Posts Tagged ‘writing’
Before You Publish: Set Goals
I’d like to offer a brief series of posts on things to do before trying to publish a book…
When you begin to seriously consider publishing a book your first step will be identifying your goals.
Are you hoping to write full time? Are you looking to add some credentials to your current career? Do you have one particular idea that is so important you want to publish it?
How you answer these questions will determine your next step.
Publishing a book requires a tremendous amount of time and planning. It is rarely as simple as pounding out a book and shipping it off to a publisher who then takes care of everything for you, mailing a fat royalty check each quarter.
You don’t write to become rich—it rarely happens.
In addition, if your goal is to merely share information with a wide audience, there are a lot of other avenues available today that may in fact be more effective in drawing a larger number of readers to your work. One poet I spoke with said he has reached thousands more readers through his blog than through his book. While his book lends him greater credibility in some circles, the simple act of sharing his work can be accomplished effectively outside of book publishing.
Keep in mind that as the economy contracts, so have publishers, editorial staffs, book acquisitions, and marketing dollars. The competition is a bit more fierce and the desire of publishers to stick with trusted names is greater than ever.
All that to say, it is still very possible to publish today, and with smaller presses and self-publishing options there is no reason why you can’t one day hold a bound copy of your work in hand. Nevertheless, before setting out into the challenging world of publishing, be sure to identify your goals and make sure that publishing a book will be the best way to accomplish them.
I’ll continue this series next week with a few more things to consider before you publish.
How Writers Prepare for Ideas
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld talked in an interview about the importance of keeping a notepad by his bed. Either before falling asleep or when waking in the middle of the night, he sometimes thought of a great line for his comedy routine. If he didn’t write the idea down immediately, he’d lose it.
Seinfeld’s lessons left a mark, as I make a point of having a ready supply of sticky notes and pens around the house and in the car. I have often pulled off the road to jot down an idea, and when I forgot to leave my notepad by the bed, I’ve jumped out of it in the middle of the night for the sake of capturing an idea.
Sometimes you won’t know if the idea is worthwhile until a few days later. Perhaps it would have been better in some cases to opt for the extra sleep. However, writers are in the idea business and something as insignificant as a pen or a piece of paper should not stand in the way of sharing a good idea with others.
Should Writers Give Their Away Their Ideas?
Should writers give away their prize ideas, the very content that becomes their currency? Writers have been struggling with answering this question with the popularity of the internet, the pervasiveness of blogs, and the recent surge in ebooks.
I’ve thought about this a lot, but I think the solution is a both/and scenario rather than an either/or.
Revisit and Recycle Ideas in Various Mediums
Experienced writers learn that they can explore ideas and topics from a variety of angles with differing degrees of detail. If a writer can revisit or recycle an idea for two different magazines, then why not explore your idea on a blog and then later in a book or magazine article?
One author was quite resistant to the thought of charging readers for the ideas of his book, but a friend added some clarity by pointing out that most of his ideas in the book were available at no charge on his web site. However, the material in his book had a higher degree of refinement and clarity that some would be willing to pay for, which leads to my next thought.
Different Mediums Require Different Processes
The book publishing process involves numerous drafts, editorial development of ideas and a team of publishing professionals walking authors through each step of the process. There is a lot of revision and planning involved in writing a book.
Blogs on the other hand are typically the work of a solitary writer or a small team of writers. I look at a blog post as a really good first draft. For a blog post I won’t write a draft, revise it, send it to an editor who suggests major changes, make my revisions, send it back to an editor for additional comments, make additional changes, and then send it off to a fact checker. Even uber-blogger Guy Kawasaki can’t afford to put that much time and involve that many people in a blog post.
That isn’t to say that blog posts are poorly written, only that the content found in books has gone through a different process. We can debate whether the book writing process is worthwhile, and in the case of some books it is not, but the final product often looks quite different from a blog post.
Some Content is Worth Paying For
Content that undergoes a rigorous editorial and design process in magazines and books may carry a price tag, but I still believe it is worthwhile to make some ideas available in these forms. They carry greater authority because they have passed through editorial boards and will tend to be of higher quality because multiple contributors were involved in the production process.
That is not a guarantee that books or magazines will always produce better content than blogs or self-published books and ebooks. There are some rather notable exceptions. However, I guarantee that almost every book produced by a major publisher will have certain advantages over a self-published book or an ebook given away for free. Whether it’s distribution, editorial development, or layout.
The Big Decision
Writers face the big decision of deciding which process works best for themselves and their ideas. If an idea is big enough to merit a long series of blog posts, then perhaps it’s worth working with those ideas for a future book project.
There are a lot of books out there with fairly simple ideas that are not capable of filling a full-length book. In those cases it’s worth it for writers to consider turning them into several solid magazine articles that may well reach more readers than a typical book.
Marketing expert Seth Godin tells writers to spend at least three years working on a blog and developing a ready audience of writers who will buy their books once released. That is a great guideline for writers and one that I have found to be true in my own experience. Blogs give writers great practice are writing regularly for the public and provide a chance to find a particular voice, angle, or, dare I say, brand.
Selecting Influencers for a Book Release: The Goal
Before a book releases it is important for authors to assemble lists of influencers who can help promote and possibly add a public endorsement that will prompt others to buy their books. For instance, if a respected author, radio personality, or, in my case, pastor of a large congregation recommends a book, especially saying it’s a must-read, then a book may well receive a bump in sales.
Selling a book tends to be a very personal, one on one process. Advertising may raise awareness, but anything from a friend’s recommendation, a book seller’s comments, or an online review often makes the difference between a book staying on the shelf or ending up on the nightstand. In addition, a series of solid reviews do not guarantee brisk sales, just as negative reviews do not equal a book’s doom.
There is plenty of competition these days for not only the public’s attention, but also for the public’s disposable income. When trusted authorities recommend a book, authors have one more way to connect a book with readers. Influencers can vouch for an author’s credibility and provide a broad point of connection with potential readers.
The ideal influencers will have trusted names, contact with a large audience, and a willingness to endorse your book. Influencers may lead to direct sales or at least give readers another reason to recommend your book.
An influencer without one of these three qualities may not be a helpful contact. In the next post of this series I’ll look into some of the problems authors encounter in putting together an influencer list.
The next installments in this series…
- Selecting influencers for a book release: The Problem
- Selecting influencers for a book release: The Solution
From Idea to Editor Workshop on October 17th in Manchester, VT
The Greater Manchester Arts Council is pleased to announce a fall workshop designed to assist writers with moving their book ideas to book proposals.
Join Ed Cyzewski, author of Coffeehouse Theology: Reflecting on God in Everyday Life for a step-by-step journey into the process of transforming your book idea into a book proposal with the necessary research, style and tips that will send your proposal to the top of the pile.
From networking advice, to tips from publishing professionals, this presentation will give aspiring writers the tools they need to take the next step in the publishing process. This workshop will emphasize the nonfiction process, but will offer
valuable advice for writers in every genre.
The workshop will be held on Saturday, October 17th, from 9-12AM at the Inn at Willow Pond on Rte. 7A in Manchester, VT. Cost is $45.00 per person/$40.00 early bird registration. Fee includes a continental breakfast. Please call 802-867-0272 for registration and information or fill out the contact form.
How to Write a First Draft of a Book
Writing a book is a long, drawn-out process. It’s hard to say when you’re “done” other than that moment when the book arrives in your mail box and sits on your coffee table like a long lost friend. Nevertheless, along the way there are certain mile stones to aim for and to celebrate.
Yesterday I wrapped up the first draft of my next book Saving Evangelicals from Themselves. The first draft often entails the lion’s share of the book writing process. There is research, brainstorming, organizing, stream of consciousness writing, editing, reorganizing, more writing, and more editing and polishing.
By 5 PM yesterday I had my draft completely finished and ready for the publisher. It even came close to the 60,000 word count with a total of 61,610 words. I’d like to share a little bit about the process of writing a first draft of a book. I hope this helps as you plunge into your own projects.
Read… A Lot
You don’t need to quote directly from every book or cite everything, but read, skim, or browse as many books as you can in your topic area. You want to communicate your own ideas in fresh ways, while giving credit where it is due.
Research
Set up Google Alerts for your subject areas, read and tag articles using del.icio.us, dig through surveys, and look up articles in key papers and magazines such as Time, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and any other magazine closely related to your topic. For myself I keep a close eye on Christianity Today.
Organize and Outline
You need to know where your book is going, and so a rough outline is necessary. Don’t be afraid to delete, add, or reorder chapters as you set out. Better now than later. Set up a rough idea of each chapter’s trajectory.
Write, Write, Write
I like to just cut loose and write a ton once I have some research and outlines to provide general guidance. I end up scrapping at least 25-35% of what I write, but the core that remains is generally pretty solid. Let your mind wander, write about things you care about, and think deeply about your topic. Always keep in mind your one-two sentence summary of your book from your proposal (you did put together a proposal first, right? If not, do that NOW!)
Fill In Gaps
After you have a good chunk of material together, you need to fill in the gaps with more research, quotes, and stories. Try to get a sense of the flow of your chapter. Are you on target? Can readers follow with you? Are they still interested? Have you backed up your claims? This is the time to ask hard questions and to be critical of your work. I have a scrap folder for each book with a document that matches each chapter. Many scrap documents have at least 7 pages of material in them. That means you need to keep adding content to your chapters, making sure you’ve sharpened your points.
Seek Opinions
When you’re relatively confident you have a solid chunk of chapter, seek out a friend or two to read it. Ask them to point out places where stories don’t work, ideas need to be developed, or the whole thing falls off course. I recommend at least two different readers since people can be very different in how they read something.
Never Stop Researching
Hopefully you’ve been keeping up on your field while you’re doing the heavy part of the writing. By saving key stories and articles on del.icio.us I have saved myself on several occasions. You never know when a crucial piece of information will surface.
The Critical Read-Through
Keeping in mind your book’s focus, reader-benefits, and goals, read through each chapter with a critical eye to anything that doesn’t fit, discredits you as a writer, loses your readers, or doesn’t sound quite right. Kill adverbs without mercy, tighten up sentence structure, delete a lot, insert strong verbs, and make sure you begin and end with bang.
Hit Send, Tell a Friend, and Buy Yourself a Treat
It’s a wonderful feeling to hit the send button when you’re done with a key phase of a book project. Celebrate the moment, treat yourself to something you enjoy, and share the joy of the moment with your friends. Chances are you won’t be celebrating when your editor writes back in two months with the revisions you need to make… 
Writing a Nonfiction Chapter: Integrating Research
By now you should have some solid fragments of writing, a loosely organized outline, and some gaps that have been filled in. The next step is integrating quotes and sources into your writing.
Over the six-month to a year process of writing, you should be reading articles, listening to conferences, reading books, and gathering the information together under chapter categories. Sometimes you’re just expanding your knowledge, which is necessary for writing a book, but in other cases you’re accumulating quotes and key points of research that will back up your writing.
While reading books I tend to use small sticky notes to flag particular pages, writing on the notes where I imagine the quote fitting into the chapter. This can save a tremendous amount of time flipping through each book in search of quotes. In the case of online material, I heavily rely on del.icio.us, an online bookmarking service that allows you to tag web pages in particular categories, as well as saving chunks of text you’d like to quote. When you have an idea of where your chapter is going, these sticky note tabs and online bookmarks will help fill in your chapter.
Of course there will be time in the course of writing when you’ll simply need to look up a fact or do a bit of research, but when working my way through a pile of sources, I tend to either drop them all at the end of the chapter, or to sort them according to the outline. It all depends on how many I have. At this point you’ll also want to create a scrap file for each chapter, a place to dump stories and quotes that don’t quite fit, but may not warrant deletion.
At this point your chapter should be stronger, with quotes and citations adding an additional punch to your anecdotes and main points. You should take note of your weak points, continue to seek out helpful sources, and make sure your outline maintains a logical flow.
For some additional insight, see Don Miller’s post about writing a book.
Posts in this series:
- Start writing what you know.
- Brainstorm ideas for the rest of the chapter into a draft outline.
- Continue writing based on this outline
- Integrate quotes and research into the chapter
- Read through the chapter to sharpen the outline and fill in gaps.
- Revise your chapter draft.
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