Interview with Julie Broad (founder of Book Launchers) about how she helps clients self-publish nonfiction. She describes an initial filter to reject weak projects, assigns a writing coach to help create an outline and a one-sentence hook, and recommends a minimum author time commitment of about 5 hours per week for 3–6 months (more hours speeds completion). She also recounts an editor’s heavy rewrite that required substantial revision and reflection time. The tone is candid and practical, mixing humor with concrete process steps.
Questions this video answers
About 5 hours per week, minimum.
Approximately 3–6 months.
Chapters
Okay. Julie Broad's with us. The name of her company is Book Launchers. I have gamed her into helping us write a book. Oh, no. She's like, yeah, we'll work something out. We'll never hear from her again, by the way. Okay, talk to us about you help people self publish nonfiction books. Take us step one through step ten, sort of, you know, do you say yes to everybody new?
Because some books are gonna suck.
There you go.
And. And I don't want to be, you know, have somebody say, I worked with Book Launchers and their book sucks.
Right, right.
That's not fun. So really, we start everybody with a writing coach.
Wouldn't it be great if we did something? Writing sucked, and she had to say on national tv, I would love it. I love it. But you know what? Yeah. No, honestly, that. Because that kind of honesty helps. So as the writing coach, then your first contact, you kind of go, here's my idea. Here's these stories. And they're going to go, okay.
I filter initially, so I get a sense of, you know, is this going to work? Are they going to be committed enough, too? Because some people say they want to write a book, but they're not going to follow through.
What kind of commitment are you? Yeah, that's a great point.
Yeah. Generally about five hours a week, minimum. Oh, that's easy. For three to six months. If you can put that kind of time in, you should be able to get the book done, and we take it from there. So once you've got.
What if we did six hours a week?
Then you'll be done a little faster.
How about all day for a week on Tuesday, do we have a book? And every alternate Sunday. Does that help, though, that time between so you can think about what you're gonna write about, or is it better to be concentrated? That's a great question.
I think initially you can power it through, but you need to have space from it to kind of reflect on it. So either way, whether it's space day to day from writing or space after you're finished, you definitely need some space.
Well, how did you do yours?
The first book, actually, once it went to the editor, I thought it was really good.
700 pages.
No, but it came back from the editor, completely edited. Right.
Hence the name editor.
And it's shock. You're kind of like, I thought I was better than this. I thought this was really good. And then completely rewritten half of your book. So there's kind of this shock factor. It actually took me a month to get back in it because I thought I was done, but I really had a lot more work to do.
Okay, so. Okay, so step two. So you find your. You find your. So you do the filter. You hook them up with a writing coach.
With a writing coach who helps you create the outline and the hook.
Is that like a ghost writer? The outline and the hook. Wait a second. What's the hook?
The hook is that marketing? Like, what is this book gonna be about in a sentence or two?
How to lose £50 by Friday.
Exactly. That is exactly.
That's my book. Take my arm back off one of my legs.
