Your book is finished, and the first box of author copies is sitting by your front door. Now what?

Many authors treat that box as the finish line. They upload the book to Amazon, mail copies to a few colleagues, and wait for the royalties to come in. But a finished book can be the start of a paid relationship with the people who read it. Substack added four tools on October 30 that make this easier, and you can build the same thing without Substack if you don’t use it.

Why would anyone pay for more?

When I raise this idea with authors, I hear the same questions:

• Isn’t everything I know already in the book?
• Who would pay for more after they’ve already bought the book?
• Won’t a membership eat up the time I need for my business?
• What if I open the doors and nobody joins?
• Do I have to be on Substack to do this?

Some of these are very good questions. Let’s take the first one.

Your book answers the questions you expected readers to ask when you wrote it. Your readers have the ones you didn’t expect, and they bring them to you. They email you, they catch you after a talk, and they want to know how chapter four applies to their own business. A membership gives you a place to answer those questions on a set schedule, for people who value the answers enough to pay for them.

I’ve written or edited 74 of my own books, and I laughingly tell people I’ve made about 35 cents an hour in royalties. I have made millions because of the doors my publications opened. A membership is one more door, and you get to build it yourself.

If you already write on Substack

Here’s how to use the new tools to extend your book:

1. Open a paid chat channel for your readers. You can now run up to sixteen chats, and each one has its own audience and its own rules about who can post. Keep your main chat free and set up a second one for paid subscribers, named after your book. Post one discussion question per chapter and let members answer each other.
2. Use a metered paywall to let free readers sample. You decide how many paid posts a free subscriber can read each month, and you decide which posts count toward that limit. Choose posts that go deeper than a chapter did, so readers see what the paid tier gives them before you ask for money.
3. Put a freewall on your book excerpt. A freewall asks for an email address, not a payment, before someone can read the rest of the post. A reader who wants to finish the chapter becomes a free subscriber, and you can write to that person every week.
4. Offer a discount to move monthly members to annual. Tie the discount to something that matters to your readers, such as the start of a new round of reading through the book together. Don’t invent a deadline to rush people.

Also note that you can export the email addresses of both your free and your paid subscribers. The list stays yours if you ever decide to leave the platform.

If you don’t use Substack

You don’t need Substack to do this. You need a list of readers who want more from you and a promise you can keep every month. Here’s how to start:

1. Put an invitation in the back of your book. Give readers one page, one link, and one free sign-up for people who want to keep learning from you. Every buyer who joins that list is a possible member.
2. Ask your readers what they still need. Send one short email asking which chapter they want to go deeper on, and read every answer. Their replies tell you what the membership should cover, in their own words.
3. Run a free round before you charge anyone. Hold a monthly video call on one chapter of the book and see who shows up. If the same people keep coming back, you have the start of a paid group.
4. Charge for one thing you can deliver every month. That might be a live call, a worksheet, or a written answer to the questions members send you. Pick one, keep it up, and add a second only when the first one runs smoothly.

Before you charge anyone

A membership is a monthly promise. Members decide whether to pay for next month based on what you gave them this month. Write down exactly what they’ll get, put it on the sign-up page, and then deliver it—every month, on the day you said you would.

Promise less than you think you can do.

The fastest way to lose members is a paid space that goes quiet for weeks at a time. A paid chat whose last post went up in six months ago has cobwebs on it.

Your book has already gathered your readers. A membership gives them a reason to stay.

If your book isn’t written yet, start there. Authors work with me as a book coach to help them accomplish their goal of getting that book written. Let’s talk about how I can help you. Reach me at patiyer.com/contact.

Pat Iyer MSN RN LNCC is a consultant, speaker, author, editor, and book coach. She has written or edited 74 of her own books and worked with dozens of authors as an editor and book coach.

Subscribe to Pat’s Substack for her latest posts and notes on The Writer’s Toolbox.