says Derricks. “It is putting the power back in the hands of the creators of the work.”
Assuming that other authors are ready to apply his pricing strategies, it will be interesting to see how the marketplace responds.
