5 Tips for Self-Editing Your Non-Fiction Book - Live Stream Replay

All right. Hello, hello, and welcome to the Tuesday live stream. It is wonderful to be here today. And let's just kick it off by telling you that today's topic is all about self editing your book. So we are still recommending that you hire professional editors. This is not editing in lieu of hiring editors. And this is editing to make your book better. Learning how to self edit your book. So I've got five tips for you today. That's what we're covering. Let me just make sure that you guys can all hear me, see me. Everything is good. Funny. Not so funny story. I was a minute late starting this live stream today because my. Well, I don't even know if you guys can see it. My mic that I usually use, the plugin piece fell apart. So the little. The little USB port that goes in the bottom of my. My blue snowball mic fell out. So I'll be ordering a new mic. All right. Hello, Kelsey, Angela, thanks for being here. And Kevin, welcome as well. So make sure you do say hello when you join in, whether you're watching the replay or you're here live, especially if you're here live because of course, there's prizes for participation. So we'll be rewarding you for being here and for chatting with us. So do say hello and thank you for confirming everything is good. Kelsey, I do appreciate it. So, yeah, let us know you're here. Say hello and, you know, for fun. Marcus, hello. I appreciate you joining in. So, yeah, so today we're talking about tips for self editing. And before we dive into that, I just want to say thank you. We just hit a milestone with YouTube subscribers, so we just crossed over 20,000 subscribers. So thank you so much for your likes, shares, comments, and of course, for subscribing to the channel. And if you're watching this live or replay and you haven't subscribed, oh, my goodness, you're missing out. So make sure you've subscribed to the channel so we can hang out and you can become one of my YouTube besties. My beloved YouTube besties. We've got some of those in the house, right? Kevin McGuire. Kevin McGuire is like, you're going to take one of the OG titles. One of the original YouTube besties. That's Kevin McGuire. Kimberly, welcome. Hello. Marnie. Derek. Hey. Derek Silksky, also a YouTube bestie. Welcome, welcome. CJ the Traveler. Welcome. Hey, good to see you. Benjamin Preston, another YouTube bestie in the house and a fabulous author with the book Launchers family, Marcus Black. Welcome. Hey, you guys, it's so good, so good to have you here today. We've got a really cool topic that I actually haven't talked about before. It's all about self editing. And just for those of you joining in now, I started at the beginning. I'm always talking about the need for editing your book and hiring professional editors. And self editing is not in lieu of that. But learning to edit your book is a skill and it can save you time and money and just overall help you create a better book. So that's what we're talking about. And again, thank you for the 20,000 subscriber mark. That's great. Our next milestone party for those of you wondering, is going to be at the 25,000 subscriber mark or 2 million views. I actually think we're going to hit them around the same time. And for those of you who don't know, I'm wearing new boring books swag today. The this was originally launched, I believe, for our 10,000 subscriber milestone. And we've got some super cool top secret swag that Angela and I have been working on real hard for you that will be unveiled at the 25,000 and or 2 million view mark for that party. So of course I've lost my mug. I think someone in my family may have used it to drink coffee out of today. Not me. So I have the book launcher's journal, but not the mug today to show you. But the next swag will be super special like these hoodies were. And you'll want to make sure that when that happens, you're there for that live stream party. And finally, before I dive into these tips, our next livestream will be our last before our summer break. We're going to be taking a break from new videos from July 7 to August 11. And that is actually the day of our final of our next livestream and our last livestream until the end of August. That will be July 7th. Okay, that's it for housekeeping. Let's dive in. So at Book Launchers, we're creating books that are of the best quality, so as good or better than traditionally published books. So we don't cut corners, especially when it comes to editing. Because besides a cover, nothing screams self published like an unedited or poorly edited book. And we're efficient, but we don't sacrifice quality for speed. And one of the things that can happen even if you aren't working with us or you're working, you're hiring editors on your own is you know, you get you haven't done any Self editing and your book isn't very good. And so you end up paying a lot more for editing than you need to. Or you end up going through a lot more iterations, which just takes a lot longer and can, can and can cost you more. So let's. And the other thing is, by the way, editing of all kinds is really important to do before you get to layout. So if you haven't seen my video on layout, interior lay, or interior design of your book, check that out. Because I talk a lot about how it's not what you think it is. If you're, if you're new to this world, it is not what you think it is not as simple as editing a word document. Things are line by line coded and edited. So you want to make sure that you have all your editing out of the way before you go to layout. So once you're in layout, you just make minor, minor typo changes to your book. All right? So tip number one, don't edit while you write. Get that first draft out of you before you do that editing. My friends, this is probably one of the biggest mistakes I see authors making while they're trying to write their book. They spend more time self editing their writing while they write than they do actually writing new material. So my best recommendation here is have a plan, which of course you already know, includes knowing your audience, creating a hook, writing that wonderful table of contents, and the key elements that feed that hook in each of those chapters and use that plan and just sit down and write. Of course, you may reread a paragraph here and there as you go, but you are not trying to make anything perfect. You are just getting that book out of your head. That is your first and only goal once you start writing the book, is to write that first draft of that book. Full stop. Now, just a supplementary tip for this. When you're writing and you finish writing for the day, my recommendation is that you spend five minutes. When you're done writing, spend a couple minutes, two, five minutes and just figure out what you're going to write about next time you sit down and create some sort of a prompt for yourself so that you don't have to reread what you did, which is a great excuse to re edit that entire chapter that led up to where you're going to pick up again. You've got a prompt that you just sit down and you start writing. There's no rereading of what you did. There's no long warmup that cuts into all of your valuable editing time. You guys know what I'm talking about, right? Who's done this? Okay, so that's tip number one. Do not edit while you write. Get that first draft down and out of you so you've got something to send to the editors. All right, so just checking in on the chat to see what's going on. Yeah, Kevin McGuire. He's always up late, so thank you for that, Kevin. He said it's just past midnight, so maybe good morning is what I should say. And Kimberly's coming in from Ohio. I always love to know where you guys are writing from, so thanks for that. And Diana, hey, welcome. Oh, I'm glad to have you. First time at the live stream. So great to have you here today. Let's see. Editing while typing. Yeah, Kevin said it took me a long time editing while typing. And Kevin 2.0 is saying he's guilty of doing that, too. And Doreen, welcome. Hello. From Pennsylvania. That's pa, right? I'm still Canadian. The abbreviations sometimes throw me for a loop. So, yeah, first time here, too. So wonderful to have you here. And if you are joining in, do smash that, like, button and say you're here, because we do give prizes for participating while you're here. And I've got one of those coming up soon. All right, so I got it right. Yay. I don't want to show my Canadian flag too strongly here when I don't know my American abbreviation for the States. Okay, so that was tip number one. Tip number two is, after your first draft is done, set it aside for at least one week. You need space from your book. Even if you're in a hurry. This is really, really important to do. A day isn't enough. Give yourself a week and then pick it back up. And as much as possible, read it from start to finish. And while you're reading it, and once you're done reading it, ask yourself, is everything there? You know? And if you're thinking it's not there, what's missing? And also ask yourself, what can you cut? And finally go back and start over the beginning and ask yourself, have you started this book in a really compelling way from the reader's perspective? Now is the time to really make sure that that chapter one is engaging and it grips them and it hits them right where. Right where they're emotionally feeling pain right now or gets them to be curious and want to know what's going on. It's like I've said many times before, you throw them straight into the action. You throw them into an emotional situation, or you just meet them exactly where they are with what they're feeling or what problem they're trying to solve. Right now, your chapter one needs to be the best chapter in your book because it is where people are going to start and either discard your book, pick it up, buy it, or keep reading. And obviously we want them to keep reading. So again, when you pick it back up and you're reading it, is there anything missing? What can I cut? And then finally, go back to that beginning, read that introduction and read that first chapter and make sure that you are selling your book and selling your reader on reading this book with that first chapter and that introduction. And here's a hint. There's very few introductions that I truly believe do this well. We had an exception this week. A new client came to us with his book written, and it is the absolute best introduction I have ever seen come our way from just like in the door or on the street, so to speak. It was fantastic. It gripped you. It spoke directly to the reader. It wasn't long and author focused. So they are out there. There are some really amazing introductions out there. But that's what I would do after your first draft is done is go back and probably cut that introduction in half or even get rid of it and really focus on making that chapter one amazing. Okay, let's do a participation. Participation prize. If you're here and you haven't said hello, now's the time. Because I'm about to ask Angela who's fabulous. She is one of my wonderful Book Launchers team. She basically keeps everyone at Book Launchers organized and handles all of our meetings. If you are ever contacting us to work with us, she's your first point of contact usually. So, yeah. So Angela's here and our first participation prize today. Let's go. You know what? Let's just go right from the beginning, right from the start, where Kelsey said hello and go 23 down. Because today is June 23rd. Right. I think that's what today is. So, Angela, if you want to just grab commenter number 23 from the beginning, that would be great. And that will be our first participation prize. And of course, you'll be able to choose whether you are taking home the Book Launcher's journal or. Or our Book Launchers mug, which is of course more of our. You guys probably can't see it, but more of our hashtag newboring books swag. Okay, so let's see here. Marcus just said, my first book took me 11 days to write. That's phenomenal. And four months to edit. After five rounds of content edit and line edits, we were ready to finally release. And it's worth investing the time and resources in editing. Absolutely. And Charlene says hello from Ohio. Woohoo. Oh, Kevin, it's your birthday today. Happy birthday. Is it really? Sometimes. I don't know because you just said you forgot your own birthday, so. And Kevin 2.0. I mean, you're on a winning streak here. So I know last time you won you wanted to give it to somebody. So Kevin, if there's somebody you would like to give it to today, you may select them and let them know it's your birthday though. That's pretty awesome. Yeah, I know again, right? I feel like this is rigged now. And we've got hot Tucson where stories are born with Mike. Hello. Welcome. Okay, so I'll come back and see who is going to be taking home that prize or if Kevin wants it for his birthday. Tip number three today is honestly, this is the editing part I do not like at all. This is this editing what I'm about to tell you I do. And this is where I hate my book. Always, always, always, always. This kind of editing makes me hate my book. But I do it because it is vital. This is sentence by sentence editing and it is as monotonous as it sounds. For those of you who are not detail people, which is me, this is. I personally do the line by line edit, sentence by sentence edit when it comes back from its first round of copy editing. And if you're not sure what the different kinds of editing are, I have a video for that. Just search up. I believe it is Book Editor Breakdown is the title of the video. So you can just search for that and it will come up. But this is. I usually use do this in conjunction with the copy edit because the copy editor's comments help fuel my line by line review. But you could do it on your own as well. And in order of priority, how I approach this, first I look at the sentence. And again, this is sentence by sentence. I am looking for anything that is absolutely unnecessary. I want to cut out fluffy words, repetitive sentences, anything that is just not needed. I try to cut it out so that the book is as direct and to the point as possible. That's my first thing. Number two is I look at any sentences that start with I. And I question carefully if there is another way I can phrase it to put it more in the reader's perspective. Because ultimately, I mean, think about it. If you've been to A party and you're talking to somebody and they are going on and on about how they like. You know, I really like this movie I saw last weekend. And, and then we went for dinner and I really, I had the, you know, the vegetarian salad or the vegetarian pasta. And then I had the, like you're getting bored. Because all I'm doing is talking about I, I, I now I, if I turned it around and said, oh, have you been to X restaurant? Have you ever ordered the vegetarian pasta? You know, sometimes when you get pasta they give you, you know, and you. I'm changing it. Still a really boring example. I'm sorry I didn't think about these things in advance, but the point is I try to turn it around to the reader as much as possible. There's always times, not always depending on the kind of book, but generally there's usually situations where it makes sense and it's good to share your perspective and use eye. But if you can change it towards the reader's perspective, do it keeps them more interested because we are all more interesting to ourselves than usually the books we're reading in many cases. So we want to make sure the reader is understanding how this is for them and put it in their perspective so it's more interesting for them. The next thing is to really try to change passive voice to active or, or again, just try to make things direct to the point. And direct. Don't beat around the bush. Just say what you mean and try not to make too flowery. One of the things that I see and I'm treading carefully, is people with a lot of academic credentials like to use a lot of extra words. And actually this kind of feeds into my. One of my later points is I'll save it. Actually, I'm coming up to this one. So speak directly, change passive to active, and really make every sentence as direct as you possibly can. There's time for passive voice, but too much passive voice is boring. And again, we're all about no boring books at Book Launchers. The next thing is, and this tends to fall into academic people, but it can also fall towards people in an industry that uses a lot of jargon and fluffy words, meaningless words they're used to. What can I say here? Let me come up with a good example. Okay, I'm making this up, so work with me here. Okay? So somebody might say, you know, this out of the box thinking is good, but let's circle back and touch base later to do a deep dive and create some action items so we can just defeat this 800 pound gorilla. What did I just say? I actually don't know what I just said, but I used as many jargon, fluffy meaningless phrases as possible and I was a master of this. My friends, when it came to my MBA and my business degree, I could fill entire 5,000 word essays with very little because I wrote words that made it sound like I knew what I was talking about and I did. Well, so some, some of the words obviously made some sense and had some value. But yeah, you don't want to write a book like that. It's not going to be meaningful for people and you're not getting to the point. So really try to catch yourself if you're using phrases or jargon that aren't really meaningful and also they can go out of date. So if you want to write a book that's more timeless, you may not want to use a lot of these phrases because five year old they might not be as in circulation as they are today. So yeah, if you've got a good one, circle back, touch base, deep dive. What else did I say? Out of the box thinking you can post them. Let's talk about those funny phrases that you don't like or that you use but you kind of wish you'd stop or other people wish you would stop. So that's that point. And then again on a sentence by sentence basis and kind of ties back to this jargon is have I said anything else that dates the book? So TV references, popular songs, popular artists, artists, popular artists, headlines, things like that can all date the book. You can still mention these things, but you can word them in a way that doesn't make it sound like it was a current reference. Some books, that's fine, you're writing the book, you know it's going to be popular for a few years, but then go out of date. But if you're trying to write a book that's more timeless on a sentence by sentence basis, you want to evaluate whether you're dating the book or not. And then of course also on a line by line basis, you're reviewing the word choices, sentence changes and other things that the copy editor has done. If you're doing this at the copy editor's phase, again, this is not a particularly fun part of the book. And this is when I really start hating my book every time. So you may not enjoy this and that's okay. Some people do like this phase, but this is really, really important. This is what creates a great book and it really makes a big difference from a Grading perspective. This is probably where your book can go from a C or a C to an A with this kind of a work. So I highly, highly recommend this sentence by sentence edit. And once you do that, I think you're on pretty solid ground to just push forward and do a proofread and then do tip number four, which I will come back to in one second. I just want to check in with you guys. Filibustering. Oh, that's a good one. I like it. Synergies and breaking silos. Oh, great one, Ben. I like that one. Yeah, Mike. I couldn't repeat that. I had to think about what ones I had said. I'm kind of proud of it, though. I'm gonna. I'll watch it on the replay and see what I said. Okay. Diana says I'm in Montreal, Quebec. Is that the same hometown as Book Launchers? Book Launchers is based out of Los Angeles. I am a Canadian. Proud, proud Canadian. But I do live in the US And I founded Book Launchers out of Los Angeles. So, no, not Quebec. But we will still mail to Canadians. I won't leave you guys out. In fact, we mail pretty much all over the world. Although we do choke sometimes at what it costs to send to folks in far off lands. Okay. And just check in with anything else. I don't think I've missed anything else. I did. I was curious who our prize winner was. Did. Did we get a. I want not give to tumber21 instead. Okay. And then I don't know who that ended up. Oh, there we go. Diana, congratulations. And that's why we were talking about Montreal. Okay, I'm up to speed, you guys. Okay, so heading on into tip number four. So recapping, for those of you who have joined in, do make sure you're saying hello. So tip number one was don't edit while you write. Tip number two was, after the first draft is done, take a rest and then read it from start to finish and figure out if you can cut anything, if you need to add anything, or. And also make sure that beginning is compelling. To tip number three, which we just went through, was the sentence by sentence editing. And tip number four is to read it out loud. And this is the great gift of recording an audiobook because this allows you that opportunity to polish your book. Because when you read your book out loud, you're going to find sentences that don't read well. And even though you read them silently and they're fine, when you read it out loud, you spot typos and you Also spot sentences that just aren't right, and you can fix them. So if you're not recording an audiobook, maybe read it out loud and just record it for sharing with friends or clients or something. Because the big thing is reading it out loud might work. I haven't actually done it just for the purposes of reading the book out loud. I've only done it recording for audiobooks. And whenever I do that, I always find mistakes. And all our clients always find typos and mistakes and things they want to change. But I have a feeling that if you just read it out loud, you'll probably skip things, not be motivated, not actually listen to what it's. What the words are saying or how it. How it sounds. So I think just record it, knowing that you're going to share it with someone, and I think you'll catch it, and that will help. So, yeah, so that's tip number four. Now, prize time when. Oh, you know what? I have a small snag in my little plan here. Hold on. I didn't open up my prize drawing system before I opened up this video. Whoops. So I need one second here because I have to open up the random prize draw. Random name generator right here. Because I didn't open it. I set myself up this morning. Pardon me. This is where I need hold music or something like that. Because I didn't. I did this this morning, and I didn't open it up. So it says queet Random. Oh, we don't want a name generator. This isn't what I want. I want a random name drawer Name draw. Okay, here we go. There we go. Here we go. Pick a name. Pick a name anyway. A name. Okay, so here's the list, and I will post it in. So when you. When you comment on the video a day, a video is released, which is every Tuesday and Friday, except for when we take a break in the summer, which is going to be from July 7th to August 11th. And you will be entered to win one of our prizes. So either the mug or the journal. And so what I've done is I have uploaded all of your names that have commented in the last two weeks into this random name picker. Normally, I cut them out and put them in a mug, but A, my mug is missing, and B, I don't have easy access to a printer while I'm in my makeshift office right now. So here we go. So drumroll, please. Our first winner is. Okay. Oh, wait a minute. It's not choosing a name filter. Duplicate names. I don't Want to filter duplicate names? Okay, here we go. Ta da. And the winner is Jean Hobbs. Congratulations, Jean. I know you've been watching for a long time. I'm not sure if you've won. I know it's been a while. If you haven't won in a while. So thank you so much for your comments, likes and shares as always. So email us@teamoklaunchers.com and let us know if you want the mug or the journal. So thank you so much. Sorry about that little technical issue there. Normally I have it all ready to go. Okay, so let's see. And Kevin says also you can have Windows read your manuscript out loud in Microsoft Word. Oh, interesting. So you can catch it there. That's great. And I think it's sister. Maybe it's Syster. I prefer to read myself usually in a dramatic movie trailer voice. Now I want to hear would be awesome. That would be so fun. And Mike does that even with emails before sending. I probably should but anyways that's all good. Okay, let's see. Just checking any other notes that I missed. Okay, wonderful. Okay, so we're heading on over to tip number five and this tip is to stop editing. So I'm actually going to do an entire video on this subject. But we have clients that go into a never ending cycle of self editing and they're no longer making their book better. They're stalling. Does this sound like anybody? You know every single book out there has mistakes in it. You will be. It'll probably be harder to find a book that is perfect than it will be to find a book with at least a few typos. Now that said we don't want typos. I'm not saying be okay with an unedited book. But just know your book is never going to be perfect. You're not going to find every typo. And the more you meddle with the book, the more mistakes you introduce. It's a fact. We see it all the time. Every time somebody. We actually had a client who once the proofread was done, she hired somebody else to proofread because she had read one of our other clients books and found three or four typos in that book. And so she said I don't want any typos in my book. So she hired another proofreader. They went through and yes, they proofread, they corrected things they themselves and we have tracked changes. So we know this for a fact. They while they corrected a few proof a few errors, they found they added five new Mistakes. Every time you touch the manuscript, you have an opportunity to introduce mistakes. Even when we correct layout changes, that adds, that has potential to add other mistakes. So what I'm trying to say is your book is never going to be perfect. You have to ask yourself, when you're continuing to edit and edit and edit, are you making the book better or are you stalling? It's really important because most of the time you're not actually making the book better anymore. And especially if you've hired professionals and you've done these tips I've already covered about editing, you're basically now at a point where you have to ask yourself what you're afraid of and deal with that. Because editing your book at a certain point is not making the book any better. And in fact, you are probably adding more errors to your book than you realize. So one of the things I always like to mention is that your book is not going to help anyone if it is not published. So go back, reconnect with that hook, reconnect with that ideal reader that you set out to help or inspire or connect with and remind yourself why they need your book. And reconnect and really get back to the point that you need to publish this book in order to anybody's life. So remember what you're doing. So if you're helping them have a better relationship with their kids, or maybe your book is about adding muscle when you haven't been able to do that in 20 years, or you're going to help them plan for retirement early, when you remember that, that's the bigger picture and you're delivering something of high value, that's going to do that for your ideal reader. They're going to overlook a few imperfections in your book and ultimately those little imperfections will get reported by some particular picky Kindle reader and you'll be able to correct them later anyways. So don't endlessly edit your book, really. At a certain point, ask yourself, is the book getting better or am I stalling? And be honest. And at that point, it's time to let your book go and let it go out into the world and see what happens. All right, those are my five tips for you today. So the last one for participation today is a skill testing question. I always like to reward the people that are not only here, but they're paying attention. So were you paying attention? Tip number one was don't edit while you write. Tip number two was after at least a week of rest on your book. So putting your book aside for A week not working on it and then going through and reading it start to finish. During that tip, I said you're looking for three different things. What's one of those things? One of the questions you're asking yourself in that period where you're reading the book from start to finish after you've given it a break. So go ahead. First one to answer with one of those three things is a winner for today. And then I'll do another draw of a random winner from today's participation. Okay. I'm just looking to see what's going on. Aubry, welcome. Late, but here. That's great. Always happy to have you here. Ben. Close those. That's from number three. Those are great. Great takeaways though. But that was from tip number three on the line by line. I'm looking for tips under tip number two, which was what are you asking yourself when you're doing the start to finish read? Yes. Kevin 2.0. Wait, wait, wait. There was one above that. Hold on. Kevin 2.0 seems to have all the answers today. Mike ahead of him. I'm just making sure nobody else is up here. Okay. I do the big edits when I'm done. Compelling start, Mike. You got it. Mike Burr. I'm not sure how you say your last name. Apologies. Congratulations, you win today's participation prize. So yes, the three questions we were asking ourselves of our book at that point was what can I cut? Is anything missing? And is this start really compelling? So Mike got that one and then Kevin 2.0 got what's missing. And then Charlene. It was like you guys were working in a team. Got what to cut and there they were. Boom, boom, boom. Hey, fantastic. So Mike, email us@teamoklaunchers.com and let us know if you want the mug or the oh so soft journal and we will get that out to you. If you guys have any questions, now is the time to ask and I will answer them. Otherwise we have one more prize to do and then that's it for today's session. That's the material that I had planned for you. Okay, so here we go. Just checking. Oh, and it was one handed. Mike says one handed type too. Way to go. And you were still were first. I think you were paying attention. Kudos. We'll do the virtual high five because that's all we can do now. Even if we were in person, this is what we would have to do. Right? Okay, let's go back to my random name picker and randomly pick another name for today. All Right, here we go. Oh, congratulations. Aaron Crawley. I don't think he is online today. I don't think I've seen Aaron. But Aaron, congratulations and thank you so much. It's been wonderful having you comment on so many videos these days. So, yeah, email us@teamoklaunchers.com and let us know if you would like the mug or the journal. All right. Question Diana asked is what is a recommendation if you can't afford an expensive editor? Okay, so I think I've talked about this before. So ultimately, if there's only two things you invest in on in your book, it is editing and a cover. I personally wouldn't publish a book, so I'll back up. One of the things that came up recently. Somebody said to me, yeah, but I don't want to self publish because so many self published books are garbage. And I flat out said that if you aren't prepared to invest money into your book to make it great, then your book will join the ranks of those books that you think are garbage. And this is where editing and book covers come in and it's tough. I ultimately think you do have to spend money no matter what. This is an investment. Now there are things you can do. You know, doing all of this self editing will certainly help. You can also try exchanges if you have other skills or you have services. You can try and see if there's editors out there that would do some sort of an exchange with you and whatever that might look like. It's hard to say, you know, what that service might look like that you would do an exchange on. But maybe you can get a professional editor that way. But ultimately my recommendation is if you're, you know, save up some money to pay at least a professional copy editor. I really think there's value in having three kinds of editing, developmental editing, copy editing, and of course a proofread. But proofreading can be easily done by getting, you know, people together and having them, you know, more or less beta read. And you can kind of use beta readers on the developmental editing side as well. But copy editing follows a very strict set of rules and it's a special eye we've hired. I don't even know how many times we've gone through screenings and hired and tested copy editors. And I can tell you that it is a very specialized skill and you want to get a really good one. So it's worth it there. Reedsy is a great website for hiring people with all budgets and it's all book focused. So. R E E R e E D S y dot com. You might find somebody newer or more affordable there. Okay, let's see. Void. Congratulations on getting your comic book out. That's wonderful news. Thanks for sharing. And. And Kevin says this is a really good live stream, so thank you. And so far, we haven't had any tech glitches. I should hang up fast before we have something weird happen today. Okay. How do you connect with a reader in the third person? Again, it's all about where the reader is at in so speaking to the reader and giving them benefit and creating curiosity for them. So I don't think you have to talk about yourself at all to do that. In fact, the most interesting person to most people is themselves. So just speak in a way that connects with where they're at, what they're afraid of, what they're hoping for, what they're trying to achieve, what they're struggling with. And the more you know your ideal reader and what they're feeling, what they've tried, that doesn't work. And you speak to that, you know, third person works fine. Yeah. And. And so, yeah, I mean, we're talking. I'm always talking nonfiction. I can't really speak to how to do that in fiction, but. But sister. Or sister. Yeah. And Doreen, asking where you find beta readers? I have a video on beta readers, generally speaking, again, because we're talking nonfiction. I personally think the only beta readers that are of true value to you are those that are your ideal reader. And so if you don't know where to find your ideal reader, that's your first problem, because you're gonna have a really hard time marketing your book. You should know people that are your ideal reader before you've even written this book. So, you know, most of us are in the space or, you know, writing a book where we should be able to reach out to clients or colleagues or friends that we know are in this category and have them be beta readers. Don't just ask a random writer. In fact, I think other writers are probably the worst beta readers they can be okay for the proofreading part if their job is to find typos and correct things. But generally speaking, again, it depends on the kind of beta reader and your objective, which is what I talk about in that beta reader video. So check that out on my channel on Bookons tv, where you're watching this. And just look for beta readers, because I cover even questions to ask and expectations to outline as well. Let's see. Diana. Yes. Okay. Is there a minimum number of words or pages In a nonfiction book. I have one presently in the first draft at around 20,000 K. So this is where I wish I was in my regular office. For those of you watching for the first time, we're up in Canada right now, actually. We're on Vancouver Island. I know there's at least one other Canadian here in the house. We're on Vancouver island where we've had one coronavirus case in the last six weeks. So it is a lovely little oasis away from Los Angeles where things, things have been. Things were pretty tough for us down there with a three year old. Things are opening up now. But we basically came to Canada to hide with family where we had support with our son as well as a little bit more freedom with what we could do and things like that. So I'm not in my regular office and won't be probably for at least another month and a half. So normally I'd have books to show you, but nonfiction books, typically we're shooting for about 35,000 words. That gives you a good spine. It gives you, you know, it just, it gives you a book with substance. Most nonfiction books these days are 55,000 to 70,000 words. 70,000 words being a much thicker book, much more, you know, in depth. You can do 20,000. We have done 20,000. You get creative with how you space things out. You do as small a book as possible. I don't know if Jacqueline's here. I don't think I've seen her comment, but she, she's really good at saying, okay, if it's that many words, this is how we have to do it. This is the book size, the layout things. But I think Jacqueline might not have been able to join today. See, does organizing ideas in bullets and short paragraphs work? I plan to transcribe from short videos and bypass lots of editing. Fluff talk. Yeah. So, Mike, everybody has a different approach. And so I never prescribe one approach for everything. But I personally like to put bullets as an organizational approach. You know, doing bullets and then filling it in after. And then a lot of our clients find that those bullets, they can talk it out. So like you said, taking it from short videos and things like that, you know, that's great. You can then, you know, insert the transcriptions for those things, those bullet pointed sections. But you know, that I think is a great organizational technique. But everybody, everybody's different. And I mean, generally in a book, I think these days you want to have shorter paragraphs and shorter sentences. That's kind of the way things have moved. That doesn't mean you wouldn't have a few long paragraphs, but you look at more and more books and the paragraphs are getting shorter and shorter. It makes it easier and faster to read, generally speaking. Let's see, sister, you got to tell me if I'm saying this right, is this sister or sister? How do you go about this? But even though I write high fantasy epics, that's awesome. We have quite a few fiction readers in the house that hang out here. All, all writers are absolutely welcome and I'm always happy to have your fiction perspectives. In fact, there is a book coming out or a video coming out on July 7th that all you fiction folks with YouTube channels should take note of. Because I am talking about why we don't do fiction at Book Launchers. And I'm saying, hey, if you want to know more about fiction, check out these folks channels. And I'm asking for you to drop links in there. So on July 7, make sure you hop on that video and drop links to your channel because that is your time to shine, my fiction friends. Okay, let's see. Have you ever read Punching a how to guide? Oh my goodness, what a title. Punching Babies. No, I haven't. I haven't. I'm gonna check. I'm gonna check it out again. Plotting sounds like fiction. I don't do fiction. I barely have time to read fiction anymore. I used to love fiction, but I have a problem with fiction. If I get into a really good book, I can't do anything else. And with a business and a three year old, that's just not an option anymore. So I don't read very much fiction. I read an absolute ton of nonfiction. So if it's about how to on plotting for fiction, I haven't read it. Do I like capitalized chapters like a blog title? Every book is going to be different on that. Like a capitalized title for the chapter title. Is that what you mean? I like a lot of just in general subtitles, chapter titles and subtitles. To break it up because I think again, you want to always be thinking about the reader experience and you also want to be thinking, I'm always thinking book marketing. And I'm also always thinking about the end goal of writing the book. You're not just writing the book to sell the book. You're writing the book so it gets read so X result happens and subtitles and chapter titles. I think there's an aesthetic decision that ties into your chapter or sorry to your cover. We always design the COVID and then design the interior of the book to flow from the COVID So there's elements that we take from the book in order to. From the book cover in order to have that same experience flow through on the. On the book. And again, this is where I wish I had some examples in front of me, but because I'd show you some of the books. There is that one I did on interiors. I think we show you some of the. Some of our book interiors and certainly some of our live streams that we were doing during coronavirus. Those of you who tuned in saw us go a little crazy showing you all of the books that we love so much that we've worked on, but breaking it up. So I know that's not exactly what you're asking, Mike, but I'm going to go down this road anyways. Breaking up your book and thinking about those subheadings as though somebody were just reading them. So what's going to get their attention? So if somebody got bored and they started skipping text, what's that subheading say? That's going to suck them back into your writing. Think about that. Because one of the things I see a lot of books do is they write and then they go. The five Tips for Success. That's your subheading. I'm bored. Right. But if you put something there that they don't expect, like five ways to bruise the baby. Like in that chapter in that book we just talked about. You know, if I've already bought that book and I'm already halfway in, I'm probably going to read this. So think about every subheading as an opportunity to resell that reader on continuing to read. And the same thing happens when somebody's picking up your book or doing the look inside. If they, if there's subheads and chapter headings that are jumping off the page and selling that book, they're going to want to read that book. So they all should be either benefit driven or curiosity creating or if you can do both. And that's going to help your, you know, help get people to the finish line on your book, but also sell that book. Okay, let's see. I love your channel. I found it only a week ago. Hey, Wet beef. That is quite a name. Welcome. So happy to have you here as a vegetarian. Names like that do give me pause, but I welcome everyone. Truly I do. Alberto, welcome. Do you recommend writing a book proposal for publishers after one has completed a first draft? Nope. But I also recommend you self publish. I have a whole lot of reasons why. There's a very tiny percentage of the population that I actually believe should traditionally publish. So I wouldn't write a proposal also. And generally speaking, if you're doing nonfiction, they're either looking at the whole book or they're just looking at a marketing plan, because all the publisher cares about is if they're going to make money off of your book. So what they really want is a marketing plan for your book more than anything. And they're looking to see if you have a giant platform and or you have a book that they know is going to sell. So you have insider on Trump, or you have an insight onto something that everybody's talking about right now. And then they know there's going to be a market for your book, even if you're a no name. But otherwise they're looking at marketing as the thing. So your book, a proposal is not really what you need. You need a very well thought out marketing plan, which is essentially what a proposal would be. But it's all about marketing. So your book itself doesn't matter to them so much as if they're going to be able to sell it. And they're generally looking, depending on the size of the publisher, but they're generally looking for you to have an audience of at least 100,000. And typically we're talking a lot more than that if it's a major publisher. Some of the numbers I've been told by many are at least a million social media followers and at least 100,000 on your newsletter list for one of the big five publishers to take a look at your book. But I mean, I question why do you even want to traditionally publish? Because they take all your rights, they're going to give you a tiny, tiny, tiny portion of royalties. Tiny, tiny, itty bitty. And again, they take all your rights, so they now own your content. And as nonfiction authors in particular, you want to pay close attention to that, because if you want to sell this as a course, turn it into a TV series, repurpose it in any way, they own you. And it becomes very difficult to do any of those things. And if your book does really, really well, you are not making that as much money. They are making all the money. And what are they making it for? For? Well, they took some of the upfront risk on your book, you know, paying for the cost of publication and perhaps printing, but they aren't doing. They're looking at you to do the majority of the marketing. So they're getting you bookstore distribution and taking some upfront risk on your book. And for that, they're Taking an awful lot. Some people, it makes sense. It certainly makes sense for certain people, but for most nonfiction authors, I think self publishing makes a lot of sense. And we're seeing some pretty big name people move to self publishing for these reasons. And rights is the biggest thing. Owning your own intellectual property is so important. This is an asset. A lot of people don't think of it that way, but your experience, your expertise, how you distill your ideas to help other people, that is an asset and I personally want to own it. I think Wiley turning me down for that book deal was one of the greatest gifts I've ever been given in my life. So just, there you go. Let's see. I know a few people are saying they didn't get notified from YouTube about this live stream. So I'm not sure why that happened. I will call YouTube and I honestly, YouTube's not going to take my call, but I'm sorry, that didn't happen. I was a minute late getting there today. Okay, so just checking for anybody else here and then we're going to wrap up for the day. But I'm so glad you made it here. Sheila's one stop for coaching Sheila Texter and let's see, I don't think that's for all publishers though. No, I'm talking major publishers. So yes, you can get smaller publishing deals, but again, why are you going with them? Because if you're not getting a Wiley a Hay House Hachette deal, you know, who have more clout with more media and even then, by the way, we still work with some authors in those categories that aren't getting the support on the marketing side that is required. Required. So they still have to hire outside PR and marketing companies. But, but even if. So if you're not going with one of them, which also makes it easier to get New York Times bestseller and those other things, if that's important to you. If you're going with a middle to small publisher, you want to make sure you're still getting everything that you need from them and that you want to achieve your goals. And in a lot of cases. So let me just put it to perspective. Had I got that book deal with Wiley on my first book, I would have made about $8,500 from the book sales straight up. That's what would have gone into my pocket. Because I self published, I made more than $100,000 and I'm still making money off that book. About $400 a month comes to my pocket from that first book that I don't pay for marketing on anymore. I don't do any marketing. I'm not in real estate. Some months it's only 200, but I'm still making money off of that book every single month. That's a huge, huge difference. And again, I own the rights. I sold courses off of that that I didn't have to negotiate. And I never did a TV deal. But I did sit to have many meetings with one production house that was interested in taking the book and kind of creating a TV show concept off of it. I didn't have to talk with Wiley about this TV show opportunity because I owned my book rights. It is big. It is really, really big. I think it's really important for you to think about it. Again. There's great reasons to go traditional and we've had clients do it. We have clients that work with us and traditional at the same time. You know, I'm not anti traditional, but I am. Think about what's important to you before you make these decisions. Because I don't think enough people read the contracts first of all and realize how much they're giving up. But I also don't think they get enough in exchange for what they're giving up in many cases. Okay. Poetry from the heart. I'm so glad you made it. So thank you. And cost of ISBN. Well, the cost of the ISBNs. Yeah. So buy a pack a 10 pack or buy a hundred pack. They get really cheap then. Mike. Okay, so I think that's about it. The Ink Pirate. Hello from South Africa. Welcome. So great to have you here. All right, folks, I think we're all done for the day, so thank you so much for being here. It was wonderful. Five local friends say they can help me edit. Friends editing. It's okay. Beta readers, that's okay. You could take all five of them, merge all their changes onto a Word document. But one thing I'll tell you, if you do have friends, Ed, here's what I would say is rather than. Rather than necessarily take their edits, I would ask, I would look for patterns and see where you can improve a book. Again, I still think you need to hire a professional copy editor, but that's another day. It was wonderful to spend a little time with all of you today. Thank you so much. Our next and final livestream before the summer break is on Tuesday, July 7th. Hopefully my calendar worked this time and I've got the days right. I can't wait to see you all then. And yeah, keep telling your friends to subscribe to the channel. So we can have our 25,000 subscriber party even sooner and you guys can see this super cool special swag that we're going to have for celebration of that special milestone. So yeah, thank you so much and have a fantastic rest of the week. Bye.