In 2009, I published my first book - Marketing has no off Switch. It was a book that generated in excess of $1 million in revenue for our marketing business, and played a role in establishing us as a trusted strategy shop, working for brands both big and small across Australia and overseas.
Yet, I was a reluctant author, and only started on the journey with some strong encouragement from Geoff Greer, who was the head of NABBusiness at the time, and a client of ours on a whistle-stop journey to no less than seventeen locations around Australia in 2008.
My presentation to business owner clients of NAB was of the same title. The purpose was to show strong evidence that businesses who kept promoting themselves - even in tough times - would be more successful than those who didn’t.
NABBusiness was keen to support their clients who were experiencing the effects of the global financial crisis at that time.
The book provided much greater detail on our proprietary model for strategic marketing - The R.A.P.I.D Marketing Model© and attracted a lot of attention from the media and prospective customers - it became a great ‘business card’ for our services.
Since 2009, I’ve written and self-published a total of 10 books, and I’m currently writing #11 and #12. I’ve also written a number of books for my ghostwriting clients including business advice books, business milestone books, and family history stories.
Having self-published these books, I’ve learned a lot about the process, and established more than a few connections with professionals in editing, printing, design, and of course the specifics of being a self-publisher. This very much includes loading books to sites like Apple iTunes and AMAZON and promoting your book once published.
In this brief article, I’d like to share a few tips to get you started on your journey to writing and publishing your story or book.
If you need some help from a ghostwriter, feel free to reach out and book a complimentary chat about your project. Use this link to organise a chat.
The Idea
Every book starts with an idea. It might be to share some knowledge you’ve gained with a prospective audience for your business, or it might be sharing the history of your family or your business.
If that idea starts to hang around for a bit and you get serious, my first tip is to start writing some brief notes on the content of the book. In the case of a tips or advice book, do you have a method or model that you use to help customers? The elements of that model is the start of your contents page. For a family history, do you have specific stories about family members such as their travels and achievements? Make a note of each of these as bullet points, and again you’re starting to map out a flow or content for your story.
Writing a book can involve tens of thousands of words and can be a bit daunting, but if you think about your book as being made up of a bunch of short stories, or a collection of summaries about each tip or step of your model, it can become easier to confront the process of writing a little bit on each story or each tip each day.
In other words, writing 50 short stories of 1000 words, can be a little more approachable than one story of 50,000 words.
The writing
Once you have got a list of ideas or bullet points or contents, you can start the writing process.
The way I approach writing my books is to set myself a target of 1000 words a day for a month. Whilst 30,000 words might not be the final word count of a book, it is a fun and approachable challenge that gets me started.
Each day, I simply pick one of the topics, chapters or story ideas and I aim to write 1000 words about that section or topic.
My tip is to set yourself a game or target. If my numbers seem a little unapproachable first time for you, then do 500 words every second day for two months. At the end of two months you’ll have 15000 words completed.
I tend to try and get my books done faster because I’m usually writing the book to support a new product or service in our business and I have a deadline. But you might write a little of your family history now and then over a year or more.
As long as the game or challenge gets you inspired, then go for it, and use the numbers and targets that work for you.
The Editing
I don’t enjoy editing my writing for all the nitty gritty details or grammar. So I get someone to do it for me.
You might like to edit, or may be able to get a family member to do this for you.
My tip however is don’t be an editor whilst you are being a writer.
If you keep stopping yourself to check the grammar, or to dot the i’s and cross the t’s, then you are likely to slow the writing process down and it will grind.
When you are writing, just write and leave the editing as a separate task AFTER you’ve finished writing.
Light and Shade
When writing books, I believe in varying the pace and the content for the reader. Otherwise it can be monotonous. For example, you’ll notice in this article, the lengths of the sentences varies a lot between very short, and quite long.
It is also good in a book, to break up the story with some ‘space’. I create space in business books by putting a few questions or exercises someone can do at the end of each chapter. In a family story, you might put in a quote from a family member, or a photograph, or perhaps even a short anecdote that is relevant to that chapter.
Give your reader some variety, or you’ll bore them to tears.
Design and Layouts
Once you’ve written and had your manuscript edited, then it is time for design and layouts. This is a completely separate process, and best done once your manuscript and editing is done. It is cheaper and easier to edit words before they are laid out in a book - it doesn’t mean you won’t proof read your layouts, but don’t wait to do wholesale editing of your book when it is designed - you’ll just cost yourself money and time.
I have a few tips on design and layouts so here’s a quick list:
Pick a font that is easy to read, and make it big enough for older readers if that is your audience
Give space around words, some white space and good borders.
Consider getting your designer to pick some icons or illustrations that match your book - business or family story - and use these throughout the book - this might be chapter headings, headers and footers on each page, or shadows behind call-out boxes with anecdotes or lists
Use methods to create a call to action for prospects if you are writing a business book - a well-placed QR code with a link to your website can connect your reader to you and turn them into a prospect. You don’t have to leave the sell to the end of the book.
Make sure you acknowledge any sources of images, or work that isn’t your own with a credit
The Cover
A mentor of mine says the front cover gets the person to pick up your book, and the back cover gets them to buy.
A front cover needs both a title for the book and your name as a minimum.
Design is such a personal thing, so I have no tips for you there. If it is a business book, a sub heading can tell the reader what the book is about so consider that.
The back cover of a business book is a good place to summarise the content in more detail and to promote yourself as an author.
For a story or history book, it might simply be a short summary of the books purpose.
Printing/E-books/Audiobooks
Unless you are seriously going to invest time in promoting your book and need hardcover copies to ‘sell’ to a business audience, I would consider only creating an e-book first for the first time author.
This way, you can keep printing expenses down and use those funds to promote your book to your target audience instead.
A family story or corporate history has a fairly small audience, so these might remain ‘unpublished’ works and don’t require any mechanisms to identify the book or for selling.
If you are going to print and distribute an e-book and physical book, you’ll need to organise yourself an ISBN(international standard book number) for your book - usually a different number for e-book and printed version. If you’re doing an audio version, you’ll need a 3rd code. The Australian agent for these codes is a company called Thorpe & Bowker (https://www.myidentifiers.com.au/)
Dave Stokes at Author2Audio https://author2audio.com/ can help you out in production of your audiobook.
Promoting your book
Once you have your book in your hot little hands, you are ready to promote it.
I was super excited and stood outside our office waiting for the delivery truck to arrive when my first book was published. I still get excited when the boxes arrive from the printer with the first print run of each book.
Most business type books are promoted directly to the target audience of the person who wrote it, and often directly sold by that person to the client, or even gifted to prospects as part of their lead generation process.
Getting your book loaded on AMAZON may be a part of your strategy and this is relatively easy to do once you have an electronic file of your book from your designer.
Amazon gives you great resources on their Kindle Self Publishing site - https://kdp.amazon.com/
Loading a book is just the start and you’ll have to work out a marketing strategy for your book if you decide to promote it.
This really involves understanding your target audience and finding ways to promote your book to them via social media, facebook ads, writers festivals and many other avenues - but that is a story in itself and for another time and place.
Book distributors are still available and they will often take on the work of all the loading of e-books, printing and distribution. But they will also then retain the majority of the profit from selling the book. For many people, self-publishing and controlling the promotion and sale of their book - especially for business authors - is the way to go.
Some great organisations in Australia can help you through the self-publishing journey from start to finish - check out Michael Hanrahan and his team at Publish Central. I highly recommend their work - https://www.publishcentral.com.au/
Ok, so there are some brief tips and tricks you can use for self-publishing your book.
Just a reminder if you need some help from a ghostwriter, feel free to reach out and book a complimentary chat about your project. Use this link to book yourself a time.
Acknowledgements/Legals
If you use information or stories or images from someone else, or you are quoting someone in a book, get their permission.
Put a source of where you got the information in that section.
Make sure you have rights to use any images you source or use.
Also, if there are negative statements about someone, it is probably best to get some legal advice on your book. I am not a legal advisor, but this makes sense if there is any risk of upsetting, offending or otherwise negatively discussing someone or an incident.
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