The Help You Need | Someday Box

Getting Your Book Out of the Someday Box

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Taking on a big project, one about which you may know very little, can be incredibly intimidating. Most of us would never try to build a house, fix a car, or learn to play a musical instrument without help: a teacher, a coach, classes, something.

You need a process to write a book But when it comes to writing a book, we envision the lone artist starving in a garret and assume that writers work alone.

Does that make any sense at all? Of course not.

Successful writers have a system. When it comes to business books, I’ve created a systematic process to take the professional knowledge that’s already in your head, and lead you through, one step at a time, to the inevitable finished product: your book.

Some Advice From Seth

The world’s greatest marketing guru and founder of The Domino Project, Seth Godin has some excellent advice for authors. Here’s the short version, but please; take five minutes & go read the whole post:

Please understand that book publishing is an organized hobby, not a business.
The timeframe for the launch of books has gone from silly to unrealistic.
There is no such thing as effective book promotion by a book publisher.
Books cost money and require the user to read them for the idea to spread.
Publishing is like venture capital, not like printing.

In my first business book, The Commonsense Entrepreneur, I wrote about chunking; breaking big projects down into the smallest possible pieces (remember the joke about how to eat an elephant—one piece at a time?) Making each step small enough and simple enough takes most of the fear and stress out of the process.

The Process

But when it comes to writing a book, we envision the lone artist starving in a garret and assume that writers work alone.

Does that make any sense at all? Of course not.

(Note: As you’re watching these videos or reading the text, I would highly value your comments on what’s missing. What else would you need to know to do this yourself? Get into whatever detail you want. Of course, you can always use the contact form to speak to me directly rather than leaving a comment here.)

Successful Writers Have a System

When it comes to business books, I’ve created a systematic process to take the knowledge that’s already in your head and lead you through, one step at a time, to the inevitable finished product: your book.

Here’s an overview:

Expose the whole book. Round up everything that’s already written. It’s probably more than you realize. Establish your reasons for writing a business book. Clearly identify what your desired outcome is and what you’ve already done toward that, and eliminate disorder and confusion.
Bring order to what exists. Organize what’s already written.
Identify gaps, ideas and concepts that are incomplete or missing.
Prioritize the missing bits, and create them.
Mechanical stuff: proofread, edit, format, design, and print.

In my first business book, The Commonsense Entrepreneur, I wrote about chunking: breaking big projects down into the smallest possible pieces. (Remember the joke about how to eat an elephant—one piece at a time?) Making each step small enough and simple enough takes most of the fear and stress out of the process.

Not doing it alone helps, too.

Hire a Guide

You’d never head out into someplace you’d never been, the desert or jungle or mountains, without a guide. If you’ve never written a business book before, hire a guide. It just makes sense.

Like that experienced jungle guide would tell you what equipment to bring and protect you from pitfalls, I’ll make sure you’ve got everything you need. With my system, we put your knowledge in one side and your book comes out the other.

Expose the Whole Book

Establish your reasons for writing a business book.

Are you writing a book to make money? Don’t. Virtually all books sell less than 500 copies. Ever. Even if you make $12 a copy (which is pretty good), you just made $6,000.
To establish yourself as an expert. Good reason. If you literally wrote the book, you’ll be recognized as an authority on your subject.
To share the gift of your knowledge and experience. Sometimes, just giving, sharing, teaching, is enough.
As an introduction to prospects: an overview of who you are and what you believe. If you’re going to take someone on as a client, it’s marvelous if they already know how you think.
To use it as a big fat business card. Seriously. You can get copies for $4. If you’ve got a hot prospect, give ‘em a $4 business card. Imagine the impression it makes to say, “I want to give you a autographed copy of my book. I want to work with you.”

Identify and gather what you’ve already written (it’s probably more than you realize!)

blog
website
presentations and speeches
white papers
video and audio
emails to/from clients, friends, others
knowledge in your head (“writing” doesn’t necessarily mean just writing)

Clearly identify what your desired outcome is and what you’ve already done toward that. Eliminate disorder and confusion. If you lie to yourself about your reasons for writing, you’ll invest a lot of time and effort on the wrong tasks in order to make progress down the wrong road.

It’s okay to write a book just to say you’ve done it. It’s great to write a book because it makes you proud. It’s fine to write a book as a business tool, a gift for your mom, or your own self-respect.

Just be clear on your “why,” and the “what” and “how” will fall into place.

Organize What’s Already Written

Gather it all together regardless of format:

print
blogs, emails, website
audio and video
what’s in your brain (for now, jot just enough notes to trigger what you know, but haven’t written or recorded in any format yet)

For each item, consider a couple of categories it might fit into. Write 3×5 cards for each. Start putting stuff into categories.

Some categories will have nothing in them. This may mean you need to create the content for this category. Save this card for step 3. Some stuff, you just won’t be able to decide which of two categories it goes in. Perhaps the categories should be combined? Some categories will be huge. Drill down and create subcategories.

This will be an ongoing process. Don’t pretend you’re going to organize your thoughts and never look back. Get this 80% of the way done and move on.

Order: is there a logical flow to the categories? If not, are there any dependencies? Put stuff in order where order exists.

Where order does not exist or matter (does the chapter on Bob Dylan have to come before the chapter on Tom Petty? order probably doesn’t matter in some cases) choose, arbitrarily. You can always change it later.

There; we’re ready to fill those holes.

Identify the Gaps

Next we need to identify the gaps: the ideas and concepts that are incomplete or missing.

Once you’ve got all your data on the table, categorized into chapters and/or sections, you’ll see some obvious gaps; things you know should be there, but aren’t, or things you didn’t realize were a logical part of this book.

There are two options—you should be very aware of what you’re doing at this phase to avoid going down the wrong path.

It’s easy to add more content, filling the gaps. This might be a good option if your content is easy to carry around in one hand while you carry your laptop in the other.

If, on the other hand, you have to stack two moving boxes to carry all your notes, perhaps a better plan would be to find a break point where you can create a natural feeling of conclusion or summary and end the book there.

You do not have to write a long book. In fact, a short book is much better. More people will actually buy it. More of those who buy it will finish it.

And then, you can turn the rest into a second book. And a third. And so on.

Once you’ve decided where the gaps are in the content you intend to use for this book, identify what goes there. You’re not writing it now, just giving it a label that’ll help you remember it later.

Well, not much later. In fact, that comes next.

Fill the Gaps

Now we prioritize the missing bits, and create them. This is the piece most of us think of as “writing a book.”

Priority means “first in some meaningful way.” It might be chronological, but usually isn’t, not directly. It might be the part that comes easiest. Might be what naturally comes before the other.

In the end, what you’ll write is what you should write. Forcing yourself to dig into the toughest section is madness—doomed to failure.

Start with the bit that’s falling-off-a-log easy. Knock something out in an afternoon; that one little bit that connects A to C.

There. Doesn’t that feel good? And now, kill off the next easy bit.

Before long, you’ll have nothing left but that big hairy knot you’ve been dreading. Except, now, you’ve got all the success under your belt and it’s not so scary. Besides, it’s the last thing. You’ll dig in and love it.

All that other stuff you’d created, the “stuff” between which these gaps fell? Now’s the time to get it transcribed, or add an intro/outro or connecting bit between this and the new stuff. Remember, the goal at this point is to write. Not edit. Not format. (Great googlymooglies; don’t let me catch you using bold or italics while you write!) Editing while you write is like baking all the ingredients, then turning them into a cake.

Before we get to the mechanical parts, there’s one more phase to the writing: the re-writing.

One reason we all edit as we write is that we’re embarrassed that our editor is going to see that we don’t know “their” from “there” from “they’re” from “Thayer.” Don’t worry; in this scenario, you get to do the first re-write, during which you finally get to edit. A little.

Read it through once. The whole thing. Just get an overview of how it feels.

Now, go back and read it as a writer. Rewrite the paragraph that made sense in your blog, but now needs the idea completely rephrased. Change the fragments to sentences, where they really should be. (Nothing wrong with fragments.) Go through it all and fix what you feel isn’t your voice, speaking your thoughts clearly.

And now, if you’d like, do it again.

Whether you re-re-write or not, now we’re on to the mechanical stuff.

Mechanical Stuff: Proofread, Edit, Format, Design, and Print.

Overview

Proofreading is simply finding and fixing errors in spelling and grammar. It does not include formatting. It is superseded by editing concerns; good editing recognizes the right of the author to use unorthodox spelling or grammar if there’s a reason for it.

Editing is the art of adjusting the words so they say the best version of what the author meant. It does not mean applying someone else’s writing style.

Formatting includes textual formatting like italics and bold. It also includes creating the page layout. This covers headers and footers, page numbers, title pages and other front matter, and possibly the index and table of contents.

Design generally refers to the cover, though it may include illustrations for the interior.

Printing requires the creation of print-ready files and delivery to a printer. Independent publishing often uses online print-on-demand services.

Proofread

Yes, you should proofread it yourself. It doesn’t matter if you can spell or not, and I don’t care if you think grammar is your father’s mother. Go through and fix what you can. This is your book. Take ownership. You’ll feel better about it all in the end. Feel free to finally move the book from a plain text editor to a word processing program and use the spell-checker. Just remember that it doesn’t know everything. Stupid things have told me for years I was misspelling ‘Canfield’ but obviously, I’m not.

Now, get someone else to proofread it. Someone you know can spell anything.

Don’t let them make the changes. Have them note their recommendations. You get the right to accept or reject any change. It’s always possible they were wrong, just this once.

Once you’re sure all the words are spelled right and the sentences say what you mean, it’s time to edit.

Edit

Editing is the art of nudging and tweaking the words you’ve written, so they become the words you really meant.

A good editor will have you saying yeah, that’s what I meant but couldn’t find the words for. A good editor will not squeeze your writing into a set of rules, running it through a propriety-wringer to make sure you’ve never said something with character or passion. A good editor can enhance and more deeply focus character and passion, crystallizing the writer’s voice.

As much as it pains me to say it, you should not edit your own writing.

Sometimes writers can’t step away from their writing enough to see the lack of clarity here, or the awkward or powerless wording there. Your Elements of Style will only get you so far. Eventually, it’s just better to have someone who knows writing, but not your subject, to give it a solid once-over.

Again, the editor should offer suggestions and recommendations. You should be free to accept or reject. This is your book and should speak with your voice, not theirs.

There will probably be some back and forth in this process before it’s done, but once it’s done, your book is written. Go, you.

Now it’s time to take your words, and turn them into a bona fide book thing.

Format

The words all need to be laid out as a book. This means headings, footers, page numbers, title pages (yes, plural) and so much more.

Go get a book in the genre you’re writing in. Look at the first piece of paper after the cover. Probably blank. Look at the next one. Probably NOT blank, and it’s probably not the beginning of Chapter 1, either.

There is quite a bit of front matter to a book. If you’re publishing independently, you need to create this stuff. The publisher’s/legal page. The simple title page and the full title page. Acknowledgments. Table of contents. Index. About the author.

Then there’s page layout. You need headers at the top, with the book title, or chapter title, or author’s name, or whatever will be the most informative for the reader at any given moment.

You’ll need page numbers at the bottom, and perhaps even more to identify the book (stuff that didn’t belong or fit at the top).

Chapter titles, if any, will need to be formatted the same throughout the book. Subheadings, too.

Footnotes, references to other books and resources, quotes, images—all of it needs to be put in place and in shape.

It all needs to be formatted at the size your book will be printed. This is determined by how you’ll print. Online print-on-demand services usually offer industry-standard sizes, but some offer custom sizes as well. If you go for a custom size, have a good reason for it. Being different just to be different is almost always more expensive, or more trouble, or both.

You can’t judge a book by its cover if it doesn’t have one.

Design

The design phase includes laying out the interior pages to some extent, and decisions about where chapters begin (top or middle of the page? right-hand page only, or wherever they fall? new page, or continuous?).

The primary design element of your book, though, is the cover.

There is a lot of talk in the self-publishing industry that sounds a lot like “never allow anyone but a professional book cover designer to design your book’s cover.” Well, poppycock. Balderdash. Nonsense.

In other words, I disagree.

Now, I’m not saying you should use your kid’s drawing from the fridge, or that you should do it yourself if you really don’t have a design bone in your body. But you are not selling this book in a bookstore, competing with fifty quillion other titles. You do not need the benefit of 6,000 years of psychological research to get exactly the right shade of red to properly augment the word “Regiment” in your title. You are not using traditional publishing, nor will you be using traditional publishing’s selling methods.

You will be doing all the marketing, all the selling. Your book’s jacket does not need any more attention than your own jacket.

You buy your clothes; you don’t make them. If you had the skills, and knew exactly what you wanted, you might. Most people don’t (have the skills, or know exactly what they want). Most of us buy clothing designed and made by someone fairly competent who mass-produces stuff that’s pretty good and serves the purpose.

But do you have a professional tailor custom-make every item of clothing you wear, in order to have the best possible marketing for your most important product—you? I doubt it. But, if you do, then by all means, have a professional book cover designer design the cover of your book.

If, on the other hand, you find that a suit off the rack, a coat and slacks from the department store, or suspenders and cargo pants do the trick, then you’ll do just fine to have someone with an eye for design and a little bit of skill put together a book cover. Make sure you get all the elements on; analyze the cover of that book you were looking at earlier for things like printed price, bar code and ISBN, author’s name and photo, description, title, all that stuff.

And finally, finally, we get to print something.

Print

There are many print-on-demand (POD) services that allow you to upload files and have them made into a book. Unless you have a budget over a thousand dollars for printing costs, POD is probably your best option. If you do have a large budget, you can get a local book printer to give you the best deal, probably even giving you hardcover books for less than a softcover from a POD website.

The better option for most of us is small lots printed on demand. Not necessarily one-offs, but small batches. I use CreateSpace for all my printing, partly because their relationship with Amazon makes adding my books for sale on Amazon easier and partly because I don’t feel like researching more options.

The printing process consists essentially of uploading two files, your cover and the interior, at printable resolutions (at least 150 DPI; 300 is better) and doing a little setup. Then, order a proof. It’s important that the fonts you use in your interior can be embedded in a PDF. The best way to know for sure is to have tested a long time ago, not now that your book is already formatted.

When the proof copy arrives, go through it thoroughly and mark all the mistakes you missed in the digital copies. Yes, you will.

Fix. Upload. Order proof.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

This is the part where you wonder why you bothered. Not during the writing, but now, at the end, when you’re so close, is when you’ll want to shortcut, skip ahead, and just do it.

Don’t.

Once you have a proof where neither you nor your trusted associates can find something wrong (wrong means mistake, not “something I’d like to change now, at the last moment”), you approve the proof, and order as many copies as you can pay for with the funds from your pre-orders.

Oh, did I forget to talk about pre-orders? That must be in the marketing section, which we missed completely. But first, a word about ISBNs.

ISBNs

Four words, actually: International Standard Book Numbers

Every book sold through commercial channels (this does not mean you) needs a unique identifier for all the computer systems it’ll be entered into. While it’s a good idea to have an ISBN, you may not need to buy one. Many print-on-demand services will include one free; CreateSpace does. You’ll still be listed as the publisher, they just own the ISBN, meaning you can’t publish this exact book somewhere else—unless you get a new ISBN for it.

If you’ll only be selling the book privately (at your own events, from your own website, etc.) or if it’s for limited or private use, you do not need an ISBN.

If you’d like the control of taking your ISBN to another print-on-demand service or other printer or publisher, buy an ISBN from Bowker, the folks who have the monopoly on issuing ISBN numbers.

Consider your future plans when buying an ISBN. A single number costs $145 but a group of 10 costs $250. If you’re going to publish even two books, buy the set of ten and save $40. Use the extras to act as publisher for another author.

Marketing

Marketing your book is a two-month coaching class. This is just the overview.

The time to start marketing your book is the day you commit to writing it. Whether you get a traditional publishing deal or publish independently, you are the marketing department. You are solely responsible for marketing and selling your book. The only difference between marketing and sales with a traditional publisher and independent publishing is that in the latter case you keep all the money instead of almost none.

You need a website. It doesn’t have to cost a lot, but it cannot look like your neighbor’s kid did it. It cannot look like you did it yourself. I am delighted to offer advice about web work at no charge, or to provide professional web work for extremely economical rates. I’m very good at it and it doesn’t take me long to do it right.

You need a blog. This is a huge marketing tool. It allows you to communicate with interested folks. You’d think an author would be able to write a paragraph on a blog three times a week. In most cases you’d be wrong. If you blog regularly and interact with your commenters, you’ll stand out from the crowd.

Do not waste time with book signings as a place to sell books. Unless you have a gaggle of fans already, a book signing is a way to sit, alone and lonely, in a bookstore or coffee shop. If you already have a gaggle of fans, don’t make them attend a dry, boring book signing. Throw a party and invite them all. Make it fun.

Network. Find groups who might be interested in your topic and offer to come speak to them. Do not go there to sell your book. Make it available, of course, but go there to give valuable information away, absolutely free, no obligation. If visitors connect with you and your message, they’ll buy your book.

Carry the book with you everywhere. If you’re in the coffee shop or library or wherever you hang out, having a book on the table with your picture on the cover is a nice conversation starter. And if someone wants to buy your book, you want them to get it now, not “later,” whenever that is.

Introduce yourself as an author. You may be a life coach, dentist, musician, or computer programmer, but if you want to talk to people about your book, when they ask what you do for work, tell them “I’m the author of [insert your book's name here].” The thing you do for money will come up based on the conversation about the book, but the book won’t come up naturally in a conversation about your business.

Don’t Do This Alone

There are parts of this process you can’t possibly offload to someone else. There are parts you should.

One surprising part you can offload is motivation.

If you had all the motivation you needed (or if motivation was enough) you’d already have a book. “Wanting” is not motivation.

The cost of a paid coach or mentor, along with their professional expertise in nudging, has a solid impact on your motion. If a paid mentor isn’t on the books for you right now, don’t go it alone. Connect with an accountability mentor. You have friends and professional acquaintances who’d be delighted if you asked them to help you get your book done.

A couple points on choosing them:

They need to believe. Somebody once started the lie that having someone tell you you’ll never succeed would inspire you to prove them wrong. Wrong. You do not need a troll, you need a rabid cheerleader who’ll make you believe when you forget to.
They need to not believe. At least, not until they see. Scientific evidence says that when someone says “Good job!” it fills the same slots in our brain as if we’d actually done a good job. Praise can be a powerful de-motivator. Instead, this person needs to keep reminding you that you don’t have a book yet; you will, you just don’t have it yet. When you say brilliant stuff, they need to say, “I’m looking forward to seeing it when it’s done.” They need to keep you hungry; hungry and believing.

Schedule regular chats with your mentor. In person is great, because the look on their face is almost as valuable as getting out of your house or office for an hour. Phone is better than email. But do it. Schedule it and stick to it. If you can’t even schedule chatting with the accountability mentor who’s supposed to be helping you hold yourself accountable to yourself, you’re never gonna write a book.

Yeah, I’m for hire. You knew that when you came to hear me speak, or read my blog or this book. Call or email. You’ll never get a sales pitch. I hate sales pitches. You won’t need me to tell you if we’re a match; you’ll know it.

Go. Write. Now.

Someone said that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Take that step right now.

Yeah, I mean right now. Put this down and get out a piece of paper or open your favorite text-editing program and write down the procedural steps we’ve talked about. Here they are again:

Expose the whole book. Establish your reasons for writing a business book. Identify and gather what you’ve already written.
Organize what’s already written.
Identify the gaps.
Prioritize the missing bits, and create them.
Mechanical stuff: proofread, edit, format, design, and print.

For each one, write a single thought about where you are, or whether you think it’s gonna be easy or hard or fun. Get a quick overview of this whole thing; it should take you less than 10 minutes.

Now, connect with your nudger, tell them what you’ve got, and get their commitment to help. If you’re asking a favor, make it easy for them to say “no,” but make them want to say “yes.”

Let me know how it goes. Whether you work with me or not (more than 90% of you won’t ever work with me, and that’s okay), I’d still love to hear about your project; how it’s going, what works and what doesn’t, and whether or not this book helped.