How Many Books Should I Publish with Rob Archangel

About this video

Dale Roberts interviews returning guest Rob Archangel about whether authors should publish many books quickly or focus on a single book. Archangel says there is no single best methodology and lays out trade-offs. The volume approach creates more discovery points, lets one book lead readers to a backlist, lets the market reveal which ideas actually resonate instead of relying on the author’s guess, and builds economies of scale as workflows, teams, and processes get easier after the initial labor. Its downside is that many authors lack the ideas, vision, or motivation for many projects and instead carry one long-developed ‘magnum opus.’ The single-book approach can be potent if it truly resonates, but risks disappointment if that one idea turns out to be, in Archangel’s framing, a hundred-dollar idea rather than a million-dollar idea. He advises single-book authors to build their tribe and following beforehand and treat the book as a culmination of insights already shared. He argues it is hard to make a sustainable living selling only $2.99 or even $9.99 ebooks on competitive platforms like Amazon, so authors need a backend — mid- or high-level products or services such as an audio/video series, coaching, or mastermind groups — that lets a smaller percentage of readers deepen the relationship and support the author. Either route, he says, must be run and continually tweaked like a business.

Key takeaways

• Archangel says neither high-volume publishing nor a single-book strategy is universally best; each has distinct pros and cons
• Volume publishing casts a wider net, feeds backlist discovery, lets the market identify surprise hits, and creates economies of scale in process and workflow
• A single-book strategy risks putting all eggs in one basket if the idea underperforms, so authors should build an audience first and make the book a culmination of prior work
• Selling only low-priced ebooks is rarely sustainable; a backend of higher-level products or services such as courses, coaching, or masterminds is needed
• Whichever route is chosen, publishing must be run as a business with ongoing tweaking, discipline, and perseverance rather than expecting runaway success

Episode details: published January 9, 2019 · 7:03 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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