7 Simple Ways to Add Massive Value to Self-Published Books

No matter what you’re selling, today’s consumers only have one thing on their minds.

Value.

If you can crack the code and figure out how to deliver the kind of value your audience wants, just about everything else falls away and becomes unimportant.

Get your value proposition right and things like pricing, personal popularity and even the length of your book don’t matter. All your readers care about is what’s in it for them.

Authors who can answer that question effectively are the ones who go on to make the most sales and generate significant income.

Think about the last time you released a new book.

Did you ever wonder whether or not you did your absolute best to make it incredibly valuable to your readers, and if you could have done anything more to make it so?

Value Boosting Book Additions

There are in fact several simple ways that you can increase the actual and perceived value of your next book and leave your readers blown away by the quality and usefulness of the offer.

1. A companion CD or DVD

If you’ve written a book that lends itself well to this idea, an effective way to dramatically increase the value of your book is by offering a companion CD or DVD that’s complimentary to the content offered in the book.

In most cases, you can simply publish the same content that’s contained in the original book in another format, such as an audio book or a slide show with voice over.

This works particularly well if you’re teaching a how-to topic or providing some other type of instructional information.

You can shoot video to demonstrate the steps outlined in the book and edit it to create a nice instructional DVD.

Doing this easily ups the perceived value of your offer and increases the potential purchase price significantly without a corresponding increase in the cost of production.

This is because you can create the content for the CD or DVD once and sell it again and again, it as many times as you want.

2. Chapter overviews and summaries

Nowadays readers are busy and eager to get to the point.

Anything you can do to make consuming your content faster and easier is good. If you relay the major ideas in your manuscript quickly it’s greatly appreciated and increases the value of your book in a big way.

An easy way to accomplish this is by providing short overviews at the beginning of each chapter of your book as well as short summaries at the end of each one.

These highlight the major points and takeaways that you want readers to pay attention to and have fresh in their minds. Super helpful.

3. Printable worksheets

Does your book require readers to go through specific exercises to take advantage of the information?

Consider providing accompanying worksheets that they can use to go through any relevant questions and activities.

By creating a free downloadable and printable resource, you give your readers the opportunity to get the most out of the content in your book in a convenient way. It makes it much easier for them to follow through with the instructions outlined in the book and get the results they want.

You can include the worksheets in the book itself, but another way to add value and drive traffic back to your author blog is to a link from the e-book to a download page on your website where they can opt-in and receive the worksheet, which grows your email list as a bonus.

4. Visual Content

People consume and absorb information in countless different ways, with just about everyone having a specific preference.

One of the simplest ways to add value to any book is by introducing different formats through which it can be consumed. For example, pictures, diagrams and illustrations.

This is particularly helpful for individuals who are highly visual and find it easier to understand topics when they are represented in an infographic, chart or other type of diagram.

If you make the effort to include this type of content in your books, it goes a long way towards increasing its perceived value.

Not particularly skilled at graphic design or drawing? Don’t let that stop you from exploring this option.

Collaborate with a graphic designer or illustrator to expand and diversify your content formats and come up with creative ways to include more visual elements in your books.

5. Additional reading recommendations

No matter how much you know and share about a subject with your readers, there’ll always be something more that they could learn that supports the information contained in your book.

Because of this fact, a simple way to increase the value of your book is to include a list of additional reading recommendations.

If you have suggestions for great books that are highly complementary to your offer, it’s very helpful to share that information with readers. This offers them insight into some of the more useful titles on the topic.

By doing this you help them to gain more relevant knowledge on a subject matter and position yourself as a thought leader in your niche. This gives a huge boost to the perception of you as an author who provides value and who goes above and beyond to share the best information available, even if it isn’t produced by you.

6. Relevant online resources

Another simple way to increase the value of your self-published book is by linking to highly relevant resources online.

If you mention a topic in your book or want your reader to be able to explore something further, linking out to quality resources is a great way to help them get more information that is highly relevant to them, while simultaneously increasing your level of influence and credibility.

For example, if you’ve written a book about dieting and weight loss, you can link to a website that features healthy meal planning recipes as well as one that features exercises for people who want to lose body fat.

You can either link to the relevant resources throughout your book or create a dedicated resources page in the back if your book, then list and link to the relevant resources from there.

7. Make an easy-reference index

If your book offer is more of an information resource that’s jam packed with useful content on specific topics and you want to increase its perceived value dramatically, think about adding a quick-reference index page.

Even the most well-researched and helpful information becomes problematic if it’s too difficult to find and consume.

Remove this common hurdle by taking the time to create an index page that your readers can scan quickly to hone in on the topics that they are most interested in and to quickly and easily find answers to their most pressing questions.

While indexing your book can be a tedious process, you only have to do it once. Keep in mind that the effort pays off big in the long run.

Most of these tips work exceptionally well for non-fiction books, but in many cases can also be applied to fiction-based publications as well.

The next time you’re getting ready to publish a new book, take a moment to go through this list of ideas for adding more value to your offer.

Also, be sure to ask your readers what else they would love to see in your next book. Because after all, your end user knows more than anyone else what they consider to be “value” for their money.