The Perfect Is the Enemy of the First Draft
Many writing coaches recommend writing the first draft of a blog post, chapter, or scene as quickly as possible without stopping to rewrite or edit. The idea is once you’ve got that first draft down, however imperfect, you’ll have broken through your writer’s block and procrastination, and accelerated the entire writing process. That’s not how I do it. I rewrite each sentence several times before moving on to the next. I pause to fact check, to look in the thesaurus for the exact right word, to get more coffee, to watch of few minutes of “Better Call Saul”…
Though I knew it would be difficult for me, I decided to try the technique to create the first draft of this article. I started my timer and set about getting four hundred words down in the shortest time possible, without rewriting or editing. My subject: The First Draft. It took me thirteen minutes! But, the result was horrifying! Here’s a sample:
I’ve been reading a lot on how to make progress on your writing, rather how to get your writing done without procrastination. The key recommendations, a theme, if you will, in my reading is that you should spend a fair amount of time researching what you are going to write about, and then think about your topic, but when the time comes to write, just start writing as rapidly as you can, with a word count goal per minute. Or just a word count goal. I’m sure that that is wrong. This is a painful exercise. I am so used to rewriting every sentence, immediately after I have written it as well as checking the punctuation and spelling and correcting it immediately after I’ve written it. Slow down, Sam, you are making mistakes. In any case, the process is research/think, write rapidly, self-edit, self-edit again, self-edit again, then send it to a professional editor. What did Abraham Lincoln say: “I’d spend 90% of the time sharpening the saw, and 10% cutting down the tree.”
Embarrassing, huh? In spite of my horror and embarrassment, I think the experiment was a success. The technique did get me to a finished article in much less time and with much less stress than usual. I’ll be using this technique from now on. Next time I’ll try for twelve minutes.
Price your book to make a profit
There’s plenty of discussion about the retail pricing of independently published books, most of it centered on self-publishing book companies setting list prices too high. I get frustrated when industry experts write that these higher prices are a problem, without offering any evidence that this is the case. In the absence of price sensitivity studies, or of testing book sales at different price points, the “experts” are simply offering a guess based on their experience. I suspect that their experience comes from pricing books for the brick-and-mortar bookstore market. What a company like Barnes & Noble suggests for list prices for their stores isn’t necessarily right for a self-published books that will primarily be sold through online bookstores.
The online book sales market is, in fact, such a new market that it is unclear what pricing strategies are most advantageous to book sales.
In the absence of hard data, how should you price a book? You should price a book for profitability.
For example, if you opened up a specialty clothing boutique next to a Wal-Mart, you wouldn’t try to price your clothes at prices competitive to the box store. You’d go out of business. You don’t have the buying clout of the big boys, so you have to compete in some other way in order to maintain your profitability. You would offer better, more interesting garments at a markup that allowed you to make money!
Independent authors should do the same. Your book is a “boutique” item. It’s a loser’s game for the independent author to try and compete on price with major publishing houses selling through the chains. Even the major publishing houses and the bookstore chains are having trouble making a profit with their current pricing models. You have a specialty product, so price your book for profitability.
Take, for example, one of Wheatmark’s titles, How to Keep Jellyfish in Aquariums by Chad Widmer. Widmer’s book, although written in a way that will engage just about anyone, is not really an “anyone” kind of book. It is a specific book aimed at a specific group of people interested in a specific topic. A niche book does not need to use an unprofitable price to entice buyers. What a niche book needs to be is a quality book that is chock full of information that appeals to these highly motivated buyers (people who are interested in raising jellyfish at home).
Online channels require more intensive and personal marketing. It is harder to wave your book in front of someone, but with quality time spent on them, online marketing campaigns can be hugely successful.
My advice: don’t sell your book short. Price it based on what makes you a decent profit, and then market like crazy directly to your target market. You can always lower the price later if sales don’t materialize. However, I suspect if you’ve implemented a strong marketing campaign and aimed it at the right motivated buyers, lowering the price will not be necessary. Remember, every time you lower the price of your book, you guarantee that you will make less money on each book, but you don’t guarantee more book sales. However, every time you raise the price of your book, you guarantee that you will make more money on each book, but you don’t necessarily get fewer book sales.
Consider Mel Robin, author of A Handbook for Yogasana Teachers. He priced his book just under $100.00 and has sold over 2,000 copies to date! His first book from several years before, A Physiological Handbook for Teachers of Yogasana, has now sold close to 6,000 copies at $49.95!
Are you leaving money on the table by charging the lowest possible price for your book?
In praise of editing
Years ago I was reading the bestselling A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson (on which the 2015 motion picture of the same name, starring Robert Redford and Nick Nolte, is based) and found a typo on one of the first pages. The word the was spelled “th”. How could this be? The book was published by Random House, one of the Big Five! How had all of their copyeditors and proofreaders, not to mention spell checkers, missed it? How had the hundreds of advance copy readers failed to report it?
I told one of the editors here at Wheatmark about my discovery. This editor happened to be a voracious reader. She started circling all the misspellings, typos, or instances of bad grammar that she found in any major publisher’s book she read, and flagging the offending pages with Post-It notes. Invariably she’d have twenty or more notes stuck in a book by the time she finished reading it. She’d then show me each book as further proof of how rare, if not impossible, perfection in editing is. She made her point.
Mathematically, of course, it’s obvious. When you put ten, twenty, or thirty thousand words together, all of which have to relate to one another in precise ways, correctly following hundreds of rules of grammar and syntax, the opportunities for error are astronomical. And that’s before taking into account all the tweaking that authors and editors do, and a host of other higher level editing changes.
I continued reading A Walk in the Woods, now actively looking to find more errors. I don’t remember finding any, though there must have been some. I was impressed. My shock at finding the one typo was replaced by respect for what a good editorial process can accomplish. I’ve never lost that respect. Now every time I read a well-edited book, I’m a bit in awe.
The editorial process major publishers like Random House use to achieve editorial excellence usually involves all these types of professional editing: manuscript evaluation, developmental editing, copyediting, and proofreading. While editorial needs vary from book to book, there’s no substitute for a good editorial process.
By the way, the “The” missing an “e” was probably an error introduced during layout. That’s how it could have been missed by so many readers. It should have been caught during proofreading (the post-layout edit), but even proofreaders aren’t perfect. Don’t skip the proofreading!
The one-step method to make your website work
What’s the most efficient, as well as most effective, way to get from your couch to the fridge? Is it a shortcut such as taking a giant leap? Or is it taking a number of comfortable steps?
Walking, which is one step—and always and only one step—at a time, has been the winning transportation tactic employed by people since the dawn of time. Gliding and flying aren’t possible in a living room setting while jumping and leaping are just too energy consuming to make it worthwhile. If you kept exerting the amount of energy needed for jumping, you’d end up having to make more frequent trips to the fridge than otherwise needed. So “one step at a time” is the best way to get from your couch to the fridge.
What does this have to do with book marketing?
We take the one-step method granted when it comes to biped mobility, but we forget about it when it comes to all other aspects of life. And that’s simply because we don’t practice those other activities nearly as much as we do walking. We’ve perfected walking, now let’s perfect marketing, too!
Let’s consider your website. If I asked you what the most important goal of your website was, would you say it was to make a sale? That is, to sell copies of your book or to get you hired as a consultant?
If you said yes, you may be confusing your goals with those of your website. The purpose of each step in a journey is to connect you with the next step. You see, your website is but a single step in your marketing funnel. Expecting your website to make a sale is akin to asking every new person you meet, “Will you buy my book?” It’s like trying to jump from your couch to the fridge. It’s simply too expensive, uneconomical, and it doesn’t work.
When you meet a new person, first you say hello—step one. Then you engage in a conversation—step two, and so on. You may find out that one person doesn’t read books at all, while another is actually looking for the solution your book offers. Your next step in the dialog is very different for these two people: you only ask the second person for the sale.
Likewise, your website’s goal should be to start a conversation with your visitors, and not simply to make a sale on the first visit.
Once a visitor arrives on your home page, he will have taken several steps to get there. What is the next step he should take? Call a number? Book an appointment? Sign up for a free gift or newsletter? Regardless of what it is, focus on this one step only and get rid of any other diversions or “bells and whistles” from your website. Do you want your visitor to fill out a form? Then make sure that one step is prominently featured and remove anything else that would distract her from filling out the form.
Once your prospect has taken action and filled out the form, your website is done! Now it’s your personal follow-up (whether email or phone) that will take her to the next step after that: either additional follow-up or the sale itself.
Don’t overwhelm your website visitor with multiple options to choose from; find the one purpose for your website in a multi-step marketing funnel and then let him complete that step on your site.
Ten Steps to a Finished Book
At Wheatmark we’ve worked with thousands of authors, and based on this experience I am proposing this ten-step process for writing your next nonfiction book. This process incorporates blogging in advance of your book’s release, so that you get a head start on building an audience for your book.
1. Make a chapter outline of your book. All you need is enough detail to describe what you are promising to give the reader in each chapter.
2. Get input on your outline from a trusted reader or editor. This should be someone who is a reader of the type of nonfiction book you are writing. Revise the chapter outline based on their input. Repeat as needed.
3. Now that you have a finalized chapter outline, write each chapter as a blog post, immediately posting each chapter on your blog as you finish it. Point all of your followers on social media to each new blog post. Save any comments or feedback you get. End every post with a note stating that you’re coming out with a book on the subject you’re blogging about.
4. Once you’ve completed all the chapters as blog posts, assemble them into a manuscript. Also, assemble all the comments and feedback you received. Read through the entire manuscript noting any changes you would like to make. Revise or rewrite the manuscript. Repeat as needed.
5. Get an editorial review from a professional editor. (At Wheatmark we call this a Reader Report.) This should be a top level standalone report which evaluates the big issues like the suitability of your manuscript to your target market, and what level of editing your manuscript requires.
6. If the editorial report recommends a developmental edit, hire a professional editor. Rewrite the manuscript based on the developmental edit. Repeat as needed.
7. Give your manuscript to your writers’ group, or a few trusted readers. These should be avid readers of the genre of book you are writing. Revise or rewrite the manuscript based on your readers’ inputs. Repeat as needed.
8. Get your book copyedited by a professional. Make sure they use the “track changes” feature in your word processing program, so that you can easily go through what the copyeditor sends you and easily accept or reject changes. Repeat as needed.
9. Get your book interior designed by a professional book designer who understands your target market.
10. Have a professional proofreader make corrections directly in the final designed book interior.
That’s it. Follow this process and you will insure that your book is the best it can be while building demand for it once it is released. What’s your writing process? Leave a comment!
The Egg That Hatched The Martian
By now many of you have seen the popular science fiction movie released in October, The Martian, starring Matt Damon. I’m sure that many of you have also read the bestselling book of the same name by Andy Weir on which the movie is based. But, I suspect, that many of you don’t know the story of Weir’s journey from aspiring author to publishing phenom.
Weir’s lifelong ambition was to become a published working science fiction author. In the late 1990s and early 2000s he wrote a couple of sci-fi novels and submitted them to multiple agents and publishers. He even took a couple of years off from working as a computer programmer to focus exclusively on his writing career. Unfortunately, he received rejection after rejection from both agents and publishing houses.
Weir went back to work as a programmer, but, undeterred, continued writing, posting his writing on his own blog at http://www.Galactanet.com.
His first success came when he posted the short story “The Egg” on the blog. The story went viral and Weir and his blog acquired a few thousand fans. (“The Egg” is well worth checking out, as are its several YouTube video adaptations.)
In 2009 Weir started posting chapters of his latest novel, The Martian, one at a time, on his blog. A few thousand readers became tens of thousands.
In 2012, at the urging of his fans he released the entire book as a Kindle ebook on Amazon for $0.99. In just a few months it shot to #1 on Amazon’s sci-fi list. Within the space of a few weeks in 2014 Weir was contacted by an agent, was offered book deal with Random House, sold the book and movie rights, and quit his day job to write full time.
Weir’s journey is, of course, yet another amazing testament to how fundamentally self-publishing has revolutionized the entire business of publishing, but it also contains a compelling lesson in marketing for all writers: Put your writing online and do so frequently.
Without Weir’s persistence in posting a variety of his writings online consistently over time “The Egg” might never have gone viral. Without “The Egg” going viral there might never have been enough readers of the first chapters of The Martian to push it to the next level of success.
Your next online article, blog post, blog comment, short story, vignette, recipe, or first chapter might be the egg which hatches your publishing success!
Procrastination
“Procrastination.” In many circles, it’s a dirty word.
“Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can accomplish today,” it’s said.
All of us are guilty of it, though… at least a little bit, from time to time.
For many of us, one of the activities we’re most likely to procrastinate over is also one of the most important: writing.
You see, all of us can benefit from writing regularly, whether it’s for our business goals, to tell a story that needs to be told, or simply to pass on family history to the next generation.
But regardless of subject, it can be hard to get motivated and start, continue, or finish a project—particularly a lengthy one, like a full-length book.
There’s something about staring at that empty page…
Here’s a quick tip for you if you’re stuck on a book project right now and can’t seem to make any progress.
It’s an old trick I learned from my screenwriting days: start work on another project.
That’s right: starting writing a second book!
What you’ll find is that the second project gives you a much-needed break from the first.
Plus, you’ll maintain your writing momentum, which is so crucial so that you don’t lose days, weeks, or even months waiting for inspiration.
If you’re stuck on a particularly difficult project and could use some more solutions like this one, I invite you to join me for a special presentation tomorrow: “Getting It Done: How to Get Your Book Written the Right Way… Once & for All!”
We’ve already got a bunch of folks registered for it, but there are still a few spots left.
To join us live on the call, just click on this link.
Talk to you then,
Grael
Grael Norton
Wheatmark, Inc.
PS: Don’t wait; click on this link now!
How big is your audience?
A few years ago I had a weekend evening to myself, and decided to go to a play. I found a performance of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘night Mother by Marsha Norman showing at the Tucson Temple of Music and Art.
I arrived very early, so I wasn’t surprised that there was only one other person in the audience, but was surprised when no one else showed up. The play started, and I thought to myself: “Now I am stuck here, even if the performance is terrible. I’m 50% of the audience. I can’t just stand up and walk out.” That turned out not to be a problem. The performance was completely engrossing.
‘night Mother is a two-hour play with only two actors. I can’t even begin to imagine what it took for the actors to sustain the emotional intensity that they exhibited for those two hours, let alone what it took to memorize, rehearse, and perfect all those lines.
After the play the other audience member approached me and told me that she was the mother of one of the actors. The cast and crew soon joined us. They surrounded me, anxious to find out what I thought. I told them how impressed and amazed I was, and thanked them for the experience.
All that effort just for two of us! But, maybe all they needed was an audience of two, and were simply happy to give a near-perfect performance. Nothing wrong with that. Donald Trump often reminds us that he only needs an audience of one for his fundraising efforts, himself.
If you, on the other hand, want a larger audience for your book, you’ll need to do more than just publish it and hope that someone shows up. You’ll need an audience-building system, preferably in place well before your book is published.
Wheatmark client Jess Kapp has just such an audience-building system in place for her yet-to-be-published memoir of her field adventures in Tibet, Girl Going Om. She’s got an entertaining, inspirational, and sometimes raw blog at jesskapp.com, to which she posts regularly. Jess blogs about her adventures as a geologist, college instructor, and mother, encouraging women to move beyond their comfort zones as she has. Her blog automatically syndicates all her posts to Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Facebook. She now has over 400 Twitter followers, over 1,900 Google+ views, and over 200 Facebook likes. This author platform has garnered her a gig as a blog contributor to The Huffington Post, and a chapter in the recently published Martinis & Motherhood: Tales of Wonder, Woe & WTF?! When Girl Going Om is released, Jess will have plenty of buyers. For that matter, she could probably dramatize the book and pack the house at the Tucson Temple of Music and Art. If that happens, please save me a seat!
Writer’s Block
Hypergraphia is a behavioral disorder I sometimes wish to be stricken with, if only temporarily. People with hypergraphia have an intense and uncontrollable desire to write, and usually churn out page after page, hour upon hour, day after day. Sometimes what they write is chaotic and disorganized, but other times they write The Brothers Karamazov or Alice in Wonderland. (Both Dostoevsky and Carroll are thought to have had hypergraphia.)
I, unfortunately, most often suffer from the opposite condition, writer’s block, sometimes called hypographia. We all know what a serious condition that can be! If left untreated it can lead to the loss of followers, a reduction in the quality and quantity of likes, being an unpublished writer, reduced earnings, and generalized anonymity. Fortunately, there is a lot of help out there. Just type “writer’s block” into your search engine and you will see what I mean. There are hundreds of X-ways-to-overcome-writer’s-block articles and posts. Some suggestions (consolidated and summarized) that I’ve found helpful are:
- Lower your standards. Just put pen to paper without worrying about how good your writing is or isn’t. You can revise and perfect it later. In other words, act as if you actually have hypergraphia. Who knows, maybe you’ll write the next Brothers Karamazov in a couple of hours flat?
- Stop writing and do something else for a bit. I find it particularly helpful to spend such breaks reading something by someone else.
- Have scheduled writing times and a completely distraction-free writing environment.
Here are some suggestions that seem promising, but I have yet to try:
- Use a computer program specifically designed to help with writer’s block. Yes, there are apps for that.
- Join a writers’ group. Good writers’ groups keep their members motivated and accountable, and help them when they get stuck. Some groups have quiet writing times during each meeting, which I think would help me. Other groups are just for people with writer’s block. Meetup.com lists 601 writer’s block meet-ups worldwide.
- Find a writing partner or co-author. Having a writing partner can demand even greater accountability, and can be an even greater motivator.
- Hire a ghostwriter. This is the make-something-happen-now take-no-prisoners nuclear option, and probably the best option if you need to get that book out, or that stream of articles and posts flowing, fast.
What do you do when you get writer’s block? Let me know in the comments.
Steps to Publishing a Book: The Timeline
For first-time authors, the book publishing process can be a daunting one. Writing and publishing a book is not just a creative endeavor, it’s a job. As with any new job, there’s a learning curve. So to help you over the hump, the following is a step-by-step approach to the book publishing timeline:
Step One
You may be surprised to learn that the first step is not to write your book. We at Wheatmark encourage authors, even before they fire up their computer and crack their knuckles, to think seriously about who they believe is going to buy and read their book.
We sometimes hear, “This is a book anyone would want to read.” This is false. The best way to market your book commercially is to figure out your niche of readers first. There’s often an obvious answer for nonfiction books. For example, a book about succeeding in sales is likely to appeal to business people involved in sales. The most obvious readers are going to be managers looking for new training skill sets or sales people looking to hone their techniques to better serve their clients and their organizations.
With fiction books, the audience may be harder to figure out. But it isn’t just who may like to read your book. It may be who will talk about and buy your book. For example, if you’ve written a horror fiction novel, the obvious target market is people who like that genre. However, maybe your main character is a spooky cat vampire. So now you can tailor your marketing down even further to people who like cats or vampires and horror fiction.
If you need help figuring out who your target audience is, consider joining the Authors Academy and watching “The 3 Pillars of Marketing Success” in the 4-part presentation series “Secrets of Highly Paid, Highly Successful Authors.” It’s an invaluable guide to helping authors understand the audience for their books.
This is also the time to start developing your book marketing plan. For more help with developing your marketing plan, check out “How to Create a Strategic Marketing Plan for Your Book,” also inside the Authors Academy members-only site.
Step Two
Now you write the book. This step can be incredibly challenging. It’s one thing to have an idea, another to know who you want to sell it to, but to finish the project all the way to “The End” can be very hard. Many writer websites recommend setting page or time goals to help you stay on track. We also provide several articles on writing on our blog.
One way to help you structure your book is to create an outline first. Then fill in those outlined blocks. That way, when you get stuck in one section, you can write in another predetermined section. Sometimes the later chapters will inform the early chapters!
Step Three
Edit, edit, edit your book! For many authors, this is the part that breaks their will to go on. Wheatmark offers several editing services, including developmental editing, to help you through this stage. Many authors feel comfortable figuring out where their book needs work, but for others, a developmental edit can help show them places to elaborate or to cut. We recommend that all manuscripts go through a professional copyedit at the very minimum. The investment will be worth it.
Step Four
If you’re going to try to publish your book through a “traditional” (rights-licensing) publisher, you’ll likely need a literary agent. Most publishing houses have submission mandates that you must adhere to. Before sending out your manuscript, make sure you follow the publishing house’s guidelines. On the same note, most literary agents require submissions be done in a certain way. By not following guidelines, you damage your chances at finding representation.
If you’re considering different methods or companies for publishing your book, don’t make any major decisions until your read our free special report, The Author’s Guide to Choosing a Publishing Service. You’ll be very glad you did!
Step Five
If you decide to work with a publishing service to publish your book, which is what most first-time authors will elect to do (and for most authors, this is the correct approach to take—see “The Author’s Guide to Choosing a Publishing Service” at the link above for more detail on why), various things will happen next. Ideally, you’ll be discussing your goals, interior layout ideas, and cover design concepts with your publishing service. Depending on the type of book, the book layout and cover design process will then take a few weeks to a few months.
Step Six
After the layout and design phase, most companies provide their author clients with an electronic file of the book block to review. This is a very important step because it’s your opportunity to go through the book with a fine-toothed comb one last time. Even if your book has been copyedited, going through the book line-by-line is essential to making sure that every typo has been caught, every sentence is properly punctuated, and that the book is exactly the way you want it to be. Often, this author review period will go on for quite some time: it takes as long as it takes.
Make sure that you’ve set aside plenty of time in your marketing calendar for this stage so that you’ll be able to receive your finished books in time for any scheduled marketing events such as book signings!
Step Seven
Market your book. Based on the work you did in Step One, ideally you should already have a very good idea of how and to whom you plan to market your book. Hopefully you’ve been generating buzz for your project throughout the publishing process and can now really hit the gas and get your marketing plan kicked into high gear. Of course, even if you’ve hired someone to help you, such as a publicist, they’ll still want you to do some work on marketing your book as well!
If you’re looking for a team of publishing professionals to help take the pain out of the publishing for you, click here to tell us about your project.