Bo Bennett On Building Author Income Streams

HOST: Bo, welcome back — episode 22. I keep coming back to something you said all the way back in our very first conversation: "It’s not very difficult to publish a book — it's difficult to publish a profitable book." Everything we've mapped since then has been about closing that gap from the publishing and marketing side. But CourseBud.io feels like the first tool where you're not trying to sell more copies of the book — you're turning the book into something else entirely. Walk me into it. GUEST: Right. So, Course Craft is about turning a non-fiction book into a course. And I say non-fiction book loosely. I I think uh for the most part non-fiction books, but we're also dealing with not all non-fiction. For example, like um there are some certain genres of non-fiction that that wouldn't work very well, uh whereas others would. Like for example, um an autobiography or something. It doesn't make a very good course. Uh a memoir doesn't make a very good course and that those are non-fiction. But anything that could be turned into like a how to, or to get more information on a topic of science, nature, technology, whatever, works beautifully for an online course. So, that's the goal. For authors just basically to upload the book and have the system do everything for them and create the online course simply from their book. HOST: Got it. So, practical, instructional kind of books. The site says the AI does a lot: breaks things into lessons, generates slides, even quizzes and discussion prompts. What does that first pass actually look like? And what does an author almost always have to tweak before it's really ready to go? GUEST: Well, it's um actually pretty much already done once the user uploads their book and AI really handles everything. What does the author need to do? Maybe just look it over? Make sure that they're happy with what AI did? But for the most part, it's it's uh kind of upload it and forget it. HOST: Interesting. So, AI handles everything from the lesson planning to the slides. You mentioned it's non-fiction, but practical stuff. Your site also promises a '3 to 5 times income stream.' ' You've told me before that most authors struggle to make any money. Where does that larger multiplier come from? Is that real data, or more aspirational? GUEST: It's based on real data. I've I write non-fiction books and have been running courses for many, many years. And I I do, well, I I won't say I make more money from the courses, but um I definitely make uh I I do very well from some of the courses. Some Again, not all books work. But I try pretty much all the books and see what works and see what doesn't. But for the the courses that do work, for example, my Logically Fallacious course, that I run on Virality. Uh our other um hosting course hosting platform. That does extremely well. And uh that continues to bring in very good revenue. HOST: So, it can produce real revenue for the right book, like with your "Logically Fallacious" course. Now, you mentioned Virsity, which is your other course hosting platform. How does CourseBud fit in with that, and is there any chance it might eventually be absorbed into something like AuthorPass? Or are they totally separate things? GUEST: Well, they are separate. Vivercity is more the courses that I create for for other users. And these are not some of them are related to books cuz that's that was my initial platform where I would put my book courses. Uh but Course Buddy is different in that it's strictly for books. And it's strictly for authors to create courses from their books. So, I I thought about kind of working that into Vivercity, but it just didn't fit. It was much better to keep it clean and just to create a separate site for that purpose. Um will it eventually be an author pass? I don't think so because author pass is really for uh specific. And I'm sorry, it's it's more for um general books and the Course Buddy is a little bit too specific cuz that's for that that non-fiction genre that would work as a course. So, I want things on author pass to work for everybody, not just for a few specific genres. HOST: Okay, so CourseBud is a specialized tool for nonfiction authors, not part of that general author pass bundle. Another interesting thing about the platform is that it has a 'Browse Courses' page for students, which makes it a two-sided marketplace. That's something you haven't had to do with your purely author-facing tools. How are you planning to solve that student acquisition problem to start bringing learners onto the platform? GUEST: Well, it's not it's not a kind of um a problem where if we don't have enough students like in in some kind of database, it's not going to work because if one student happens to discover the book from a Google search, then that's good enough. So, it it's not this type of service where we need a critical mass before before it actually works. That's what I'm trying to say. Students could come and and and trickle in and sign up for courses and that works just fine. HOST: I see. So, it's not reliant on having a huge student base to be valuable for the author; even just one student finding it through a specific search makes it work. So, looking at the whole pipeline, this seems like the first tool that's about creating a second product from the same intellectual property. Does an author run CourseBud instead of the marketing pipeline, or is this something you recommend doing after everything else is already up and running? GUEST: No, it's definitely not instead of a book marketing pipeline. It's in addition to. And is it uh like where does it fit in the timeline? I would suggest you just do it anytime. Right after your book is published, go ahead and do that uh get the course going. HOST: Got it. So, it doesn't replace marketing, but adds a new dimension, and just do it right after publishing. Before we go — for listeners who want to follow up on this, where can they find you? And where can they find CourseBud? GUEST: They can find more about all our businesses at archieboy.com and coursebud at coursebud.io. HOST: Fantastic, Bo. Thanks for coming back on. I'm really interested in this idea of turning existing content into new products, and that '3-to-5-times income' potential is definitely compelling. Let's get you back on soon to check in on how those numbers are holding up. And thank you for spending part of your day with us. Until next time — that's a wrap.