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April 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Does your book have “juice”?

By “juice,” I mean “emotional content.” Life is juicy, love is juicy, and you can think of negative juicy stuff on your own. Your book must be juicy if you want it to be read, and if you want your readers to take action, or at least remember what you wrote.

Thinking is dry. Concepts are lifeless. We have to tie them into some aspect of human life if they are to attract us.

What sorts of things are juicy? Sex. Pain. Conflict. Power. Transformation. Money. Fear. Overcoming.

Your use of juice must be appropriate. Open your daily newspaper (if you still get one), and you’ll see examples of appropriate and inappropriate uses. An inappropriate use: Sexy woman in an ad for dental care. Unless the dentist is that sexy woman, this is simply an attempt to get attention, and to associate what is for some readers a juicy image with the proffered service. It may get people to read the ad, but I recommend against it in your book.

If you use sex to get attention, there needs to be some kind of a payoff for the reader. Are you offering sex advice? Health counseling that covers sexual activities? If not, that’s an unkept promise, and your reader will be left frustrated at some level.

The “offer” made by your book’s title and cover, the pain it promises to abate, the desire it claims to satisfy, must be congruent with its content. When the reader reaches the end of the book, they ought to be able to flip it over to the cover and say to themselves, “Yup. She promised a way to relieve lower back pain, and she gave me one.” Or whatever the promise was.

Put juice in your book, authentically and congruently. Your readers will enjoy it and reward you with their attention.

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April 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

What’s your book-writing motivation?

Is it internal or external?

Internal: Do you want to write a book to express yourself? Do you feel you have a story to tell, something to teach, something to record? Those are great reasons for writing a book, and my BookProgram method–described in my free book, which you can get by clicking on the link in the header of the blog–will serve you well. Follow it, and you will get your book written. Well. And quickly.

External: Is your main reason for writing a book to accomplish something beyond getting a book out there? Is it to be a source of income? A door-opener for your speaking, coaching, advisory, therapeutic business? Will it serve as a way to attract customers to your other products, such as ebooks, courses, recordings, membership sites, and more? If this is your motivation, my method will really shine for you.

Whichever point of view you are coming from, you would do well to “consider the end from the beginning,” in the words of Stephen Covey (The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People).  What will you do with the book once it’s finished? If it’s internally motivated, you will want to think about the communities who will be interested in it, and how to reach them.

If it’s to serve an external function in your business, you should plan what products you’ll derive from the book material, how you’ll price them, and how you will promote them.

In either event, your book should have its own website, where people can order it and sign up to remain in touch with you–through your newsletter, your autoresponder sequences, or in other ways.

Being aware of your book-writing motivation will help you take the book to its next step. There’s a lot to think about–and it’s worth thinking about.

You can do it. And you should.

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April 26, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Use my approach to book-writing to create a course

I have been teaching that if you write a book following my method, (a) you’ll have a good book, quickly; and (b), you’ll be very well-positioned to start creating additional information products based on the stuff you’ve generated to write the book.

It’s time to be a bit more explicit.

First of all, if you haven’t done so, head to the link at the top of the front page of this blog and get my free book. Read it.

Done? OK, at least you scanned it. I hope it intrigued you enough to actually start doing what it says.

If you do, you’ll create what I call a BookProgram–a simple outline that is your book, in essence. The writing part is just a matter of filling in the blanks, once the BookProgram is done.

Now, whether or not you’ve written your book yet, you can use this outline to create a course. Your course can be based on the entire outline, or just a portion of it. The important step that the creation of your outline has taken you through is the one I call, “the diamond is your friend.” That’s the part that helps you think about, “What questions am I answering? And what must I explain to help my reader get from the question to the answer?”

When you’ve already done this for your book, it’s now easy to focus on, “What are the desired outcomes of this course for anyone who takes it? What will they know, what will they be able to do after taking it?” By answering these questions, you’ll be able to enunciate the benefits of the course to your prospects. You’ll be able to state clearly to them what they will gain by taking your course.

Mind you, I am not minimizing the craft of course creation. I don’t mean to imply that if you follow some general rules, you’ll be as good as any course creator out there. But just as I believe you can create a “good” book–one that keeps its promise–by following my method, I also believe you can create a “good” course by following these guidelines. A good course, by my definition, like a good book, keeps its promise.

Filed Under: book love, book writing, course writing, marketing, planning, steps to write a book Tagged With: , , ,
April 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment

If structure must precede content, how do you get your structure together?

A discussion I had with my wife after posting yesterday’s blog entry made me think about how I teach people to write books. I’ll try to lay it out for you in brief here, so that you can see if this fits your thoughts.

My market for my book-writing products and services has been, to date, anyone who has professional knowledge they want to share with clients. They have a body of knowledge, and a method (perhaps more than one) for applying it to the needs of their clients.

So my book-writing “secret” is simply this: If you want to write a book quickly, you must complete the structure–a simple outline–before you do any writing. And I mean ANY writing.

If you do this, your path from finished outline to finished book is just days long; maybe even hours.

But how do your produce the structure?

Steven Johnson, the author I mentioned yesterday, describes his process: He spends months collecting pieces–notes, quotes, websites, articles, etc.–without being quite sure what the book looks like, or even what it is precisely about. That emerges as he sifts through the stuff.

Important distinction: My method does not necessarily offer anything to replace this process; it’s really not intended for this type of explorer. My ideal client already has a body of knowledge, and a way that she teaches it to her clients. So she can start her structuring process by simply clustering; it will all pop up.

Steven Johnson’s approach is for getting to the point when structuring is possible.

Now, I believe he could benefit from clustering, and from understanding the diamond (if you don’t know what these are, use the “search” above to find my explanations). And maybe he does, but just didn’t mention them in that article.

I’ll have more to say over time about what must precede structuring. What are your thoughts?

Filed Under: book love, book writing, people & ideas, planning Tagged With: , , ,
April 22, 2010 By 1 Comment

How NOT to write a book–I think…

BoingBoing.net often has really interesting pieces on a wide variety of topics.  I ran across this 1/2009 post from Steven Johnson that is illuminating (how one really good writer writes),

1990 Boing Boing logo, from a t-shirt
Image via Wikipedia

thought-provoking (what a wide range of interests), and befuddling (how in the world does a coherent book emerge from such a chaotic process?).

Now, it may not make sense to compare the style of a frequent NYTimes contributor and multiple-bestseller author to the method I have adopted and teach. But I would have expected to find within his approach something that I might identify as my “structure precedes content” principle.

But maybe I’ve been looking in the wrong place. What Johnson describes as being the major part of his collecting process is really what happens for me before I begin my writing process. I, too, read a lot. I too grab all kinds of articles and Web pages and notes. I stuff them into Evernote (for reasons I’ve elaborated upon here) rather than Devonthink. I just haven’t identified that magpie-like activity as part of my writing process.

Johnson says how having a collection of notes, quotes, and Web pages gives him a starting point for each chapter. What he tells about his structuring is that a unique approach for each book’s structure is suggested to him by the material, and he converges from there.

I love his books and his writing. But I don’t think the process he uses is easy to replicate, although I love reading about it. I like my method better.

What do you think?

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Filed Under: book love, people & ideas, steps to write a book, write a book Tagged With: , , , , ,
April 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Check out our new Author Forum!

In the menu bar at the top of the blog, there is a new tab: “Forum.” Come check it out! Post your questions, comments, thoughts.

Warmly,

Joel

Filed Under: book love, book printing, book writing, inspiration, marketing, people & ideas, planning, publishing, steps to write a book Tagged With: , ,
April 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Passion!

A newborn macaque imitates tongue protrusion
Image via Wikipedia

Sex! Greed! Pathos! Pain! Does the word “passion” evoke these for you? They are what literary people think of.

When I think “passion” in the context of non-fiction books, I think of things people really, really care about. Things with which they are deeply involved. Things that they can talk about for hours on end. Things they believe are basically good, even if they are frivolous.

Both are powerful. (Maybe because of mirror neurons.) We echo the feelings represented by the words, and that gets our juices flowing.

I’ve heard it said that the reason bad news dominates newspapers is so that people’s adrenalin will be pumping when they see the ads, so that they’ll have an emotional reaction. And it doesn’t much matter if the reaction is positive or negative; it’s just that strong negative reactions are easier to generate. So that’s why “if it bleeds, it leads.”

When you are writing your book, ignore Sgt. Joe Friday, of the old “Dragnet” tv series, who famously said, “Just the facts, Ma’am.” Your facts need to be dressed in story, something to help your reader identify with what you are saying. Without story and passion, what you write will not hold anyone’s interest.

On the other hand, gratuitous references to body parts or fluids will not accomplish that for most audiences; they will evoke disgust, even revulsion. The passion you convey should relate to the reader’s pain, the thing they want to resolve. Now. If you can, in the well-known advice of copywriters, tap into the conversation that is already taking place in the reader’s head, you have a much better chance of communicating your message to them.

And that’s why you are writing a book, isn’t it? To say something to someone. So use passion, but be civil. You can do it.

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April 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Some of you may take exception to this post

I have to confess to what may be unusual, perhaps even aberrant, behavior. I am convinced it must be strange, because clearly so many writers of blogs, sales letters, and even books, point it out.

Yet I feel there may be something to learn from it, and so I am willing to expose myself to the public eye, in the hope that someone may somehow benefit.

Here it is: When I read a blog, a sales letter, or a book–I read alone. Nobody is seated next to me, peering over my shoulder. It’s just me and the reading material.

I know it’s weird. I know it, because almost universally, writers keep addressing me as part of a crowd: “Some of you may think….” or “Most of you have probably…” It’s hard for me to keep from looking over my shoulder to see who else is with me.

So I have a few suggestions for anyone who might care to address that anomalous personage, the lone reader:

  • In place of “some of you,” try “some people”
  • Instead of “most of you,” consider “most readers”
  • Rather than “all of you,” perhaps “all readers” or even “all my readers” might work

Yes, we must be a minority. But I feel strongly that we, too, deserve to be directly addressed by writers.

What do you think? Comment below.

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April 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment

First new presentation/brainstorming tool I’ve seen in years

It’s Prezi.com, and it gives me a new way to think about presentations–and about brainstorming and planning.

Here are its salient features:

  • It’s Web-based.
  • You work on an infinite canvas.
  • You click and place text, which can be colored, styled, rotated, etc.
  • You can also click and place pictures, pdfs, and videos.
  • You click and create a “path” to tell a story.
  • The story can include zooms. So words and pictures can be tiny and huge, and smooth zooming traverses between them.
  • If you can picture Prezi from these bullets, you are a powerful visualizer. This presentation tells the story much more clearly:

Academy: Prezi Workflow in 15 minutes on Prezi

How to use Prezi to write your book? I’ve just discovered it, but I think it might work as a way to cluster. It is certainly a wonderful place to brainstorm and to create presentations. Love to hear your thoughts about it! (Since it’s Flash, it won’t be on your iPad anytime soon…sigh.)

Filed Under: book writing, inspiration, people & ideas, planning, write a book Tagged With: , , ,
April 16, 2010 By 2 Comments

A great free tool for information gathering and tracking

Evernote is a note-taking program that can run on your PC, your Mac, the Web, and your iPhone/iPad. You can create notes in various ways:

  • Click on “new note”; type into the note
  • Go to a Web page in your browser; click on the Evernote elephant icon, and the url and/or the page are stored in an Evernote note
  • Select something on your screen, and click on the elephant in your menu bar or system tray
  • other ways, depending on platform

What’s the big deal about Evernote? What makes it so useful to a book-writer?

  • You can create or access your notes on any of the supported platforms. Capture a note on your PC, and moments later it’s available on your smart phone. Or on a public-access computer.
  • You can capture Web pages with their urls, or just their urls.
  • You can tag your notes and group them in different notebooks.
  • You can email a note as a pdf or export it as an html page.
  • Evernote will look for text within any pictures you save as notes, and let you search the text.
  • You can capture a picture from your smart phone’s camera directly into Evernote.
  • You can capture an audio note on your smart phone by speaking into your smart phone.
  • You can scan text and images directly into Evernote.
  • You can send material to on-line scanning services and have the scans delivered directly to your Evernote account.

And did I mention that it is free? Check it out.

Filed Under: book writing, planning, steps to write a book Tagged With: , , ,
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