On the Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast, host Anna Featherstone speaks with bestselling business author Andrew Griffiths about the production and distribution choices behind his books. They discuss the trade-offs between traditional publishing and self-publishing, and how design and print decisions shape perception, pricing, and reach. The conversation also covers bulk sales, corporate partnerships, and strategic gifting as alternatives to retail, with a focus on long-term visibility and opportunity.
Listen to the Podcast: Bulk Sales, Gifting and Alternative Distribution
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About the Host
Anna Featherstone is ALLi’s nonfiction adviser and an author advocate and mentor. A judge of The Australian Business Book Awards and Australian Society of Travel Writers awards, she’s also the founder of Bold Authors and presents author marketing and self-publishing workshops for organizations, including Byron Writers Festival. Anna has authored books including how-to and memoirs and her book Look-It’s Your Book! about writing, publishing, marketing, and leveraging nonfiction is on the Australian Society of Authors recommended reading list. When she’s not being bookish, Anna’s into bees, beings, and the big issues of our time.
About the Guest
Andrew Griffiths is Australia’s leading small business author, speaker, and longtime advocate for using books strategically. He has published seventeen books, both traditionally and independently, in more than sixty-five countries and delivered more than one thousand presentations worldwide. His recent titles include Someone Has to Be the Most Expensive—Why Not Make It You and The Business of Being an Author. You can find Griffiths on his website.
Read the Transcript
Anna Featherstone: Welcome, and thanks for tuning in from your special part of this beautiful planet we all call home. I'm Anna Featherstone, and our guest and I are joining you today from a mesmerizing part of it — the lands of the Palawa people, the original storytellers of what we now know as Hobart in lutruwita/Tasmania. Today's conversation is for authors who are curious about how books can do more than sit on shelves — how they can open doors globally, build credibility, and support a bigger body of work or business, and the production and distribution strategies that can make that happen.
Andrew Griffiths is Australia's number one small business author, speaker, and longtime advocate for using books strategically. He's published 17 books traditionally as well as self-published, in over 65 countries, and delivered more than a thousand presentations globally. If you can do it from all the way down here, you can do it from your corner of the world too. Welcome, Andrew.
Andrew Griffiths: Lovely to be here, and lovely to be chatting about all things book — especially from Tasmania. We are literally a few streets away from each other, which is hilarious.
Anna Featherstone: I know. And there's an air show on today, so we apologize if you hear planes zooming — it's literally outside both our windows. So Andrew, we first met a few years back when I reached out to interview you for my own book on self-publishing nonfiction. You were a great example of a highly successful, traditionally published author who was also publishing as an indie. What usually tells you which path to take when deciding on your publishing pathway?
Traditional vs. Indie: Choosing the Right Path
Andrew Griffiths: Such a great question. I published my first book with Allen and Unwin about 27 years ago. My first dozen or so were traditionally published, back when people still looked down their noses at self-publishing because it was really finding its way. But as time evolved and I started working with other authors and publishers, I saw the rise of the self-publishing model and thought: where there really was a differential between the two way back, things are now very much on par. It's a new world.
As authors we now have this wonderful ability to move in and out of traditional and indie publishing depending on the needs of the book. I'm talking to traditional publishers now about one book while self-publishing a couple of others at the same time. My framework around that is: if I'm writing a book where I have a lot of backend — keynote presentations, workshops, product offerings built around it — that's a well-developed product architecture, and there are certain things I want in the book that publishers probably wouldn't want there. Sales pages, subtle references to my work throughout the book, not gratuitously but to highlight what I do. For those books, I want to control the content.
My latest book was Someone's Gotta Be the Most Expensive — May as Well Be You. I had a big commercial backend planned for that. Even though I was approached by a couple of publishers, I said no, I want to do that one myself. The differentiator for me is: what do I want this book to achieve? What does it mean in my business model? Is it a broader retail book where I'm going to rely on book sales and a bigger profile? Or is it something I'm going to manage all the backend on and control entirely?
Anna Featherstone: With that book, you made some premium design choices — including a very bold red cover. How much do you think about the physical experience of a book, how it feels, and what it signals about value?
The Physical Book as Brand: Hardcovers, Embossing, and Packaging
Andrew Griffiths: It's huge. With that book I did a hardcover version and a softcover version — the first time I'd done that — partly because I'd always wanted to do a hardcover. But I also had a strategy: I did a thousand hardcovers and a thousand paperbacks, and I sold the first 500 hardcovers as a limited edition at $50 Australian each. That 500, which I sold quite quickly, paid for my entire print run. Now I'm only doing hardcovers because they're expensive, but I love them. To me, the reader experience is so much more than the words.
I always invest in embossing. Even the inside covers — we always do those to complement the cover. And the packaging piece matters enormously. I want the experience to begin from the minute the package arrives. It's beautifully and securely packaged. In contrast, I get sent so many books in a padded envelope with nothing — no note, rattling around inside so the cover gets scuffed and the corners get dinged. By the time it travels to Tasmania, you open it and it looks like a secondhand book. You've gone to all this trouble to make this amazing thing and then just chucked it in a bag and stapled the top.
Anna Featherstone: I'm doing a year of travel and writing a book about house sitting at the moment, so I don't always have my stock with me. Sometimes I ship direct from IngramSpark to people, which means I can't include anything. What I've started doing is sending an email explaining that I'm traveling and would normally include a personal message — starting up the conversation via email. So there are ways around it if you can't ship your own books, but you still have to have that contact somewhere if you want to develop a relationship. Do you think authors sometimes undermine their authority by underpricing or under-producing their books?
Andrew Griffiths: Absolutely. Writing a book about pricing, I've found there's a poverty mindset that can be in anyone — depending on your upbringing, what you heard growing up, who your formative leaders were. I grew up with a poverty mindset, entered an industry with a poverty mindset, and bought a business off a guy who had a poverty mindset. I had the trifecta. I went broke at a great rate of knots and had to change something. That's when I came across this concept: if you're going to be the most expensive, fine — but you've got to be the best. What does that best look like?
When I ask a room of 500 people how many feel they charge what they are truly worth, maybe 2% put up their hands. Ninety-eight percent, in every room I've been in over the last few years, feel they don't charge what they're worth. It's particularly common in creative industries — design, art, writing. We're probably touched with the undercharging stick a little harder than most. And authors often don't appreciate just how important the book is if you want to use it to grow your business. It's got to represent your brand fabulously. A poorly written, poorly published, poorly edited book is actually an anti-business development tool. You're better off not sending it. That's a bit of tough love, but it's the truth.
My goal is that when someone emails me about a speaking engagement or coaching, the first thing I do is say, great, let's catch up in a week or ten days — can you give me your address so I can send you a copy of one of my books? By the time we have the conversation, the book has already done the heavy lifting. I hear this all the time: Andrew, this is really a formality after reading your book. That only happens if you value what you've written and invest in the publishing of it in a way that is impressive.
Giving Books Away as a Business Strategy
Anna Featherstone: On one hand you're saying the book is worth so much, but then you've led with a strategy of giving books away on purpose. When did you first see that as a smart business decision rather than a loss?
Andrew Griffiths: Going back to the traditional publishing route with Allen and Unwin many years ago, it was all about book sales — the Angus and Robertsons and the Dimocks, before Amazon. Everything was measured in your quarterly royalty statements, and we'd do big promotions like 30,000 books for Australia Post. Book sales, book sales, book sales. That was how I understood being an author. But I didn't really get the leverage value of the book — it was good for my ego, but I didn't understand its leverage ability until my publisher sat me down and said: Andrew, you've got to get off your bum and promote this book. And I went — well, what does that mean? I thought I published a book and a Maserati would arrive.
So I started looking at everyone around the world who had sold a million books or more — Louise Hay, Anthony Robbins, Zig Ziglar. I deconstructed how they did what they did. I rang Zig Ziglar's office one night from here — it was early morning in Texas — and said, hi, I'm Andrew Griffiths, I'm an author in Australia, could I speak to Zig? And next minute I was having a two-hour conversation with Zig Ziglar about books and how to use them. What I started to realize was that they were using books for things other than just selling. Anthony Robbins — Unlimited Power really transformed his world. These were leveraging tools.
I started getting business coming to me in unexpected ways. I got a call from Telstra — a big telco here in Australia — wanting me to do a tour to 38 cities across the country. Little old Andrew Griffiths running a marketing company, and all of a sudden one of the biggest companies in Australia wants me as their authority speaker for small business owners. What I generated out of that, I'd have had to sell 50,000 books to equal the same revenue. That's when the lights really went on for me. I can try to make five bucks a book, or I can try to make $10,000 for a speaking job. Every book for me is a seed.
I reverse-engineered every significant opportunity I'd had over 15 to 20 years — working with Richard Branson, working with the European Union, being the only Australian contributor for Inc. magazine in New York. Every single one traced back to a moment where I had physically handed someone a book. Hand the book to one person, they connect with someone else, who introduces you to someone else, and on it goes. That's when I truly understood the value of getting books into people's hands. I give away about a thousand books a year. That's my marketing budget.
Bulk Book Sales: An Underutilized Opportunity
Anna Featherstone: As well as that strategy, you also focus on bulk sales and alternative distribution channels beyond bookstores. Talk us through your bulk book sales approach.
Andrew Griffiths: Bulk book sales are such an underutilized opportunity. When you're a speaker, it's obviously the backbone of what I do — I literally just bundled up 200 books for a conference last week. But a lot of speakers just don't know how to sell books in bulk. For me, it's a natural part of the conversation with any potential client. I just ask: what are you giving all the attendees as a gift? They often haven't thought about it. And I say: are you interested in perhaps buying books in bulk? I can sign them all, I do the presentation on being the most expensive, everyone gets a copy, you can probably find a sponsor to pay for them.
I've sold 2,000 books in one hit to NewsCorp for a series of events in Western Australia. I also did a promotion with my accountants at the time — probably the largest accounting firm in town, with about 1,500 clients. We gave every one of their clients one of my books. That's perhaps $15,000 to $20,000 worth of books, and it was a hugely successful promotion. I got so much work out of it. The accounting firm built it into their model; they got cheap access to the books, but they gave me access to their people. That's really a collaboration as much as a bulk sale.
Over the years I've done bulk sales for magazine launches, product launches. Optus, another telco in Australia, was releasing a product and one of my books at the time really suited the name of their product, so they bought thousands in bulk. And the biggest one: a man called me wanting to buy copies of 101 Ways to Advertise Your Business. He ran a calendar company, and tip number 75 or so was ‘give your customers a calendar.' He wanted to put a note inside each one saying: if Andrew Griffiths says this is a good idea, you're onto a good thing. I asked how many he'd like — thinking maybe 50. He said: about 10,000. He had 10,000 customers across Australia and New Zealand.
If I look at Someone's Gotta Be the Most Expensive — a book about charging what you're worth — any organization with a pile of members or clients who aren't charging enough is a potential bulk buyer. Financial planning firms, accounting firms. And all those people who get books in bulk ultimately follow you back, enter your product ecosystem, and the value compounds.
The Business of Being an Author
Anna Featherstone: Your new book, The Business of Being an Author, explores how books aren't just content but can be infrastructure for a long-lived business. What made you want to write it?
Andrew Griffiths: I've personally coached over a thousand first-time authors to write and publish their nonfiction book. What I see with all of them is that the book arrives and post-published depression sets in. They don't know what to do — just like me waiting for my Maserati and having that come-to-Jesus conversation with my publisher. They may have written and published a fabulous book, but six months later I ask how it's going and they say: it didn't really do much for me. I've got four boxes in the garage. And I ask: but what did you do for it?
I realized there's a huge need for people to understand how to actually use a book once it's out. A lot of it is counterintuitive — don't worry about book sales, leverage your book, try to make a million dollars in revenue rather than $10,000 to $20,000 in royalties. Or if you want to change the world, how do you use your book as a leveraging tool? Whatever your model is — that thinking differently piece had a big gap in available resources.
There's also the ridiculous hype in this space that really bugs me — the hustle mentality, build a funnel, sell a billion dollars overnight. The only people who make money out of those models are the people selling those models. Many of them have never written a successful book and don't truly understand the process. I deal with the fallout from the other end — people who have spent a lot of money on those programs and produced no results. So I wanted to write a book that cuts through the hype and is honest: if your book is not up to the task, you've got to fix it, or you've got to acknowledge that you got cheap when it came to publishing it and that's why it's not opening doors. I send my books to everyone — to presidents, to the Queen. I got a letter back from Buckingham Palace.
Production and Distribution Decisions
Anna Featherstone: You outsource all your book design to Michael Hanrahan at Publish Central, who you've worked with for many years — and his team handles editing and everything?
Andrew Griffiths: Yes, everything from cover design through to Amazon and, in Australia, bookshop distribution through Woodslane. I always do the call just before we go to press and ask Michael: is this a load of rubbish? Tell me straight. And he's very good at talking me off the ledge — I've talked a thousand authors off the ledge, but when it's your own work everything is different.
Anna Featherstone: And how do you find the bookshop distribution side?
Andrew Griffiths: It's important to have books in bookshops, but something I learned from my traditional publishing days is that getting your books into bookshops is just one part. Unless you're really driving it — getting media, doing promotions, directing people to bookshops, ringing the local bookshop ahead of a speaking engagement in that town — it doesn't move on its own. Print on demand is handy to have set up even if it's not my preferred quality option, because if I'm doing a podcast with someone in America, it's much easier to order them a book from Amazon in America and have it delivered directly than to ship my own from Tasmania.
Collaboration and the Australian Business Book Awards
Anna Featherstone: You speak a lot about collaborations, and you're one of the co-founders of the Australian Business Book Awards. What do you say to authors who are nervous about reaching out?
Andrew Griffiths: We Australians are not very good at collaboration. We tend to be little lone wolves. In America everyone collaborates and partners up all the time. The reality is that if you can collaborate, there are so many payoffs — you get access to a new market, you add value to your own community by bringing in new knowledge. The biggest realization for me was: when a book comes out, you are not fundamentally different to who you were before it came out. You think you're just Andrew Griffiths with a book, proud of it, but you have no real sense that others see you differently. What I've learned, reinforced many times over, is that once you write and publish a book, others look at you differently. In parts of Asia and Japan, being an author puts you on a pedestal above doctors. So as an author you bring real value to collaborations.
Learn to go: okay, I bring something to this, I have value here. Then you can approach anyone about collaboration, and the worst they can do is say no. Over the years I've approached anyone and everyone about doing a workshop, webinar series, podcast series, article series, whatever it might be. You probably have more social credibility than you realize by being an author. And you don't only have to collaborate with other successful authors — it could be organizations. I might approach CPA Australia and say: I want to do a webinar series for all your accountants, I won't charge you, you invite your members along, I build great credibility, and we both benefit.
The approach is always: I'm looking for a partnership, a collaboration. I'm not going cap in hand trying to sell something. I can help your people — let's talk. That comes from confidence. I've been doing this a long time and I know I can bring great value. And the other thing I've come to realize is that corporates often have no idea — they want people like us to reach out. They want ideas brought to them.
Anna Featherstone: In those initial emails, you're explaining the value you can add to them, not just announcing that you've written a book.
Andrew Griffiths: Exactly. This book could help your brokers, your advisors, your members. I have a brochure made up about Someone's Gotta Be the Most Expensive — how we can work together, testimonials, the whole lot. I go in with both guns blazing from a credibility point of view. And the conversation is either they're not interested, or how do we do this together. There's not much middle ground when you go in fully prepared.
Treating Writing as a Business
Anna Featherstone: So for listeners today — have a think about who you can reach out to to share more about your book and what you can do for them.
Andrew Griffiths: Make a list of ten potential collaborators — push yourself, go extreme. Make a list of ten potential bulk book sales opportunities. Organizations that could use your books. Start thinking around this idea. And getting back to my new book: it's about treating your writing as a business, not a hobby. I'm a commercial writer. I write to make money. I love books — my house looks like a Dymocks bookstore — but it's a business. I approach it as a business: investing in it, budgeting for it, marketing strategies, collaboration strategies, bulk selling, a ten-year publishing schedule. That's the difference. That's why I've been successful as an author and continue to be.
I leverage my books every single day of every single week of every single month of every single year of every single decade. A new business opens nearby — I drop them one of my books. I don't expect anything. There's a pile of books on my kitchen table every Friday going out to collaborators, bulk sales clients, speaking clients, potential coaching clients, whoever it might be. Treat it like a business and it will become one. That's the big mind shift behind my success.
Closing
Anna Featherstone: I always love speaking with you. Where can people find out more?
Andrew Griffiths: AndrewGriffiths.com.au or .com — both work. That's the home of all things Andrew.
Anna Featherstone: We'll put links in the show notes. Andrew, thank you again, and to all of you out there, whatever you are writing or creating — thanks for being part of our very special ALLi podcast family. I'm Anna Featherstone with Andrew Griffiths, and here's to you and your writing projects. All the best.
Andrew Griffiths: Thank you, Anna.
