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Setting Up a Book Launch

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Over the last month, I’ve been privileged to be a part of Michael Hyatt’s launch team for his new book, Platform. Through this experience, I have seen the need to plan way ahead when writing a book. If you are going the traditional publishing route, it’s probably a good idea to start at least a year ahead, to give you time to put book proposals out and see if there is any interest in your title.

This is one area that self publishers have an advantage. They can move ahead with the process much faster since they don’t have to shop proposals, wait for approval, and hope that something comes through.

However, in our fast paced world, how do you know what things are going to be like in six months, much less a year? It’s tough.

I’m working on a new fiction book and I decided to plan out the complete project from beginning to end to give my self a timetable for production. The first thing I did, was to ask myself what would be the best time to launch a new book. In my genre of personal development web traffic explodes on January 1st and then tapers off until April where it stays relatively flat for the rest of the year. So it seems like a safe bet to launch in December or January.

Next, I looked at my experiences with my previous fiction book, The Path of Consequence. The basic writing of the book took about three months, writing two hours per day. Working with an editor took three months of back and forth corrections while the self publishing part took an additional three for formatting, beta reading, and proof completion. The launch took three months to get the web site up, the word out, and everything up and running.

Overall about one year from start to finish.

Now that I have gone through the process once, I’m sure I can streamline many of the facets to put everything together much faster.

So I looked at my book title, the content, my desired audience and came up with a date.

This is where the problem comes in. To build interest in a book, the marketing and platform building need to start about six months prior to launch. In addition to the book, additional products and resources need to be in place to drive sales. I’ll also need to build a tribe of interested subscribers to be on hand for the product reveal.

Unfortunately, I hate trying to plan things that far in advance.

However, I decided to give it a go.

I put together a preliminary poster with an important date…

The end of the world (Mayan Calendar)

This is what it looks like..

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It’s actually fun to put something together…

But the pressing question is…

Would you read it?

Let me know in the comments below…

What I Learned From The Author 101 Conference

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I had the pleasure of attending the Author 101 Conference this last weekend, put on by Rick Frishman and his team. I’ve been to a lot of speaking events, but I can honestly say, I’ve never seen one with so many good speakers and such a high energy level. Rick did a magnificent job of coordinating the event, held over three days, at the Westin hotel next to the Los Angeles Airport (LAX).

While the event had over 20 speakers and a plethora of products, services, and vendors, I’d like to share with you three take-a-ways that I received from the conference.

1. You can become an expert in your field. This was the main premise of the conference. In today’s web connected economy, it has never been easier to find answers to your problems and locate proficient and profession people in a given field. Through the conference, it became clear that being an expert could take many forms. One of the most interesting was speaker Alex Carroll, who wrote a book about beating traffic tickets. While the self published book languished at first, it really took off when Alex started promoting it on Radio.

Think about this for a minute. Most of us think that becoming an expert means years of schooling and prominent letters behind our names. But what I found at the conference was that offering solutions to common problems was the real trick. In this case, we have all had traffic tickets, whether deserved or not. Wouldn’t a book on the subject be helpful? With tickets costing hundreds of dollars, an inexpensive book on fighting them might really be helpful. With thousands of books sold and appearances on hundreds of radio shows, Alex obviously found a great niche.

Here are a few questions to ponder…

  • What problem are you good at solving?
  • What do you know how to do that no one else does?
  • What new way of doing something have you discovered?
  • Once you have that figured out you need to …

2. Write a Book. Most of the attendees at the conference have either written a book or are in the process. What became clear quickly was that it was beneficial to write a book for credibility, but not to make money. As speaker Craig Duswalt put it, a book is an expensive business card.

In my journey as an author, I’ve certainly found this to be true. The conference brought up some startling statistics…

  • Over 300,000 books are published in the U.S. each year (Excluding self published titles)
  • The average self published book will sell under 200 copies
  • The average person will read one book after college
  • The average person will not read past the first chapter

While this news is rather disheartening, many speakers talked about using your book as a foundation of your business, to build credibility and to spread your ideas. The good news is, there are a plethora of great self publishing options to take your ideas and get them put in book format, whether you like to write or not.

The conference featured vendors that could help you at any point along the book publishing process, from formatting and printing all the way to distribution and marketing. Unlike a writer’s conference, this event was not focused on the craft of writing, but really about getting you published. If you have a book in your future, this is a great conference to attend.

3. Create a Product. Once you have found your niche and published a book, you need to create products or services that your customers can buy. While most of the products shared were “info products,” featuring E-books, CD’s, DVD’s and the like, some people offered software programs, video services, and web design.

It was interesting to see how some of the speakers had leveraged the power of marketing with the incredible vastness of the internet to build businesses quickly and profitably. When you can truly find your niche, tell the world about it, and create and share products, there is not a better business on the planet.

To sum up this post, I’d like to share an amazing gift of passion and purpose, that was created by one of the speakers at the event. It sums up what this event was really all about. Find your passion, build a business, and share your joy with the world.

Enjoy this video about heartstones.

Overall: If you are a writer or just have something unique to share with the world, this conference is for you. I would suggest that you leave your checkbook and credit cards at home, and just take in the vast amount of information offered. While there are a lot of things for sale here, you’ll need some time to process the information and make choices wisely. Once you figure out your niche, you’ll be better prepared to develop the tools to share it with the rest of us.

Question: Have you ever attended an Author 101 event?

Powerful eBook Publishing Options

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The great thing about eBooks versus traditional paper publishing is the options that the format provides. You can publish via PDF on your blog or website. Converting your book to Kindle format allows you to reach millions through Amazon.com. Formatting for ePub opens the door to the iPad and Barnes and Noble Nook.

But wait… there’s more.

Now you can publish in an interactive textbook format on the Ipad with iBooks Author. You can write your eBook in manifesto format and submit it for review at ChangeThis.com. When you are done you can take your electronic document, reformat it, and self publish it in printed form through a publish-on-demand company.

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While all of these publishing options are great, you’ll soon find that the formatting differences will drive you absolutely nuts. Each format has it’s idiosyncrasies and numerous options. You can literally spend days fine tuning your document for one particular application only to find that it completely changes when viewed on a different device. Your book will look completely different on the small screen of a cell phone, than it does on the larger screen of an iPad or other tablet.

I spent the last month formatting my printed book, The Path of Consequence, for Kindle, iPad and Nook. It seemed easy at first, but as I viewed my document in the different formats I was horrified at the results. Through trial and error I found some solutions and came to some conclusions. Here are the three common formats and some workarounds.

Ebook Publishing Options

1. PDF format. If you have a blog or website and want to format your book for your readers, saving it in PDF format is a good start. You can save it in a landscape format for screen reading, or a portrait format for cell phones and printing. If you want to create a good looking landscape document for the screen, try creating your PDF document in Powerpoint or Keynote. For portrait use, MS Word is a good option. Later versions of Word allow you to save in PDF format right from the program. To give you an idea of how this format looks, here are three creative examples.

Landscape Mode: The Tower by Chris Guillebeau

Portrait Mode: Lycopolis by Ali Luke

Keynote Format: Michael Hyatt has a tutorial on his blog about how he created his Life Plan eBook in seven steps. You’ll find some great tips here if you will be using Keynote (on the Mac) for your creation software.

2. Kindle Format: If you want to make your book available for Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, you’ll need to save it in their MOBI proprietary format. This is best done using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing service. You’ll need an Amazon account to get started. Once you sign in to their service, you’ll want to look at their simplified formatting guide. Amazon recommends that you save your document in .doc format. This is the older Microsoft Word format. Both MS Word and Apple Pages software will save in this format.

What I found when formatting for the Kindle was to keep my document simple. Kindle automatically indents the first line of each paragraph by default. If you use Word, try uploading your basic document and see how it looks and make changes from there. After the end of each chapter, add a page break to keep your chapters from running together.

Publishing on the Kindle was relatively easy using MS Word. You’ll need to experiment and tweak your document to get it the way you want it. For advanced users you can download their full formatting guide, but this is overkill for most people.

3. ePub Format: If you want to publish for the iPad or Barnes and Noble’s Nook, you’ll need to save your document in ePub format. If you have a Mac and Apple’s Pages program you can save in this format natively. Unfortunately, to get your ebook listed on the iPad you’ll need to go through an intermediary company. For most people this will be Smashwords.

To save you hours of time and frustration, sign up for a free Smashwords account and then look at their free style guide. Smashwords will save your book in multiple formats using their meatgrinder conversion software. Their formatting guide is very helpful and offers once very powerful suggestion… nuke your document. I spent almost two days trying to get my pre formatted book to go through their conversion software. I finally had to use the nuclear option. I took my document, made a copy, and opened it in notepad on my PC. This removed all extraneous formatting. Once I saved it in notepad, I reopened it in Word and added chapter headings and indentation. Once I did this, the conversion worked like a charm. Within a week, my eBook appeared in the iBooks store and on Barnes and Nobles site.

Overall: eBook publishing can be a challenge. It requires patience and a lot of trail and error. The current ePub and Kindle formats are in their early stages and the published output is rather simple to work with multiple devices. It lacks the polish of traditional books. If you are a perfectionist, this may drive you nuts.

If you are in a hurry to get published, there are many professionals that can help. Amazon has a list of conversion services that may help. If you are a blogger or small business professional and want to get an eBook out to your readers or customers, I would suggest that you pick up Ali Luke’s easy to follow guide, Irresistible eBooks. This easy to follow book includes two MS Word templates that will get you up to speed quickly. I used her guide and templates to create my first book. Her guide is straightforward and will help you focus and get your book out in no time at all.

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Question: Which ebook publishing options have you used before?

Bullet Points or Gladwell Style?

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I’ve been working with a book editor for the last few weeks to put together an outline and proposal for a new book based on this blog. At the suggestion of Michael Hyatt, I decided to focus on one specific area, and research the material extensively. This has been a fun endeavor and the outline is taking shape. Yesterday I wrote a preface page which is a basic synopsis of the book. This was more difficult than I first thought. I used Michael’s great book proposal program as a guide and expanded upon the basic outline.

To get some ideas, I looked at the preface pages and table of contents of a half dozen popular personal development titles. Most were concise and gave the reader a good idea what the book was about.

I only had one problem.

None of them really drew me in.

Most were a collection of facts, figures, and basic a,b,c, stories. They appealed to my left brain but their was no emotional tie. There were lots of promises, but no color or emotion.

In a point of contrast, none of these authors was a Malcolm Gladwell.

I wanted a good story, with lots of description, and human emotion. Instead I got three bullet points promising that I could get to point C only after I went past A and B. I like facts, but they don’t always make for a compelling read. Contrast that with a Malcolm Gladwell book. He will take some little known fact or piece of data and weave it into a masterpiece of story interspersed with color, sounds, life, and emotion.

To give you an example of the difference I’ll give you a small innocuous fact that will make up part of an early chapter of the book. The chapter will be about Skills; How we learn new things. The fact is that we can learn many new things by listening to audio books. The innocuous fact is that kinesthetic people (people who learn with their hands or by doing) often learn better if they listen to audio books while driving or exercising. It’s the act of doing while listening that makes the subtle difference.

Here is the difference in print.

In a facts oriented book it would read…

You can acquire many new skills by listening to audio books. People who are kinesthetic (people who learn with their hands or by doing) may find they learn better by listening while driving, exercising, or taking notes. It’s the act of physically doing something that makes the difference.

It’s simple and to the point. Unfortunately it has low emotional impact and may easily be glossed over.

If this were a Gladwell book, Malcolm would take this simple fact, expound on it, and show you how it changed someone’s life.

It might read this way…

Jack Strike drove down the 78 freeway in Escondido California, on a hot gray Friday afternoon during the summer of 2002. Recently divorced, he was headed out of town to spend a lonely weekend, drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon, and playing the slots in Vegas. Jack was a newspaper man. Now 48, he did the local feature stories for the Escondido press. It was a two bit job with little excitement. He wrote about petty crimes, high school football games, and homecoming parades. His wife and stock fortunes, along with his glamorous day job with Epic magazine had crashed with the stock market in 2000.

Stuck in heavy traffic in his gray 98 Honda Accord, Jack listened to an audio book about writing. His friend at the paper, Bill Bingham, had lent him "Stein on Writing," and Jack was on chapter two. Bill had encouraged Jack to listen to the book. "It might get you out of your funk," he said, when he passed the CD collection along.

The air conditioner poured out cold air as Jack changed lanes repeatedly. It was just over a mile to the exit and the open road freedom of the 15 freeway. Jack twisted the steering wheel from left to right, trying to gain a lane advantage over everyone else in line. As he turned the wheel, the audio book seemed to get louder and more distinct. The words of Sol Stein seemed to penetrate his gray matter the harder he pulled on the wheel.

"If you need inspiration, look in front of you," Sol blared out from the speakers. Just that second, Jack caught that phrase and looked up. Like an inspiration from heaven or a lucky coincidence, Jack saw something that moved him to action. Two cars in front of him was a 1965 Sunbeam Tiger convertible, the kind of car Maxwell Smart used to drive. Its royal blue paint job and chrome bumpers stood out from the grey skyline, but the blonde driving it is what really attracted Jack’s gaze. It was like a scene out of a Technicolor movie. Her blond hair and red scarf were all that Jack could see but it reminded him of a scene from the movie Vertigo, where Jimmy Stewart followed the beautiful Kim Novak.

Now Jack had one mission, he needed to see who was driving that car. He turned right into the slow lane, but the traffic was slow and ponderous. He moved further back in line. As his car passed under the last bridge before the exit, he knew he only had moments to catch a glimpse of this car and driver.

Jack loved sports cars and this was a classic. He also loved blondes, having married one and now following a mysterious one. He went from the slow lane to the fast land on the three lane highway. He could now see the driver’s side of the Tiger and the side of her face in the mirror, two cars ahead. It was clear as the traffic moved ahead that she was headed towards San Diego on the 15. Jack was headed north towards Vegas.

As the Friday traffic guided itself onto the off ramps, Jack’s car slowly edged ahead. As his car came up along side the striking blue car, he took a fateful glance to the right. There she was. For a split second, like the blink of an eye, she looked straight at him. It was like time stood still. She was a gorgeous woman in her mid forties, her red painted lips contrasting a warm sun glowed tan. As this frozen view widened he could see her hands on the steering wheel, no wedding ring in sight.

Then just as quickly as it started, Jack blinked and she was gone, her car now exiting to the right. He glanced again and noticed an out of state plate with the letters NBJ 127. As his car stopped in traffic, he jotted it down.

That weekend, in a hotel in Vegas, NBJ became Nora B James, private detective. Her story became At First Glance, a novel that would go on to be a bestseller. That pitch of the wheel, that phrase from Sol, "If you need inspiration, look in front of you." made all the difference. They say that truth is stranger than fiction, but in this case maybe the truth led to fiction.

Researchers have found that listening to an audio book while driving or exercising can make it come alive. In this case, one book led to another.

While I’m no Malcolm Gladwell, I think you can see the difference. Both types of books work, but an immersive story really draws the reader in. I’m still working on the final format for my book and I would love to hear your comments.

Question: Bullet points or Gladwell style.
What is your favorite type of non-fiction book?

iPad 2 vs Kindle: Airplane Usability Test

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As I was flying back from Miami last week, I was on a very full second leg flight from Houston to San Diego. I ended up in a center seat on a 737, with two lawyers on either side. (There is probably a joke here somewhere!) The guy to the right of me had a new Kindle with a deluxe case and night light. The guy to my left was reading a paperback book and had an iPhone. I had my trusty new iPad 2 on my lap.

That’s when the comparisons started.

I started up a conversation with the guy with the Kindle. He showed me how the e-ink screen worked and showed me the pop out night light. The case was leather and was about the size of a 6×9 inch book. When I took a look at the unit, the side window of the airplane was open, and the black and white screen was easy to read. It looked like a great alternative to a standard book.

After looking at the Kindle, he asked me about my iPad 2. I showed him how the smart cover worked, and folded it back so it formed a prop for typing. I then showed him a Kindle book and an iBook. He was impressed with the bright screen and the reading layout.

The plane was then ready for takeoff so we had to close our devices. As we reached cruising altitude, the captain announced that we could turn our electronic devices back on. I pulled down the tray table in front of me and folded the smart cover back. I started on a blog post with the onscreen keyboard. The sun was really bright coming in the side window, so the young guy to my left closed the port hole window. This is when the comparison really got interesting.

I looked over at the guy with the Kindle and his screen had turned to a grey mush. It was very hard to read from where I was sitting. What looked great in the sun was now much harder on the eyes. He held the Kindle with one hand on his tray table and tried to get comfortable reading it. He then did something very interesting. He put the Kindle flat on the tray table and then leaned forward and propped his head up with his left hand on the tray table. He stayed this way for quite a while.

I finished my blog post up, and then started reading an iBook. The smart cover propped the iPad up at a great angle for reading and it worked well for using a finger swipe to turn pages. While I was comfortably back in my seat, the guy with the Kindle was scrunched forward. While he kept reading, I loaded up Angry Birds and started playing. He looked over and asked about the game. I showed him how it worked. He said that his Kindle was just for reading, so he leaned forward and started a new chapter.

After a few new levels of Angry Birds Rio, I turned the iPad over and used the smart cover in easel mode to watch a movie. I clicked in my headphone and enjoyed a stored TV show. Both of the guys beside me were watching the show for a while and then went back to their activities.

The young guy by the window pulled out his iPhone and started playing Angry Birds on it. He quipped that the game play was much better on the iPad than the phone since everything was larger. He then went back to reading his book.

As the flight started to descend, we had to turn everything off again. The guy with the book now had the advantage, and he was able to finish up a chapter on the way down.

Overall, my impression was that the iPad was the more usable and comfortable device to use on a plane. The screen was easy to read, the smart cover made it easy to type and the easel function made it easy to watch movies. Having a paper book had it’s advantages as it was usable the whole flight. The Kindle seemed great at first, but the subdued light of the plane and a flat case made for an uncomfortable reading experience.

The advantage of both the iPad and Kindle is they go through security well. Compared to a standard laptop, which requires that you remove it from it’s case, these smaller devices are much more convenient. You can easily stow them on a standard carry-on.

Bottom line... If you want to get work done on a plane with a minimum of hassle and also have a plethora of entertainment options, the iPad 2 is for you. If you want the simplicity of a book, bring along the real thing. The Kindle seems best for good lighting conditions or reading by a window seat. If you have specific PC programs you need to use, you’ll need to drag the laptop along.

Question: Which electronic device do you prefer on a plane?

Book Writing Tribe

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Seth Godin is one of my favorite authors. His unique world view on business, marketing, and personal development is engaging and brilliant. Currently he is offering his new book —Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us— for only 95 cents on iTunes.

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This is pure marketing genius and this simple price point has taken this book to the number one spot in the Audio books section. The great thing is, there is a lot of value in this three hour audio book.

The ideas he presents are timely and things that each one of us can do.

Are you a leader?

Do you lead a tribe?

If not, there is surely a tribe just waiting to be formed and lead by … YOU!

I have had the pleasure of being a member of a Book Writing Tribe for the last few weeks. My good friend, Karen Hobson, has taken the leap and created a six week program for the person who wants to get serious about writing a book.

She calls it the Start 2 Finish Writers Workshop and it has really fired me up to get my book done. The interesting thing about this workshop is the location. We meet in a local Coffee Shop and our small tribe has become very interactive. As we go through the exercises, each person shares their writing with other members.

This small group experience is a powerful way to share ideas, critique each others work, and learn many new writing techniques. If you live in the Temecula area of Southern California, I highly recommend her seminar. For the rest of you, her free monthly newsletter will be a valuable asset.

If you want to start your own tribe, you should definitely download Seth’s free tribes casebook. This 240 page PDF is packed with ideas about starting, leading, and being successful with your own group. Highly Recommended!