Regina Calcaterra is the New York Times best-selling author of Etched in Sand. It’s a true story memoir about five siblings who survived an unspeakable childhood on Long Island.

Why She Wrote a Memoir

Regina was inspired to write her own memoir in part because she read The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls when it was published in 2005. It was the first memoir Regina had read about someone wrote about a horrible tragedy without being a victim.

Etched in Sand is Jeannette’s memoir about growing up in poverty with parents who are mentally ill. It tells the story of how she and her siblings coped and grew up in that environment. Jeannette’s memoir can be difficult to read because of what happens to her and her family. It struck Regina that Jeanette’s memoir was written without pity or victimization.

How She Got a Memoir Published

Once Regina had the idea to write her memoir it always stayed with her. She decided to take the plunge years later, and she signed up for a workshop put on by The Gotham Writers in New York. She took three classes on how to write a memoir.

Over those three classes, she wrote the first four chapters of her book Etched in Sand. During the classes, she bonded with a group of writers who decided to meet every week at whole foods in Manhattan, keep writing and critique each other’s work. Critiquing the writing of her peers and getting critiques from them was the most important part of Regina’s learning process.

Regina worked on the first four chapters of her book for years. In July 2011 a friend of hers set up a breakfast for her and three other women at Michael’s, a place in New York City where a lot of people in the world of traditional publishing go to eat.

One of the women at that breakfast was Lisa Sharkey, the VP of strategic development for HarperCollins. Another lady at that breakfast was a book agent. During that breakfast, they went around the table and each woman told a little bit of her life story.

The book agent told Regina that she wouldn’t be able to sell her story because she didn’t have a platform. The book agent didn’t believe Regina’s story would go anywhere.

Lisa Sharkey told Regina to ignore the advice of the book agent. Lisa said that Regina had an important story that needed to be told. They set up a meeting to review Regina’s materials.

Regina asked Lisa if it was okay if they meet in September of that year. The weeks from July to September to research the publishing industry and make the best first impression she could.

In her research, Regina discovered the book How to Write a Book Proposal: The Insider’s Step-By-Step Guide to Proposals That Get You Published by Jody Rein and Michael Larsen. She read the book and spent two months of writing the best book proposal she could.

How to Sell Your Author Platform

Regina crafted a book proposal based on Michael Larsen’s book. She spent a lot of time describing her platform in her book proposal.

Regina was well known in the New York area, and she’s done a number of cable news shows as a commentator. She really spent a lot of time thinking about every single constituency she could put into her book proposal.

To describe your author platform in detail you have to know three things:

1. The different groups of people who might be interested in your book.
2. The size of the different groups of people who might be interested in your book.
3. Why different groups of people might be interested in your book.

When you can clearly and concisely describe those three elements, you’ll have a good handle on your platform.

Marketing Tip: Find Comparable Books

Another area Regina focused on when putting together her book proposal was her comparable books. Traditional publishers want a list of comparable books that did well, and they want to know why your book is going to do as well or better.

“There are so many people out there who have a good story they want to write, but it really has to do with the marketability of the book. These are publicly traded companies. They’re responsible to their shareholders. So, if they’re going to put out any money, whether it’s to give you an advance or to have their staff spend time editing this and publishing your book. They want to make sure they get a return on the investment” – Regina Calcaterra

Regina sees selling a book to a traditional publisher like being a contestant on Shark Tank. You have to be able to prove the value of the product you want to put on the market. You have to be able to show traditional publishers why they should give you money.

After Regina detailed out her platform in her book proposal, she included the four chapters in the book she’d already written and an outline of the rest of the book.

Lisa Sharkey was impressed with Regina’s book proposal but she was unable to win over the HarperCollins publishing committee at first. Lisa invited Regina to a meeting at HarperCollins offices to meet with one of their top publicists.

When Regina told the publicist her story the publicist began to cry. Armed with an ally, Lisa was able to convince the HarperCollins publishing committee to give Regina a book deal.

HarperCollins offered Regina a very tiny advance on her book because she was an unknown quantity in the traditional publishing world. She briefly thought about trying to sell her book to another publisher, but in the end, she decided to stay with the people who believed in her.

Lisa Sharkey wanted someone to work with Regina through the editing process. Regina ended up spending most of her advance on her editor because she felt it was an investment in her future.

Regina finalized her book deal in April 2012. The book was due to the publisher by October. She worked full time as the chief deputy to the Suffolk County administrator while she was writing her memoir. She only had four chapters written when she signed her publishing deal, and she turned in one chapter a month between April 2012 and September 2012. She ended up getting an extension on turning in her book because of hurricane Sandy.

When Etched in Sand was published in 2013, it became a New York Times bestseller three weeks later. It has been featured on a number of national broadcasts including CBS Sunday Morning and Inside Edition. The New York Post, People Magazine, and Newsday have all published articles about the book. High schools and colleges across the United States are using Etched in Sand as part of their curriculum because it has so many messages in it.

Regina’s Life: A Story of Survival

Regina is one of five siblings. Her mother was a mentally ill woman who dealt with her mental illness by self-medicating with alcohol and drugs. Regina’s mother had five children by five different fathers. None of those men stuck around after the children were born.

Regina and her siblings grew up on the fringes of society. Her mother would find the children a place to live and abandon them for weeks at a time. Periodically Regina’s mother would return and register Regina and her siblings for school. That never lasted long because Regina’s mother usually had several warrants out for her arrest, and she was afraid that the police would find her through her children. Regina’s childhood education was divided between public schools and public libraries.

Regina and her siblings became very close. They always tried to make where they were living a happy and positive place. They always tried to shield their younger siblings from the harsh reality of their lives and the abuse that was taking place.

Regina survived her childhood and chose to do the work necessary to be successful in life. She graduated high school and college and went to law school at night.

How Regina Deals with Life’s Challenges

One of the benefits of Regina’s childhood is the unique perspective on pain, suffering, and hardship it has given her. She experiences setbacks and heartbreaks like the rest of us, but she never spends more than two days feeling sorry for herself. She always remembers where she came from and how far she’s come.

When she was going to college in the 1980s, 2% of the children who grew up in foster care were successfully graduating college. Today 3% of children in foster care go on to graduate college. Regina has always beaten the odds.

Regina is a successful lawyer with a good job. She owns a house, and she never goes hungry. Most importantly, she has 12 nieces and nephews who were raised in loving homes by her siblings who also broke the cycle of abuse.

How to Break up Negative Cycles and Patterns

Throughout her childhood, Regina was being told by adults that she was going to grow up to be a drug and alcohol addicted mother who was in and out of jail. Adults were convinced she was going to repeat the pattern because that’s what children in foster care usually do.

Other children were always told to stay away from her because their parents knew she was homeless.

The only way to break that kind of negative cycle or any other behavior pattern is to make conscious choices that lead to different results.

“The most important message I wanted etched in sand to deliver is a message of perseverance, resilience, and optimism. The overall message is how we can all positively affect the life of a child in need. And that’s why the book is received so well, because people start to think about other kids in their neighborhood that maybe they weren’t paying attention to.” – Regina Calcaterra

Even though Regina never had a consistent parent or adult in real life to look out for her and encourage her, she had many positive role models in her life from teachers, to librarians, to parents of friends who invited her into their home. All of those positive role models gave Regina an idea of what her life could be like.

That’s why she wanted Etched in Sand to have a positive message for society. She wanted her audience to read it and understand that it is possible to be successful after surviving such a difficult childhood.

Etched in Sand gives its audience perspective on their life, and shows them how they can help children in need.

For the most part, Regina found that writing her memoir was a joyful process for her. She enjoyed reminiscing about all the crazy things she and her siblings did to survive and stay together during their childhood. They often hid from the authorities. They always made sure to keep their stories coordinated when they were questioned by authorities, so they wouldn’t go into the system and be separated from each other.

The hardest part of writing Etched in Sand for Regina was telling the story of her sister Rosie and how Rosie was kidnapped and taken to Idaho by her mother. She cried writing that chapter.

The Second Memoir

Girl Unbroken is the sequel to Etched in Sand. It tells the story of Regina’s younger sister Rosie and what happened in her life after her mother kidnapped her from foster care and brought her to Idaho.

Writing Girl Unbroken was therapeutic for Rosie. It allowed her to own her story and take back the power from the person who victimized her.

Advice for Publishing a Memoir

Write your book proposal yourself.

When you write a memoir you are the product and when you are the product, no one can sell the product better than you. Your book proposal is going to show what your marketability is.

Read Michael Larsen’s book on how to write a book proposal. Follow the instructions in that book as closely as you can.

If you don’t have a platform now, start building a platform while you’re writing your memoir. Start reaching out to community organizations. Start writing opinion editorials for newspapers. Regina wrote a lot of opinion editorials to build her platform.

In today’s world, you can build a platform by writing for your own blog and building an audience on social media.

Medium is another place where you can write and find an audience.

Push your name out there and use your efforts as evidence of your platform.

Your platform isn’t about convincing New York your book will sell. It’s about convincing New York that you will sell your book.

Regina hasn’t stopped selling her books since the day she sold them to New York. She works full-time as a lawyer during the day and travels throughout the year to make audiences aware that her book exists.

“As far as making sure you have an impact, don’t think about it too much when you’re writing a story for the first time. But when you go back to take a look at the manuscript, and you can reflect on all the experiences you had, then at that point you may want to think about all of the constituencies you can have a positive impact on. At that point make sure you’re putting the messaging in the book.” – Regina Calcaterra

If you try to put your messages into your first draft you’ll end up writing a story around messages and it will be fake.

Another way to make sure that your story has the impact you want is to write an epilogue that emphasizes the message you want people to take away from your story.

How to Write an Engaging Memoir

It’s important when you’re writing a story to show your reader the world you are writing about, don’t tell them about it.

What that means is bring the reader into the world of your story through the thoughts, opinions, and the five senses of your viewpoint character. Readers read to experience the story of a character they’re interested in. It’s important that you bring the world of your story alive by pulling the reader into the viewpoint of your main character (if you’re writing fiction) or your viewpoint (if you’re writing your memoir)

Regina learned to be a better storyteller by rewriting chapters and getting feedback from her writing group.

“Having others read and critique your work also gives you perspective on what it is they’re saying as opposed to what you’re seeing when you write something.” – Regina Calcaterra

It’s important to get feedback from readers when you write a memoir, because you may think you’ve described a scene when in reality your memory is filling in gaps on the page that you don’t see.

Rely on the skill set of others. Take constructive criticism positively.

People Mentioned in This Interview

Jeannette walls inspired Regina to write her own memoir.

Lisa Sharkey is the VP for strategic development for HarperCollins.

Michael Larsen wrote How to Write a Book Proposal: The Insider’s Step-By-Step Guide to Proposals That Get You Published along with Jody Rein

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Interview

Connect with Regina

http://reginacalcaterra.com/ – Regina’s website.

Regina’s Facebook page

Connect with Regina on Twitter

Books by Regina

Etched in Sand: A True Story of Five Siblings Who Survived an Unspeakable Childhood on Long Island by Regina Calcaterra

Girl Unbroken: A Sister’s Harrowing Story of Survival from The Streets of Long Island to the Farms of Idaho by Regina Calcaterra and Rosie Maloney

Other Links and Resources

The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls

Gotham writers workshops – learn about workshops in New York and online they can help you advance in the craft of writing.

How to Write a Book Proposal: The Insider’s Step-By-Step Guide to Proposals That Get You Published by Jody Rein and Michael Larsen

https://medium.com/ – you can start a blog on medium and gain a following.

The post 179: Write a Bestselling Memoir: The True Story that Became a New York Times Bestseller with Regina Calcaterra appeared first on TCK Publishing.

Ricardo Fayet is a cofounder of Reedsy, an online marketplace that connects authors with everything you need to succeed, from free educational courses, to a platform to help you find the best cover artists, book designers, and publishing support.

Ricardo and a friend got the idea for Reedsy in business school. They approached developing Reedsy from a reader perspective.

The Birth of Reedsy

Ricardo and his friend were among the first early adopters of the Kindle device. They began thinking about how the device was changing the publishing industry for publishers and authors. They asked themselves several questions:

• What does it change for authors and publishers?
• How does it change how readers read books?
• Will there be more ebooks produced than paper books?

After asking these questions, Ricardo began learning about self-publishing. At first, self-publishing was a fascinating market space. As Ricardo looked into self-publishing more deeply, he realized that there’s a lot that goes into publishing a book beyond simply hitting publish.

You have to:

• Edit the book.
• Do cover design for the book.
• Market the book.

That’s when Ricardo and his partners decided to create a marketplace for authors who were self-publishing, as well as the people who were leaving traditional publishing companies.

When self-publishing started to take off, in the period from 2010 to 2011, a lot of people who had worked for traditional publishers decided to do freelance work instead. They like the freedom and flexibility of working as a freelance provider, and they also like the access to self-published authors.

“It’s really a misnomer to call it self-publishing. No one does it by themselves. You have to have cover designers, book designers to do the layout, and usually marketing support and help. So there’s a big team that any self-published author needs to create in order to make a project really successful.”
– Tom Corson Knowles

How to Create the Best Team to Support Your Book

“The most common advice out there is to ask your peers and other authors in your genre. On the one hand, I think it’s great advice, because obviously what worked for one author might work for you. But on the other hand, it depends a lot on your genre, for both cover design and editing. Editing depends a lot on your personality and writing style.”
– Ricardo Fayet

The most important factor that affects cover design is your genre or category. If you ask authors in your specific genre or category for advice on cover designers, that advice will probably work for you.

The most important factor that affects your relationship with your editor is your personality and writing style. Because every writer is different, it’s less likely that one author’s advice about a good editor will translate into a good working experience for another author.

When looking for an editor, it’s best to look for an editor who specializes in your genre. On Reedsy, the editors in the marketplace specialize in certain genres.

As an editor: It’s simple to specialize in a genre. Simply choose to edit the books you like to read. Once you get some clients and do good work for them, they will recommend you to other authors who write in their genre. Then you can begin to build a portfolio as an editor.

As an author: When you’re looking for an editor, reach out to three or four and see how they work. Send them a small sample of your work, about 3,000 words. This allows you to get a feel for the relationship before you commit to working together on the larger project.

When you’re looking for a developmental editor, you definitely want someone who specializes in editing your genre. Ricardo recommends asking for a sample feedback letter that they wrote for another author. You can’t really ask them to look at a sample of your work because they need to see the whole book in order to give you good feedback.

But by asking for a sample letter, you can get an idea of how they give feedback to authors. Some editors are very blunt. Some editors like to sugarcoat their feedback. By looking at an editor’s sample feedback letter, you can get a sense of the type of feedback you’re likely to receive from that editor, and you can decide whether or not that feedback will help you write a better book.

When you hire an editor, it’s all about developing the right kind of relationship. That’s why it is important to reach out to several people, get several quotes, and get an idea of what type of feedback each editor will give you.

Reedsy only accepts 3% of the freelancers who apply to be listed in the marketplace. They are very selective about the professionals they choose to offer to authors.

Reedsy has never seen any freelancer abuse their access to the creative work of authors. A lot of the freelancers on Reedsy come from traditional publishing. They’re not going to compromise their good working relationship on Reedsy in order to publish some author’s idea under their own name. In many cases, they aren’t even authors themselves.

A lot of the best editors on Reedsy make between $10,000 and $15,000 a month. They’re not going to risk their reputation to publish an author’s work themselves.

The biggest problem Reedsy has run into as a platform is editors and authors not getting along. That’s why Ricardo recommends that you get several samples from copy editors and a sample feedback letter from a developmental editor.

The best way to make sure you’re going to have a good relationship with an editor is to try out numerous applicants until you find a good fit.

The editor/author collaboration is a real partnership and you have to make sure your personalities match as much as possible before you agree to working on a larger project together.

If you use a freelancing marketplace like Reedsy and you make sure you’re going to have a good personality match with the editor, you’re never going to be unhappy with your results.

When an editor quotes you a price on Reedsy, Reedsy will add a 10% service charge to the price. That’s how they make money. So, if an editor quotes you a price of $1,000, your final bill as the client will be $1,100. Of that, $100 will go to Reedsy and the agreed-upon $1,000 will go to the editor.

The Hiring Process on Reedsy

You can use Reedsy to hire a variety of professionals to help with your manuscript.

Hiring an Editor

Let’s say you’re hiring a developmental editor through Reedsy.

Reedsy is going to give you a form that asks a lot of questions. They’re going to want you to send a sample of your manuscript, as well as describe the characters in your story. They’ll also want to know when you want to publish your book and when you want the editor to get back to you.

After the editor receives your submission, they’ll likely have additional questions. Typically, after an editor responds to you, a natural conversation takes place.

If, after you send initial information to an editor, that conversation doesn’t take place, you should look for another professional.

Communication is always key. If you start a project with a $500 budget and you find a cover designer who says they’ll design you a cover without asking questions, that’s a warning sign.

You haven’t said what genre your book is, or whether your cover design is for a print book or an ebook. Those are very basic questions that any good cover designer would ask.

There’s a lot of information that freelancers need before giving you a quote for the service. Most likely, you’re not going to think of all the information they need. You should expect to get questions back when you put a project on Reedsy.

If you don’t get questions back, you should look for another professional who will give your project the kind of attention it deserves.

Hiring a Cover Designer

It’s always good when you’re working with a cover designer to send them inspiration. Find two or three covers on Amazon in the genre of your book that you really like. When you send those to the cover designer, that’s going to give them an idea of what appeals to you, and then they’ll most likely begin a conversation with you about the specifics of your cover.

Experienced freelancers are going to ask the most questions up front because they know the process, and they know all of the issues that might pop up during their work. So they want to have as many answers for those potential problems as possible before they put in the time and effort to do the project.

It’s important that you hire a cover designer who has experience with book cover design, especially if you don’t. If you are an experienced indie author, you can take on an inexperienced cover designer because you’ve been through it before. But if this is your first project, you want someone who knows the ins and outs of cover design.

You’ll want someone who:

• Knows the type of images that will work for your genre cover.
• Knows the kind of typography that will work for your genre cover.
• Knows how to lay out your cover so that it looks right.
• Has experience with the types of problems that can occur when designing a cover.

What to Do If the Project Isn’t Working Out the Way You Want

When a project starts going wrong, it’s important that you manage the expectations of the freelancer. It’s also important that you be honest and upfront from the very beginning.

The biggest problems on Reedsy’s platform happen because authors don’t make freelancers aware that they’re unhappy until very far along in the process. If you’re honest and upfront at the beginning, the freelancer can either adjust direction, or you can part ways without wasting any more of each other’s time.

When you’re not honest about a problem at the beginning of the process, it leads to miscommunication, hurt feelings, and bad relationships throughout the entire process. This means a loss of time and money for both you and the freelancer.

The longer you wait to let your freelancer know there’s a problem with your project, the more likely it is that you won’t be able to publish your project on time.

When you hire a freelancer through a third party like Reedsy, you should get them involved as soon as you feel like something is starting to go wrong. The sooner you get Reedsy involved, the more time they have to look into the problem before it leads to a real issue with your publishing schedule.

Almost all the problems you might encounter can be avoided by communicating with your freelancer before you hire them.

If things go really wrong, the final recourse is a legal one. If you’re not hiring a freelancer through Reedsy, make sure you sign a contract. Make sure you read all of the provisions in that contract before you sign it.

Make sure the contract:

• Protects your intellectual property.
• Protects your copyright.
• Clearly defines the consequences to each party of canceling. Ricardo has heard horror stories about cancellation fees and communication breakdowns when a project goes wrong.

Reedsy has developed standard contracts to protect both parties that are a part of their normal terms of service.

Overall, Reedsy has conflicts between freelancers and authors only 2% of the time. In those cases, Reedsy steps in as a neutral third-party mediator.

In Ricardo’s experience, every problem can be avoided by communicating with the freelancer up front before you hire them.

Don’t be afraid to tell a freelancer that you don’t like the way the project is going early on. Ricardo knows of one publishing company that uses Reedsy to find cover designers. The managing editor insists on having a “kill fee” in the contract. If she gets three cover designs she doesn’t like, she’ll pay the cover designer $300 or $500 to kill the project.

How to Have the Best Customer Experience on Reedsy

All the freelancers on Reedsy have been vetted by the company. That means they all have the same basic level of ability to do the work.

That being said, it’s probably best to work with editors and cover designers who have fewer clients. If you work with freelancers who have fewer clients, that means they’ll have more time to devote to your individual projects.

Reedsy has quite a few editors who worked on big traditional books, and a lot of people want to hire them. They’re all able to do their work, but when you hire a famous editor who’s working with several clients at once, you’re not going to get the type of attention you could get if you work with someone who’s only working on your project.

Ricardo has noticed a career trajectory for editors on Reedsy. The editor will start with one or two clients. Those clients will be satisfied and recommend that editor to their friends.

Now the editor has more clients. Those clients will be happy and recommend the editor again. At some point, the editor will book one client too many. When they book one client too many and then have issues in their personal lives come up, that’s when problems arise. As an author, you can’t predict when that’s going to happen for an editor.

Ricardo recommends you be patient if you realize the editor may have booked too many clients. He also recommends that you always ask the editor how many clients they have booked for the time that they’re going to be editing your project. The fewer clients they have booked, the more time they can devote to editing your work.

Advice for Authors in a Rush

If you’re on a tight deadline, it’s important that you contact more good applicants for the position you need filled. It’s also important that you brief them really thoroughly about the project itself so that the rest of the process can go smoothly.

In general, cover designers can come up with a good cover design in a week, but you’ll want to contact more of them because if you have a hard deadline, more of the cover designers you want to work with will be booked during the week you need them.

Good copy editors can work with you on a tight deadline. It’s important that you contact more of them to find one who is available, and that you brief them thoroughly on the specifications for the project.

Good developmental editors are generally booked a full 3 to 6 months in advance. That’s a good thing! They know how many clients they can handle and they stick to that number per month. Those are the kind of editors that you want. If you need a developmental editor, it’s important that you don’t put yourself in a position where you’re on a fixed deadline.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Interview

https://reedsy.com/ – a marketplace connecting authors with the freelancers they need to self-publish their books.

https://blog.reedsy.com/learning/ – free courses for authors on writing, editing, design, marketing, publishing, and distribution.

[email protected] – contact Ricardo directly. Feel free to ask any questions you want. He’s also happy to recommend freelancers for your project.

Advice for Authors Who Want to Use Reedsy.com

• 4 tips to find your dream editor on Reedsy
• What to Look out for When You’re Looking for an Editor
• Book Cover Design: How Self-Publishing Authors Can Do It Best
• 6 Tips for Briefing Your Book Designer
• Is It Worth Partnering with a Book Marketer

 

The post 178: How to Build a Team for Your Self-Published Book with Ricardo Fayet appeared first on TCK Publishing.

Josh is the author of four books, including Writing Without Bullshit. He is frequently quoted in major publications like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He’s also given keynote speeches at major conferences on television, music, marketing, and technology all over the world.

Josh spent his whole life focusing on his two talents, math and writing. He wanted to make good money, so he put most of his emphasis on his math talents. But he was always interested in writing.

When he became an analyst at Forrester Research about 20 years ago, he was able to combine his two talents. Then, 10 years ago, he convinced the CEO of Forrester Research to allow him to write a book on social media, Groundswell.

Following the success of that book, Josh has defined himself as an author. For the last two and a half years, he has worked with indie authors and corporations on how to communicate clearly and powerfully.

Clear Writing Principles

After Josh washed out of the PhD program at MIT, he learned some critical skills that helped him become a successful and powerful communicator and writer.

1. Write in the active voice. Avoid the passive voice whenever possible.
2. Write as directly as possible.
3. Use bulleted lists to break up the flow of your copy so that it’s easier to digest.
4. State your arguments clearly.
5. Break up your text with headings and subheadings.
6. Be brief.

Josh’s Top Communication Principles

“You must treat the reader’s time as more important than your own. That sounds like something everyone would agree with, but every time we write an email, a memo, or a book chapter, people tend to do what’s easiest for them instead of thinking about what’s easiest for the reader.”
– Josh Bernoff

The #1 thing you can do to improve your writing is to be brief. Don’t spend a lot of time warming up. Just say what you need to say as clearly as possible. Eliminate any duplication.

Next, you want to frontload your writing with the things your readers need to know.

Often, people will warm up before they get to their point. They write emails with the idea that people will keep reading past the first two paragraphs.

That’s not how it works. When you write an email, your subject line and the first two paragraphs you write need to be about what the reader needs to know. People will often give up on reading a longer email.

3 Elements of Toxic Prose

1. The Passive Voice

When you write in the passive voice it hides what’s going on from the reader.

2. Weasel Words

These are intensifiers and qualifiers that don’t mean anything. Some popular examples that Josh sees appearing everywhere right now include: huge, incredible, and insane.

3. Jargon

Using jargon creates writing that only you can understand and no one else can make sense of.

If you avoid these toxic prose elements, write as briefly as you can, and frontload your information so people are getting what they need to know at the beginning of your writing, you will communicate far more clearly and powerfully in a world where everyone reads on a screen all the time.

How Josh Edits for Clients

When Josh works with a client, he helps them organize their thoughts so that they can present them more clearly and usefully. Here’s how:

Do an Idea Audit

The first thing Josh does is an idea audit. He’ll ask the client to tell him their idea. He’ll usually say something like, “That’s boring,” or “that’s complicated,” or “I don’t understand.”

By pushing on the idea like this, you have to explain it more and think more deeply about it. It’s difficult to defend your idea and go deeper, but when you do, you finally get to something that’s big, new and powerful. Something that people will read and take notice of.

Once you have the idea right, you can structure the material that comes after that.

Make Sure Your Ideas Flow Logically

When Josh edits a particular passage for a client, the first thing he’ll do is look at the structure of the chapter that the passage is in.

He wants to make sure that he has a clear idea of the beginning, middle, and end of the thought he’s currently reading. Do the ideas flow logically and make sense to readers?

Cut Weasel Words and Repeated Ideas

After the flow of ideas make sense, the next step is to delete things that don’t matter. People will often take one or two paragraphs to get warmed up to their subject. You’ll often find that the first paragraph of actual content is a perfect way to start your writing.

Delete weasel words. Those words don’t matter and they don’t add to the knowledge of the reader.

Delete repeated sentences or ideas, too. Make your point clearly the first time and you don’t need to repeat it again and again.

The Benefits of Editing

The benefits of this type of editing is that it goes beyond the qualitative. You’re not just deleting words—you are making your written communication clear and easy to understand.

3 Qualities of a Good Idea

1. The idea has to be new.

You can’t write what other people have written. You’ll come off as a copycat.

2. The idea has to be big.

Josh would rather read something huge and sweeping about the future of politics in America than some small piece about the healthcare world.

3. The idea has to be right.

Of the three elements, this is the hardest to achieve, because you can’t be absolutely sure an idea is right if you’re tackling a new idea. It’s important to have evidence that supports your new idea so that people can follow your chain of logic.

It turns out that the intersection of ideas that are big, new, and right is very hard to come by.

These are the questions Josh asks himself as he’s critiquing other people’s ideas:

• Is it a big idea or small idea? If it’s a small idea, can I make it bigger?
• Is it a new idea, or is it an idea I’ve heard from countless others?
• Is the idea right? Is there evidence to support the idea?

These elements of a good idea pull in opposite directions. The easiest way to have an idea that is right and has evidence behind it, is to write about something that’s already been discussed.

It’s in the intersection of an idea that is big, new, and right where you’re creating an idea that’s interesting enough that people want to read about it.

How to Come Up with an Idea

“Great research or creativity consists of noticing the obvious before anyone else.”
– Unknown

The secret to coming up with a good idea is looking at what everyone else has looked at, and seeing what no one else has seen.

The interesting thing about that is you can’t do that sitting in your room, looking at the internet.

Let’s say you read something and it sparks an idea. You need to put that idea out into the world and see if anyone else has had that idea before. You need to seek out people who will disagree with you, so you can test your idea, and find evidence to deal with their objections.

In the internet age, you have many channels where you can put your ideas out into the world for other people to scrutinize.

“One of the great misconceptions people have is if you have a great idea, you should hide it so no one will steal it. No. The best thing you can do is get it out there, so you can test and modify it so it resonates with the largest number of people possible.”
– Josh Bernoff

Why Share Your Ideas?

There are two major pitfalls to hiding your ideas for too long.

1. When you finally publish your idea in the marketplace, you’ll find that many people disagree with you and that your idea is fundamentally flawed.
2. Often, people think they need to hide their idea way too long, and someone else publishes the idea before them.

For every idea, there comes a moment where people are ready to hear it. If you’re coming to a conclusion, chances are someone else is coming to the same conclusion at around the same time. You need to get your idea out there in a timely fashion, so people know it’s your idea.

How to Deal with Fear

Back in 1995, Josh was given an assignment by his manager at Forrester Research to write a report about how content creators were going to make money on the internet.

After interviewing a number of thought leaders about the internet, Josh came to the conclusion that content was going to be supported by advertising or subscriptions.

His editor challenged him to pick one of those two revenue models and write a report on it.

Josh wasn’t quite sure which model was going to win out, but he chose one and wrote the report.

“If you say something you’re worried about timidly and with a lot of qualifications, or if you state it boldly and clearly, the penalty for being wrong is exactly the same. So you might as well state it boldly and clearly, because if you’re wrong, you’re going to be wrong.”
– Josh Bernoff

The way to put fear aside is to ask yourself, “What do I believe?” Write what you believe to be true clearly and powerfully, and don’t let the fear of being wrong prevent you from using your voice.

One of the interesting things that happened when Josh wrote his article in 1995 was that a lot of people disagreed with him. His first instinct was to apologize to them. Their response wasn’t what he expected.

They told him they appreciated his argument and how he challenged their thinking. They told him they’d be watching to see if he ended up being right or not.

“In the society we have now, people don’t do enough of actually looking at the arguments of people who disagree with them and saying, ‘Ah well, I’m going to have to keep an eye on that, even if I don’t actually agree with what the person said.’”
 – Josh Bernoff

State Your Conclusion First

This is the easiest way to improve the power and clarity of your writing, and it flies in the face of what we have been taught in school.

In grade school, middle school, and high school, we are taught to develop arguments first, and state conclusions at the end of our essays. When you’re writing a blog post, or an article for the internet, the best thing to do is state your conclusions, and then follow it up with evidence.

Josh writes a blog post every day. He always puts the point of his blog post in the first three sentences.

Go Beyond Your Conclusion

People almost always think they’re done with an argument when they’ve reached their conclusion. When deciding how to present your ideas, take your conclusion a step further. If your conclusion is true, what else does that imply? If your conclusion is true, and the next implication is true, what else does that imply?

Keep going until the last link in your logic chain is absurd. Once you’ve reached the absurd idea in your logic chain, go one step back. That’s where you should end your blog post, article, or chapter.

By going beyond your conclusion, you’ll cause people to sit up and take notice of your writing and ideas.

How to Organize a Written Argument

1. Start with your conclusion.
2. Define the assumptions that led you to come to your conclusion.
3. Give evidence that your conclusion is correct.

When you write an argument this way, everything follows sequentially. Every paragraph has evidence that supports the conclusion you stated at the top. When your audience is done with your piece, they’ll know where you stand and some of them will be persuaded of your argument.

Learning Math Can Help You Become a Better Writer

There are two types of math problems.

First, there’s the standard math problem where the object is to find an answer and use problem-solving skills.

The second type of problem in mathematics is called a proof. A proof is a type of math problem where you prove something about how math interprets the world.

When you do a proof in mathematics, you have to lay out your assumptions in a logical sequence, and the conclusions that you draw from your assumptions have to follow in a logical sequence as well.

Learning the skill of doing mathematical proofs can help you write clearer arguments that are easy to follow and understand.

Remember that Books Are about People and Their Stories

“Books, even business books, are made up of people and stories.”
– Josh Bernoff

Books are about people and their stories. You can have all the evidence and statistics you need to back up your point, but if you don’t put a human face on the topic, it won’t engage your reader.

Books are best when they focus on people and how they solved specific problems. This structure allows your reader to identify with the person you’re writing about who has the same problem. The reader thinks, “If they solved this problem, so can I.”

The Most Important Thing Writers Need to Learn

“I think frontloading and getting to the point quickly are really the things that people need to learn. And it’s new because I think the level of impatience now of readers is much higher, because they’re trained with reading things on the computer screen.”
– Josh Bernoff

 

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Interview

Josh Bernoff’s Amazon author page

https://withoutbullshit.com/ – Josh’s blog. He publishes a 1,000-word blog post every day.

All of Josh’s articles on how to write books

Words on Screen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World by Naomi Baron

Writing without Bullshit: Boost Your Career by Saying What You Mean by Josh Bernoff

Groundswell, Expanded and Revised Edition: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li

 

The post 177: Streamline and Clarify Your Writing to Make It More Powerful with Josh Bernoff appeared first on TCK Publishing.

If you’ve ever been to a theme park like Disney World, chances are you’ve seen Steve Alcorn’s work. Steve is the CEO of Alcorn McBride, a company that designs products used in nearly all the world’s theme parks.

He’s also the author of many books. He’s written historical fiction, romance, and young adult novels. He’s also written several nonfiction books, including, Build a Better Mouse, Theme Park Design, and How to Fix Your Novel.

Steve fell into the field of theme park engineering because his wife always wanted to be a Disney Imagineer. Steve and his wife were in engineering school together, and when she graduated, she applied for exactly one job and got it. She became a Disney Imagineer and began working on the preliminary designs for Epcot Center.

When it became clear that she was going to be in Florida for quite some time working on the installation of Epcot Center, Steve followed her into that industry and worked on the American Adventure at Epcot.

After he was done working on American Adventure, Steve started a company that makes the types of things he wished he had when designing American Adventure. When he was working on that attraction, Steve and his team had to design everything from scratch.

Alcorn and McBride makes products that theme parks can buy off the shelf to help them design and build their rides. If you’ve been to any of the Disney parks or Universal Studios, you’ve likely experienced some of Steve’s work. His products work behind the scenes to make sure the synchronized audio and video are running smoothly.

Theme park design is a really fun field to be in because you get the inside scoop on attractions way before they open, and you get to help solve really sticky technical problems.

Steve has always been interested in writing, and he’s always been interested in creative enterprises. That’s one of the reasons he became an engineer in a creative field. Steve is also a sculptor.

In this interview, we talk about the importance of having a plan for your novel. We also talk about how to plan your novel, the three-act structure, and the scene/sequel method of building a novel. This is a great interview packed with information about how to think about planning your novel.

How the Writing Academy Came to Be

Steve decided to write his first novel when his daughter was little. They enjoyed reading together and he wanted to write something special for her.

His first novel was based on his experiences growing up in a summer camp near Sequoia National Park. That turned into the novel A Matter of Justice. The novel ended up having a protagonist a lot like his daughter at the time.

Through that process, and when researching a subsequent novel about the St. Francis dam, Steve met the screenwriter Doran William Cannon. Doran wrote for a lot of popular hits in the 1980s, including Dynasty and parts of The Godfather films.

Steve and Doran really hit it off. Doran had an online class called Write Like a Pro and he suggested that Steve do a course on writing mysteries, because he wasn’t writing mysteries and didn’t have a class on it.

So Steve developed a class on writing mysteries. In 2000, he teamed up with Doran to launch the online writing school Writing Academy. They have classes in novel writing, nonfiction writing, and writing your own memoir, among others. Steve has taught more than 30,000 aspiring writers how to structure their novels. In his house, he has an entire library filled with the signed novels of his students.

Why Steve Decided to Teach Writing

Steve has always wanted to help people. When he started his company, Alcorn and McCabe, he helped a lot of his clients use the products he created to build their theme park attractions. As the business grew, Steve assembled a large, competent engineering team around him, and they all encouraged him to go find something else to do with his time.

He always loved writing, and he’s read just about every book there is on the craft.

When he came across Doran’s work, it really connected with him. He became an evangelist for Doran’s teachings. They did several seminars together. At one point, Doran even said that Steve understood his techniques better than he did.

The Difference between Plot and Story

The first thing that writers need to understand is the distinction between plot and story. If you read a book that doesn’t feel quite right, it’s probably because the writer didn’t understand the distinction between story and plot.

The plot consists of the events of the story. It’s everything that happens external to the viewpoint character.

When we talk about story, we’re talking about everything that happens inside the protagonist’s head. We’re talking about the protagonist’s emotional journey.

Those two things are very distinct.

Even if you’re working on a screenplay or television production, you need both elements. Even though the camera is an inherently visual medium and is showing what is happening—the plot—the actor is portraying the emotional journey of the character, the story.

If you’re a screenwriter, you can often use the dialogue to help you tell story. If you’re a novelist, you have it easy because you can dive right into the mind of the protagonist. You can really delve into that character’s thoughts and express their emotions.

Every novel has to pay equal attention to the plot (the external events of the novel) and the story (the emotional journey of the protagonist through the novel).

You should set up your novel so that it is composed of a plot event (action) followed by an internal emotional reaction that leads to another plot event.

Good novels are made up of an action/reaction pattern.

How to Structure a Character’s Reaction

A proper reaction has three parts:

1. The point-of-view character feels something about what just happened.
2. Then they think about what just happened and their feelings about it.
3. Then they make a decision about what to do next and trigger the next plot event.

“A lot of novelists—and action novelists are a prime example of this—sort of leave out that story part, and so when you read these really exciting bang-up stories [with] cops and robbers, chases, dinosaurs, and so on. But you get into this sort of fatigue after a while if you never get to know the characters.”
– Steve Alcorn

You also want to avoid having too much story and not enough plot. This happens most often in romance novels where the reader is stuck inside the protagonist’s head with no plot events to move the story forward.

“You want to have the balance between the physical and the emotional. That’s the core of successful novel writing.”
– Steve Alcorn

Your Protagonist Must Change

“Novels are about a character changing. They’re not just arbitrary collections of random things happening.”
– Steve Alcorn

A story is about a protagonist who has a flaw. They have to work against their flaw and overcome it to solve a problem. If you figure out what your character’s flaw is before you start writing your novel, actually writing it becomes a much easier exercise.

There are only a handful of commonly used flaws that protagonists have in novels.

The most commonly used flaw for a protagonist is lack of self-confidence.

If you think about most movies, they are almost invariably about the protagonist overcoming a lack of self-confidence to solve a problem that has arisen.

That makes it sound like every story in the world would be the same. The truth is, it’s the plot details that make every story unique and different.

The Three-Act Structure

You can use the classic three-act structure to help keep your plot moving and allow you room to explore your story and your character’s flaws.

The First Act

In the first act, the protagonist is flawed and they don’t know it. The first turning point is when something happens that shows them what their flaw is. At the first act turning point, the audience sees the protagonist being overcome by their flaw.

The Second Act

The second act is the longest act of any story. It’s a big, long struggle because the protagonist hasn’t yet changed. They’re fighting against their flaw.

At the end of this act, the protagonist realizes their flaw, and they realize they need to change. Now that the character realizes they need to do something differently, they can make a plan to change and solve their problem.

Act Three

Act Three is usually the shortest. It’s also the most action-packed because this is when the character puts into motion their plan to change and solve their problem.

The three-act structure is universal to all types of stories. It’s what needs to be there for a story to be exciting and satisfying.

Star Wars Episode IV, A New Hope: A Case Study

Star Wars is the story of Luke Skywalker. The theme of that movie is about the Force and believing in yourself.

Act One

Luke Skywalker lives on Tatooine, a desert planet on the outskirts of the galaxy. Because we’re in a movie, there are things that happen that are outside Luke’s viewpoint, but the story really begins when Luke finds his home destroyed, and that propels him to the first act of the story.

Luke is really in a crisis, overwhelmed by a lack of self-confidence because he doesn’t know what is happening around him.

Act Two

He becomes involved with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Han Solo, and all these setbacks occur as the plot evolves. This is the struggle of Act Two, and all these exciting things are happening.

But Luke isn’t effective yet because he hasn’t overcome his basic flaw, lack of self-confidence. Even though he’s gone through training, he still doesn’t yet understand that he has to believe in himself and the Force.

Act Three

Star Wars has a very short act three. The Act Two turning point is very easy to identify. It’s when Luke is in his X-wing and he hears the voice of Obi Wan Kenobi, and realizes that he has to trust himself and the Force to make this impossible shot, and not the technology of his ship. Every event leading up to that is still part of Act Two.

Once Luke realizes the truth, he decides to trust the Force, and the climax happens. Darth Vader is defeated, and the movie is wrapped up in a neat ending.

Very little of the movie is the exciting Act Three. In this case, it was really that long struggle during Act Two that was the vast bulk of the movie, when Luke hadn’t yet changed.

Once the protagonist changes, the dramatic tension of the story tends to evaporate, and things need to be wrapped up quickly.

Sometimes Act Three is longer, like when a succession of plans doesn’t work at first. But Steve has also seen novels where the third act is just one page.

The length of the acts doesn’t matter. Making sure events happen in the right order is what matters.

1. Begin with a flawed character who has a problem.
2. Your flawed character struggles against their flaw to solve their problem.
3. Your flawed character changes.
4. Your previously flawed character is able to solve their problem after they’ve made the necessary change in their character.

At The Writing Academy, they break the three acts into nine checkpoints, which is actually more manageable than three acts. If you follow the nine checkpoints, you will come up with a novel that works structurally, guaranteed.

The Scene/Sequel Method

The scene/sequel method was developed by Jack Bickham of Oklahoma University.

A novel can be broken down into scene/sequel pairs.

Scene

A scene can be one sentence long, or it can take pages.

Every scene has three parts:

1. Goal – this is what the viewpoint character is trying to do.
2. Conflict – this is how the viewpoint character is being physically opposed from doing it.
3. Disaster – the viewpoint character doesn’t accomplish what they’re trying to accomplish.

It seems crazy to say there can be hundreds of scenes in a novel, but let’s look at a simple conversation:

The goal of the conversation: the viewpoint character wants to get some information.

The conflict in the conversation: another character doesn’t want to give up the information the viewpoint character wants.

The disaster in the conversation: the viewpoint character doesn’t get the information they wanted, or the information isn’t what they want to hear.

So you see, not every scene has to have the Death Star blowing up. Every scene before the climax just needs to have a setback for the protagonist.

Those three elements are the plot. They are external to the viewpoint character. Every scene is followed by a…

Sequel

Every sequel has up to four elements:

1. Emotion – your viewpoint character didn’t get what they want. How do they feel about that?
2. Thought – so your character didn’t get what they want. What should they do about it now? Your viewpoint character has alternatives, and they consider them in their head.
3. Decision – this is where your viewpoint character decides what to do next.
4. Action – this is where your viewpoint character takes action based on the decision they’ve made.

The emotion, thought, and decision elements are story elements, because they take place inside the character’s head. The action element returns us to the plot, because it happens in the external world. The action that comes after a decision will often reveal the goal of the next scene.

How to Control the Pace of Your Novel

If you want to speed up the pace of your novel, build up your scenes. That way, more stuff is happening, and it feels like a faster story to your audience.

If you want to slow down the pace of your novel, build up your sequels. Give your character time to reflect and emote. Give your character more time to plan out what to do next.

By adjusting the ratio between your scenes and sequels, you adjust the pace of your novel.

If you want your story to be fast and exciting, you should have a lot of scenes happening. If you want your story to be slower and more thoughtful, you have lots of sequels happening.

That controls the balance between plot and story. The balance can change throughout your novel. Some chapters will have more scenes, other chapters will have more sequels.

“If you feel things are dragging, it’s time to cross out some of those lines of thoughts, reflections, and emotions and get back to the action. If you feel like the reader is getting tired from nothing but nonstop car chases, it’s time to slow down and put in some reflection.”
– Steve Alcorn

Even in the middle of a car chase or something else exciting happening in your story, don’t forget to give the readers some emotion every page, even if it’s just a sentence.

Give us some emotion. Give us some thought. Give us a decision. Don’t let it be just blind action—give us some time to get in the character’s head, and let them reflect on the latest thing that happened, even as they move on to the next exciting thing.

How to Approach Your First Draft

Writing a novel can be tough, but there’s a few things you can do to get started smoothly.

Don’t Worry about Chapter Breaks

A lot of new writers worry too much about where their chapter breaks are, and about the overall word count of their novel. Neither are very important in the beginning.

You want to put a chapter break where people can’t stop reading. That is, you want to end a chapter when something so interesting is happening that the reader has to keep going to see what happens next.

The natural point for a chapter break to occur is after the disaster in the scene. Something horrible has just happened. What’s going to happen next?

The next chapter could open with the sequel to the previous scene, or you could time-jump to some point in the future and have us wonder what did happen. It’s best to decide where those dramatic breaks are later, after you’re done writing your manuscript.

Word Count Doesn’t Matter

Another misconception is the importance of word count. Word count does matter if you’re going to be traditionally published, at least a bit. Word count may also matter depending on the genre of story you’re telling.

But if you’re just starting out, and especially when writing your first draft, don’t worry about the word count.

New authors tend to think that every word they write down in the first draft is going to end up in the book. That couldn’t be further from the truth. A first draft is just that, a first draft. Professional authors will write 3–5 drafts of a manuscript before the book is published.

The second draft of the manuscript doesn’t just involve cutting a few words. The second draft of the manuscript is often a complete rewrite of the story. You shouldn’t worry about making your first draft perfect.

“Many authors will work from a printed copy of their first draft, and actually retype their second draft, saving the parts that they want, but finding new ways to word things as they go, because they know their characters much better now as a result of having completed that first draft.”
– Steve Alcorn

It’s very common for the word count of your manuscript to get shorter with each successive edit. You find ways to say things more clearly and tighten up your language, so that it really sings.

At the same time, if your word count is running short, you don’t really need to worry about it because you can always add in some subplots, or write deeper, richer settings in subsequent drafts. You can also add in other things to pad your word count if you need to.

When you’re writing your first draft, let your creativity flow. You have a plan because you’ve sketched out the nine checkpoints in the three-act structure of your story. You know your protagonist because you’ve done a character sketch and defined their flaw.

Worry about chapter breaks and your final word count when it comes time to edit your manuscript.

Every author can learn to be a good self-editor. No matter how bad your first draft is, those writing skills can be learned.

The Biggest Mistake First-Time Authors Make

The biggest mistake Steve sees first time authors make is that they try to write a novel without a plan.

Steve has taught thousands of students and about 25% of them will introduce themselves by saying, “I had this really good idea/vivid dream that I wanted to write as a novel. After writing the first chapter, I got writers block.”

The truth is, these people didn’t get writer’s block. Their idea ran out of steam. They didn’t know where they were going.

That’s why Steve’s process is for you to take a step back and define these nine checkpoints which give you a roadmap to tell your story.

Creating these nine checkpoints can be as simple as writing nine sentences to give you benchmarks about where you’re going.

A lot of Steve’s students do NaNoWriMo. National Novel-Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, takes place every November. It’s a writing challenge you can sign up for online. Participants commit to try and write 50,000 words in one month.

That 50,000 words may not be enough for a novel in some genres, but it’s a heck of a good start, and it’s a very reasonable goal to try and write that in one month.

A lot of new authors try NaNoWriMo and fail because they don’t have a plan. Steve’s students always have a plan before they start trying to write a novel, in November or any time. A large percentage of them succeed, and at the end of November, they are either ready to edit, or they have a few more chapters to go before they’ve finished their novel.

Having a plan before you start is the key to success.

“Spending a few hours in the planning stage can save you hundreds of hours in rewrites, and can also save you from getting stuck, both of which are disasters.”
– Steve Alcorn

How to Make a Plan for Your Novel

The nine checkpoints Steve recommends are story checkpoints. There are some plot points involved in the planning process. But story checkpoints relate very much to what’s happening inside the character as they move through the plot elements.

The next step after you define those plot checkpoints is to fill in what Steve calls scene markers.

You might have as many as 200 scene/sequel pairs in a novel. You’re not going to jot down all of those. You want to jot down the major plot points that you can think of. The plot points that get your character from point A to point B.

Understanding Your Characters

When Steve is planning a new novel, he’ll spend several days gaining a deep understanding of his characters and what makes them tick. He has a comprehensive character attributes form that he fills out for all his important characters. The form consists of about 100 questions.

This may seem like a waste of time to new writers, but understanding your characters is the most important work you can do. Readers read for character. Readers fall in love with characters. Really understanding your characters makes writing stories and novels much easier.

“The planning process can be the most fun part of writing your novel because it allows you to invent things without doing the work of writing them down. You can think of an idea, jot down three or four words to remind you what it is later, and move on.”
– Steve Alcorn

Links and Resources Mentioned in this Interview

Steve Alcorn’s Amazon author page

How to Fix Your Novel by Steve Alcorn. Steve goes in depth about how to plan your novel and the nine character checkpoints you need in every story.

https://writingacademy.com/ – the online writing school Steve started with Doran William Cannon. They have classes on many different types of writing.

Get all of Writing Academy’s courses for one low monthly subscription – get all of the courses (valued at over $2,300) for $49 a month.

Get the nonfiction bundle at Writing Academy – get all of their nonfiction writing courses the Nonfiction Writing Workshop, the Write Your Life Story Workshop, and the Publish Your Book Now Workshop for $19 a month

Get the fiction writing bundle at Writing Academy – this bundle includes Beginning Writer’s Workshop, Novel Writing Workshop, Young Adult Fiction Writing Workshop, Writing for Children Writing, and Science Fiction and Fantasy for $29 a month.

 

The post 176: How to Harness the Difference between Plot and Story with Steve Alcorn appeared first on TCK Publishing.

Emma Sumner is the author of The Fairies of Waterfall Island. She published the book in 2016 at the age of only eight years old. Today she’s 10 years old and just finishing up her second book, which is a prequel to the first.

She was inspired to write her first book when she saw her dad publishing his second book on Amazon. Her dad told her that if she could write 150 words in her story that day, he would help her publish the book when it was complete.

She began immediately outlining the book in a new notebook she’d recently gotten. When she showed the notebook to her father that night, Emma had 172 words in it, and he began helping her from there.

In this podcast, we talked about what inspired Emma to write a book, Autism Speaks, and the importance of starting your novel. Emma has a unique story and a message the whole world needs to hear.

How Emma Decided to Write a Book about Fairies

Emma likes books about fairies. She’s a particular fan of Rainbow Magic and The Never Girls. She also likes mysteries; she enjoyed The Magic Treehouse. There was never any question in her mind what type of book she’d write.

Emma’s Writing Process

Emma is definitely a plotter, not a pantser. After Emma finished her outline, she began writing the rough draft. She would have a writing session every Saturday at Panera and post an update on Facebook about what she was doing.

After Emma was done with her rough draft, she and her father hired an editor to go over the manuscript. The editor helped a lot because she found mistakes that Emma and her father missed.

Emma revised the rough draft based on her editor’s suggestions, and then published the book.

What Emma Learned from Working with an Editor

There are a lot of lessons you can learn by working with skilled professionals who are able to give you a different perspective on your work.

Emma learned that you can make your book better by focusing on the details.

Before the editor helped Emma revise her work, there weren’t a lot of details about the world. She says it was really fun working out how fairy magic works.

That kind of nuance adds depth to your fictional world and makes it easier for readers to fall in love with your story.

How Emma Markets Her Book

Emma’s aunt has been tremendously helpful in marketing her book. She helped Emma get several television interviews because of the unique story about how the book was created. Notably, Emma has been on Good Morning Sacramento and Fox 40. She’s also done interviews for magazines and newspapers.

Emma recently started using Amazon ads to market her books. She targets books similar to hers on Amazon; her book is displayed every time someone looks at those product pages.

Emma also made sure that her book was available in as many formats as possible. You can buy a Kindle version, a print version, or the audiobook version.

What It’s Like to Be on Local TV

Once you agree to do a television interview, you and the producer decide on a day and time. Then you go to the TV station and do the interview.

Emma has had to miss school a couple of times for TV interviews. The experience was well worth the missed class time.

Emma’s Spelling Bee Success

Emma has traveled all the way to the National Spelling Bee two years in a row, when she was in the third and fourth grades.

She’s also talented in math and science. She competed in the district math bowl in the first grade.

Readings in Classrooms

Teachers read Emma’s book in classrooms. She attends some of these readings and talks about the process of writing her book. There’s a lot of ways to get your book known if you simply look at opportunities within your own community.

The Message of Emma’s Book

“Part of the reason I wrote my book is that I wanted to teach kids of all ages that anything is possible. If I wrote my book at age 7, you can do it at any age, if you really want to.”
– Emma Sumner

The moral of the story is persistence is the key to success. You can’t just give up if things aren’t working for you the first time you try something. You have to make sure you work the process, and just keep going until you’ve accomplished what you set out to.

The process of writing the book mirrored the story itself. There were times while Emma was writing her story that she couldn’t think of anything to write. But the message Emma wanted to put out in the world inspired her to continue writing until the book was done.

“The best way to get over writer’s block is just write anything that comes into your mind.”
– Emma Sumner

The Importance of a Good Support Team

Emma had a lot of people helping her during the book production process. Her dad was a constant source of inspiration and support. Her editor really helped bring her book to another level, and her aunt connected her to people who helped Emma promote her book.

When Emma started her Facebook page to talk about and promote the book, almost 300 people signed up before the book was published.

That was a huge surprise to her. Emma didn’t think anyone would sign up for her Facebook page. To have that support during the production phase of the process was amazing.

Her entire family was incredibly supportive. They became true evangelists for the book. They helped and inspired her throughout the production process, and they really helped spread the word about her book when it was published.

How Emma Used a Launch Team to Catapult Her Book to Success

Emma gathered her launch team using Facebook. She had a signup form linked to her Facebook page. Close to 300 people signed up to be part of her launch team.

Having a launch team that large really helped word of mouth spread about the book quickly when it was live on Amazon.

The Self-Publishing School

Emma learned a lot from The Self-Publishing School. Her father is a teacher there. The most important thing she learned at The Self-Publishing School was the importance of the details in your story.

Autism Speaks

Emma thought it would be cool if she was able to raise some money for charity. So for the first three months that her book was live on Amazon, 100% of her royalties went to Autism Speaks.

Emma chose Autism Speaks because of the personal connection she has with the disease. Before she moved to her current house, she was friends with a neighbor on the autism spectrum. So, when she was deciding what charity to donate to, Autism Speaks was the natural choice.

Autism Speaks is a charity that helps people with autism deal with their condition. They offer speech therapy, as well as a number of other therapies and services to help autistic people deal with the world.

Emma Inspires Others

Emma’s success with The Fairies of Waterfall Island: The Search for the Missing Crystal has inspired her friends to write their own books. Emma’s best friend Annabelle is in the middle of writing her own book. Annabelle loves Diary of a Wimpy Kid, so her book is written in that style.

Emma’s cousin is working on a comic book with his friends.

Emma’s Second Book

Emma’s second book is a prequel to The Fairies of Waterfall Island: The Search for the Missing Crystal.

In The Fairies of Waterfall Island, Julia is the wisest fairy in all the land. The prequel explores Julia’s character and tells the story of how she got her powers.

Final Words of Advice

“If you want to write a book, start writing. The hardest part of writing a book is starting.”
– Emma Sumner

Once you start writing your book, it becomes a lot easier. Writing can be fun if you let it be.

You don’t get anywhere by questioning yourself.

 

Links and Resources Mentioned in this Interview

The Fairies of Waterfall Island: The Search for the Missing Crystal by Emma Sumner

http://emmalovesbooks.com/ – Emma’s website

Emma Sumner’s Amazon author page

https://self-publishingschool.com/ – Emma learned a lot about self-publishing from this program. Her father is a teacher there.

https://www.autismspeaks.org/ – Autism Speaks is a charity organization dedicated to promoting solutions, across the spectrum and throughout the lifespan, for the needs of individuals with autism and their families through advocacy and support; increasing understanding and acceptance of people with autism spectrum disorder; and advancing research into causes and better interventions for autism spectrum disorder and related conditions.

 

The post 175: Lessons from a 10-Year-Old Published Author with Emma Sumner appeared first on TCK Publishing.

Steven Spatz is a writer, marketer, and president of BookBaby, a distributor of ebooks and print books. He started his writing career at age 13 and worked for several major newspapers after graduating from university.

Steven got a job as a sportswriter when he was 13. His journalistic heroes were Walter Cronkite and Howard Cosell.

He did that for a little while and then went back to the family business, where he learned direct marketing. Steven’s family had a food catalog they grew to be one of the largest in the United States. Through that experience, he really learned about direct marketing, and bringing the right products and services to the right people at the right time.

That’s what Steven has done with most of his career. He’s worked for Mattel and Hasbro Collectibles. About 15 years ago, Steven became interested in the music business. His parent company, CDBaby, still manufactures custom-made CDs and DVDs. Yes, there’s still a market for that! They also work in digital music.

BookBaby started seven years ago. BookBaby’s mission is to help authors get their work out into the marketplace. The BookBaby motto is “We make the little guy look big.”

Steven is using his talent for writing and his knowledge of direct marketing to help indie authors be successful in the marketplace.

In this interview, we talked about the factors every indie author needs to consider, how BookBaby can help you achieve your goals, how the marketplace has changed in the last eight years, and the benefits of using BookBaby to help launch you onto the world stage.

Starting Up BookBaby

BookBaby grew out of CDBaby, which still sends a lot of music to iTunes, Amazon, and Spotify.

Through these existing partnership, Steven had a great opportunity: when Apple created the iPad, they were looking for companies that could make ebooks. They knew CDBaby already created music files for them, so Apple asked if they could make ebooks. The people at CDBaby had to quickly learn how to make ebook files that would work on the iPad.

Since then, the business has exploded. They added ebook distribution to Amazon, and now they’re in 59 other digital retail stores around the world.

BookBaby quickly realized that if authors were going to succeed, they would need to give their readers the book in the format the reader wanted. That’s why they started offering print distribution.

They began by partnering with a printer they knew. Two years ago, they started printing some books in house as a test, and now they print all their books in house.

At this point, BookBaby is a one-stop shop for everything an indie author needs. They provide:

• Editing
• Ebook production
• Cover design
• Book formatting
• Print distribution
• Electronic distribution

“Our goal has been to help authors not have to make many decisions. Authors need to spend time writing, and then hand over all the details about their books to experts. You used to have to go to many different places to get all of the services authors really need; now you can just come to BookBaby.”
– Steven Spatz

Five Things You Need to Consider as an Indie Author

BookBaby offers a simple five-step guide to self-publishing.

There are five decisions you need to make before you publish your book.

1. You have to decide the book is finished.

You have to decide that you’re happy with your finished product, and that the book is the best you can make it right now.

Understand that even though your book is as good as you can make it, it’s not going to be perfect. No book is perfect. You have to decide when it’s time to let go.

Steven still talks to authors every month who have been working on their books for years. It’s important to do the best job you can with your book, and then get it out there.

2. You have to have your book edited.

BookBaby runs an ad in industry magazines that says, “The only page that doesn’t need editing is blank.” It’s true. Even the best authors need a good editor.

You put yourself at a real disadvantage if you don’t have a professional editor. (Hint: a pro editor does not mean your English teacher, or your mother-in-law who thinks she knows a few things about commas and semicolons.)

 

3. You have to decide what kind of physical product you’re going to introduce to your readers.

Yes, books are a product—and that means you have to decide what formats and products matter to you and your readers.

• Are you going to produce an ebook?
• Are you going to produce only an ebook?
• Do you need help formatting the book?
• Are you going to format the ebook yourself or do you want help doing that?
• Are you going to produce printed books as well?
• What size and color will your book be?
• What is the trim size of the book going to be?

4. You have to decide what kind of distribution you need.

Your book needs to get into readers’ hands—and that involves some knowledge of where they shop, and what benefits you can gain from being in different marketplaces.

• Are you happy just putting your book on Amazon?
• Do you want a Print on Demand book?
• Do you want to distribute to other countries?

Amazon isn’t dominant everywhere. Amazon is big in the United States and England. In Europe, they’re the second or third biggest distributor. In Asia, Amazon is almost nonexistent as a competitor.

Thinking outside the Amazon ecosystem is important for indie authors, especially if they want to reach their maximum audience.

5. You need to decide how to market your book.

Marketing is an activity a lot of authors don’t like to do. But it’s one activity that no one else is going to do for you. There are millions of books available on Amazon and other online retailers. You have to decide how you’re going to make your book stand out in the marketplace.

Book Marketing Help

There are several services you can pay for that may help your book break through the noise. But there are no guarantees when it comes to advertising.

There are also services you can pay for where you learn how to do the marketing process yourself.

You should use every marketing strategy as best you can.

• Use social media to get the word out about your book.
• Get as many Amazon reviews as you can.
• Use search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to maximize your Amazon ranking.

 

If you follow that script in order, that’s a good starting point for any indie author.

How BookBaby Handles Distribution

Getting your book into readers’ hands requires a different approach for different channels and formats.

For eBooks

If you just want to be on Amazon, it’s relatively easy to upload the book yourself and go to CreateSpace for your print book. That’s what Steven recommends for those folks who only want Amazon exposure.

If you want to reach fans all over the world, you can go to BookBaby and they will help you format your book so that it works on every single e-reading device in the world. They create both epub files and Mobi files.

It’s entirely possible for you to create your own epub and Mobi files, but sometimes you just want a professional hand to make sure that everything looks and works the way it’s supposed to.

After the conversion process is complete, BookBaby asks you where you want to be distributed. If you go for full worldwide distribution, BookBaby will distribute your book through several channels, including:

• Amazon
• Apple iBooks
• Google Play
• Hoopla – a new player in the ebook industry which has exploded in the last few months
• Versa – a company that puts your book in a lot of European and Asian stores

 

If you go with BookBaby, your book can be purchased in 60 stores all around the world. What really sets BookBaby worldwide distribution apart is that your book is distributed through all of the local bookselling powerhouses in their respective countries. You’re not just limited to Amazon outlets in foreign countries.

Plus, when BookBaby adds a new store, they ask you if you’d like to be distributed there. If you opt in to being distributed to that store, expanding your distribution is effortless on your part.

BookBaby collects their money through fees charged up front. That means you keep 100% of the royalties you earn by being distributed worldwide.

For example, on average, Amazon pays authors about 90 days after their book is sold. If you go through BookBaby, you’ll get your royalty check about one week after they receive it from the online bookstore.

For Print Books

Distributing print books is where BookBaby gives indie authors some real advantages:

1. Your book is guaranteed to be in stock 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. BookBaby can do that because they’re the printer.

Over the Christmas holiday, quite a few Print on Demand books on Amazon were out of stock. BookBaby experienced that problem to a much lesser degree, but they were able to solve the problem faster because they own the printing machines.

1. When you distribute your print book through BookBaby, it’s available to all brick and mortar bookstores through their normal distribution channels.
2. BookBaby offers a direct-to-reader website for print distribution that doesn’t cost the author anything to set up.
3. BookBaby pays a 50% commission for every print book you sell through your BookBaby website. On top of that, you get paid much faster than with other online retailers. If somebody buys a book from your BookBaby storefront on Wednesday, you’ll get paid the following Monday, because it’s baked into BookBaby’s payment engine.

How Print-on-Demand Works at BookBaby

The nice thing about print-on-demand (POD) at BookBaby is you don’t have to have an inventory of books available.

BookBaby charges an up-front POD fee to have your file available on their press. They’ll print a few test copies to make sure everything looks right. After that, it’s all done automatically as orders come in.

Here’s how the ordering process works:

• Your customer orders a print version of your book from Amazon (or your BookBaby storefront.
• The order goes directly to BookBaby.
• They print the book.
• They package the book.
• They ship the book.

After uploading the file to BookBaby, there’s nothing the author needs to do, except look at his or her account a week later and see that money is available from the sale of that book.

Whether a customer orders one book or 1,000, the process is the same. Digital printing presses produce the same quality product every time. BookBaby has the capacity to handle book orders of any size.

Three Major Printing Differences with BookBaby

Why choose BookBaby over another printer? There are several advantages for an indie author:

1. They offer a large variety of trim sizes (the finished size of the book, like 6×9 inches).
2. They offer easy color printing. Some POD services will only do black and white or greyscale printing.
3. BookBaby will also produce a hardcover book if you want. They are currently one of only a small handful of companies that offer print-on-demand hardcover books.

How BookBaby Competes with Amazon

The potential self-publishing marketplace is huge. There’s room for everyone to compete.

And there are a lot of very good companies out there. Who you choose to work with depends on what you need as an author.

BookBaby serves a wide range of customers. They work with people who don’t know much about self-publishing and need a lot of hand-holding. They also work with authors who prefer the convenience of having one distribution account that handles everything.

The last thing Amazon wants to do is a lot of handholding of its authors. Amazon’s business model is all about producing a large inventory of self-published work that its customers can buy.

BookBaby sends a lot of its content to Amazon. So in that way, the two companies are allies.

But they also offer authors other ways to make their books available all over the world and to keep more control over the process, while getting the help they need.

BookBaby’s Most Popular Service

The complete self-publishing package is BookBaby’s best-selling offer by far. The package costs $1,600, and for that you get:

• eBook files that work on every e-reader in the world.
• Worldwide ebook distribution. (By default, they enroll you in KDP Select for one 90-day period. They recommend that for first time authors, as there are some real marketing advantages to being in the KDP Select program for 90 days.)
• Cover design.
• Worldwide print distribution of your books, and a 50% commission on all print book sales.
• A BookBaby storefront where you can sell books directly to readers.

They take as much confusion and technical worry out of the process of self-publishing as they can.

Differences between Musicians and Authors

In Steven’s experience, authors and musicians are quite different.

Musicians are happy to release their music into the world. They release their art early and often.

Authors are often reluctant to release their manuscript. It’s much harder to convince an author that the book is ready to be released than a musician.

Authors and musicians have the same creative drive and the same ambitions, but by and large, their temperaments are quite different.

The indie music scene has been around for 20 to 25 years. The indie author scene has been around for about eight years, so it’s a much less mature marketplace.

On the music side of things, there are only a few decisions to make. On the book side, you have a lot more options in terms of packaging and distribution.

The Biggest Changes in the Self-Publishing Industry in the Last Eight Years

A lot has happened in the self-publishing world in the few years it’s been around in its modern form. Here are some of the biggest changes Steven has noticed:

Author Expectations

Expectations have changed tremendously in the last eight years. Authors used to be content to have their book available on Amazon. Now authors want to be the bestseller in their genre.

Author Professionalism

The awareness of professionalism is important. When BookBaby first started its editing program, 2 out of 10 books that were distributed through BookBaby were professionally edited. Now the number is more like 7 out of 10.

Authors realize that in order to be competitive, you really have to put out a quality product.

Author Platform

The importance of having an author platform has increased as the marketplace has gotten more competitive. Building an author platform is not an easy thing to do, but it’s essential today.

It’s not enough to simply go on Twitter and shout for the world to buy your book. You have to take a more systematic approach to building your author platform.

One of the most important things you can do is to create your metadata deliberately. Metadata is the data that Amazon and Google use to index your book on their websites.

Metadata is found:

1. On your product page.
2. On your Amazon author page.

You want to make sure that you put some thought behind your Amazon keywords. These are the keywords you tell Amazon your book is about. These keywords help Amazon customers find your book.

Overall, indie authors are becoming more professional in their expectations of and their willingness to do the work it takes to be successful.

Carl-Johan Forssén Ehrlin: A Case Study

Carl is a Swedish psychologist. He called BookBaby six years ago and told them he wanted to publish a book in English. He translated his children’s book into English himself, and then BookBaby helped him publish The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep: A New Way of Getting Children to Sleep. He had great hopes for it.

At first, the book didn’t go anywhere. Carl called their office every month asking what he could do to make his books sell better.

The first thing they did was change the category the book was in. He put it into a children’s category when the book was really about parenting. After they changed the book’s category, it did a little bit better in sales.

Then they suggested that he have the book translated into more languages. It is a short children’s book, and that meant the translation costs were low. When they released the book in six more languages, the book did a little bit better. But sales still weren’t meeting his expectations.

The folks at BookBaby suggested Carl write more books so he would have more inventory to attract more readers. He didn’t want to do that, because he believed in his book.

Finally, they suggested that he start giving away his book for free on his website and through social media. That’s when they saw downloads of his book really start to tick up. He was getting up to 1,500 downloads per week. People were really starting to take notice.

That’s when the book found its way into the hands of the editor of a prominent British newspaper, The Guardian. Apparently, the editor had a child who wouldn’t go to sleep, so he read the book to his child and like magic, the child went to sleep.

The editor was so thrilled that he wrote an article for The Guardian that was syndicated to more than 600 newspapers. From that point on, sales of Carl’s book exploded. Starting in August 2015, his royalty checks went from four figures, to five figures, to six figures a month, month after month.

Carl was the first self-published author to have his book be number one on Amazon and on the New York Times bestseller list at the same time.

He got a seven-figure book deal to publish two books with a traditional publisher after the success of his first book.

Carl recently contacted BookBaby to say he was going to use them for his next series of books because he enjoyed the process of self-publishing more than the traditional publishing process.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Interview

 

Steven Spatz’s Amazon author page

https://www.bookbaby.com/

Call BookBaby at 866-707-0024 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern time, Monday through Friday, to get free advice on how to move forward with your self-publishing project. They won’t read your book, but they will give you free advice about the next steps you might want to take.

 

 

The post 174: How To Use BookBaby To Grow Your Print and Digital Book Sales with Steven Spatz appeared first on TCK Publishing.

Ethan Jones is the bestselling author of more than 20 books, including the best-selling Justin Hall Spy Thriller Series.

Ethan always wanted to be a writer. He started writing novels seriously in 2008, but ever since he was a kid, Ethan would watch TV shows and movies and imagine future adventures for the heroes he loved.

He doesn’t have a favorite spy movie, although Salt, The Bourne Identity, and the James Bond films rank fairly high with him.

In 2008, he began carving out extra time to schedule to write his own stories. He always loved TV shows and movies that had to do with spies, so he figured that writing spy thrillers would be right up his alley. It turns out his audience agrees with him.

In this episode, we talked about Ethan’s author journey, his writing process, and the importance of treating your writing like a business. We also talked about Ethan’s marketing strategies, his daily routine, and some mistakes Ethan made early in his career you can learn from. This was a fast-paced interview jam-packed with information.

Ethan’s Turning Point

Ethan decided to write his first novel after he read a spy novel that wasn’t very good. He thought for sure that he could write something at least as good as the book he’d just finished reading. That was the beginning of his writing adventure.

It took Ethan one year to write his first book. The first book is always the hardest to finish.

He wanted to write something a little different than the standard spy story. So the story takes place in Canada and his hero is a member of the Canadian special forces. Usually in spy fiction, the hero is a member of some sort of US government agency, whether that be the CIA or FBI or another alphabet soup agency.

How Ethan Developed His Writing Process

Ethan developed his writing process by writing books. He wrote his first book completely by the seat of his pants. There were one or two places where he wrote himself into a corner, and he had to spend a few days figuring out how the story was going to work out.

These days, Ethan has an idea of where the story is going to end. He doesn’t have a detailed outline, but he has some idea of what the major plot points are and roughly where they occur. He’s not so tied to his outline that he won’t let the story change as he writes it. He allows his characters the flexibility to discover the story as they’re living through it.

Having an ending firmly in mind has been helpful for Ethan when writing his books, even if the ending might change as he produces the manuscript.

Why Pantsing Works for Ethan

Ethan tried to plot a couple of his novels in detail. He found it was difficult for him to force the story on to the path he wanted it to take. It broke his creative flow.

Ethan is much more productive with a loose idea of where the story is going and the flexibility to allow his characters to react naturally.

Most of his stories are about spying and spycraft. So his characters have a lot of trust issues, and it’s very easy for him to manipulate the mood of a character to make them more suspicious, then gently nudge the story where he wants it to go. Writing mostly by the seat of his pants just works best for Ethan.

How Ethan Comes up with His Story Ideas

To develop his stories, Ethan does a lot of research. He pays attention to international news, and specifically news about the region where he’s going to set his next book.

Recently, Ethan decided to write a book where ISIS featured prominently. He watched a lot of documentaries by journalists about the group. For Ethan, research is essential in coming up with his ideas and making sure his book seems like something that might actually happen.

Write in a Genre You’re Passionate about

Some time ago, Ethan tried his hand at romantic suspense. There was less research involved, but his heart wasn’t really in it. Those books took much longer to write because he wasn’t as passionate about the genre.

“Writing good spy thrillers does involve a lot of research, but when you’re doing something you really enjoy, it doesn’t sound like work.”
– Ethan Jones

Ethan’s Publishing Journey

Ethan wrote Arctic Wargame: A Justin Hall Spy Thriller back in 2008. At first, he tried to get a traditional publishing deal. Self-publishing wasn’t as popular back then as it is now, and a traditional publishing deal seemed like the way to go.

In Canada, the book market is smaller, so you don’t necessarily need an agent to have your book traditionally published. Ethan tried submitting his book to agents and publishers. Some of the people he submitted to requested a partial manuscript, and he got good feedback from them, but he couldn’t secure a book deal.

In 2011, a friend suggested that he self-publish his manuscript.

Before diving in, he took some time figuring out how self-publishing works. He was able to publish the first book in the Justin Hall Spy Series in 2012, shortly after finishing the manuscript for the second book in the series.

He published the second and third books in 2014 and hasn’t slowed down since.

Back in 2012, you didn’t need to do a lot to promote a self-published book. Just the fact that was in the marketplace at a price lower than traditionally published books was enough for you to make a few hundred dollars a month, as long as the story was decent.

The market was less crowded in 2012, and it was a lot easier to make money as a new author in the marketplace.

Today, it takes more work—and more books. Ethan has three series out right now, and he plans to add another series in March 2018.

Lessons Ethan Has Learned about Writing and Publishing in the Last 10 Years

• Things change in the self-publishing marketplace quickly. Things are often different just month to month! It’s important to adapt to changes as they occur. Don’t expect things to stay the same.
• Ethan suggests that all indie authors should consider wide distribution.
• There’s value in not having all your eggs in one basket, or all your books in one distribution system.
• Having your books available at different bookstores creates multiple income streams. That way, if one website’s sales slow down for you, the other booksellers might be able to pick up the slack.
• Ethan tried Kindle Unlimited as recently as early 2017, and his books didn’t stick in Amazon’s ecosystem. He’s had much better luck going wide.
• He’s done particularly well with his books in Kobo. Kobo also gives you opportunities to promote your work.
• Think about physical products. Sony televisions are available in a number of different stores and chains. They aren’t exclusive to Wal-Mart or any other chain of stores.
• Don’t be afraid to experiment, but always focus on collecting data that gives you information going forward.
• 

Ethan’s Strategy for Launching a New Book

Ethan didn’t do any active promoting of his books until early 2017. His promotional strategy for his early books was to:

1. Tell his mailing list that a new book was available.
2. Be active on social media. Write Facebook posts and tweet about the fact that a new book is available.
3. Write a blog post on his website announcing that a new book was available.

Ethan’s Paid Promotion Strategy, Starting Early 2017

Ethan has been experimenting with Amazon marketing ads since early 2017. He’s also been experimenting with boosting his Facebook posts.

Ethan’s Free Promotion Strategy Starting Early 2017

On the free side of things, Ethan has been building his network of authors in his genre and cross-promoting with them.

The authors Ethan has teamed up with tell their mailing lists when he has a new book out. He returns the favor when they have a new book out, or when they have a deal going on.

“Cross-promoting with authors in your genre is the best marketing you can do, because that audience is already hot for books like yours. Also, you’re not an unknown person to them, because you’re coming with a recommendation from the author that is writing to them.”
– Ethan Jones

Depending on how involved the author recommending you wants to get, they can say they read the book and enjoyed it and their subscribers might enjoy it as well, or they can simply say that you have a new book out and it looks good.

It’s very important to be honest and aboveboard with your email list at all times. You shouldn’t lie to your readers to drive up book sales. You might get some short-term benefit, but it will cause you headaches in the long run.

Cross-promoting with other authors is kind of like dating. Working with some authors might get you a lot of book sales. Working with other authors might not get you many sales at all. You’ll never know which partnerships will work best for you until you dive in and give it a try.

It’s best to network with authors who write in your genre, because they have readers on their list who will probably like the books you’re writing.

Ethan’s Daily Routine

Ethan has a full-time job and has to carve out writing time wherever he can. He takes the bus to work every day, and that commute takes about an hour. He writes every morning as he commutes to work. There are times when he wishes the bus would take longer because he has to stop at a point where things are going really well for him.

Sometimes Ethan wakes up earlier in the morning to do his writing. He has to get on the bus at 7 a.m., so he’ll get up at 4 or 5 a.m. to start his writing day.

“I used to think writing was only to be done when you could have four or five uninterrupted hours on a Saturday. But realistically, that’s difficult to do when you have a family and other obligations. So even if I can spend 15 minutes and write it’s possible to get 100 words down in that period of time. So even if you only spend 15 minutes a day, by the end of the month, if you’re consistent you can get a few pages down for sure.”
– Ethan Jones

Mistakes You Can Learn From

Ethan has made many mistakes in his author journey. Here are some of the bigger ones:

• Ethan’s biggest mistake was not having a mailing list from the beginning.
• Ethan wrote his books without a mailing list for three years. Without a mailing list, Ethan could only communicate with readers who sought him out; he had no way to follow up with his audience.
• You should have an autoresponder, a mailing sequence for your readers, and a call to action to join your email list at the front or back of your book.
• It’s important that you adopt a business mindset when it comes to publishing your work.
• Ethan had to learn more about how a business is run, how promotions work, and how to market his books.
• Business skills don’t come naturally to many authors, but they’re important if you want to be successful.
• In the beginning, Ethan priced his books too high.
• He also wishes he had begun networking sooner.

It’s also important to improve your writing craft. It can be harder to see your writing mistakes than your business mistakes. When you’ve read over your manuscript a few times, you can get to the point where you’re tired of rereading it.

It can be much easier to see your business mistakes when you do a promotion for your books and they don’t sell very well.

Of course, if your book isn’t good, or it doesn’t have good packaging, that can certainly affect your sales. But you absolutely must have:

• A good story
• A good cover
• A good, succinct description
• An opening that grabs your readers. Readers can usually see about the first 10% of your story for free in the different online bookstores. You want to make that beginning as good as you can to draw readers in.

A promotion that brings more traffic to your product page should lead to more sales. Also remember that some promotional websites give you a better return on your investment than others.

Ethan Reflects on his Author Journey

Ethan tried to get his first book published through a traditional publisher. As with all authors, his first book was his weakest in terms of craft. He also wrote the book to be a standalone story, something he doesn’t recommend for today’s authors wanting to make a living. Series sell better because each new book is an advertisement for all the other books in the series.

He wants to improve his writing style, particularly focusing on some weak areas readers have pointed out in the past.

You don’t have to put all of your research into the book you’re writing. Nobody likes a show-off. If the detail of your research doesn’t add to your story, leave it out. You should only add details about setting if they’re unique to the place you’re talking about, or if they add to the story.

If you’re talking about a beach or a gun, you don’t need to describe every minute detail. Even if your readers haven’t been to the beach you’re talking about, most of your readers have been to a beach. Don’t get bogged down in details that don’t advance your story.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Interview

Ethan Jones Books – Ethan’s website where you can join his mailing list and get a free short story. He wrote the short story recently and it’s one of his better works.

Ethan Jones’s Amazon author page

The Justin Hall Spy Thriller Series – Ethan’s first series. It’s about a spy in the Canadian Special Forces.

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Dorie Clark is an adjunct professor at the Duke University School of Business. She’s the author of Entrepreneurial You, Reinventing You, and Stand Out (named the #1 leadership book of 2015 by Inc. magazine). She’s a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, and she regularly consults and speaks for clients such as Microsoft, Google, and The World Bank.

Dorie’s first job out of graduate school was as a political reporter. When she was laid off from that job, she began the process of reinventing herself. She tried a lot of different things, not all of which worked out.

She worked in two unsuccessful political campaigns and then turned her talents to running a nonprofit. After two years of doing that, Dorie realized that running a nonprofit is exactly like running your own business.

So…Dorie decided to start running her own business. For the past 11 years, she’s run her own marketing and consulting company. She’s done all kinds of activities to help build her brand and the brands of her clients, including:

• Writing books
• Giving speeches
• Doing executive coaching
• Launching online courses

In this interview, we talked about what a personal brand is and how to build yours. We took a deep dive into social networking, how to do it, and why it’s essential to building your personal brand.

Why Dorie Decided to Start Her Own Business

Dorie was the head of a small nonprofit for two years. She decided to start her own business because running the nonprofit and being responsible for the livelihood of three other employees was super stressful. Also, she didn’t get paid very much.

Working for herself and being responsible only for her own income and needs seemed like a move toward a more stable, less stressful life.

Dorie’s time as the head of that nonprofit was an incredibly valuable learning experience. Running the nonprofit taught her what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.

To be a successful entrepreneur, you have to be a jack of all trades, because you’re responsible for everything that happens in your business.

“You have complete independence. Yeah, you might have to solve problems yourself, but you don’t have to answer to anyone, you don’t have to answer to a boss, nobody’s telling you what to do. Everything is more fulfilling because you are making the choice to do it.”
– Dorie Clark

Why Dorie Decided to Write Her First Book

Dorie made a New Year’s resolution in 2009 to publish a book that year.

She’d always wanted to write a book. She thought it would be cool, and she also thought it would raise her company’s profile and demonstrate thought leadership in her field.

All of that turned out to be true. What Dorie didn’t count on is how difficult it would be to actually publish her first book.

In the first six months of 2009, Dorie wrote three book proposals. They were all turned down because she didn’t have a big enough author platform.

So she went back to the drawing board and figured out how to build that essential author platform. She was able to do it primarily through blogging.

Dorie signed her first book deal with Harvard Review Press in 2011 and her first book came out in 2013.

Why Dorie Chose Blogging to Build Her Author Platform

Blogging was a natural choice for Dorie because of her experience as a print journalist. Also, audio and video were much more expensive and complicated to jump into back in 2009.

Audio and video are much more accessible to new people now than they were back then.

How to Become a Recognized Expert in Your Field

Becoming a recognized expert involves three key components.

1. Creating Quality Content

Content creation is the linchpin of becoming a recognized expert. You can’t be known for your ideas unless you share your ideas publicly. You have to share your ideas, and you have to share your ideas a lot to break through the noise today.

The biggest mistake Dorie sees in the marketplace today is people not creating enough content. So many bloggers think that posting one blog post a month is enough. The truth is, Dorie spent three years posting 50 to 100 blog posts a year before she saw any measurable uptick in inquiries about her work.

“You have to do a lot more than you might otherwise suspect you have to do, that’s the truth. The good news is most people won’t last that long. Most people will not keep it up, and if you do, you are far more likely to succeed, because the field has thinned.”
– Dorie Clark

2. Social Proof

Social proof is your credibility. What is it about you that is going to get people to take you seriously? How can you demonstrate that you know what you’re talking about and that your suggestions will work?

3. Your Network

Your network is who you surround yourself with. The world judges you by your associations. Your network can also be the early ambassadors for your ideas.

How to Create Multiple Revenue Streams without Spreading Yourself Too Thin

Dorie has several income streams that feed into her business. She developed them over the last seven years.

Her income streams are:

• Consulting—this is how her business started
• Executive coaching
• Writing books
• Business school teaching
• Giving keynote speeches
• Affiliate income from online marketing
• Online courses Dorie has developed
• Live events

That may seem like a lot of spinning plates, and it is. But they aren’t burdensome, because Dorie developed each income stream independently and systematized it before moving on to another income stream.

Dorie recommends that you focus on building one income stream per year. Once you have that income stream systematized and automated, you can build another income stream without sacrificing the first.

As you build new income streams, they should relate in some way to the other income streams that you have previously built. If you build income streams that target wildly different audiences, you could very easily be pulled in too many different directions. In contrast, if you build income streams that support each other, each income stream you build will make the others stronger.

As you build new income streams, opportunities will appear that you never expected.

Dorie didn’t plan to organize live events. She started to organize do so after her customers asked if they could be part of live events.

What Is a Personal Brand?

“Basically, ‘personal brand’ is a modern colloquialism for your reputation. That is something that has existed from the beginning of time.”
– Dorie Clark

If your reputation isn’t what you want it to be, it’s probably worth your time to think about how to change it. If you’re not reaching people in the right way, if you want to be understood in the world, then you have to understand what your reputation is, and make sure it’s congruent with how you see yourself.

Reframing the question of your “personal brand” that way allows you to see that authenticity is a vital part of your personal brand. In fact, if your personal brand is inauthentic, audiences and customers will realize that, and they will steer clear of you.

One of the problems that entrepreneurs face when they first start out in business is that we feel like we have to project this image that we have it all figured out.

One of the first iterations of Dorie’s website had a background image of skyscrapers, as if that represented her power in the marketplace. The truth is, that type of stuff is silly.

People really respect you if you have something interesting to say and you say it in your own unique voice. That’s what makes you stand out in this crowded world.

“The ultimate source of strength is not pretending to be anything other than what you are. Some people are going to be like, ‘whatever.’ Some people aren’t going to like your message. But for those who resonate with your message, it is such a breath of fresh air to have somebody say it the way they’ve never heard it before. There’s a huge amount of power in that.”
– Dorie Clark

How to Build Your Personal Brand to Increase Your Influence and Get More Clients

One thing you can do to build your brand is to make a concerted effort to write for “name brand” publications like Forbes. There are two benefits of writing for well-known media outlets like this:

1. You get exposed to new audiences who have never heard of you.
2. You build your reputation and personal brand because you’re associated with respected publications.

Creating content that allows you to associate with blue-chip brands that people have already heard of creates a social proof that’s valuable, as you’re beginning to establish your personal brand in the marketplace.

How to Start Writing for Blue-Chip Brands

If you’re starting from scratch, what you want to do is develop a portfolio of “writing clips” that show you can write an article like your target publication. One of the best places to showcase your writing ability/style is on your personal blog. You can also publish your article on LinkedIn or Medium where there is no barrier to entry.

From there, you want to start writing for more and more prestigious brands to raise your own reputation.

You can figure out the best publications to read in your industry by simply having conversations with people and asking them what they read. Ask them where they get their information from. Target those publications.

More Ways to Get Social Proof

Social proof is all about making the public aware of connections that enhance your credibility and stature. Think about who you’re connected to that would make people think better of you.

Think about your:

• Clients
• Former or current employer (Many former Google employees have become bestsellers, for example.)
• Educational affiliations. Did you go to an Ivy League school? Or a well-respected school in your field?
• Professional associations. If you take on a leadership role in a locally or nationally recognized professional association, that can be great social proof.

Social proof is all about networking.

Interviewing as a Form of Social Networking

Doing interviews is a great way to meet people and network with them. It allows you to have a conversation with people you wouldn’t be able to meet on your own.

The key to this strategy is you’re offering value to the person you’re interviewing by giving them access to your audience. That’s why they’re willing to talk to you.

This works especially well if you can time your interview to coincide with something they are promoting, like a book or movie.

Organize Dinners to Get to Know People

Another way to get to know people is to organize dinners in your community. Dorie did that when she moved from Boston to New York. It worked really well for her.

Another thing you can do is organize dinners or drinks for a group of people if you go to conferences on a regular basis. By taking it upon yourself to organize these types of social gatherings and being the host, you’re establishing yourself as a person who has social value.

 

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Interview

https://dorieclark.com/ – Dorie’s website

https://dorieclark.com/entrepreneur – download Dorie’s 88-question self-assessment that helps you think about how to utilize multiple income streams to support your own life.

Books by Dorie Clark

Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It

Reinventing You, With a New Preface: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future

Entrepreneurial You: Monetize Your Expertise, Create Multiple Income Streams, and Thrive

Places to Publish Your Articles

https://www.linkedin.com/ – a networking site for professionals. You also have the ability to publish articles on LinkedIn for free.

https://medium.com/ – another place you can write articles and gather a following, with no barrier to entry.

The post 172: How To Create and Build Your Personal Brand with Dorie Clark appeared first on TCK Publishing.

Jeff Goins is the bestselling author of five books, including Real Artists Don’t Starve. His blog, goinswriter.com, is one of the most-read blogs for writers and creative folks.

Jeff has always been a creative person who likes to make things. As a kid, he drew his own Garfield fan comics with a friend.

Jeff’s dad taught him how to play guitar when he got older. He was in a number of bands that played really bad songs.

It was in high school that Jeff started to write stories for fun. He also acted in plays during his high school career.

Jeff gained more experience with writing as a writing tutor. After he graduated college, he toured with the band for a year. The most fun Jeff had during that year was writing weekly blog posts about the touring experience.

After a year, he quit the band and moved to Nashville, where he was hired as a copywriter by a nonprofit. He eventually became their director of marketing, and learned quite a bit about traditional and online marketing.

That’s when Jeff had the idea to use the brand-building strategies he learned at the nonprofit to build his own personal brand as a writer.

Today, goinswriter.com is Jeff’s ninth blog. The first eight blogs he wrote for failed. goinswriter.com succeeded because Jeff took the right steps and didn’t quit. Jeff’s successful blog allowed him and his wife to quit their day jobs and do this full-time.

Jeff’s Author Journey: Defining Moments and Small Steps Forward

Jeff’s success has been made up of both huge defining moments and small, consistent steps forward. When Jeff was 27 years old, his boss enrolled him in a coaching program for professional development. Early on in those meetings, someone asked him what his dream was.

Jeff had seen many of his friends quit their day jobs to pursue their dream—only to be back at a day job within six months. He didn’t think he had a dream. So he replied, “I don’t have a dream—I have a job, I have a family. I don’t need a dream.”

Jeff’s coaching buddy replied, “That’s funny. I get the sense that your dream is to be a writer.”

That resonated with Jeff and he said, “Yeah. I guess that is my dream, to be a writer someday. But that will never happen.”

Jeff’s coaching buddy pointed out, “Jeff, you don’t have to wait to be a writer. You just have to write.”

Jeff published a 500-word blog post the next day. Every day for a year, he published a blog post between 500 and 1,000 words long.

Throughout that year, when he met new people and they asked him what he did, he told them, “I’m a writer.”

This wasn’t a case of “faking it until he made it.” Jeff believed he was a writer. Then he took small consistent actions until he became a professional writer.

“People won’t take you seriously until you do.”
– Jeff Goins

Jeff developed a system for creating daily blog content that allowed him to write and edit a post before publishing it to his blog. Want to learn from his experience? There’s a link to his three-bucket content system in the links section of the show notes.

How to Deal with Fear

“Fear is what happens to us when we hesitate to do the things we know we need to do. Fear is what happens when we wait. ”
– Jeff Goins

When you act quickly, there’s no time for fear to creep in. Children have very little fear. Fear is something we learn as a result of watching the consequences of certain actions. We think, “Oh, if I do this I will get hurt.”

Because Jeff was producing daily content for his blog, he didn’t have much time to feel fear. He knew his content wasn’t necessarily that good. But this was his writing practice. He was just practicing in public.

Jeff knew that if he wrote on his blog long enough, some people might notice. But that wasn’t the point. The point was to practice his art to improve his skill.

There’s something interesting that happens when you put yourself into a daily practice: It doesn’t allow you a lot of time to feel afraid.

Most people feel fear and stop what they’re doing. When Jeff studied other successful people, he came to realize successful people also feel fear. The difference is successful people feel fear and yet still do what they’re afraid of.

“I began to see fear as a friendly reminder that I’m moving in the right direction.”
– Jeff Goins

From Blogger to Author

Six months after Jeff started regularly blogging, he was approached by a traditional publisher who asked him if he was planning to write a book.

He signed a deal for a small book contract. That gave Jeff the confidence to keep going. He also began to notice that readers of his blog were asking questions he couldn’t answer in a long blog post.

“I don’t think you write a nonfiction book because you want to. I think you write a nonfiction book because it’s the most succinct way of saying what you have to say.”
– Jeff Goins

A lot of people have a blog post go viral and think they should write a book. Jeff doesn’t agree. He thinks you should only write a book if you need the length of a book to express your idea.

If you’ve expressed all you need to express in a blog post, then move on to the next thing.

The Message of Real Artists Don’t Starve

Jeff writes books because:

• He’s serious about something.
• He has an experience with something.
• He has something unique to say about the topic.

Real Artists Don’t Starve puts forth the bold argument that if you’re starving as an artist, that is your choice. Starving is not a necessary byproduct of being an artist.

Jeff has met a lot of people doing great work and making a decent living who aren’t national celebrities. These people are thriving artists and creative entrepreneurs. They are making a living from their art and loving it.

Jeff lives in Nashville, and he kept meeting people who said that making a living as an artist is impossible. He wrote the book Real Artists Don’t Starve to introduce these two groups of people to each other.

“It is possible to do creative work, and make a full-time living off of that work, and now is the best time to do that. If you have a dream, a passion, a gift you want to share with the world, you have no excuse not to make a living from that, if that’s what you want to do.”
– Jeff Goins

How to Be a Thriving Artist

The first thing you have to do to become a thriving artist is educate yourself. There are many ways for artists to get paid for their work today. There are many artists who are making a living by selling their art.

The next thing you have to do is realize this isn’t a path to becoming Taylor Swift. This is simply a path that helps you earn an income from your creative work.

Use the internet to find the people who need your art. You have to find your 1,000 true fans, as Kevin Kelly would say. That’s not a lot of people in the grand scheme of things, but it is enough people to build a platform that will support you financially as long as you nurture it.

If you can find 1,000 people who resonate with your message and need your art, you can make a living from that kind of exposure.

We need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that you have to be famous, or that you need a big break in order to be a thriving, successful artist.

You can find the people who need your work and connect with them directly to exchange value with them.

How to Find Your True Fans

Jeff has a few tips on how to find those 1,000 true fans.

Mindset

You have to think like a thriving artist. You have to see the value in your work so that you can market it effectively. You have to take your work seriously before anyone else will.

You have to cultivate that mindset. You have to begin to think in terms of what’s actually possible. You have to dream a little bit.

Michelangelo was the richest artist of his time. At the end of his life, he had the equivalent of $50 million to his name. Before Michelangelo, artists were working-class citizens. After Michelangelo broke the glass ceiling of what was possible for an artist, artists of the Renaissance became aristocrats or upper-crust people.

Michelangelo was told his entire life that his ancestors were noble. His family believed it, and when he became an artist, he proceeded from the assumption that he was of noble birth.

• He got the wealthiest patrons to commission his work.
• He charged 10 times what contemporary artists were charging for the same type of work.
• In short, he did everything differently and got a different result than artists who came before him.

The interesting thing about Michelangelo’s story is that he wasn’t actually descended from a noble line. He just believed that he was and proceeded from that assumption. His belief led him to act differently than his peers, which led to his amassing great wealth.

If you believe you’re going to starve and struggle, that will come true for you. Conversely, if you believe the world needs your work and you just need to find a way to make that happen, eventually you will find a way to succeed.

Market

How do you get your work into the right people’s hands so they help you find more fans and spread your message?

The best way to do that is to find a modern-day patron. Find an influencer who has an audience that can help spread your message faster than you can by yourself.

Patrons didn’t just give money to artist in the Renaissance—they lent their influence to their artists. They became evangelists of their artist’s work.

When Lorenzo de Medici became Michelangelo’s patron, he commissioned many statues. But more importantly, Lorenzo invited Michelangelo into his house and introduced him to the connections that would support him for the rest of his life.

Michelangelo was building a network, which is really important if you’re going to support yourself using your creative work, and have your work spread.

This still holds true today: Hank Willis Thomas, a successful photographer, says all of his success came from five people he met in art school.

Money

Never work for free. Always work for something of value. Don’t just work for the “opportunity.” Valuing your own work is how you teach others to value your work.

“We’re not just doing the work to get a paycheck. But getting paid is an important part of being a professional.”
– Jeff Goins

“We don’t make movies to make money. We make money so that we can make more movies.”
– Walt Disney

“The point of making money is so that you can do something in the world to help people, and make the world a better place.”
– Tom Corson Knowles

Money buys you time. If you’re focused on paying your bills this month and you need to write a book in the next three weeks to pay your bills, the book you write isn’t going to be as good as if you had three months to write it.

Money gives you the freedom to spend the time necessary to produce quality products. Money provides a little bit of security so that you can make the next thing that’s going to make a dent in the universe.

More on Mindset and Expectations

We have to be really honest about what’s driving us. Chasing status very rarely brings you the fulfillment you are searching for. Once you achieve the status you’re looking for, whether it’s to be a bestselling author, or get a certain number of people on your mailing list, or whatever, you might feel good for a moment.

After that moment passes, your mind will either come up with reasons to be unhappy about your success, like you don’t deserve it or you aren’t worthy, or you’ll decide that you want even more success.

And you’ll never get enough.

The challenge is that being content with whatever you have is boring! It isn’t bad to want things, to be ambitious and want to grow.

“As human beings, we think we want the summit. We think we want to be at the top of the mountain. What we really want is the climb. We want the experience of gradually moving towards a worthy goal.”
– Jeff Goins

The journey is the fulfilling part of the equation, not the destination.

On the other hand, if you have an endless journey without a destination, it can be exhausting. So it is good to have milestones and achievements to celebrate.

The important thing is to do work that fulfills you as you are doing it. If you enjoy the act of creating your art, you will create art forever. If you consistently create your art, eventually something you create will break through the noise and help you find fans.

“I love who I am when I’m working on a book, a project, something that fascinates me, something that I’m curious about, but also something that challenges me, that I haven’t quite figured out. And there’s all these questions, and I don’t know how it’s going to end. This is what makes it exciting.”
– Jeff Goins

One of the things we need to do as creative people is understand that we enjoy the process of making things, not necessarily the process of finishing things. We need to finish a project in order to get to the next project.

“As soon as I finish a book, it’s very important to me that I start another, regardless of how the first book does.”
 – Jeff Goins

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Interview

Real Artists Don’t Starve by Jeff Goins

Jeff Goins’s Amazon author page

Jeff Goins’s three-bucket system for creating daily blog content

https://www.hankwillisthomas.com/ – a successful photographer, and an example of a thriving artist in the 21st century. Hank says all of his success came from five people he met in art school.

An interview with Kevin Smith where he talks about making Clerks

Listen to Jeff Goins’s podcast

1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly – an article about how to make a living with 1,000 true fans.

 

The post 171: How to Find Your 1,000 True Fans and Make a Living as an Artist with Jeff Goins appeared first on TCK Publishing.

Mimika Cooney is an international award-winning photographer and the author of Photographing Newborns. She was nominated by the Huffington Post as one of the 50 women entrepreneurs to follow in 2017.

Mimika is a multi-passionate creative. Born and raised in South Africa, Mimika and her husband left in 2000 and emigrated to England. In 2006, they immigrated to the US. She is currently based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

She’s had a very interesting journey both creatively and in the realm of business and marketing.

Photography was originally a hobby for Mimika. She’s had an entrepreneurial mindset since she was a child, and she always looks for ways to make money with anything she does.

She loves the creative outlet of photography. Mimika started her photography business in England, and continued it when she moved to the United States. She decided to write her books about newborn photography to answer all the questions she was getting while speaking at photography conferences; writing was a natural progression for her because she’s been writing in journals since she was a child.

Mimika is passionate about teaching people how she learned from her own mistakes in business. She credits that skill more than any other as the reason for her level of success today.

Changes to the Writing World

Mimika is taking an entirely different approach to writing her third book than she did with her first two.

“I made the mistake of thinking after I wrote my first book, my job was done. It wasn’t.”
– Mimika Cooney

In today’s world, publishers expect you to do all the marketing for your own books. Writing is only the beginning of your author journey.

What Has Changed in Online Marketing over the Last 20 Years

Marketing has become so saturated, the number of offerings in the marketplace is overwhelming.

There are a lot more platforms and apps available for business people to directly connect with customers. There are many more places to promote yourself. That’s a double-edged sword, because the internet and social media have led to information overload for almost everyone.

Video marketing has become prevalent, when just two years ago very few people were doing it.

Successful marketing tactics change about every six months. You can’t rely on one platform for all your marketing.

The internet landscape changes so quickly, you have to focus on evergreen tactics that will bring customers into your business.

When you’re an author, you are a business person. You have to pay attention to that reality, and spend the time, money, and effort needed to build your brand.

One benefit of a market oversaturated with marketing channels is that it lowers the price of marketing yourself.

When Mimika started her online TV show MimikaTV, it used to cost her $350 an episode to produce. Now she is able to produce it free using the YouTube platform.

“It’s the easiest it’s ever been to start a business venture or project, but it’s also the most competitive.”
– Mimika Cooney

 

Succeeding in business today is all about figuring out what marketing channels work for your audience and how you can put the pieces together to make your business successful.

Video Marketing Is Evergreen

“Video is the best way, other than meeting you in person, to get to know you. Reading your body language, hearing what you sound like, getting an idea what you sound like—it’s almost like meeting you in person.”
– Mimika Cooney

You can write blog posts and you can post on social media, but nothing translates better than a video to captivate your audience and get them to understand who you are and what you’re trying to do.

Video is the easiest way for people to get to know, like, and trust you.

How a Beginner Should Get Started in Video

As writers, it can be hard to transition from writing behind a computer screen to going on camera. But it’s important you get over yourself.

One thing you can do to get used to being recorded on video is to record yourself on your cell phone. Just get used to the actions necessary to go through the recording process.

Put your phone in selfie mode, turn it around, and start talking to it like you’re talking to a friend.

At the end of the day, all you have to do is take baby steps. You don’t have to jump in with both feet, guns blazing.

The great thing about video is you can record and delete it if you really hate it.

Learning to publish and distribute videos is very much like learning how to write. The first few times are going to be difficult. As you get more used to the mechanics of what you’re doing, things will come easier and you’ll have more fun doing video.

When it comes to video marketing, starting is the biggest hurdle. After you’ve started, you want to keep your video marketing efforts consistent.

Use Facebook to Launch Your Video Marketing Efforts

The first thing beginner video marketers should do is a Facebook Live feed. Using Facebook Live is simple and easy to do, and it’s free.

The biggest benefit of doing a Facebook live is that you’re pressured to actually complete a video. You’re doing it live, so it’s impossible to fail because of analysis paralysis.

Get on Facebook Live and ask a question. Start a conversation. Give your audience something to interact with beyond passively watching you.

Traditional publishers want new authors to have a platform to sell their books. Start building your platform before you publish your books by doing Facebook Live videos.

If you’re going to be an author, you should have your own professional Facebook page. Facebook frowns on doing business promotion on your personal Facebook page.

Once you have your business page set up, start posting your videos on that professional Facebook page. You can also make use of YouTube and build an audience between Facebook and YouTube.

If you want to pay for traffic to your videos on Facebook, now is the time to jump in. You only have to pay pennies per view.

Start Small with Video

The key to getting started with video is just to do one thing at a time. Start small, learn from your failures, and build on your successes.

Practicing video marketing is very much like writing drafts of your book. You know the final draft of your book is going to probably be very different from the first draft of the book.

The major difference between publishing your book and practicing video marketing is that we are so conditioned to only put out what we think is perfection. The truth is, nothing is perfect.

Anything you want to do, you have to be willing to do poorly at first. Doing something poorly is the only way you learn how to get better at a skill.

The key to getting better at anything is consistent practice. If you do a video every day for 30 days, you’ll be much better at the end of 30 days than you are at the beginning, just by going through the steps of recording a video.

How To Develop Content for Your Video Marketing

Developing content for your video marketing efforts should be approached like any other content marketing endeavor. All you need to do is figure out the answer to these three questions, and you’ll have a content idea for your audience that will be helpful to them and engage them.

3 Key Content Marketing Questions

1. Who is my audience?
2. What can I share with them to add value to their lives?
3. What do I want to talk about? What are some takeaway tips you can tell people about your book?

You can always quote yourself and create a graphic to post on social media. That can start a conversation.

If you are truly unsure of what types of content to share, try posting a Facebook poll asking your audience what they’re working on, or what they want to hear about.

You can also join the Facebook groups of your target readers and conduct surveys within those groups. It’s best to become a part of the communities you join before you start conducting surveys within the group.

If you listen to the conversations of your target readers, you can get content for your book and help them solve problems they’re having at the same time.

Video Marketing Tools

If you have the latest iPhone, the cameras on them are tremendous. Even a year ago, the cameras on iPhones weren’t nearly as good as they are today.

Selfie sticks with tripods are inexpensive and really help boost the quality of your video by keeping your camera stable when you’re recording.

Logitech 720p Webcam C510 – this is the webcam that Mimika uses when she’s video chatting. You can use your computer’s built-in webcam if you have a good one. Video quality is important. You should really look for an HD-quality camera that will give you video that doesn’t pixelate as you record it.

Buying a quality external digital webcam allows you to have more control over the settings of your device so that you look your best.

You want to pay particular attention to your video and lighting quality when you record your videos.

Three Things to Consider When Planning a Video

1. Audio Quality

If your audio quality isn’t good, people won’t watch your video because they can’t understand what you’re saying.

2. Video Quality

The higher quality your video, the more things you can do with it. You want to have the highest quality video possible in your price range. The newest iPhones have excellent cameras in them.

3. Video Stability

You don’t want your video to be constantly moving around or jumping—it looks very amateurish and can even make viewers a little motion sick!

Getting a tripod for yourself a selfie stick is an inexpensive way to dramatically improve the quality of your video for your viewers.

You really don’t need much software these days to produce a great video. Everything is mobile friendly. If you want to do a Facebook Live feed, all you have to do is push record when you’re on Facebook.

Where to Promote Your Videos

With video marketing, it’s little by little, and nothing’s going to happen overnight (unless you have a huge marketing budget and can pay for views).

That’s why Facebook Live is such a powerful tool. It allows you to test out content with your audience.

Mimika has been experimenting with Facebook Live recently and she’s been surprised at which videos did well with her audience organically, simply because of the title of the video.

The quickest way to build an audience for your message is to get people to like and share your videos, regardless of the platform you use. If you know your audience really well and can strike a chord with them, it becomes easier to build an audience faster.

Boosted Videos

Another way to build your audience inexpensively is to create a video and then boost that post on Facebook.

Boosting a post much less expensive than actually paying for a Facebook ad, and video is more engaging than a static text post or even a picture post. Just boost your video post and see what happens.

When you boost your post, you can also target a specific market of people, like women between the ages of 30 and 40 who have children in school.

Interviews and Collaborations

Once you get to a point where you have 1,000 subscribers or likes, start seeking out different content creators you can collaborate with. Collaborating with different creators who have similar target readers is the fastest way to grow your audience.

You can also do interviews. Interviews allow you to tap into your interview subject’s network much like a collaboration would. You interview somebody, and then they tell their audience about it. Their audience becomes aware of you as an authority in your field, and some of their audience will join your mailing list.

Selling through Videos

The types of products you’re offering to the market dictate the types of videos you should do. If you’re a coach selling coaching or a subscription website, webinar-type videos work really well.

As a general rule, Mimika likes to follow the 80/20 rule when it comes to selling on her videos. 80% of the time she provides content, and 20% of the time she offers something for sale.

“Video is a long-term game. It’s not something you’re going to do once and then all of a sudden you have people breaking your door down. It’s a branding exercise. The more people see you visually, your visibility grows and the more your audience will come to know, like, and trust you.”
– Mimika Cooney

In today’s marketplace, people have to hear your name between 10 and 17 times before they associate your name with what you do.

Video marketing is time-consuming in the sense that you don’t get an immediate result. The only way you can get an immediate result is if you have some money to put into it. If you can buy views, that will increase your visibility and increase the chances that your video will go viral.

Build a Relationship with Your Audience through Video Marketing

If you’re looking to use video marketing to build an audience over time, you are going to have to offer something that adds value to your audience before you ask them to buy something from you.

“Video marketing is very much like dating. You wouldn’t go up to a girl and just simply asked her if she’d like to get married. She’d probably slap you, and tell you you’re a creep.”
– Mimika Cooney

The great thing about video marketing is that it’s the fastest way for you to build a genuine relationship with your audience. All it takes is time, and putting out valuable content.

Whatever you do to market yourself, do it consistently and make the best use of the resources you have available to you.

The Side Benefits of Video Marketing

Once people get to know like and trust you, it’s amazing the range of opportunities that come your way.

Video marketing is like an online, visual business card. When people get to know who you are and what kinds of things you offer, things can skyrocket really quickly.

Writing a book isn’t going to make you a millionaire—it’s the opportunities and personal growth that come from the writing that are the most valuable.

Just think of video marketing as a tool to get you where you want to go and you’ll be surprised by the opportunities and benefits that show up along your journey.

 

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Interview

 Photographing Newborns by Mimika Cooney

Mimika’s YouTube channel

How to do a Facebook Live video – an instructional video on YouTube about how to do a Facebook Live broadcast.

https://belive.tv/ – a subscription service with different levels that integrates with Facebook. This service will allow you to do interviews on Facebook while integrating with your Facebook Live stream. There are different user levels and there’s also a free trial period.

http://mimikacooney.com/video/ – get Mimika’s free guide, How to Look Good on Video.

http://mimikacooney.com/ – Mimika’s website

Connect with Mimika

https://www.instagram.com/mimikacooney/ – Mimika Cooney on Instagram

https://www.facebook.com/mimikacooney  – Mimika Cooney’s Facebook page

https://twitter.com/mimikacooney?lang=en – follow Mimika Cooney on Tw

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AJ Cosmo is the bestselling author of The Monster that Ate My Socks and more than 20 other fun children’s picture books. His stories are crafted to help parents teach children lessons in a fun and engaging way. Six years ago, AJ was at his day job searching for ways to make money online. One […]

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