Book Repurposing: How Quality Content Can Lead to Publishing a Book with Mike Morrison

How does a busy business owner, entrepreneur and content creator make the dream of publishing a book happen?

I know! I know!

But, this post isn’t about me. (You can read about my book publishing journey here!)

Time is not always a luxury that we have, and writing a book is a very time consuming project. Fortunately, my good friend, Mike Morrison, came up with some very creative ways to publish not one but two books. And, these methods proved to be a real time saver!

It involved repurposing of course! By taking the content already available to him and repurposing it into a book.

Meet Mike Morrison

Mike Morrison is a client of ours here at Content 10x and the co-founder of the Membership Guys. He helps membership site owners navigate through what it takes to start, run, and grow a successful membership site.

Mike and his business partner Callie are the driving force behind teaching entrepreneurs and small business owners how to create membership sites that can earn 5 to 7 figures a year in recurring revenue.

In addition, they recently added putting on awesome events to their skillset!

Retain Live was a 2-day membership growth event held in September in Newcastle, UK, put on by Mike and Callie. It that was a HUGE success and I had the pleasure of being a speaker.

At the event Mike and Callie launched their second book, Behind The Membership. And, I was so intrigued to hear of the repurposing that went into creating book that I decided I simply had to hear more and share the story with you too.

Changing tact — from writing a new book to repurposing content

Mike and his partner Callie had a vision of surprising all of the attendees at their inaugural conference with a brand-new book.

Taking a book from a dream to reality is no easy task! (As I am well aware having been in the process myself for the past year!)

It needed to be a high-quality book that offered value.

Starting with original content seemed like a good idea at first, but they quickly realized that time was not on their side.

Creating something under pressure would only produce a result that was not top notch.

And if you’ve ever had a listen to Mike’s podcast, The Membership Guys, his core message throughout is to always create value for clients and customers.

Repurposing a podcast into a book

There was another option. Mike and Callie actually produce 2 podcasts and this is where the story gets interesting.

On the Behind The Memberships podcast, Callie has no-hype, no-fluff conversations with membership owners about the highs, lows and day to day realities of running a paid membership website.

It occurred to them that the Behind The Scenes podcast was a goldmine of fantastic, powerful content. And, they could share this existing content with their audience. The stories are of real-life businesses with real challenges they had to face and how they were dealt with.

So, Mike and Callie realized, with 3 seasons of the podcast under their belt, that these powerful stories could be the source material for a book. Case studies, personal stories, failures and successes: these were a great starting point to expand on and repurpose into a book.

And surprise! They had the book ready and waiting for their Retain Live attendees. Including me! It’s called Behind The Membership and it’s a great read!

Repurposing from audio into text does require a lot of work. It needed plenty of editing, reviews and rewording to make it book-friendly.

But, now that Mike has done the journey from audio to book, it is an easier transition to repurpose the book into other written formats. Because the trickiest part is transforming the audio into readable, written content.

A whole new world of repurposing opportunities opens up — another article, email, or social media post.

For another great story about repurposing a podcast into a book check out my interview with Emily Prokop in episode 71 of the podcast.

Repurpose email content into a book

I was also intrigued to hear from Mike that the first book published by the Membership Guys, Member Machine, also had its origins in content they already produced.

When Mike and Callie started their Membership Site coaching business, they used a 30-day challenge to build their email list to encourage conversions for their launch product.

The goal of the challenge was to help a customer set up a membership site within 30 days. It was a very clever way to engage an interested audience, build their email list and provide people with practical tips and advice.

The interesting part is that, at the time, they had no intention of spinning it off into a book. Their focus and time was dedicated to providing good quality content and value so they could build trust with their audience and ultimately convert their readers.

I bet you know where this is going.

The 30-day challenge was comprised of rich content including diagrams, workbooks, and activities.

But the email challenge alone was not quite enough to justify an entire book. Instead they did some MORE repurposing.

They looked into their blog post archive and discovered that they could repurpose their blog content to fill in some of the gaps. They literally did not have to change much of the wording at all!

In the end, 80% of their book (called the Member Machine: Build Your Membership Website in Just 30 Days) was repurposed from their existing content.

The book also ended up being repurposed again into an online course. They built the course for their members and it took an even deeper dive into the topic of starting a membership site.

The best content is the content that solves problems

After these two book experiences, it became clear to Mike how important content repurposing is. And, how the goal of content creation is to provide answers and solutions to people’s problems.

“We don’t set out to create the best blog post. We set out to create the best answer to a question, or the best solution to a problem” — Mike Morrison @MikeMIMO

When you create content from this perspective, from this mindset of considering the challenges your customers face, what you create is inherently repurpose-able.

It no longer needs to be locked into the original format its published in. It can be stretched, transformed, and leveraged into other formats and it will continue to provide value.

Now, that is the essence of content repurposing!

Connect with Mike

You can find a ton of free resources about membership sites on Mike’s website.

You can also find Mike on Instagram and Twitter. Drop him a line and tell him how you heard about him!

Thanks for reading!

Say Hello on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Originally published at https://www.content10x.com on November 7, 2019.