How to Turn Your Book Into an Online Course (Non-Fiction)

7 minute read

Have you written a nonfiction book and you are looking for more ways to monetize it?

Creating a successful online course from your book can be a great way to generate an additional income stream and offer more resources to your customers and readers.

With the rise of online learning, authors can transform their written content into engaging, interactive, and profitable courses.

In this blog post, we'll guide you through the steps to convert your book or ebook into an online course, using simple and actionable strategies.

Why Building a Course From Your Book is a Great Idea

Taking your non-fiction book and turning it into an online course can have multiple benefits, both for you and for your customers, here is why:

Increased Engagement: While books can certainly captivate readers, online courses allow for a multi-sensory learning experience through videos, assignments, and interactive discussions.
Broader Reach: Online courses break geographical barriers. No matter where your students are, they can access your course as long as they have an internet connection.
New Revenue Streams: Courses often command higher price points than books. Additionally, you can offer tiered pricing for different levels of access and content. Even though the course content may be similar to the book material, it is laid out specifically to drive your customer toward a valuable result.
Authority and Credibility: By providing a course, you position yourself not just as an author but as an educator and expert in your field.
Attract clients from different backgrounds: There might be people interested in learning what you teach in the book, who do not necessarily prefer a book format, but they might enjoy watching your course videos and interacting with your community.
Flexibility of digital products: digital products are easy to edit, improve and change over time. With an online course, you can add new content, improve your lesson or change something at any time, with ease.

How to Turn Your Book Into an Online Course

Now that you know why creating your own online course from a book content is a great idea, let's see how you can actually do it, in a few simple steps.

Step #1: Choose the Right Online Course Platform

While for books you need a publisher and a printing house, for online courses, you need an online course platform.

Such a platform allows you to deliver your course content to students, handle transactions safely, built the learning resources you need and so much more.

While books are only composed by written words, an online course can be more complex in terms of format. You have course lessons and modules, videos, downloadable files, multiple pricing tiers, and sometimes a community area.

Create and sell online courses that help students learn with our course creation software

To build all of this, you need an online course platform (unless you are a really good web developer and want to spend countless hours creating your own setup!).

This step is crucial: not all online course platforms are equal. Make sure to choose one that has all the necessary features for creating valuable courses.

Heights Platform is the all-in-one online course software where creators can build and sell beautiful online courses, communities, and digital products.

You already have the content for your course from your book, but a successful online course is much more than just a collection of lessons (or chapters) organized into an order.

Creating an online community, applying gamification techniques, engaging students with assignments and projects, and communicating with your students are all important aspects of your course, in addition to content.

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Here is an example of an author and course creator, Dane, who chose Heights Platform to host his online course, and is currently working on building his course from his book The Tricycle Effect! This is what he posted in Creator Climb, our community of creators:

Step #2: Organize Your Course Structure and Content

When you want to turn your book's content into an online course, you need to organize it carefully.

Begin by breaking your book down into modules and lessons that flow logically from one topic to the next.

For instance, each chapter of your book can serve as a module, with subtopics within each chapter as individual lessons.

However, the structure of your course highly depends on the nature of your book.

Typically, books are more detailed and longer. On the other hand, online courses should help students learn new skills as quickly as possible.

Therefore, it may not be the best approach to make your course extremely long to match the same level of depth of your book. Instead, you could consider combining multiple book chapters into a single module or lesson.

You can create a course outline using Heights Platform's "Climb Outline" feature.

This feature allows you to easily create lessons, group them into modules, and reorder them as needed. You can use this outline as a reference when uploading videos and creating lesson content.

Heights Platform also offers multiple AI tools to help you build and grow your online courses. One of these AI tools specializes in building a course from scratch. By giving a simple course title to the AI, you will get a ready-made outline, and recommendations on your course idea.

This can help you brainstorm new lessons and course content that you might want to add to your course.

What's great about this AI tool, is that it can save you hours and hours of manual work, as the AI generates the course for you inside your Heights Platform account. All that will be left for you to do is populate your course lessons with the unique content from your book.

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Step #3: Record Lesson Videos

Videos are a core component of online courses: they provide a personal touch and can simplify complex topics better than text alone.

If you are a writer, you probably do not have high-tech recording equipment to record videos. But that's ok! You don’t need a professional studio for your course creation process: a quiet room, a good microphone, and proper lighting will suffice.

Many creators record professional videos simply using their smartphones!

Many creators face the challenge of feeling uncomfortable showing their faces on video. If you share this feeling, there are methods you can use to produce engaging and professional videos without appearing on camera.

Read this article from our blog to learn more: Can You Create Videos Without Showing Your Face? 5 Ideas for Faceless Videos!

Other learning elements you can add to your course include visuals (maybe that you already have from your book), slides, a community, assignments and more.

Step #4: Launch and Promote Your Online Course

After you are done creating the content, it's time to set the price for your online course, and launch!

Promoting your online course is essential to inform people about it, and get your first sales.

You can start by building anticipation through teasers and pre-launch content on social media and other platforms.

It can be a good idea to offer early bird discounts to your email list and presell your course, especially targeting those who have purchased or shown interest in your book.

Other marketing ideas include utilizing content marketing, partnerships, and paid ads to widen your reach.

More Tips for Turning Your Book Into a Course

Here are a few other tips to consider when turning your book into an online course!

Understand the Difference in Delivery

Books and courses serve different purposes in terms of catering to various learning styles.

While a book may provide an in-depth understanding of a particular theory, a course should have a more practical approach with actionable takeaways.

To meet the expectations of a course, it is important to modify your content to make it more interactive and practical.

Bundle Your Book and Course to One Offer

Consider including a digital or physical copy of your book, or a digital product for your ebook, as part of your course package.

This addition can enhance the value of your offering by enriching the learning experience and providing a tangible connection to the course material.

Create a Community Around the Course

Building a community around your course can significantly enhance the learning experience.

Encourage interaction among students through forums or social media groups. This community aspect can lead to networking opportunities, peer learning, and a supportive learning environment.

With Heights Platform, it is easy to grow a thriving online community alongside your courses!

Promote Your New Course to Past Book Readers

Your current readers are the most accessible audience you have. You can connect with them through newsletters, personalized emails, or special offers.

Since they are already familiar with your book, they are more likely to be interested in a deeper, structured learning experience and get the chance to interact with you - the author - through your online community.

Incorporate Interactive Elements

Adding interactive components such as assignments, gamification tools, surveys, and community channels can significantly enhance engagement in your course.

All of these elements can be added to your course by using Heights Platform!

These elements not only make learning more enjoyable but also help reinforce the material. For instance, at the end of some course lessons, you could include an assignment that helps students practice what they learned.

Offer Certificates of Completion

Providing a certificate upon completing the course can be a great incentive for students. It gives them a tangible reward for their efforts and can be used for professional development or resumes.

Make sure the certificate is visually appealing and reflects the value of the course. With Heights Platform, you can design certificate of completion and automatically grant them to students as soon as they complete your course!

Regularly Update the Course Content

One of the benefits of courses vs physical products (such as printed books), is that at any time you can go and edit your course, add new content or improve your lessons.

To keep the course relevant and engaging, regularly update the content based on the latest research, trends, and feedback from students.

This not only keeps the course fresh but also encourages past and prospective students to revisit the course for new information.

Turn Your Book Into a Course With Heights Platform

Today, we discussed the advantages of converting your nonfiction book into an online course, and how you can do it with a few easy steps.

By transforming your book into an engaging online course, you can earn more money, gain higher engagement levels and expand your audience. Additionally, you can establish yourself as an expert in your field, which can increase your credibility.

Heights Platform provides a comprehensive solution that streamlines the process of creating, managing, and scaling online courses.

With its powerful tools and features, including AI-generated course outlines and community-building capabilities, Heights Platform makes sure that your transition from author to educator is smooth and successful.

Create Your Online Course Today

Post Topics: Build and Promote Your Course