Right now, as I write this, I'm negotiating a sponsorship for my book.

Not my podcast. Not my newsletter. My book.

Here's the pitch. I go to Kit, the email platform I use, and I say: write a foreword for Sponsor Magnet about how a newsletter helps creators land more sponsorships. We'll put a custom cover on it. The Kit Edition, with your logo and a little badge. You hand it out at trade shows. You stuff it in your holiday mailer to your best customers. You show the industry you actually care about creators getting paid.

And you pay me for the privilege.

You know what happens next? I get paid for the sponsorship. I get a royalty on every copy they print. And 500 or 1,000 more copies of my book land in the hands of exactly the people I want reading it.

There it is. Win-win-win.

I walked through this exact idea when Susan Friedmann had me on her show, Book Marketing Mentors. If you're an author who thinks sponsorship is only for YouTubers with a million subscribers, keep reading.

One Company, 500,000 Copies

Here's the thing. You probably think you have nothing worth sponsoring. No massive following. No video content. Just a book.

But a big chunk of the 10,000+ copies of Sponsor Magnet I've sold came from strategic partnerships. And because I hybrid-published through Lulu's print-on-demand model, I can spin up a custom edition whenever a partner wants one. If you're self or hybrid published, you have that same flexibility. Use it.

Then Susan dropped a story that made my jaw hit the floor.

Her first book, about exhibiting at trade shows, sold 500,000 copies. To one company.

They sold exhibition booths across England and Europe. She trained people how to exhibit. Same customers, zero competition. So they put their own cover on her book, translated it into five languages, and had their distributors hand it to every prospect and customer they had.

Half a million copies. One deal.

Why does this work? Because it's way easier for a company to partner with the most trusted voice in their industry than to write their own white paper nobody downloads. They're renting your credibility.

So here's your homework. List the top 5 to 10 companies in your niche who might want to rent yours. And understand this: they are not going to call you asking to license your book. You have to bring them the idea.

Stop Pitching Like a Fan

But here's what I noticed after seven years running an influencer marketing agency, sitting on the brand side of the table. Most authors build that shortlist, then send something like this:

“Hey, I love your product. I've been using it for three years. I'm an author. I'd love for you to sponsor me.”

Crickets. Ghost town.

Put yourself in the marketer's shoes. They have no idea who you are. They're slammed. They don't have time for calls with strangers. And there are thousands of authors with email lists. Sorry, but you're not a unique snowflake.

So in Sponsor Magnet, I teach a framework called the ROPE method.

R is relevant. Your pitch ties directly to a campaign the brand is running now or has run before.

O is organic. You point to work you've already published that shows your readers already care about this category.

P is proof. You show you can actually move people to act.

E is easy to execute. When they say, “Interesting, what did you have in mind?” you already have the answer.

Lead with relevance and the brand instantly sees how you serve them. Lead with how much you love them and you're just another inbox casualty.

Let's Get Susan's Podcast Sponsored

So I did what I always do. I said, “Susan, let's get your podcast sponsored. Right now. Live.”

She told me it had been her dream for years. Perfect.

First, I had to stop myself from asking the wrong question. Most people ask, “Who are your five dream sponsors?” Wrong. The right question is: which brands could genuinely serve your audience at this point in their author journey?

Susan named two. A podcast booking agency. And a founder she'd just interviewed who builds AI “digital twins” that answer questions about your books and frameworks around the clock.

We ran with the digital twin.

Now, you might think, “I already had him on my show. He got free airtime. Why would he pay me?” But one appearance is a flash in the pan. A company needs sustained marketing.

And I'd bet his biggest problem is objections. Authors are nervous about training an AI on their name and their frameworks. Will anyone still buy the book? Will anyone still hire me?

So here's the pitch I gave her on the spot:

“We touched on the objections authors have to your tool. I'd love to create videos and articles for your knowledge base, your YouTube channel, and your social media explaining why this is a great fit for authors. Sure, I'll talk about you on my podcast too. But the real value is content for your owned and operated platforms that educates your future customers.”

I know what you're thinking. I'm an author, not a content creator. I don't do that.

Why not? A deal like this funds your writing. It serves the brand. And it serves your readers, who need tools that free up more time to write.

Running the rest of ROPE

The organic piece is easy for Susan since she already interviewed him. If you haven't, study the brand's website, blog, and social, then link them to a past newsletter that fits. Or create something new first. Pitching a newsletter tool? Publish an episode on why authors struggle to start a newsletter, then reach out. It still serves your audience. It just pulls double duty.

For proof, show what you've moved. “I told my listeners about a webinar, and a few hundred of the 1,000 people who downloaded the episode signed up.” That's influence.

For easy, spell it out. Here are the five videos. Here's what each one covers. Do you have time Thursday at 10 AM to talk?

That's the pitch.

Never Price in a Vacuum

Susan's next question was the one everyone asks. How do you even price something like that?

First: your price should be different for every partner.

If you fire off a rate sheet the second a brand shows interest, you're leaving a ton of money on the table. And you're probably doing extra work the brand doesn't even care about.

Get them on the phone and ask one question: What would a win look like for you?

Then stop talking. They'll say one of three things. I call it the ARC framework.

Awareness. “Nobody knows about us. We want authors excited about this.”

Repurposing. “We want the rights to post your content on our channels, or run it as ads with your face on it.”

Conversion. “We want signups. Downloads. Sales we can track.”

The math in the brand's head

Say the brand wants conversions. Here's what they're calculating.

Your episode gets 10,000 downloads in 30 days. Ten percent click the link, so 1,000 people. A quarter of those start a free trial, so 250. One in five converts to paid, so 50 customers. The software costs $10 a month and people stick around 10 months, so each customer is worth $100.

Fifty customers at $100 each is $5,000. That's their break-even. The absolute ceiling.

But they don't want to pay you $5,000. They want profit. So they'll offer half, a third, maybe a quarter, depending on their appetite for risk. That's why conversion-focused brands are brutal to negotiate with.

Now flip it. A brand that wants awareness measures downloads, views, impressions, engagement. Squishy stuff. And squishy is where your negotiating leverage skyrockets.

Same deliverable. Totally different price. Pricing is an art and a science, and you should never blurt out a number you dreamed up alone. The full playbook is in chapter 2 of Sponsor Magnet.

Your Book Sales Don't Set Your Price

Then Susan asked how this works for a book specifically.

Same question underneath: what's it worth to the brand to keep a customer because your book helped their business?

I have a client who's one of the top pathologists in her field. Her book hasn't sold 100,000 copies. It's sold maybe 500. But her clients are medical device companies spending millions.

She ran a LinkedIn livestream with about 50 people watching. Fifty. And she sold a $250,000 piece of medical equipment off of it.

So what should that livestream have cost a sponsor? $200,000? I honestly don't know. But I know it wasn't $500.

Your niche, your industry, and the size of your clients' deals matter way more than your follower count. So ask the brand straight up. How do you acquire customers today? How would you use my book? Hand it out at trade shows in exchange for a badge scan? Gate it behind a lead form? What's a lead worth to you?

If they'll tell you, the answer is probably a lot. Price accordingly.

Stop thinking like a book seller

A lot of authors get stuck right here. They just want to sell books, and sponsorship feels like selling out.

So I ask one question. Do you want a bigger impact on your readers?

The answer is always yes.

Great. Sponsorship gets you there. Three to five long-term partners could be what lets you quit the day job and write full time. And what happens when a brand emails your book to its 100,000 customers? More books in more hands.

Sponsorship doesn't have to mean holding up some product like a shill. You can design deals that fit your values and still pay you well. If you want help structuring them, that's exactly what we do inside Wizard's Guild.

Screw what's normal. Strive to be abnormal.

Find the Person Who Can Say Yes

Susan's last big question is the one I get asked more than any other. Who do I actually contact? Sales? Marketing? PR?

It depends on the size of the company. There's a Job Title Targeting Matrix on page 69 of Sponsor Magnet for exactly this.

Under 15 employees? There's probably one marketing person, likely a director of marketing. Go straight to them.

Between 16 and 100? Now you've got directors, managers, maybe a coordinator.

Over 100? Some of these companies have titles like influencer marketing manager or partnerships manager. Medtronic, a B2B medical device company, now has a director of influencer marketing. Not a consumer brand. Wild.

You can dig all of this up manually on LinkedIn. But because this question never stops coming, I built a tool called Sponsor Mole. Type in a brand's name and within about five seconds it tells you who to contact.

Start Before It's Written

At the end, Susan asked for my one golden nugget. Here it is.

Don't wait until your book is out to market it.

I started six months before launch and brought people behind the scenes of the entire process. By release day, readers felt like their feedback was baked into the book. They'd helped bring it to life. Of course they bought it.

Start building your audience earlier than feels comfortable. Way earlier.

And put sponsorship on the table from day one. If you want real deal breakdowns like the ones above landing in your inbox, grab my free sponsorship newsletter.

So here's my question for you. Which five companies in your niche would pay to rent your credibility, and what's stopping you from pitching the first one this week?