IP Is Everything!

Intellectual property (IP) is everything. Your book is IP. And building the value of that IP begins long before any camera rolls.

These were the key lessons the Your Bestselling Book Summer Cohort and I took away from last week’s Q&A with Laura Malin, Founder and CEO of Malin Entertainment. Laura is a bestselling author and movie producer who has spent over 30 years in the film industry, starting as an assistant at the Cannes Film Festival at age 17. She also runs the Adaptation Bookclub, a contest that presents one winning book to Hollywood dealmakers. (Full disclosure: I am a judge for the Adaptation Bookclub’s Summer Cycle, happening now, and also participated this past spring. I receive no monetary compensation – it’s a volunteer position.) 

So, what does this all really mean?

Let’s begin by defining intellectual property. In legal terms, IP means copyright. “If you have a book and you have readers, that’s IP," Laura told us. “A story with an audience around it.” You may be focused on writing a book, but what you’re actually doing is building the first piece of a much larger intellectual property.

Next, Laura discussed two powerful allies in IP: plasticity and long tail. Plasticity means that your story can start anywhere and bend into new shapes. “IP can have many formats and should have," she said. 

Your IP might start out as a keynote address, turn into a book, and then into a movie. Or it might start out as a podcast. Or it might begin as a book, evolve into a podcast and/or keynote, and then become a documentary. Heck, IP can even enter the world as a toy! Just look at Barbie’s journey from plastic doll to TV series, to the top box office hit of Summer 2023. A single powerful concept can live a dozen lives.

Long tail means your IP endures, sometimes for decades. The Color Purple, a novel by Alice Walker, serves as a powerful example of the long tail. It started out as a book, then Steven Spielberg adapted it into a film, later it became a Broadway musical with a stage run across thirty cities, and finally it was released as a new film in 2023. This one story has remained relevant for 40 years.

So while most of us treat publishing a book as a finish line. Laura encouraged us to treat it as a starting line. And you don't have to wait for permission to build your IP. She called the old model of querying literary agents and praying a studio notices your screenplay "a 20th-century game.” And she stated, “Now you can do it yourself."

Think of your IP like a ladder, Laura said. Your book is the bottom rung. From there, you build the middle rungs of the ladder with a newsletter, a podcast, a short film, a speaking career, andd from there, you keep climbing on your own.

Laura also offered us a warning. As your IP grows, guard who owns it, she said. "Margaret Atwood never saw one penny off the Hulu adaptation of her book The Handmaid’s Tale because she sold the book rights to MGM." Yikes!

I often share the same warning with aspiring authors. When you sign with a traditional publisher, you often hand over control of your IP. When you publish yourself, you retain control of everything. You keep 100% of your IP and your royalties.

Perhaps the best news Laura had for us nonfiction authors was this. “Nonfiction, for the first time in Hollywood, has become as important as fiction, partly because it costs less to produce.” Books that teach us or tell a true story now open doors that previously stayed shut for years. Killers of the Flower Moon was a nonfiction book that read like a true-crime thriller. Martin Scorsese turned it into a popular movie in 2023. 

The moral of the story here? Stop picturing your book as an object on the shelf. See it as one format of a story that can stretch across decades and take many forms. It’s part of an IP that you can own and grow. 

Hit Reply and tell me: if your book is the first piece of your IP, what's the second piece you'd love to build? If your book has emerged from another IP, what was your first step? I read every message that lands in this inbox, and I always write back.

Aloha, MeiMei

Join me for an incredible 2 hour workshop on How to Build Your Personal Brand as an Author!

We'll cover all kinds of important topics, such as:

1. The AI-driven shift from the attention economy to the trust economy.
2. Why resonance is more important reach.
3. Getting beyond the noise
4. Building authentic connections with your audience

And I'll be joined by two fabulous guests!!!!

Andrea Sullivan, a personal branding expert for more than 3 decades, and cofounder of VyVE Mastermind with Gary Vaynerchuck.

Yrmis Barroeta, an expert in building your email newsletter list to over 100K.

TIP OF THE WEEK:  

Map Your IP

1. Write your story's core in one sentence.
2. List five forms it has taken or could take beyond the book: podcast, newsletter, keynote address, workshop, short film, documentary, stage piece, graphic novel, online course, toy? Stretch your thinking past the obvious.
3. Circle the one you could start to work on this month if you haven’t already.
4. Take the first small step toward it this week. 

Want to know more about the next cohort of my 6-week online program and other offerings from Your Bestselling Book? 

Learn More Here!