3 Book Writing Tips

Hello, hello, hello. Happy Tuesday, my friends. It is a fabulous March day. Today's live stream is going to be short and sweet because I have to drive to the Las Vegas Strip for a meeting and I can't be late. So I'm going to keep this nice and short and sweet. So I'm just going to dive right in. We're going to have three writing tips today. Today, or kind of my answers to some very common writing questions that I get all the time. And so I'm just going to dive right in to the first tip. So whether you're watching the replay, you can say, hello, replay. Or you're watching right now, you can say, hello, But I'm just diving right in. So the first tip is there's no answer. There's no right answer to the question you're asking. When it comes to how long should my book be? How many chapters should it have? How big should each chapter be? There's no right answer. There's things that make it more marketable potentially, but there really isn't a right answer for this. There's no. This is how big your book needs to be. This is how many chapters it needs to have. There's no formula. That's the good news and I know for many the challenging news. Larger books are less marketable because, I mean, they're a huge time commitment to read and financially you probably have to price them quite a bit higher in order to make a profit, but that doesn't mean it's not going to work for your goals. So, I mean, I talked to somebody yesterday whose book is 145,000 words, and, you know, I was talking about the marketability factor. My dog is joining our live stream today and I talked about the marketability factor with him and he's like, well, I really don't. I want to have it in a few local bookstores, but I don't really care about selling it wide. He goes, I want to print it and give it to every one of my family members. And then when I do these speaking engagements, I want people to be given a copy at these events. I talked about the hefty shipping bill he'll have, but for him, he really did not care. For him, it was about putting all the content in. He had to share in one book, and that was 145,000 words. Conversely, short books can work, too. My main issue with short books is, you know, for most of what we do, building a business, building a brand, you want to have your book in print in addition to it being an ebook, because this is more than just a lead magnet, right? We're creating books that have marketability. They get you speaking engagements, they get you on media, and that has to have a bit of substance to it. And so you really do want to have a book that is thick enough to have a space spine. And that means it needs to be at least 110 pages. 120 is better so that you can get the binding that is strong enough to put the spine on it and to have the title on the spine so it looks like a legit book. But of course you can get creative with the layout inside. And so for as little as 20,000 words, you can get your book printed. But we like to kind of push them a little further. So again, there's ballparks, there's suggestions, there's recommendations, but there isn't a right answer. Typical business books are 55,000 to 65,000 words, but that doesn't mean that's what it has to be. And that's actually gone down the last few years. It used to be closer to 75,000 words. So I'm going to do a prize, but let me just say hello to the folks that are here today. Kat, hello. Welcome. Lakeisha, great to have you. Angela, as always, thanks for being here. If you're here and you haven't said hello yet, please do, because I'm giving prizes fast and furious today because I'm getting out of here fast. John, hello. Great to have you here. Thanks for joining in. Is this your first live stream, John? I'm just trying to remember. Linda, Kaylee is here. Keisha. Keisha. I'm sorry if I'm saying your name wrong. Welcome all. And we have somebody from western North Carolina. I show my Canadian when you guys do these abbreviations and I'm like, oh, which, which state is that? Ms. Kimoli, welcome. Okay, so let's just do our YouTube prizes right now. And then I've got tip two and tip three for you. Okay? So. Oh, and by the way, the next deep dive training, mark your calendars or just go ahead and register right now. Book launchers.com forward slash, deep dive. It's happening on Saturday, March 19th at 10:10am Pacific Standard Time. Our deep dives are always two hours long. Pure content. We usually don't even have time to talk about how to work with book launchers because we have so much content to share. So it is pure content. This time is a topic my team suggested, which is how to make smart decisions about your cover Your book description and your title. So we've got some amazing experts from the Book Launchers team joining me for this session Saturday, deep dive on March 19th. So go ahead, get yourself registered. Book launchers.com deep dive. And we always have time for extra questions too, so you can make sure that you join in. We cover this great content and you can ask your questions so we can support you in your book journey, wherever you may be in that process. All right, so the first prize today. And for anybody who doesn't know, our prizes are for the people who comment the day a video is released, and that includes live streams. So. So when you're watching the replay, you comment on the replay as well. But every Tuesday, every Friday, there's a new video that comes out. And when you comment the day a video is released, you get entered to win some of our fabulous book launcher swag. And today's prizes are a copy of Self publish and Succeed, which I have, but it's going to be awkward for me to grab it, so don't mind me and don't look at the messy house behind me. Okay. My son is really into crafts and we have ship building crafts all over the back there. We've built all kinds of ships out of popsicle sticks. The uss, the SS Arizona. USS Arizona. The Titanic is his favorite. So you've built a lot of Titanics. And lately he's been building battleships because he likes the shape of them. So that's all in the background. Here's my book. So today's prizes are self publish and succeed or you can get our new journal. I'm assuming we have those back in stock now, Angela, I'm pretty sure you sent me a picture of them. So we have a new version of our oh so soft Journal. Angela has been carefully curating and trying to find new resources, new sources for our swag. And so we have a new oh so Soft journal. So those are your prizes today. So the winner is Alyssa Metastic. Matesic. Metastic. Sorry, Alyssa Matesic. So please email us@teamoklaunchers.com and let us know which prize you want and where to send it. And thank you for commenting the day a video was released. And our next prize winner and same choice, my friend, is Self Publish and Succeed or our oh so soft journal 2.0. And it is Brian at Neoson. So thank you. I don't know if that's the first time Brian's won or not, but I've seen him comment a lot and I feel like he maybe hasn't won. So congratulations, Brian. Thank you so much for your comments and your likes and your shares and same instructions. Email Team T E A M book launchers.com and Angela will happily send you your choice of self publish and succeed or a journal. All right, fantastic. So I'm going to go back to tip number two for writing and I see a few folks here. Yay. Journals are back in. Yes. And I get the name pronunciation a lot, so you're fine. Well, I'm. I. Keisha, you gotta type it out for me phonetically so I know then I'll know I'll get it right next time. Angela says that she thinks they're both first time winners, so that's fantastic. Yay. Okay, so tip number two for you today is don't try to time your book launch. At least not in the beginning. A lot of people contact me and they want to talk about, you know, writing the book, but they're already focused on when they want it to launch or when they want. When they want to time it for launch. And while there are times in your life where I would say it's not a good time, I don't feel like you should at the beginning try to start timing a launch. I think you should. Or trying to, you know, wait to start until the marketing conditions are just right for you to actually launch the book. I really think you should just start. If your life can handle, you know, this big project, add it on. Most of our clients are going to need two to five hours a week, most weeks, for the better part of a year, if not longer, if you plan to market the book, book. And so you really have to plan for that amount of time. And so if your life is just such that that's not possible, then that would be a reason not to do it. But I wouldn't start trying to figure out when you want to launch or having a hard launch date. Because we've seen a lot of times people come in and the book evolves or there's an opportunity to make the book so much better. But they do need to take a couple of months to do that, which is going to mean they can't hit that launch date. Sometimes they're waiting for a really important, powerful endorsement or contribution to their book or a permission. And those things can hold up the process as well, making it very hard and stressful. If you're trying to hit a specific launch date. What I recommend is get a sense of when you want to launch and shoot for that. Give yourself that goal, but set the firm Launch date when you're close enough to have control over more of the factors. So you can hit that launch date for us with our clients, we're firming up that launch date, really, after the book comes out of layout. So we're basically uploading the book and then we're finalizing that launch date. But we have a tentative launch date throughout the whole process. But it's a moving target for a lot of people. But it's also easier to kind of look at where you're at when you're closer and go, oh, actually I'm going to be done in time to hit June, so I can hit June. And you know, previously I thought maybe I'd have to go for September. And so you can look at those things and make good judgments based on the market conditions, what makes sense for the timing of your book based on who the reader is and how you're going to market them, where your audience is going to be paying attention to this topic and be interested in it, where you're going to have the most support from people in your book army. Those are all important factors when it comes to your launch. But if you haven't written your book yet, I think you're too early to worry about a launch date. I wouldn't worry about that so much as I would worry about just getting the book done and then looking around and going, okay, what makes sense for when I should time my launch? Okay, number three. And I know a lot of people like Linda, who's a regular around here. She's one of my YouTube besties. Go Linda. Go besties. The next tip should not surprise anyone, but it would not be a writing tips even. Even though this is a super speed session, it would not be a writing tip session without reminding you who this book is for. It's not for you. Even if it's a memoir, it's for your reader. And the only person that matters in that book journey is your reader. Keep your eye on the prize of how your book is going to help that reader. Visualize them. Even visualize your reader as they're reading your book. What has just happened? What has just happened in their day? If you're writing for a mom, are they reading this at 10pm at night after they've just fought with their child for three hours to get them to go to sleep? Are they reading this in the middle of the afternoon as they're trying to help their child through homeschooling? So really visualize who is this person? What are they doing right before they Read it or why are they picking up your book? What is their emotional state? Are they frustrated? Are they excited? Are they hopeful? What have they tried that hasn't worked? What is the experience you're going to give them when they read that book? I think that's a question a lot of people don't ask themselves, is what is the reader experience going to be like when they read this book? Are you sharing stories? Are you making jokes? Are you being relatable? I just finished reading a client of ours, Glenn Poulos. He wrote a book called, called Never Sit in the Lobby. And I went through his book because my team put together an outline for a course that he's creating. And. And I was reading through the book and I was delighted. And it was an unexpected delight because there was so many stories in his book that I wanted to keep reading. I was like, oh, what's this? And he had all these catchy titles for all of the tips that he shares. And I just wanted to know more. I wanted to read more stories. And that was an unexpected delight. So I think if you can provide entertainment and do it unexpectedly, that can be really, really great experience for your reader. But picture your reader clearly. Paint that picture of how you're going to help them, what the experience is going to be like, what their emotional state is like when they're reading and write the book for them. And then, of course, choose the COVID and the title for the reader, too. So those are my three crash tips today. I also have a prize for you guys for joining me live today. Ben. Oh my goodness, it is so, so good to see you. It has been a while, my friend. I hope you are doing well. It's great to have you here. Mike, hello. Welcome. Mindful eats. That's wonderful. Dr. Chris Perry. So great to see you. I don't know if I've seen you on a live before. So welcome. All right, so prize number one is going to go to commenter number eight, because it is. Right. Is it the eighth today or is it the ninth? Hold on. It's the eighth. Okay, I was right. Commenter number eight. So, Angela, if you can let me know who that is, that would be lovely. And then let's do a really quick participation for the final prize and then I must say adios for today. Like I said, just a quick one today. So the participation prize is going to be what? We didn't even cover it today. So this is to see if you've been here before, if you've been paying attention or. Or maybe you're good at guessing what is the next book that I am writing about. All right, that's your participation prize. First one to get that one right is going to be getting a prize today. And Stephanie Perry says she is eighth. Is that true? Oh, no. Yes. Eighth. Oh, it is the eighth. Sorry, Stephanie, I thought you were saying you were eighth. I'm like, oh, are you? That's great. Oops. Oh, quality child care one. Great to have you here. Thank you for joining. This is a short one. We normally do questions and do a lot more today, but I have to scoot out early today. John Blue is Comment number 8. So, John, congratulations. You can get a copy of Self Publish and Succeed or our oh Soso soft journal 2.0. So email. Email Angela. Sorry, not Jacqueline. Email Angela at Team T e a m booklaunchers.com let her know what you want and where she can send it. And I'm waiting. I. I love, I love the question mark. Mindful Eats. Yes, that is right now. I feel like you have won everything already. So if you would like to choose one of the prizes, you're welcome to have them, of course. Or you can let us know if there's somebody here that you would like to give a prize to. But that is right. It is book marketing. I am working on another book and it is going to be a seque to self publish and succeed because this is all about writing a book that will sell and the book marketing book will be on, you know, achieving your. Your goals from the book, for your business, for your brand, and of course selling books too. So I'm just checking to see if Mindful Eats wants the book, the journal, or to give the prize. And it's true, you might be able to use a new journal, Mindful Eats. It might be time. So we'll just let you know. Patrice, welcome. We are anyone in the right postal area who doesn't have your book. Oh, that's so sweet. Okay, so who's here in the in the US or even Canada that does not have Self Publish and Succeed yet? The first one to put your hands up, Mindful Eats is giving you a copy of Self Publish and Succeed. Yeah. So it's great to have you here. And Patrice, that's great. Hello. Just waiting for that and then I'm gonna run. So thank you all for joining me for this super speed session today. And like I said, Deep dive is on March 19th at 10am all about choosing the right cover book description and something else for your book, which my team will be joining me. It's going to be great, April. All right, we got our winner. April is going to take the book. Thank you so much for sharing. Mindful Eats. You're awesome. So, April, email angelaeamaoklaunchers.com and I will see you all back here for a normal length live stream in two weeks. Tuesday, 2pm Pacific Standard Time, right here at Book Launchers TV again. All right, make it a great day, you guys. Thank you so much for joining. Bye.