Julie Broad (founder of Book Launchers and an Amazon #1 bestselling author) warns authors against splitting a manuscript into pieces for simultaneous editing, describing a client anecdote that led to 'draft confusion' and lost work. She advises waiting for an editor to finish the full manuscript, consistently versioning filenames with dates/names/initials, and using editorial downtime to build your author platform instead of editing fragments. The video ends with community engagement prompts (comments, subscribe, playlists).
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Are you writing a book and working with a writing coach or editors? If you are, this video is going to save you time, pain, and possible heartache, so stick around. Hey there. I'm Julie the book broad. I'm an Amazon Overall Number 1 Best Selling Author and the founder of a fabulous company called Book Launchers. Our superpower is caring more about you and your book than anybody else, as we help you write, publish, and sell a nonfiction book that will boost your brand and make you money. So if you're writing a nonfiction book and you're trying to make it go faster, you might be tempted to speed it up by splitting the book up into parts and having different people work on different pieces at each time. Doing that, however, can be a huge mistake. And we've seen it happen. We had a client who could only work on her book on the weekend, and she wanted to work on it every single weekend. We explained, for example, that her 80,000 plus word book would take a few weeks with the editor, but she was 100% not okay with that. She insisted we split up the book so she could work on it in between. So we had some parts with the editor and some parts with her, and she would send some things she'd worked on to a writing coach in between all that. As we got through the second round of edits, she became furious because somewhere along the way, a bunch of the work she'd done had vanished poof. Into the air. It was nowhere to be found. What had happened was a bad case of draft confusion. It was compounded by the fact that she hadn't been labeling the manuscripts with the version numbers or dates or anything. She just kept saving them as the same file name. She ended up having to take two weekends to redo it and stress the whole time about whether it was as good as the first time or if she was missing things. And ultimately, the client blamed us, and it was our fault because we let her push us into not following our process. So now we're really strict with this. Waiting a week or two while an editor finishes work on your full manuscript will save you time and energy in the long run. Now, draft confusion can happen easy, even if you're not passing pieces of a book around like a hot potato trying to go so fast. Hot potato, hot potato, hot potato, hot potato. I don't want it. So here's what I recommend. First thing is avoid the temptation to edit a book in pieces. The front half of the book is not independent from the back half. Reading something in one area may trigger you or your editor to check and adjust something elsewhere. If pieces are missing, they can't do this, and the notes have to be carefully made to do it next time you work on that piece. It's just adding work and confusion to an already challenging process. You might think working on it as a whole is not efficient, but the reality is that draft confusion is far more energy and time draining than just a little patience. The second tip is to update the file name of every edit of your book with a new version number and date. We usually put initials on it too, just to be clear who touched it last. You're going to end up with a dozen different versions, but you'll always know which is the most recent, and if something gets deleted along the way that you want back, you can retrieve it from a previous version. Writing a book is time consuming, so I understand the inclination to work on it whenever you have a moment. But a better idea is to spend the time when your book is at the editor working on your author platform, connecting with influencers in your space, building a lead magnet or heck, relaxing because there's so much more work to come. Do you have a draft confusion story? Share that in the comments below. And when you comment the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some sweet book launcher swag like a noboringbooksmug or an oh so soft journal. And if you do it often enough, you could become one of my YouTube besties like Studio 38 who always makes me laugh, and Kevin McGuire who always laughs at my jokes. Both things get to my heart pretty fast. IJ King and Latonia too. Oh, and dream a drudge. Can't forget you. So big virtual hugs for all your comments, shares and support. Like this tip. Smash that thumbs up button. Go ahead. It feels so good. Try it. And make sure you've subscribed to the channel so we can hang out every Tuesday and Friday when new videos come. If you want to learn about building your author platform, this is Playlist right here is perfect for you. Or if you want the latest and greatest video, that's right here. Either way, let's keep this conversation going. I'm waiting for you on the next video. See you there.
