How To Write, Publish & Promote Your Book under 12 months
To become a Very Influential Personality (VIP), it is important that you become liked, known and trusted on a subject matter. Publishing a book is an easy way to do this. When you publish a book, you can transmit your value to your tribe. The following 7 steps will lead you to gaining the VIP status in your industry through authoring a book.
1. Positioning
It's important to start your book writing process with an end goal in mind. What will success look like for you? What question do you want to answer for the reader?
In most instances, the key to success is finding an uncrowded niche. Two of the top reasons I find that authors fail to meet their goals is not having the right goal in mind and not identifying a category where their book could fit in and stand out. With my book Get MAD, I fit into the youth empowerment segment but my niche was not jut feel good self help, it was personal responsibility. With my book Who says It’s A Man’s World, I still fit into youth empowerment segment but with a focus on one gender - women - still taking them on a journey of personal responsibility. All my training and coaching fits into the personal responsibility niche.
2. Planning
Plan your content. I believe writing a book is similar to giving a speech. I also teach my students that a good speech has an attention captivating introduction, an insightful body and a memorable conclusion. Just as it is easier to engage your listeners and persuade them to take action if you know the result you want to achieve in the end, same goes for your readers. To start this, plan your outline as follows:
A. Your Title
B. Your Hook
C. Your (core thoughts broken into) Chapters
D. Your Conclusion
3. Pouring
It is time to make your ideas flow out rapidly in a steady stream. Ensure you express your thoughts and feelings in an unrestrained way. It is important to use your goal and outline as your guide. You don’t have to worry about coherence; just say whatever comes to mind. Use the voice recorder on your phone or any other audio recording device to start recording your thoughts. Instead of spending a long time to type, you can reduce your turnaround time for producing the book by speaking to your phone and recording it. Along the line, if you are invited to facilitate a session virtually or physically, you can also record and add it to your rough draft. Also, you can engage a friend, a relative or a colleague to serve as your Interview Buddie. Your Interview Buddie will ask you questions on the specific topic you want to write about. While this exercise is for the book, it will also get you comfortable with granting interviews. Media interviews come along as a natural consequence of being a Very Influential Personality.
4. Personalising
To a large extent, your book is your personality in print. Why? Because you are using the book to Transmit Your Value. The book contains your opinion, your views, your findings, your bias and your experiences. After pouring your thoughts into a recording device, you can have it transcribed by a professional ghostwriter into a first draft. The ghostwriter can determine a lot about the quality and output of your book from which many people you may never meet, will develop their opinion about you. Based on this, you want to vet the style and competence of your ghostwriter by requesting to see samples of the work they have done. When I use ghostwriters, I work with 2 or 3 different ghostwriters to ensure the style and quality conforms to my style and personality. I will highly recommend that you develop a good relationship with your ghostwriter so he or she can ensure your book sounds like you.
5. Perfecting
Although you now have a first draft, but it is not yet time to publish. You want to ensure that the book has all the required and desirable elements, qualities and characteristics. This is not about being a perfectionist; you want your book to be as good as it is possible to be. I am sure you have read books with a lot of avoidable errors. As an author, it is difficult to see an error when you are in the frame. It is tough to spot your own mistakes, oversights and unnecessary exaggeration. If the first draft needs more work, send it back to the ghostwriter. In perfecting the book, you will also need a copy editor. When the ghostwriter completes the job, a copyeditor needs to look at the draft to ensure every punctuation is in the correct place, ensure grammar, spelling, phrases and examples enhance the quality of your book. You don’t want anyone to criticise the quality of your book.
After copyediting the book, you will require the services of a graphic designer to work on the interior layout and design the book into a format that will be acceptable for publishing. Finally, you will need to get an attention grabbing book cover. You want the graphic designer to provide a cover that is visually appealing by focusing on two main elements: book title and artwork. The title should let people know what they will get from the book. Even if you plan to do every other thing yourself, it is important you engage the services of a skilful graphics designer for the interior layout and cover design.
6. Publishing
About a decade plus ago, getting a publishing deal was critical to becoming an author. Today, there are numerous publishing outfits who can print your book in small quantity and very good quality. You can choose to print just 50 copies of your book at a time. Today, to be published by a big name publisher has some good benefits but you may need to be a Professor, a Global CEO or a Global Sportsperson to gain the attention of these big names. However, many Very Influential Personalities are choosing to self publish so that they can make more form books when they sell or give them away at a cheap price. After publishing, you can always repurpose the content of your book into bite size series of published articles, handouts and blogs to further transmit your value to your tribe. This can be like the proverbial chicken and the egg question of which comes first? This is because you can also begin the book writing process by publishing your thoughts as articles, handouts and blogs. It is important to remember that the goal of writing the book is to build your brand and communicate with your market.
7. Promotion
It is not important to be a massive seller of your book. But, it is more important that you are perceived as an authority by authoring a book. If you use your book correctly, you will not need to sell millions. I must admit that I used to think that becoming a Very Influential Personality in my industry is about selling millions of copies of book but thankfully, I later realised that authoring has more benefits that selling a book. Strategically giving out books helped me to make millions in a space of a few months than I have made in 8 years of focusing on selling books. Please remember that the goal is to become a Very Influential Personality in your industry under 12 months and not to spend all your energy selling books. The purpose of the book is to promote you; your purpose is not to promote the book.
That said, to make your target audience gain interest in the book, it is important to have a captivating book description. You can’t afford to put all the work into creating a valuable book and write a weak description that cannot persuade the target reader to pick up the book. While you have Your Hook, it is equally important to create a Hook for Your Book. While having a captivating book description is helpful, having an outstanding biography will further attract your tribe to you. Your bio is an opportunity for you to become liked, known and trusted by your tribe as an authority they should follow. Your biography should answer the question of why someone should listen to you or why you are the expert on the topic or why you are so passionate about the subject matter.
With little budget, a lot of promotional activities can be done via your own social media platform. Depending on a number of factors, you can decide to reach a wider audience with more budget. It is important that you remember, the purpose of the book is to promote you; your purpose is not to promote the book.
Things To Think About
A. Who will be your Recording buddy?
B. Who will be your Ghostwriter?
C. Who will be your Copyeditor?
D. Who will be your Copywriter?
E. Who will be your Graphic artiste?
F. Who will work with you for Promotion?
To become a Very Influential Personality (VIP), it is important that you become liked, known and trusted on a subject matter. Publishing a book is an easy way to do this. When you publish a book, you can transmit your value to your tribe. The following 7 steps will lead you to gaining the VIP status in your industry through authoring a book.
1. Positioning
It's important to start your book writing process with an end goal in mind. What will success look like for you? What question do you want to answer for the reader?
In most instances, the key to success is finding an uncrowded niche. Two of the top reasons I find that authors fail to meet their goals is not having the right goal in mind and not identifying a category where their book could fit in and stand out. With my book Get MAD, I fit into the youth empowerment segment but my niche was not jut feel good self help, it was personal responsibility. With my book Who says It’s A Man’s World, I still fit into youth empowerment segment but with a focus on one gender - women - still taking them on a journey of personal responsibility. All my training and coaching fits into the personal responsibility niche.
2. Planning
Plan your content. I believe writing a book is similar to giving a speech. I also teach my students that a good speech has an attention captivating introduction, an insightful body and a memorable conclusion. Just as it is easier to engage your listeners and persuade them to take action if you know the result you want to achieve in the end, same goes for your readers. To start this, plan your outline as follows:
A. Your Title
B. Your Hook
C. Your (core thoughts broken into) Chapters
D. Your Conclusion
3. Pouring
It is time to make your ideas flow out rapidly in a steady stream. Ensure you express your thoughts and feelings in an unrestrained way. It is important to use your goal and outline as your guide. You don’t have to worry about coherence; just say whatever comes to mind. Use the voice recorder on your phone or any other audio recording device to start recording your thoughts. Instead of spending a long time to type, you can reduce your turnaround time for producing the book by speaking to your phone and recording it. Along the line, if you are invited to facilitate a session virtually or physically, you can also record and add it to your rough draft. Also, you can engage a friend, a relative or a colleague to serve as your Interview Buddie. Your Interview Buddie will ask you questions on the specific topic you want to write about. While this exercise is for the book, it will also get you comfortable with granting interviews. Media interviews come along as a natural consequence of being a Very Influential Personality.
4. Personalising
To a large extent, your book is your personality in print. Why? Because you are using the book to Transmit Your Value. The book contains your opinion, your views, your findings, your bias and your experiences. After pouring your thoughts into a recording device, you can have it transcribed by a professional ghostwriter into a first draft. The ghostwriter can determine a lot about the quality and output of your book from which many people you may never meet, will develop their opinion about you. Based on this, you want to vet the style and competence of your ghostwriter by requesting to see samples of the work they have done. When I use ghostwriters, I work with 2 or 3 different ghostwriters to ensure the style and quality conforms to my style and personality. I will highly recommend that you develop a good relationship with your ghostwriter so he or she can ensure your book sounds like you.
5. Perfecting
Although you now have a first draft, but it is not yet time to publish. You want to ensure that the book has all the required and desirable elements, qualities and characteristics. This is not about being a perfectionist; you want your book to be as good as it is possible to be. I am sure you have read books with a lot of avoidable errors. As an author, it is difficult to see an error when you are in the frame. It is tough to spot your own mistakes, oversights and unnecessary exaggeration. If the first draft needs more work, send it back to the ghostwriter. In perfecting the book, you will also need a copy editor. When the ghostwriter completes the job, a copyeditor needs to look at the draft to ensure every punctuation is in the correct place, ensure grammar, spelling, phrases and examples enhance the quality of your book. You don’t want anyone to criticise the quality of your book.
After copyediting the book, you will require the services of a graphic designer to work on the interior layout and design the book into a format that will be acceptable for publishing. Finally, you will need to get an attention grabbing book cover. You want the graphic designer to provide a cover that is visually appealing by focusing on two main elements: book title and artwork. The title should let people know what they will get from the book. Even if you plan to do every other thing yourself, it is important you engage the services of a skilful graphics designer for the interior layout and cover design.
6. Publishing
About a decade plus ago, getting a publishing deal was critical to becoming an author. Today, there are numerous publishing outfits who can print your book in small quantity and very good quality. You can choose to print just 50 copies of your book at a time. Today, to be published by a big name publisher has some good benefits but you may need to be a Professor, a Global CEO or a Global Sportsperson to gain the attention of these big names. However, many Very Influential Personalities are choosing to self publish so that they can make more form books when they sell or give them away at a cheap price. After publishing, you can always repurpose the content of your book into bite size series of published articles, handouts and blogs to further transmit your value to your tribe. This can be like the proverbial chicken and the egg question of which comes first? This is because you can also begin the book writing process by publishing your thoughts as articles, handouts and blogs. It is important to remember that the goal of writing the book is to build your brand and communicate with your market.
7. Promotion
It is not important to be a massive seller of your book. But, it is more important that you are perceived as an authority by authoring a book. If you use your book correctly, you will not need to sell millions. I must admit that I used to think that becoming a Very Influential Personality in my industry is about selling millions of copies of book but thankfully, I later realised that authoring has more benefits that selling a book. Strategically giving out books helped me to make millions in a space of a few months than I have made in 8 years of focusing on selling books. Please remember that the goal is to become a Very Influential Personality in your industry under 12 months and not to spend all your energy selling books. The purpose of the book is to promote you; your purpose is not to promote the book.
That said, to make your target audience gain interest in the book, it is important to have a captivating book description. You can’t afford to put all the work into creating a valuable book and write a weak description that cannot persuade the target reader to pick up the book. While you have Your Hook, it is equally important to create a Hook for Your Book. While having a captivating book description is helpful, having an outstanding biography will further attract your tribe to you. Your bio is an opportunity for you to become liked, known and trusted by your tribe as an authority they should follow. Your biography should answer the question of why someone should listen to you or why you are the expert on the topic or why you are so passionate about the subject matter.
With little budget, a lot of promotional activities can be done via your own social media platform. Depending on a number of factors, you can decide to reach a wider audience with more budget. It is important that you remember, the purpose of the book is to promote you; your purpose is not to promote the book.
Things To Think About
A. Who will be your Recording buddy?
B. Who will be your Ghostwriter?
C. Who will be your Copyeditor?
D. Who will be your Copywriter?
E. Who will be your Graphic artiste?
F. Who will work with you for Promotion?
