August 15, 2025 • 14 mins
Check back weekly!
Join the community at www.AuthorBossAcademy.com
Ready to write your book? Go to www.AuthorMastery.com to write in just 6 weeks!
Ready to publish your manuscript?
Go to www.IAmReadyToWrite.com for your free consultation.
Have questions or need to reach out? Email us at Hello@PopPublishing.com
Join the community at www.AuthorBossAcademy.com
Ready to write your book? Go to www.AuthorMastery.com to write in just 6 weeks!
Ready to publish your manuscript?
Go to www.IAmReadyToWrite.com for your free consultation.
Have questions or need to reach out? Email us at Hello@PopPublishing.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Alright, Yes, so we are that with another powerful episode
of Author Boss. So author Boss is a place where
when you learn to tips strategies of how to become
a successful and sustainable author. Alright. So I'm your host,
Shannon Paja Anderson, and I am a best selling author,
(00:25):
i am a publisher, I am an executive producer, and
so I've touched several different things in this industry as
far as podcasts, television shows, film, and so I'm just
gonna be sharing my expertise and also just giving you
some tips and strategies on how you can build out
your successful author brand. Alright, So welcome, welcome, welcome. Now,
(00:49):
today I wanted to talk about how being an author
is actually a business, Okay, And I cannot tell you
how many people have no idea that they are now
a business. Right. So, once you've written the book, once
you decide to write a book, right, then you can
(01:10):
go ahead and really establish yourself as a business, not
just by saying that you're a business, but you can
actually establish a business entity. Okay. And later on in
this podcast, in the series, I'm going to be talking
about business models as an author. But today I wanted
to just share with you about the power of having
(01:32):
an author brand and knowing that you're an actual business.
All right. So I've coached hundreds of people in the
book writing space and publishing space, and I cannot tell
you how many people had no idea that you could
be a legitimate business, like legitimately having an number, like
(01:53):
having an LLC as an author for your book. All right.
Because here's the thing. Any time that you have a
product or service to sell, you are a business. Okay,
So just remember anytime you're selling anything, you can create
an actual business from that. I don't care if you're
(02:14):
selling them out the trunk of your car, it doesn't matter.
And as a matter of fact, once you publish and
you go to Amazon and these other platforms to sell
your book, they're gonna send you what's called a W nine,
all right. So if you are a self employeed person
or a contractor or anything like that, then you know
about W nine's right, And so they're gonna send you
(02:37):
a W nine because why they report your sales to
the irs. Okay. So that's how you know that you
are a legitimate business. And some of my clients actually
prefer instead of just being so you know, a proprietor,
they actually form and establish LLC's. But we're not gonna
(02:59):
get too deep into that today. I just wanted to
talk about how you are a boss, right, which is
why I go with the author boss thing, because authors
are bosses, right, Like you can literally hire people, you
can literally fire people, you can literally impact people. So
I want to just lay out three questions that you
(03:22):
should be asking yourself as you are building out your
successful author brand, right, your successful author business. And number
one is who are you? Who are you as an author? Okay?
And so this is one thing that I had to
get really really clear on in the very beginning. I
(03:45):
had to get really clear on who I was like
when I came into the space of being an author.
I wanted to really impact people. I wanted to really
inspire people. I wanted to really motivate people. I knew
right off the rip that I was going to be
an inspirational author, that I was going to be a
(04:07):
motivational author, right, an author that writes books to inspire
and to motivate people. And so that's very that's very
very big when you are getting into this space, and
so many people skip over this process. But when you
come into this industry or when you're in this world
and you don't have a clear understanding of who you are.
(04:29):
Your readers don't know who you are either. Right, your
audience they don't know who you are either. And as humans,
we automatically associate things, right, It's just an automatic thing.
So when somebody comes across you and they come across
your book, they're thinking, who are you? That's the first
(04:49):
question that people are asking, who are you? And if
you don't know who you are as an author, then
people are going to tell you who you are. Okay,
kind of like this saying that maybe your parents told
you or your grandparents told you. If you don't know
who you are, the world will tell you who you are. Right,
So you want to establish that in the very beginning.
(05:10):
And if you are already an author and you're probably
wondering why your book isn't selling, you don't really know
how to start marketing. Well, the first place to start
is understanding who you are as an author, because that
is what you were reflecting back to the world. That
is what is attracting your ideal audience and your ideal reader.
It's who you are, right, So I know that a
(05:32):
lot of people who come to me. You're writing autobiographies,
you're telling your personal stories. You are writing memoirs and
things of that nature, right, Or you are telling a
little bit about your story, but you're also creating lessons
and teaching and you know, maybe you are a minister
or you have nonprofits to whatever, but still you're still
(05:52):
bringing in parts of your story, right. And so that's
why it's important to know who you are as an author,
because as they're reading parts of your story, all right,
so you need to establish that. You want to establish
who you are in the very beginning. So who are
you as an author? That's number one. Number two, what
do you want to be known for? So I know
(06:15):
that when I came into this industry, I told you
I wanted to be an inspirational author. I wanted to
be a motivational author, and I wanted to be known
for that. That's kind of changed as time has gone on,
But in the very beginning, I wanted to be known
for motivation and inspiration and that's exactly what I was
known for. Okay, And so as things grew and as
(06:40):
time passed, you know, that kind of shifted, but it's
still the core of who I am. It's still the
core of my author brand. It's inspiration and motivation, but
also now helping people to create their own inspirational and
motivational author brands. Right, So it's gotten larger, you know,
(07:00):
it's you know, pulled forward. But in the very beginning,
all I had was a book. I didn't have the
publishing company, I didn't have the TV show, I didn't
have the documentary, I didn't have the coaching company. Right,
So in the very beginning, it was just a book,
and that's what sparked everything else. So but we'll talk
about that later as well about how the book can
(07:23):
actually create other streams of income, right and become other things.
But today I want to get you really focused on
the foundational. And the foundational part of the business is
number one, understanding who you are and two, what do
you want to be known for? Okay, And as I
(07:45):
was writing my book, and as I was marketing my
book and releasing my book, I knew that I had
written a story about my life, and I knew that
I wanted to create it. I wanted to create impact.
I knew that I wanted to create change, and so
I really really like went ten toes down into the
inspiration and the motivational space, okay, and that led to speaking,
(08:08):
and that led to press, and that led to you know,
having my own events and conferences and things of that nature.
But it all centered around motivation and inspiration because, like
I said, I was building an author brand, right, And
when you're building a brand, you have to be known
for something. So I wanted to be known for inspiring.
(08:30):
I wanted to be known for motivating and then known
for helping other people to create their own motivational and
inspirational author brands. Right. And then number three, what impact
are you making? So I keep going back to myself
because I mean, I know my business inside and out,
(08:52):
and so I knew that I wanted to create impact
and inspire motivate, and so that was the impact that
I was making, right. The impact that I was making
was now helping people to write and publish their books
and create their own inspirational brand, creating their own motivational brand. Okay,
(09:16):
that is now the impact that I made. So does
that make sense? So, I, you know, knowing who you
are then leads to what you're known for, and then
that then leads to the impact that you create or
that you make. So even if you're just writing or
you're just starting the author process, you can still answer
(09:36):
these questions. You know very well what you would like
to be known for, or you at least know the
impact that you want to make in the world. Right
if you are already an author, and you're already selling
your books, and you're already marketing and things of that nature,
these things may be the very three things that help
(09:57):
shift your business, help shift your books se and help
shift everything else in your marketing. Because once you're clear
on these things, the marketing becomes easy. See. I get
a lot of you asking me, Shannon, how do I
steal more books? How do I market my books? Well,
a lot of you haven't answered these three questions, so
you don't know who you are as an author, so
(10:17):
therefore your reader doesn't know who you are as an author.
You don't know what you want to be known for,
so you're not making that clear in your marketing, and
then you don't know the impact that you create, so
you still don't know what to say in your marketing.
It's more than just hey, everybody, go to my Amazon
page and buy a book. Absolutely not that is not
what creates buyers. What creates buyers is you telling the story.
(10:41):
What creates buyers is you sharing the story. What creates
buyers is letting people know who you are. What creates
buyers is letting people know what you're known for or
what like to be known for. And what creates buyers
is really really digging deep into the impact that you're creating.
Go deep in the impact, whatever that is, whatever that
(11:03):
looks like, are you speaking, are you showing up at events?
Are you on you know, doing your own conference? Are
you speaking at conferences? Are you, you know, volunteering? Are
you what are you doing that is creating the impact? Right?
(11:24):
What are you doing that helps you show up as
the person or as the author that you say that
you want to be. Okay, so a lot of you
aren't taking the actions required to create the brand, to
create the business, right, So let's take the actions. Let's
take the actions of inspiring people. You can do that
(11:45):
for free on social media. You can literally just open
up your phone and record a video and say something inspirational.
So that is exactly how it started. When I wrote
my first book, I used to do a segment called
motivational Minutes, and I would literally record a motivational minute,
sixty seconds of me saying something inspirational or something motivational,
(12:09):
and I would post it every Monday, and it got
popular and people started following me for the motivational minute,
and then after they saw the motivational minute, they then
went and bought the book. Right, because all of it
made sense. I also share parts of my story, right, So,
and I got deep into the story. I didn't read
(12:30):
my whole book, but I let them know what had
gone on, and I told them how I overcame these things. Right, So,
how are you positioning yourself and positioning your story to
be told? A lot of you are just writing a
book and not actually sharing the story. Like, no one
knows the story, so they're not going to buy the book. Guys.
(12:53):
So we want to do the work right. We want
to show up. We want to create the impact, and
you can't create the impact by being silent, right, Silence
does not drive impact. Being invisible does not drive impact.
So we want to be visible. We want to be seen,
we want to be heard, we want to share our
stories and we want to have a voice. All right,
(13:16):
So that is it for today's show. God, thank you
so much for joining today. Also, I am releasing the
author Boss Academy very very soon, all right. So Author
Boss Academy it is, oh my gosh, the foundation, right
so it is going to be everything that you need
to build your successful author brand. It's a membership so
(13:39):
you can join, you can cancel it any time. And
you're also going to have a wonderful community to come along,
all right. So make sure that you join the author
Boss Academy at authorboss academy dot com, and you know,
just come along on the journey because you want to
learn the skills you want to learn, learn the steps
you want to you know, be in a community. You
(14:01):
want to have that mentorship and that guiding and being
around other people who are like minded. That is so
very important, all right, So make sure you go to
Authobossacademy dot com. Make sure you join or get on
the wait list if there's a wait list there. And
I look very forward to seeing you meeting all of you,
(14:22):
working with you in some capacity, all right, So check
again next week. I'll talk to see zom
Alright, Yes, so we are that with another powerful episode
of Author Boss. So author Boss is a place where
when you learn to tips strategies of how to become
a successful and sustainable author. Alright. So I'm your host,
Shannon Paja Anderson, and I am a best selling author,
(00:25):
i am a publisher, I am an executive producer, and
so I've touched several different things in this industry as
far as podcasts, television shows, film, and so I'm just
gonna be sharing my expertise and also just giving you
some tips and strategies on how you can build out
your successful author brand. Alright, So welcome, welcome, welcome. Now,
(00:49):
today I wanted to talk about how being an author
is actually a business, Okay, And I cannot tell you
how many people have no idea that they are now
a business. Right. So, once you've written the book, once
you decide to write a book, right, then you can
(01:10):
go ahead and really establish yourself as a business, not
just by saying that you're a business, but you can
actually establish a business entity. Okay. And later on in
this podcast, in the series, I'm going to be talking
about business models as an author. But today I wanted
to just share with you about the power of having
(01:32):
an author brand and knowing that you're an actual business.
All right. So I've coached hundreds of people in the
book writing space and publishing space, and I cannot tell
you how many people had no idea that you could
be a legitimate business, like legitimately having an number, like
(01:53):
having an LLC as an author for your book. All right.
Because here's the thing. Any time that you have a
product or service to sell, you are a business. Okay,
So just remember anytime you're selling anything, you can create
an actual business from that. I don't care if you're
(02:14):
selling them out the trunk of your car, it doesn't matter.
And as a matter of fact, once you publish and
you go to Amazon and these other platforms to sell
your book, they're gonna send you what's called a W nine,
all right. So if you are a self employeed person
or a contractor or anything like that, then you know
about W nine's right, And so they're gonna send you
(02:37):
a W nine because why they report your sales to
the irs. Okay. So that's how you know that you
are a legitimate business. And some of my clients actually
prefer instead of just being so you know, a proprietor,
they actually form and establish LLC's. But we're not gonna
(02:59):
get too deep into that today. I just wanted to
talk about how you are a boss, right, which is
why I go with the author boss thing, because authors
are bosses, right, Like you can literally hire people, you
can literally fire people, you can literally impact people. So
I want to just lay out three questions that you
(03:22):
should be asking yourself as you are building out your
successful author brand, right, your successful author business. And number
one is who are you? Who are you as an author? Okay?
And so this is one thing that I had to
get really really clear on in the very beginning. I
(03:45):
had to get really clear on who I was like
when I came into the space of being an author.
I wanted to really impact people. I wanted to really
inspire people. I wanted to really motivate people. I knew
right off the rip that I was going to be
an inspirational author, that I was going to be a
(04:07):
motivational author, right, an author that writes books to inspire
and to motivate people. And so that's very that's very
very big when you are getting into this space, and
so many people skip over this process. But when you
come into this industry or when you're in this world
and you don't have a clear understanding of who you are.
(04:29):
Your readers don't know who you are either. Right, your
audience they don't know who you are either. And as humans,
we automatically associate things, right, It's just an automatic thing.
So when somebody comes across you and they come across
your book, they're thinking, who are you? That's the first
(04:49):
question that people are asking, who are you? And if
you don't know who you are as an author, then
people are going to tell you who you are. Okay,
kind of like this saying that maybe your parents told
you or your grandparents told you. If you don't know
who you are, the world will tell you who you are. Right,
So you want to establish that in the very beginning.
(05:10):
And if you are already an author and you're probably
wondering why your book isn't selling, you don't really know
how to start marketing. Well, the first place to start
is understanding who you are as an author, because that
is what you were reflecting back to the world. That
is what is attracting your ideal audience and your ideal reader.
It's who you are, right, So I know that a
(05:32):
lot of people who come to me. You're writing autobiographies,
you're telling your personal stories. You are writing memoirs and
things of that nature, right, Or you are telling a
little bit about your story, but you're also creating lessons
and teaching and you know, maybe you are a minister
or you have nonprofits to whatever, but still you're still
(05:52):
bringing in parts of your story, right. And so that's
why it's important to know who you are as an author,
because as they're reading parts of your story, all right,
so you need to establish that. You want to establish
who you are in the very beginning. So who are
you as an author? That's number one. Number two, what
do you want to be known for? So I know
(06:15):
that when I came into this industry, I told you
I wanted to be an inspirational author. I wanted to
be a motivational author, and I wanted to be known
for that. That's kind of changed as time has gone on,
But in the very beginning, I wanted to be known
for motivation and inspiration and that's exactly what I was
known for. Okay, And so as things grew and as
(06:40):
time passed, you know, that kind of shifted, but it's
still the core of who I am. It's still the
core of my author brand. It's inspiration and motivation, but
also now helping people to create their own inspirational and
motivational author brands. Right, So it's gotten larger, you know,
(07:00):
it's you know, pulled forward. But in the very beginning,
all I had was a book. I didn't have the
publishing company, I didn't have the TV show, I didn't
have the documentary, I didn't have the coaching company. Right,
So in the very beginning, it was just a book,
and that's what sparked everything else. So but we'll talk
about that later as well about how the book can
(07:23):
actually create other streams of income, right and become other things.
But today I want to get you really focused on
the foundational. And the foundational part of the business is
number one, understanding who you are and two, what do
you want to be known for? Okay, And as I
(07:45):
was writing my book, and as I was marketing my
book and releasing my book, I knew that I had
written a story about my life, and I knew that
I wanted to create it. I wanted to create impact.
I knew that I wanted to create change, and so
I really really like went ten toes down into the
inspiration and the motivational space, okay, and that led to speaking,
(08:08):
and that led to press, and that led to you know,
having my own events and conferences and things of that nature.
But it all centered around motivation and inspiration because, like
I said, I was building an author brand, right, And
when you're building a brand, you have to be known
for something. So I wanted to be known for inspiring.
(08:30):
I wanted to be known for motivating and then known
for helping other people to create their own motivational and
inspirational author brands. Right. And then number three, what impact
are you making? So I keep going back to myself
because I mean, I know my business inside and out,
(08:52):
and so I knew that I wanted to create impact
and inspire motivate, and so that was the impact that
I was making, right. The impact that I was making
was now helping people to write and publish their books
and create their own inspirational brand, creating their own motivational brand. Okay,
(09:16):
that is now the impact that I made. So does
that make sense? So, I, you know, knowing who you
are then leads to what you're known for, and then
that then leads to the impact that you create or
that you make. So even if you're just writing or
you're just starting the author process, you can still answer
(09:36):
these questions. You know very well what you would like
to be known for, or you at least know the
impact that you want to make in the world. Right
if you are already an author, and you're already selling
your books, and you're already marketing and things of that nature,
these things may be the very three things that help
(09:57):
shift your business, help shift your books se and help
shift everything else in your marketing. Because once you're clear
on these things, the marketing becomes easy. See. I get
a lot of you asking me, Shannon, how do I
steal more books? How do I market my books? Well,
a lot of you haven't answered these three questions, so
you don't know who you are as an author, so
(10:17):
therefore your reader doesn't know who you are as an author.
You don't know what you want to be known for,
so you're not making that clear in your marketing, and
then you don't know the impact that you create, so
you still don't know what to say in your marketing.
It's more than just hey, everybody, go to my Amazon
page and buy a book. Absolutely not that is not
what creates buyers. What creates buyers is you telling the story.
(10:41):
What creates buyers is you sharing the story. What creates
buyers is letting people know who you are. What creates
buyers is letting people know what you're known for or
what like to be known for. And what creates buyers
is really really digging deep into the impact that you're creating.
Go deep in the impact, whatever that is, whatever that
(11:03):
looks like, are you speaking, are you showing up at events?
Are you on you know, doing your own conference? Are
you speaking at conferences? Are you, you know, volunteering? Are
you what are you doing that is creating the impact? Right?
(11:24):
What are you doing that helps you show up as
the person or as the author that you say that
you want to be. Okay, so a lot of you
aren't taking the actions required to create the brand, to
create the business, right, So let's take the actions. Let's
take the actions of inspiring people. You can do that
(11:45):
for free on social media. You can literally just open
up your phone and record a video and say something inspirational.
So that is exactly how it started. When I wrote
my first book, I used to do a segment called
motivational Minutes, and I would literally record a motivational minute,
sixty seconds of me saying something inspirational or something motivational,
(12:09):
and I would post it every Monday, and it got
popular and people started following me for the motivational minute,
and then after they saw the motivational minute, they then
went and bought the book. Right, because all of it
made sense. I also share parts of my story, right, So,
and I got deep into the story. I didn't read
(12:30):
my whole book, but I let them know what had
gone on, and I told them how I overcame these things. Right, So,
how are you positioning yourself and positioning your story to
be told? A lot of you are just writing a
book and not actually sharing the story. Like, no one
knows the story, so they're not going to buy the book. Guys.
(12:53):
So we want to do the work right. We want
to show up. We want to create the impact, and
you can't create the impact by being silent, right, Silence
does not drive impact. Being invisible does not drive impact.
So we want to be visible. We want to be seen,
we want to be heard, we want to share our
stories and we want to have a voice. All right,
(13:16):
So that is it for today's show. God, thank you
so much for joining today. Also, I am releasing the
author Boss Academy very very soon, all right. So Author
Boss Academy it is, oh my gosh, the foundation, right
so it is going to be everything that you need
to build your successful author brand. It's a membership so
(13:39):
you can join, you can cancel it any time. And
you're also going to have a wonderful community to come along,
all right. So make sure that you join the author
Boss Academy at authorboss academy dot com, and you know,
just come along on the journey because you want to
learn the skills you want to learn, learn the steps
you want to you know, be in a community. You
(14:01):
want to have that mentorship and that guiding and being
around other people who are like minded. That is so
very important, all right, So make sure you go to
Authobossacademy dot com. Make sure you join or get on
the wait list if there's a wait list there. And
I look very forward to seeing you meeting all of you,
(14:22):
working with you in some capacity, all right, So check
again next week. I'll talk to see zom
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!