Wondering how do you turn your book into an online course? Or, maybe you’re thinking about writing a book that leads into your online course?
Your book could be the foundation of a thriving online course business. But here’s the catch – simply recording yourself reading your book won’t create the transformational experience your readers are looking for.
A book can be more than just a revenue stream – it can be the gateway to deeper engagement with your audience and significantly higher income through strategic course offerings.
Nancy is a student of ours who first launched a successful online course with us in our Create 6-Figure Courses program. She then made her dream of launching a bestselling book a reality by building on the concepts she teaches in her course. Her book attracts her ideal audience for her course and the automated funnel leads her readers from the book to her course.
Let’s explore how you can strategically take your book and convert it into an online course or write a book that helps you find students for your online course.
The Book-to-Course Opportunity
Before we dive into the how-to’s, let’s address a crucial point: Your book and your course serve different purposes in your business ecosystem.
- Your book builds credibility and reaches a broad audience
- Your course delivers deeper, more personalized transformation
- Your book creates awareness of the problem you solve
- Your course provides the complete solution with support
Understanding these distinctions is crucial because the most common mistake authors make is trying to simply repackage their book content as a course. Instead, you need to create a strategic pathway that leads naturally from your book to your course.
How to Monetize Your Book…Even If It Is Free
We have written three non-fiction books. Our first book was published with a small publishing house and second with a large publishing firm. Our most recent book was self-published and also happens to be free.
Here’s the crazy thing: our self-published FREE book was by far the most profitable book that we’ve ever launched.
Your return on your book does not come from the sale of the book. It comes from how you serve your readers after they purchase your book. Our free book has generated multiples of the combined revenue of our two previous books.
“If you want your book to build your business, you have to design a learning experience around the concepts you teach in your book.”
Get Clear On the Goal of Your Book
Let’s start by exploring your goals for your book.
Do you want to:
- Establish yourself as a thought leader?
- Help your people get results?
- Grow your audience?
- Create a bigger impact through your work by helping your readers to apply what you are sharing in your book?
- Monetize your book as an entry point to doing deeper work with you in your courses, coaching, or other offers?
- Attract the right audience for your existing online course or higher level offers?
If you said yes to any or all of the above, including an online course as a way for your readers to implement what they learn in your book can help you make this happen faster.
Let’s talk about how you can do this if you either already have a book or you want to write a book that leads into your existing online course.
Once you’re clear on your goals, you can create a strategic plan to transform your book content into an engaging course experience. Here’s how:
How to Turn Your Book into an Online Course
Step One: Focus on the Problem You Will Help Solve
People buy books and online courses for the same reason: they want an answer to a problem.
What is the problem you are solving in your book?
The Transformation Gap: Why Your Course Needs to Go Beyond Your Book
Before moving to Step Two, let’s address a crucial concept: the Transformation Gap. This is the space between knowing (what your book provides) and doing (what your course delivers).
To identify your Transformation Gap:
- Look at your book’s Amazon reviews – what are readers still struggling with?
- Survey your readers about their biggest implementation challenges
- Note the questions you get most frequently from readers
- Identify where readers typically get stuck applying your methods
For example, if you’ve written a book about social media marketing, your readers might understand your strategies (knowledge from the book) but struggle with actually implementing them in their specific industry (this is the Transformation Gap your course could address).
These insights will help you create course content that truly serves your audience’s needs and goes beyond what’s in your book. Use this understanding to inform how you outline your course in Step Two.
Where does your reader want to go?
What do you want to equip your reader to do by the end of the book?
An online course can help your reader get there faster because you can guide them in implementing the concepts you are teaching in the book.
If you’re not sure of how much overlap should exist between your book and your online course or how to make your ideas actionable, here are some things to think about:
- Think about the last time you read a great book. Did you make notes around key concepts that you wanted to apply?
- Go through your book and make notes of where your reader will be practicing what you are teaching.
If you need help defining that core transformation, our guide to building your signature method can help you structure your approach.
Step Two: Outline Your Course Content
If you are like most non-fiction writers, you are moving your reader through a process in your book. You can typically see that process outlined in the table of contents of your book.
Review your chapters and identify the steps your reader will move through to apply what you are teaching.
When you think about your online course as a companion resource to support the implementation of what you are sharing in your book, it becomes easier to see what to include in your course.
For each step outlined in your book, you can have a corresponding module in your course that helps people implement what you are teaching in the book.
Making Your Course Content Come Alive
While your book provides the foundation, your course should bring the concepts to life through:
- Interactive exercises
- Implementation workshops
- Real-world case studies
- Community discussions
- Accountability systems
- Progress tracking tools
There are many ways you can support the learning process through tools, exercises, and community support:
- Checklists
- Cheatsheets
- Reflective exercises
- Workbooks
- Quizzes
- QA Calls
- Accountability challenges
- Implementation sessions
For tips on creating tools your students will actually use, check out our guide to designing effective course worksheets.
We have helped many authors do this even when they couldn’t easily see the steps in their table of contents.
The great news is you likely don’t need to create any new content. You can simply focus on animating what you’re already sharing in your book.
How to Turn Your Online Course into a Book
Now let’s flip this around. What if you want to create a book that leads into your online course?
The very first thing you will need to do is decide on the goal of your book. You can revisit the goals listed at the beginning of this article. Once you are clear on your goal, you can use this as a filter for the content you will provide in your online course.
When you have an online course before writing a book, you have an advantage. You already know how you are going to monetize your book.
One short, powerful ebook can make a huge difference in attracting students into your course.
Step One: Focus on the Problem You Will Help Solve With Your Book
If you created your course in our Create 6-Figure Courses community, you designed your course working backward from solving a problem for your audience. You can write your book with the intent to lead prospects into your course. Or, you can choose to write a book as a next-level support tool for your course students.
Review the steps you outlined in your Course Content Storyboard.
For example, if you are writing an ebook to attract leads for your course, think about the questions your prospective students are asking related to your course topic.
Step Two: Outline Your Book Content
Think about the places your audience gets stuck:
- Are there beliefs that are holding them back?
- Are they making it too complicated?
- Do they struggle to find the time?
- Do they believe they don’t have the resources or “what it takes” to get results?
Sharing stories in the form of case studies, client success stories, and your own personal experiences can help your students move into action.
`Not sure how much to give away in the book versus save for the course? Our post on how much free content to share can help you draw that line.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
When turning your book into a course, watch out for these common mistakes:
- Simply recording yourself reading the book
- Not providing enough implementation support
- Missing the opportunity for community interaction
- Failing to create additional examples and case studies
- Not addressing the specific challenges your readers face
Instead, focus on creating an experience that brings your book’s concepts to life through action steps, accountability, and guided implementation.
Summary
Having a course and a book together is a really powerful way to help your people implement, and it is a great way to monetize the work you’re putting into in creating your book or online course. Remember, your book is just the beginning of the journey. Your course is where the real transformation happens.
Next Steps
Are you looking for deep strategic support in turning your book into an online course, laying out your business model, pricing, developing your offer, and so much more?
Our Course Creation Support team would love to speak with you about designing your revenue model and creating your course. As a team of specialized course creation and marketing experts that has created and launched hundreds of online courses in all kinds of niches, serving tens of thousands of students, and generating millions in revenue, we know the online course market in and out. We bring all that expertise and knowledge to the table to help bring your course to the finish line.
If you would like more information on how we can work together, simply click here and share more about your course, and our team will circle back with next steps.