Top Blog Posts of 2012

At Write Your Life, we enjoy sharing tips and information to help you get smart about becoming a self-published author. Throughout 2012, our team of bloggers has shared valuable expertise and knowledge to help you succeed. Here, we share a few of our top picks from the year. 

Begin With the End in Mind

Many authors do all their writing first and think that they can wait to work on plans and goals later, when the book is ready to be released. But in doing that, they’re starting out behind. Here are five questions to consider before writing and publishing your book.

Looking for Home Writing Made Easy

Stop searching for the Holy Grail of all writing instruction materials and instead build your network of academic pros, literary pros, and colleagues to hone your craft.

Bait, Cast, and Hook

Time and patience and inspiration allow great authors to achieve eloquent and emotional introductions. With a little effort, you, too, can craft a strong opening line.

Be a Better Writer

Writers need to write. The learning curve can be tough. Demanding. But it’s important to your craft. If you want to get better, here are some ways to improve. 

Your Book as a Business

Most often, new authors consider the dollar cost of book production as an expense rather than an investment. The distinction, as I see it, is that an investment suggests an anticipated return while an expense may not. And so it should be with your book project.

Connect and Promote Before You Publish

The time to begin making connections and building relationships for marketing is BEFORE your book is complete. Small, consistent steps make it easy.

20 Ways to End Your Book

Taking the time at the start of your writing journey to consider how you might wrap up your story will become one of the biggest favors you’ve ever done for yourself.

10 Questions to Ask When Choosing an Editor

A professional edit is an essential component of a well-produced book. So why do so many authors, particularly self-published authors, skip this vital step? It could be that they do not know what to look for when choosing an editor.

Sell BOXES or TRUCKLOADS of Your Book

Many think the hardest part of publishing a book is writing it, but that’s the easiest part for most authors. Marketing is equally important. Here are some ideas for generating special market sales.

Study Your Readers to Improve Sales

For strategic authors, identifying an ideal reader – a target audience, as it's called in marketing – is an unvoidable and absolutely necessary first step in creating a book that will appeal to a niche market.

Write the Book Proposal that Sells

If you’re looking to get a commercial or academic publisher, here are the top five things you should include in your book proposal. 

One Dollar Marketing

The power of a dollar can go quite far with your book marketing budget. As the co-author of How to Market Your Book For Free, I have learned to use various strategies to market my books while on a budget, through healthy self-competition, for a substantial return on my investment. 

We wish you a peaceful, prosperous, and phenomenal New Yew Year. 

8 Essential Items to Include in Your How-To Book

You’re writing a how-to or self-help book and you want to teach people something. You want your readers to not only enjoy the read, but to learn something valuable and to immediately put it into practice.

How do you know if you’ve covered all the bases to help your readers maximize their experience with your book? Consider these eight items to include in your how-to book:

Who are you? Here is where you position yourself as an expert. In a previous post, I explain the three questions audiences (and readers of self-help books) ask themselves about you to help them know of your expert status. State your credentials. What education, industry experience, or certifications do you have? How and why did you decide to pursue this line of work? What do you hope readers will learn from the information you share in your book?      

Overview of the book. Do yourself and your readers a favor and clearly explain, in the introduction or first chapter, what your book is about. In addition, mention the types of readers who will get the most benefit from reading your book and implementing the strategies and information included.

Tell me a story. Although your focus is to teach a concept, readers love a good story. Sprinkle in examples and case studies throughout your book. Include stories of how you learned a particular concept or how you assisted a client. Readers can learn from the best practices, mistakes, and successes you share.

Step-by-step instructions. Your book is all about “how to.” Therefore, explain in detail how readers can apply what you are teaching. Give step-by-step instructions, explaining even the most obvious items.

Templates, tables, and worksheets. How-to books are for the “do-it-yourselfers” among us. Give readers the tools to easily begin implementing your concepts. Use charts, tables, worksheets, and other resources that readers can follow or fill in using their own unique circumstances.

Results. Your book might explain a process or system that you have created. It is fine to describe this, but sharing the results readers could expect adds a valuable component to your book. Estimate possible outcomes or, once again, use examples and case studies to demonstrate the results others have experienced by using your system.

Contact info. Imagine that readers might either have questions after reading your book or, better yet, that they might wish to become a client. Be sure to include several ways for them to reach you, such as your email address, website, social media links, phone number, and business address.

Links to online resources. Gone are the days when a reader’s experience ends on the last page of a hard copy book. Including links to online resources – especially those on your own website – further transforms your book into a useful tool. Send readers to a webpage where they can download a form, watch a video, listen to a podcast, read a blog post, or make a comment.

Use these essential elements to help make your next self-help or how-to book even more valuable for readers.

What other elements have you found useful in these types of books?
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Anita Paul, known as The Author's Midwife, coaches aspiring authors to write a phenomenal book and helps current authors use their existing books to leverage their business. She is the author of Write Your Life: Create Your Ideal Life and the Book You've Been Wanting to Write, and is the creator of the Write Your Life program, through which she has created a dynamic system to Write Your Book in 90 Days or Less. She has owned The Write Image for 15 years, and has had her freelance articles featured in over 25 publications in the U.S. and Canada. Anita is also the host of "Book Your Success".

10 Questions to Ask When Choosing an Editor

A professional edit is an essential component of a well-produced book. So why do so many authors, particularly self-published authors, skip this vital step? It could be that they do not know what to look for when choosing an editor.

The range of editing services is vast. When choosing an editor, it’s important to know exactly what you’re paying for and the extent of the services you’ll receive (and maybe more importantly, won’t receive). Many editors do not specify exactly what services they offer, so getting the answers to the following 10 questions will help ensure a smooth and successful edit of your manuscript.

1.       Will you do a complimentary sample edit?

The best way to compare editors is to compare sample edits of the same material. Usually two pages of a double-spaced manuscript will be sufficient. From a sample edit, you’ll get an idea of how thorough each editor is.

2.      What services am I paying for?

The most basic service is a proofread. For this service, grammar, punctuation, style consistency, and typos are reviewed. Typically, no content-related revisions are suggested. A proofread is often done in one review, though I contend that more reviews are usually necessary.

The most extensive service is a thorough edit, which in addition to a basic proofread may include content revision and fact checking. A thorough edit can take two to four full reviews of your manuscript to complete, depending on its length and the changes required.

3.      How many times will you review the manuscript, and will you make the edits yourself or only note where edits are needed?

It’s important to know how many times your manuscript will be reviewed. It’s difficult to catch all of the errors in a manuscript in just one review, unless it requires only a few changes.

If your editor suggests several revisions to your manuscript during the initial review, you need to know who will proof those changes after they are made. This is extremely important because of the time involved and the possibility of introducing new errors. Some editors will make the changes themselves, but some will only point out the needed changes. In addition to saving you time, having the changes made for you will keep you from making new mistakes that are not caught, particularly with rewritten material.

4.      How much experience do you have with my type of manuscript?

If you are in need of only a basic proofread, then you have many professionals to choose from. If, however, content revision is necessary, be sure that the professional you choose has the type of experience you need. For example, if you are writing fiction, and you are not sure if you wrote well-developed characters, you need an editor who knows character development. Do not hesitate to ask how many books the editor has edited in your genre. Historical fiction and children’s books, for example, may require different expertise.

5.      What is your turnaround time?

Make sure that timelines are clear, and find out what happens if they are not met. If more than one revision is necessary, part of the time that it takes to complete your project may depend on how quickly you can make changes and respond to questions. Expect to pay more for rush jobs.

6.      What style guides are you familiar with?

Most nonacademic, new authors are not aware of style guides. For books, the Chicago Manual of Style and the Associated Press Stylebook are commonly used style guides. Your editor needs to know which style you are using and to be familiar with that style when reviewing your manuscript for consistency.

You may also use your own style, as long as you are consistent, which is difficult if you’re not aware of your style choices (e.g., which numbers will you spell out and will you use the serial comma).

7.       What correction/commenting method do you use?

Many editors use the track changes tool in Word. If your document is not in Word or if your editor does not use track changes, you might communicate by fax with comments handwritten on the document.

8.      If you have questions about my content or if I have questions about your edits, will we have a phone conversation, or do you communicate electronically only? If phone conversations are included, is there a limit to the number of calls or the duration of the calls?

Some points of clarification and questions do not translate well by email. You need to know if you can ask questions by phone and if your editor will call you with complicated questions or explanations.

9.      How and when do you invoice, and what payment methods do you accept?

When possible, don’t pay for your service in full in advance. If you do, you may not have any recourse if the job is not completed as promised.

By using PayPal or a similar service, you can file a dispute if you have problems with their merchant, and you won’t have to give your credit card number to a stranger. If your editor does not have a PayPal account, suggest that she get one. Setting up an account is free, fast, and easy.

10.   Do you have a satisfaction guarantee, and will you put the terms in writing?

Find out what happens if your expectations are not met. This information is also helpful when comparing editors.

Be sure to get your agreement in writing. Though a formal contract is probably not necessary, it’s a good idea to have clearly defined expectations and target dates in writing.

Getting answers to these important questions will help you choose the right editor for your needs. Being an informed consumer may also save you time and money. Here’s to your bestseller that you will be proud to present again and again!

See Ms. Hyde’s previous guest blog post "Errors in Your Writing Can Be Costly."

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Tippi Hyde is a freelance editor whose clients have referred to her as the editor with the eagle eye, a master copyeditor, and proofreader extraordinaire. She has been hired to proofread/copyedit for Cox Enterprises (one of America’s largest private companies), the City of Atlanta, nonprofit organizations, and universities. Her editing work includes blogs, books, websites, policy monographs, grant proposals, grant reports, and doctoral dissertations, and she has copyedited documents that were presented to the White House, local government, and The Oprah Winfrey Foundation.

Are There Too Many Books on the Market?

If you’re like me, it seems that everytime you turn around someone has a new book out. Or maybe you’re not like me, because when this happens I love it! Seriously, I believe that everyone has at least one good book in them. Whether it’s a celebrity, a corporate tycoon, a survivor, a hero or one of the millions of  “regular” people among us, authoring and self-publishing a book is becoming one of the fastest, most effective ways to tell your story. But do you really need to write a book? After all, aren’t there already too many books on the market?

According to R.R. Bowker, a leader in the publishing industry, an estimated 15 million new book titles will be publshed by the end of 2012. That’s up from 3 million in 2011 and up from 1 million in 2010. That’s a phenomenal growth! So with all of that competition for the eyes and wallets of readers, why write another book to muddy up the marketplace?

Book Tunnel by Petr Kratochvil

My response is that if having “too many books” on the market in America is our biggest problem, we’re doing pretty well. After all, did you know that the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms estimated that in 2010 there were 5.4 million new firearms manufactured in the U.S., and another 3.2 million were imported. In addition, it is estimated that an amazing 14 billion hamburgers are sold in the U.S. each year. And, consider that there are 254 million registered passenger vehicles in the U.S. according to the U.S. Department of Transportation (can you say, “traffic jam!”).
 

No, I haven’t turned into a spout of senseless statistical data. The point I’m making is that books are among our least dangerous domestic product. So if it’s true that there are too many books – which I completely disagree with – then at least our surplus product has a benefit to its end user: to educate, inspire and inform. Besides that, if there wasn’t a thriving market for books – as in millions of people who still love to read – authors, publishing companies and others would not be producing books. In short, books are fulfilling a basic tenet of economics: supply and demand. Hats off to all you authors (and readers)!

So the next time you hear someone mention that there are too many books and there is absolutely no reason that anyone should write another one, just let them know that you’ve got a book of your own, and advise them to simply make the check out to you (thank you very much)!

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Anita Paul, known as The Author's Midwife, coaches aspiring authors to write a phenomenal book and helps current authors use their existing books to leverage their business. She is the author of Write Your Life: Create Your Ideal Life and the Book You've Been Wanting to Write, and is the creator of the Write Your Life program, through which she has created a dynamic system to Write Your Book in 90 Days or Less. She has owned The Write Image for 15 years, and has had her freelance articles featured in over 25 publications in the U.S. and Canada. Anita is also the host of "Book Your Success".