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May 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment

“Begin with the end in mind”

This is one of Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Successful People.” It also corresponds to an ancient Jewish dictum that is part of the Shabat service, “Lekha Dodi”: “Sof ma’aseh b’makhshava tkhila,” says the Hebrew–”The end of a deed is in prior thought.”

Here’s the application to books: If you want to wind up with a book, you have to start with a book in mind.

“Well, duh!” I hear you snorting. And yet–most people who want to write a book don’t do that. They start with some general notion that they want to get to a book, then do random things–journaling, reading, lots of web surfing, thinking, feeling frustrated… and are disappointed and distressed that they seem to be no closer to a book weeks or months or years later than when they began.

It’s not their fault. It’s as if they had determined to travel to some distant destination–say, Joplin, Missouri–but had no idea where Joplin is.

So they start traveling. They drive, they walk, they fly, just to be moving. But they never get to Joplin, and feel worse and worse about it all the time.

One thing that would be helpful would be a map. Here’s one:

  • Decide who you are writing for
  • Decide what you are going to say to them, and why they will want to hear your message
  • Name your book
  • Create the table of contents–the list of chapters
  • For each chapter, create a list of subchapters
  • Only when you are satisfied that your table of contents and all the subchapters are in the right order do you begin to write
  • If there’s anything you need to look up or find out, note it and leave it for the end. When everything else is done, go do whatever is required to fill that blank

That’s how you build a book. You begin with the end in mind.

Need help? Schedule an appointment with me for a free strategy session. Click below.


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May 17, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The dance of communication

I went to an amazing seminar this weekend. The focus was on sales–and I just saw you wrinkle your nose. That’s ok. That was my reaction, too, when I first thought about it. I see it differently now.

Two years ago I began to realize that I was resisting sales. When I was a computer-aided design consultant, I did almost no sales. I was a celebrity, and $10,000 keynote speeches, $25,000 consulting engagements, and more, just flowed to me, because I was THE star.

When I became a coach, and decided to focus on helping people produce books, and income from follow-on products, all that changed. Nobody knew me. So I knew I had to learn about marketing and sales.

Marketing–letting my market know who I am and what I can do–has come fairly easily to me. But sales? No.

I realized I resisted sales as a yukky activity, as a sleazy kind of coercion, as a way to get people to do things they don’t want to do, for my own benefit. I knew that wasn’t right, so I adopted a motto: “Selling is an act of love.”

You see, I know I have something nobody else has: A way to help people express themselves by producing a good book, quickly and easily. And then taking the work they put into producing the book and leveraging it into an entire business. It can be a life-changing experience, as it already has for several of my clients. I want people to know about it.

But I was stuck with these bad–and incorrect–beliefs about selling. And one more, even more deadly to the sales process, that I just discovered this weekend.

What I discovered was that the overriding program in my communication process was that I want to be liked. I so wanted to be liked that I’d gladly forgo a sale to ensure that the person I spoke with would leave the conversation liking me.

Thus I sabotaged myself–and them.

Sometimes, just shining the light of truth on a situation is enough to change things. I believe that’s the case here. I learned to lead my prospect through a series of transactions that result in us both being able to make an informed decision about the question: Are we right for each other? Is there a match between their wants and needs and what I offer?

To help my prospect reach that point, I have to take control of the conversation–gently, but definitely. When the prospect asks, “Never mind all that, how much will it cost me?” I must civilly get their permission to bring them to the point where I can give them an answer that will make sense. “Of course you want to know how much it will cost. Would it be ok if I ask you just a couple more questions so that I can give you an accurate and meaningful answer?”

It’s a dance, and I must lead skillfully, so that my dancing partner enjoys and profits from the dance–even if we never see each other again.

Think about this when you write your book. Communication is a dance.

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May 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

5 questions you must answer

Why write this book?
You’ve felt that you have a book inside you for some time, and you have had a growing sense what it is about. Or perhaps the idea just came to you: “I ought to write a book.” You came across the book you are now reading, and thought, “OK, I’ll do it. I’ll write a book.”

But—why? What is it that gives you the desire to write a book? What is the purpose of the project? What will you do with the results?

You don’t need a reason. You can write a book on a whim, and enjoy the writing and the book, when it’s done. But writing a book—even quickly, as I teach you to do—does require a certain amount of determination, of stick-to-it-iveness. If you know why you are doing it, the reason or reasons can help you maintain your resolve when your interest flags a bit, or when you feel stuck
You don’t have to know why. But if you can give yourself a reason, it will help you.

For whom?
Related to the question of why is: For whom? Who are you writing for? What do you want your readers to understand or learn or experience from your book? Who are the people who will want to read it, or will benefit from it, or be enlightened by it? In a way, this question is more important than “why,” because you must have an audience in mind when you decide how to write and what to say.
What level of vocabulary will you use? What knowledge will you assume your audience has? Will your writing be controversial, or will it confirm widely held opinions?

When I write I find it helpful to picture my reader, to think about the person who is reading what I wrote. How old are they? Male, female? What’s their education? Their profession? Why did they pick up my book? What do they hope to learn? How can I speak to their need most clearly and directly?

When you have a clear idea who you’re writing for, and can maintain it, your writing has clarity and power.

About what?
You may think you know exactly what you are writing about. But do you really? Cluster your topic; see what comes up. Explain it to a friend; “sell” them the idea of your book. Listen to their responses. Are your topic and purpose clear?

Clustering will help you see what your topic means to you, what things actually come to your mind when you focus on your subject. You may find out that the book you thought you wanted to write was actually narrower than what is really in your heart—or it may have been broader.

Sharpening your focus will help you immensely. It will enable you to pour all of your creative power into a sharp-edged channel, so that your message is delivered to your reader with clarity and integrity.

What will the reader get from it?
You know who your reader is. You know what your book is about. Now—what will your reader get from it? Picture that reader just having finished your book, speaking to an intimate friend about it. “I just finished that book I was reading. Here’s what I got from it.” What do they say next? Are they happy? Disappointed? Matter-of-fact? Will they recommend the book to the friend? What response would you like them to have? What must your book be like in order for them to have the response you’re hoping to evoke?

What will you get out of it?
Picture this: The book is done. You’re holding a copy in your hand. What are you feeling? What are you thinking? Are you experiencing the psychic and emotional rewards you expected? What are they? It’s important that you have some idea what they will be.
What role will it play in your life?

For some authors, a book is an end in itself. It was inside them; it wanted to come out.

For others, the book serves another purpose. It may establish their authority. It may deliver a message. It may serve as the keystone of a consulting and speaking business. It may give them a product to sell, to enhance their income.
Other authors have more personal reasons for writing. The book tells about their family, for their family. Or about their town, or company, or military unit.

Whatever the role that the book is to play in your life, it must be planned, designed. It won’t happen automatically.

If you are a coach or consultant, plan out your business framework. Will you sell the book at speaking events? Market it on the web? Offer it in bulk to corporate clients? Give it away, like a large business card?

If it is a personal book—a biography or family history—will you distribute it at a family reunion?

Plan the distribution, the marketing, the applications of your book. Then create a timeline, so that you will know when to do what.

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May 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment

An old warning

Yikes! My hard drive crashed today.

Joy! I use the Mac’s built-in Time Machine functionality, so that I’m continually backing up to a 1T hard drive. I lost–nothing. Took my MacBook Pro (unlike most laptops, it’s not a do-it-yourself hard-drive machine) to the techs; 3 hours later, voila! The Mac’s ready to bring home. I turn it on, plug in my backup drive–and 3 hands-off hours later, all 350 gigs of applications and data are back–and even the tabs I had open in my browser are open.

Backup was not this easy in years past. And for many PC users it still is not. I haven’t done the research, but I use MirrorFolder on my PC; every action I take on the PC is mirrored on my backup drive. If the PC drive crashes, I’m completely up-to-date.

If you are serious about writing a book, you should either keep all of your writing (and other important files) in a secure online service, like FastPencil.com, or get a good backup system. Otherwise, you are betting against entropy–the proven tendency of the universe to go from order to disorder. Right here, on your hard drive.

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May 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment

A “magic pocket”

The tools of the author’s trade used to be simple and few–something to write with, something to write on. Today we have a lot more help–or distraction, depending on your proclivities.

The computer, with its keyboard, spell-checker, dictation software, gorgeous printing, great organizing abilities, has become indispensable for me. I love to type, and have always hated to write. Typing is liberating for me.

I don’t use spelling and grammar checking features, usually–although I am grateful for it catching my rare spelling mistakes. But I love being able to move things around, to search-and-replace, to change typefaces–like a carpenter who loves her hammer and saw, I love the computer-based tools of my trade.

And then there’s the Internet. Wikipedia. Google. I have to force myself to get up and move around, to focus my eyes on objects at different distances, because I get so engrossed with the almost-infinite wealth of information at my fingertips.

So when I come across a truly useful innovation, I get excited. Dropbox.com is one such.

At first it seems like another “hard drive in the cloud”–a site that lets you store your stuff and access it at your convenience.  They’ve been around for years.

What makes Dropbox special? Like so many other amazingly popular developments–think iPod, Facebook, iPad–it’s not the originality of the functionality that makes the wonderfulness. It’s the overall feeling that gears, buttons, levers, and waiting time are out of the way. It bring me back to something Nicholas Negroponte said years ago, when asked what’s the next step beyond personal computing: “Intimacy” was his response.

I think a lot of Apple’s magic, a lot of why the simple Google search screen instantly became more popular than AltaVista, Yahoo!, and others, can be explained by that word, “intimacy.” These engaging experiences feel disintermediated. We feel as if we are in direct contact with what we’re trying to do, with nothing in the way.

That’s how Dropbox feels. You download a program to your Mac, PC, or Linux box. It sets up a special folder on your computer. Anything you put in that folder is automatically, invisibly synced with a secure storage location in the cloud. Any other computer from which you access your Dropbox account–and even your iPhone, with some limitations–can then access the same information. Dropbox makes sure everything is all in sync, all the time.

It’s free for up to 2 gigs. (You can get additional increments of 250 megs for each person you refer, up to 8 gigs; that’s why the link above is my affiliate link.) For 50 gigs, it’s $9.99/month or $99.99/year.

What would you use it for? Well, backups, for one–painless, unattended backups. Sharing large files, for another.

Dropbox says it’s like a magic pocket–put stuff in it from any computer, retrieve it from any other. I like that image.

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May 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Lots of ways to write a book

You may think there’s only one way to write a book, even if you’ve read my free book on the subject. You name it, plan it, structure it down to the sub-chapter level, then write it.

That’s the way I teach, and it works very well. But it isn’t the only way to produce a book. Here are several others that may suit your needs:

  • Interviews. Find leaders in your niche and interview them. Tell them you’re going to transcribe the interviews and include them in a book. (Don’t forget to ask how many they want to order.)

    The interviews don’t have to  be very long. An ideal length will result in just a few pages of material.

    Pick a unifying subject for the book: “What’s the Biggest Problem in (your niche), and What Do the Experts Say about It?”

    You can conduct the interviews over the phone and record them. You can also package and market the recordings; don’t forget to get the interviewees permission. And ask them for a link to their website or a sales page for you to publicize; that’s their motivation for participating in the project.

  • Quotations. Collect a bunch of quotations (that are out of copyright) relevant to your niche. Put each on its own page. Beneath it, or on the opposite page, write your interpretation of Socrates’ wise saying to people in your field. (You can also leave room for the reader to add their own reflections.)
  • Blog. You may have already written your book: Your blog entries might be its content. In fact, FastPencil.com will let you import your blog, then rearrange and edit the entries into a book. That’s fast.
  • Photo-journal. You can use the special book-layout tools of Blurb.com to create a gorgeous book of your photos. The price per book is fairly high, depending on various factors, but might be still worth it for, say, a construction project proposal or an investment offering, a commemorative book or gift.
  • “The 47 best tips on…” Elicit tips, opinions, whatever from your readers, your Twitter followers, your Facebook friends, whatever, and compile them into a handbook. Jokes. Toasts. 6-word short stories (Hemingway’s famous one: “For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.”) Collect ‘em. Publish ‘em, with your intro, and a link to your website. You are now an opinion leader in your field.

A stroll through a bookstore or your library will inspire you with even more ideas.

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May 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Pain

If you want your book to be read, and to do good for people, an excellent approach is to focus on a particular pain that your audience is experiencing. Of course, this means you must have a specific audience in mind when you are writing. And that’s worth at least a paragraph or two right here.

You want to write a book. You have things to say, things you want people to know. Things you want people to know about you. Who are these people? Before you answer, let me give you a hint: It’s not “everybody.”

There are very few things that are truly of interest to everybody. And if you write so as to offer something for every conceivable reader, you’ll find that nobody wants to read what you’ve written–because too little of it pertains to them, to their life, to their interests.

You must have an audience in mind when you are writing–and you must characterize them to yourself, so that you are writing to a single person who represents you audience. Without that model, it will be very hard for you to write in a way that is meaningful and interesting. “Meaning” is a very local matter; shared meaning is usually confined to groups with shared interests.

Once you’ve identified your audience, you want to address issues of immediate concern; in other words, pain points. When you write things that are generally interesting or funny, you’ll capture readers who have a bit of time on their hands, and are looking for something with which to occupy themselves. But when you write about someone’s pain, you have your reader’s full attention. They are looking for ways to abate their pain, and if you have a product, a service, or an approach that will help them, they are yours. “The Fun I had Driving Coast to Coast”–maybe dentist waiting-room reading. “How to Stop Lower Back Pain in 24 Hours or Less”–”Gimme!” says any sufferer.

So ask yourself: What’s the purpose of your book? Do you want to entertain your reader, or move them to action? If the latter, get very clear on who your ideal reader is, and address a point of pain for them.

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May 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Don’t write a book

Let’s face it, writing a book is a non-trivial undertaking. I mean, you’ve been thinking about it for–how long now? A year? Five? Surely if it were important or could make a significant difference in your business, you’d have realized it and just gotten it done.

Think about all the things you have to do to write a book:

  • Define your audience
  • Find something that is a “pain point” for them
  • Be able to articulate what you can do to resolve their pain
  • Let your readers know know a bit about what your approach has done for others who used to have their pain
  • Write the book
  • Get a cover designed
  • Get the book printed
  • Start handing it out or selling it

That sounds like a lot of work–at least 30 days’ worth, at 1 hour a day. Do you really want to spend your time that way? Wouldn’t you be better off:

  • Attending referral clubs and networking groups
  • Handing out business cards
  • Making cold calls
  • Handing out more business cards
  • Trying to explain how you help people, while
  • handing out still more business cards
  • Designing and printing a $5/each color brochure
  • Investing in a $5000 website

Don’t these things make so much more sense than writing a book that will cost you $1.10 (quantity 500) and will credentialize you, establish your authority (author=authority), differentiate you from your competition, and actually give you something to sell AND a basis for creating additional products?

Of course they do. I knew you’d see it my way.

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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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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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