04: Building an Author Empire with Cara Alwill Leyba

Our guest today is the author of Girl Code and founder of The Champagne Diet Cara Alwill Leyba. In this episode she shares advice about writing your first book and growing your audience.

Cara believes every woman has a story to tell. If you are an entrepreneur, you have what it takes to self-publish a book. You’re not just writing and publishing a book, you are selling it, marketing it and doing PR for it. As a business woman it’s a smart move but there are some things to be aware of.

• Understand that to be successful it’s got to be a full time endeavor. Cara’s books took a lot out of energy, money and attention out of her. But she put all her time into it because it was her passion.
• If it’s not your passion, don’t waste your time doing it. It’s a lot of work and takes a lot of time to see revenue come in.
• Be all in. Be willing to sacrifice a lot for it.

Steps to get moving in the right direction:

1. Start reading books in your market and industry. If you want to write a novel, understand and get to know your genre.
2. You want your book to look as professional as possible. Really start to understand what books look and feel like, how they read, how long chapters should be.
3. Decide how many chapters you want in your book, what you want your content to look like and start writing.
4. Get an editor.
5. Make Google your best friend and do a ton of research.

 

How long did it take you to write your first book?

It took me a couple months to write the first book and a lot of that time was spent on research. From the time I first began writing it to the point I published it was probably 6-7 months. Give yourself anywhere from 6-8 months to get that book done.

How much should people invest in an editor?

In terms of finding an editor it’s hard to say but the editing process for each of my books was under $1,000.

Growing an audience

In the beginning when you’re first starting out it’s important to pay attention to quality over quantity. Don’t worry about numbers so much. People get caught up in how many followers they have and how many likes they get. Just nurture the people that are coming to your space. There is so much noise and so much going on out there so if you have ten people who love what you’re doing over serve those people and treat them like they are 100,000 people. Don’t get worried about what you’re missing, focus on what you have.

Contacting Cara:

Website: www.thechampagnediet.com. You will find her blog and books and a place for women to come.