#135 Start Small Masterclass: The BIG Impact of Publishing Short Kindle eBooks

Hello everyone, this is Shelly Hits, and welcome to this Start Small masterclass where we're going to talk about the big impact of short Kindle ebooks. This is something that I have done and I've been teaching for years and so it's just fun to talk about this topic again. This is one that tends to bring a lot of ideas and so have a paper and journal available and, you know, be ready for what God is going to do. So I'm really excited about this. Let me pray for you and then let's dive in. So, God, thank you so much for today and for every Kingdom writer that's here live or watching this training later. We just thank you for what you're doing in their life and all that you have called them to do, gifted them to do, invited them to do. And we just pray that this would be a blessing to them. We pray that they would get God ideas even during the call or afterwards. Maybe they're, um, on a walk or commuting somewhere later and all of a sudden an idea is given to them from your spirit. So we pray that you would lead and guide and direct me, but also that you would be speaking to each person that is listening. And we just pray this in Jesus powerful name. Amen. So what we'll be covering in this masterclass, Start small. The big impact of short Kindle ebooks is seven reasons to consider publishing a short Kindle ebook. 5. Five ways to that Starting small helps save you money and the recommended length for your book, which is probably the most common question that I get. And we'll be covering more. Plus we'll be able to answer some of your questions at the end.

All right, so before we get started, I just wanted to let you know everyone's publishing path looks a little bit different. So do what works best for you. This is something that's worked really well for CJ and I over the years and on. Honestly, it is the reason that we've been able to publish over 70 books. Most of our books are small. They're not these giant books. And so it's worked really well for us. Our audience really likes it. But just know everyone is different. So do what works best for you. And as always, I'm going to encourage you to be spirit led every step of the way and involve God in every decision. He has the best ideas. And I am praying that you receive God ideas for during this presentation or even afterwards that then you can implement a God. One God idea is worth a million good ideas. Can I get an Amen but before we get started. Oh, but I'm going to make an offer to work closely together with you at the end to publish a short Kindle ebook. And this is something outside of Christian Book Academy. This is something extra that I decided to do this fall to help you publish a Kindle book before the end of the year. You'll get more support from me, more content, and I'm just organizing it in a very concise way for you. So just be knowing that I'm going to share that at the end. So let's get started. So like I said, I am sharing this from experience. This is not just something I learned from someone else or I hear other people doing. This is one of the primary things that we have done in our publishing career over the years. So here are just a few examples. So. So this is our Gratitude My Gratitude series. And the first three books are all short Kindle ebooks. And the Gratitude journal, it's a 21 day challenge. And then I have 21 prayers of gratitude. That one has been really popular, which you can tell by how many reviews as almost a thousand reviews. That one has been one that's been really popular. And it's one of our shortest books. And then 21 stories of gratitude, that's an anthology. So I was able to gather, I think C.J. and I each had a story story and then maybe there was 19 others, but that's an anthology. So a lot of people were helping to promote that. And then, you know, what I did is I then put together those three smaller books into a larger book. And that's the A Life of Gratitude. And so the larger book, I actually wrote it over time. So I wrote and released the Gratitude Journal. Then I wrote and released the 21 prayers of gratitude. I wrote and released the 21 stories of gratitude. And then that bigger book, A Life of Gratitude, was published. And so the benefit to doing something like this is that you begin to serve your audience sooner. You are able to get to profit sooner. So I was earning book royalties on these first three books before the big book was published. If I just published one big book, then I would have had to wait so much longer to impact lives. Plus, some people are really interested just in the Journal the challenge, or some people are just really interested in the prayers. They would never buy the bigger book, A Life of Gratitude, but they'll buy some of these shorter books and the 21 stories of gratitude. It really harnesses the power of collaborations because there's all these other writers then that are helping me to market the book. And so we've done this also. I have a Life of Faith series and CJ did one on generosity. So we did three different series in this way. And I also did. My very first one was on vegetarian cooking. I have since unpublished those books. I no longer have that platform. And you know, I had a website and social media, all the things, but God just told me to shut all that down. And so I, I no longer have that. But there was like seven or eight books in that series as well. So here's another example to get you thinking. So Forgiveness Formula is a bigger book that CG and I wrote together. But there was a section in there that I wrote about Trusting God when bad things happen. And people really responded well to that when we were speaking. And it was something that I would talk to people about. And so God really led me to take out a portion of the book. Forgiveness Formula. It wasn't new content, but I published it as a new book, a short Kindle ebook. And I retitled it Trusting God When Bad Things Happen. And I edited a little bit. You know, you have to add a different intro conclusion. You know, you have to edit it a little bit. But again, look how popular that book was. 354 reviews on that one, only 61 on the forgiveness Formula. I think a lot of people, they know they need to forgive and it's just kind of like, like I don't know if I want to go there right now. You know, it's like a book on forgiveness just feels heavy. Whereas Trusting God when bad Things Happen, it's like, yeah, like what do I do? How do I walk through this time? And so it's just another way that God had had us to. To publish a short Kindle Ebook. So you might already have a book published that maybe there's a section in it that could be pulled out. It could be a feeder book into the bigger book. It could serve a. And it could be something that, that you do. So I actually put these into a series. You can say, see here it was like book one of two and book two of two. You know, there's the same content is in the Forgiveness Formula, but it's, it's a shorter piece. There's a lot more content in that book than what's in For Trusting God. This was another, another example. So my book Broken Crayons still color. If you've been around here a lot, you know, that's been my most popular book and I have been want write followup books. But it feels so Overwhelming because I want to do it similar to how I did this book, you know, with videos and fill in the blank, you know, viewers guides and possibly coloring pages. Who knows? I mean I just, I was, I, I've been thinking about, I have like two other books that I think I could possibly do that would be follow ups to that, that would be like a book study. But in the meantime I thought, you know, this is so popular. My email list grew to over 10,000 people on that email list. I was like, you know, how serve the people who've already purchased that book. And so God led me to write this book, Living Beyond Brokenness. And it's a devotional. And so this is brand new material. It's not something that I took from anywhere else. But it's a short Kindle ebook. But I also published it as a print book. So a lot of these books started as short Kindle ebooks. And once they started selling, we realized people wanted it. You know, we would publish it as a print book as well. But this is a small book, it's not, not a large book. And so I can then follow up now in my email series about Broken Crystal Color offering that book to them. So just hearing those case studies, are there any ideas coming to your mind immediately of the type of short Kindle ebook you might create and publish? If so, let us know in the chat box. But I'm going to go in and share now. Seven reasons that you might want to publishing a short Kindle ebook book no matter where you are on your publishing journey, if you already have books published or if this might be your very first book. So first of all, it's just the get published book. So if you do not have a book yet published, publishing a short Kindle ebook can be the easiest path to becoming a published author. Like adding published author to your bio and having something out there for people to purchase. So, you know, I know a lot of you have these, you know, big books, signature books, you know, that you want to write and that's amazing and, and I want you to do that. But maybe, you know, you know, in the process or maybe before that you focus on getting a short Kindle ebook done. I really believe all of you can get it done in three months or less, you know, depending on how much experience you already have with the publishing process. If you already know and you've already published other books, you could definitely get it done quicker. But if this is something that you think would be applicable to you, just type get published in the chat box. The Second option is message to the masses book. So you might already have an audience, you might already have, you know, a place that you want to, you know, people you want to share your book with. And to get traditionally published usually takes two to three years, you know, from start to finish, sometimes longer, depending on their time frame, depending how backed up they are. And so the Message to the Masses book, this is the fastest way to really share a message to the world. Let's say you have something that's very time sensitive, and right now we're in an election year, and I know that can be very stressful, but let's just say you had something that had to do with an election, the election, and you wanted to get something published or you had something that was very, you know, time sensitive. You could get a message to the masses quickly without having to go through all the red tape, without having to go through all the, you know, you know, stuff of even trying to get a publisher. Right? I mean, that could take several years just pitching to publishers and finding an agent and writing a proposal and all of the things. So this is a way that you can really get your message out faster. And that doesn't mean you will never have a traditionally published contract in the future, but you're just getting something out because you know the importance of this message and maybe God has really impressed it on you that it's for now, it needs to be now. And so if that applies to you, just type in message to the masses and several of these may apply to you. There may be more than one budget book. So a short Kindle ebook is one of the most affordable ways to publish a book. So if you're on a tight budget, and honestly, that's why we have done short Kindle ebooks many times, is it's just, it's cheaper. And we're going to talk about that a little bit more later in this presentation. But, you know, it's just, it's just an affordable way to publish a book. So maybe you're saving up money, you know, and you're, you want to hire the, you know, an editor and formatter and all the things. Like you can get this book done because it's, you know, we're talking about this, but because it's less words, you're going to pay less on editing. But also you might be able to even do the formatting yourself for this kind of book. So it is an affordable way. So if the budget book applies to you, share budget book in the chat box. Now, these are for publishing so this is number four, and it's a For Fun book. This is simply a topic you want to share and you know, you will have fun writing it. So maybe you have a hobby of gardening and you, like, I've been getting into hydroponics lately. So maybe you have this, you know, this niche of like, oh, it would just be so fun to share with people how they can get started with hydroponics on a very small budget and start having fresh produce in their home. Even if they live in a condo like I do, they have no yard like I do. You know, they have a very small budget like I do. You know, it's like, I just want to get this book out there and share it with people that this is possible. So it might just be something for fun that you're doing. Or maybe you. It's something you do with your grandkids. You're creating a book with them and then they get to be published off authors too, you know, because they've done it with you. But if that applies to you, just type For Fun book in the chat box. All right, so those four related more to the publishing side of things. This relates more to the marketing side of things. So if you already have books that you want to sell or if you have a business that you want to market, these are more those options. So number five is Reach New Readers book. Amazon is a search engine most writers ignore. So if you think about Google or any of the search engines, you type in a phrase, you know, how to garden or how to do this or what, you know, da, da, da, a recipe or, you know, and it comes up with a bunch of different options. Amazon is the same way. You search in there and then book titles will come up. And so Amazon is a search engine that we can use. For example, my book self publishing books 101. The reason I made the title self publishing books 101 is because people search for that phrase self publishing books. And there's so much more competition now. But way back when I first published that book, it would show up on the first page of Amazon for that phrase self Publishing books. And so, you know, it's a really powerful thing that I think a lot of people ignore. And it's something that with a short Kindle ebook, you can, you know, publish it with a specific title with a specific, specific keyword phrase, so that you're really trying to get into the search engines for those searches on Amazon. So if Reach New Readers is for you, type that in the chat box. Number six is Billboard Book. And I was just thinking about like, you know, if we wanted to advertise our books, you think about a billboard, it advertises for that company. You can have an advertisement for your other books inside a short Kindle ebook. So if you're already a published author and you're wanting to find a way to sell more books, publishing a short Kindle ebook, it's not very expensive, so you're not spending a ton of extra money on that. But then it's something that can work for you 247 and advertise your other books. So what I like to do is think about like in the beginning, you'll have like a page that says other books by your name, you know, and then a list. Have you ever seen that? Especially, I know it's especially with fiction, but also I think it's good for nonfiction. Just. Just a list of other books by this author. And you have a list there. And you can, in a Kindle book, you can actually add a link and so you can link directly to them. And then at the end of the book you would actually have a longer advertisement. So you'd have like a mock up of the book. You would have. Or a picture of the COVID you'd have the title, the description, you would share a little bit, have a link. And if there are several books that you have to advertise, you can put those in the back as well. And so think about books you've read that you know there's other authors that do that, right? You get to the end of the book and then they have these pages where there's advertisements for their other books. And so especially if they're connected, which 100%. That's the strategy here. Connect, make it the step before your main book or something that would lead into your main book. And even my book, like Living Beyond Brokenness, if someone's interested in that, they'll probably be interested in my book. Broken crayons still color. And so, you know, you know, tying them together. And then one who buys one might want to buy the other and vice versa. If you're a fiction novelist, this is really easy because people get really emotionally tied to those characters. And if you have already.

A full length fiction novel, you can write a novella kind of backing up a step and kind of introduce the characters and have a fun story and then say, to continue the journey with these characters, you know, go ahead and get my other books. And so, yeah, like a prequel, Mandy says, but if Billboard Book is your pr, you know, something that you think might be interest to you. Go ahead and type that into the chat box. And then finally, audience builder book. So you can actually grow your author platform with strategic calls to action to join your email list inside a short Kindle ebook. And so what happens is, you know, Amazon, if somebody buys your book, you don't get their email address. You don't get any way to contact them afterwards. So I always recommend to have a way to have an email list. In Christian Book Academy, we have a training on setting that up in mailer Light. It's currently free for up to a thousand subscribers. So most of you, it'll be free for a while. So you can set that up and then you can put a link in your book for them to sign up. And this is great because especially if you plan to do anything else, like you can promote even other products as affiliates. You can, you know, promote other books that you have in the future. You can promote anything that you're doing in the future. It's a way to stay in contact with those readers. And so this is something I recommend. And again, similar to the Billboard book, I recommend having a call to action in the beginning that you have something really enticing for them to sign up for for free. And then as it's appropriate throughout the book, have, you know, you know, links there. You want to be careful not to make it just one big promotional. People get a little upset about that and might leave a review about that. But and then definitely at the end, you know, make sure you have another a call to action to your email list. But I've done this for most of my books, not all, but let, for example, broken crayons still color. There's corresponding coloring pages. And you know, if you have the book, they're in the print book. But there's scripture cards, you know, that they can download. There's the videos that, you know, they get access. And I have a link directly to the video. So they don't have to sign up to my email list to watch it, but they get a bunch of things for signing up. And so every chapter I can share, like to download the scripture things and to, you know, to get all of these extra goodies, you know, make sure to sign up@brokencransbook.com and so like I said, I've grown that email list. Now I think it's over 10,000. But I've been removing some people who are not active and all of that just, just by putting those links in my book. Now it has to be something very compelling. That they want something that's related. You know, I mean that's also part of the strategy. But how many of you are interested in the audience builder books? This could be for a business like you have a business and you want to draw traffic from Amazon to your website and to get on your email list. And we do that a lot just for our, you know, Christian Book Academy and our, the stuff we do for writers. So these are the marketing ones. And now with the marketing ideas, because it's a short Kindle ebook, you can price it at a, you know, an easy to buy, an impulse buy price. So $0.99, $2.99, whatever feels comfortable to you, it's an impulse buy. And then you can also at times run specials. So you could run, you know, if it's something that you put into the KDP select program, then you could run it as a free promotion occasionally and, and submit it to other sites or you could run a 99 cent promotion if it is 2.99 and then submit it to a bunch of sites. So there's a lot of different things you can do to then really feed this engine, you know, of the, the short Kindle ebook getting more exposure. You can do solo email swaps with other authors and you know, even you could even offer that book for free for a certain time and that that author shares about your free book, you share about something of theirs. There's so many ways and we teach all a lot of these things inside Christian Book Academy. But how many of you, your, your, your wheels are spinning between the publishing ideas and the marketing ideas? There are a lot of ways that you can use a short Kindle ebook. Of all of those options, which would you say is the very top for you? Let me go back up. So the get published book. So you're, you're not a published author yet and you just want to get published. You're ready to get published message to the masses book. You want to share your message. The fastest way possible budget book. You're looking for an affordable way to publish for fun book or for the marketing reach new readers book, Billboard book or the audience builder book. And like I said, you could have multiple of these, but which one really rises to the top for you that you could see yourself doing with a short Kindle ebook. So there are a few benefits to writing and publishing short Kindle ebooks. Number one, it's easier for your readers to consume. We have been in information overload for a lot of years. Can I get an amen like there's just so much stuff out there. And when you need an answer, you want to find it. But you don't want to have to spend like months reading a book or you know, like just, you know, a lot of time. Like you want to get, you know, in there. Or like maybe you want to read a novella over your lunch hour and you just want to be entertained, but you don't want to have to like read this really long book and then find yourself in the middle of it when it's time to go to bed and then you don't get enough sleep. But a novella, you can finish it, you know you're not going to lose sleep.

Right? But it's easier for your readers to consume. Guess what? It's quicker for you to write and a lot of you already have content you could repurpose. And you could probably have a first draft done really quick. Or like my book, Trusting God when Bad Things Happen, it was literally a section of a book, you know, forgiveness formula that I took out and reused. And so some of you may even be faster. It saves you money and we're going to talk about that. Like how does it save you money? Well, here are five ways that publishing a short Kindle ebook will save you money. Less words, like mentioned earlier means editing will cost less. So you know, we are paying for an editor's time. And if you write a 300 page book, you're going to pay a lot more for editing than if you have a 60 page book. And we'll talk about length of short Kindle ebooks here soon. But it's just going to cost less to edit it. You don't need an ISBN. So currently an ISBN is around $99 for my identifiers for the US in Canada it's free. So yay Canadians. You guys normally get the short end of the stick and things are more expensive. But you don't have to pay for ISBNs, which is awesome. But you know, with a short Kindle ebook, Amazon assigns you what's called an asin, so you don't have to buy it with a print book, you have to have an ISBN either. You can use a free one from Amazon, but typically I recommend purchasing one so that you have more control and you can do a lot of other things with that book, but no need to buy one. It's an ebook only cover. So when you have an ebook and you know when you look on Amazon, it's just the front cover, you don't have to have a spine, you don't have to have a back cover. So you're going to spend a lot less purchasing a book cover. And it's just going to be easier to do because you don't have to think about, you know, the description, you know, ahead of time. Like you're just, you're just getting that front cover done. And it's a lot cheaper as well. And then formatting. Formatting costs are typically less as well because again, you're paying somebody for their time. So if you have a shorter book, you're not going to pay as much. But it's also easier to DIY when you're just doing one format. You're just doing Kindle. There are so many ways to do it and there's other, you know, different softwares. And Kindle even has a free software called Kindle Create. You could just use that, get it out there, and it saves you a lot of money that way to DIY the formatting. And it's a lot shorter. Like with print books, you have to get the formatting, like, exact and all the pages and the margins. And I will just say, like, I will want it to pull out my hair sometimes. Like when we were for. I hired somebody, but when I was working with my formatter for Broken crayonstall Color, I think it was partially a spiritual attack, but my goodness, it was like we changed one thing and then something else would change. And it was just, it was a lot. But when you're doing a Kindle ebook, there's no page numbers. It's like it's all one continuous flow. Now. There are things you have to do for that that's different, but it's easier and it's just quicker to write. So then it gets you to profit quicker. So I don't, I don't know if that's necessarily a way to save money, but you'll be making money, which quicker, you know, instead of waiting for two more years or waiting for another, you know, to a year or whatever, like, you're able to get that book out there and also help people quicker, but get to profit quicker as well. And then there's no guarantee that you'll sell a certain amount of books. But, you know, it is just, it's something that we've definitely seen over the years. And so how long should your book be? Well, for short Kindle ebooks, I recommend a length of about 10,000 words. So it can be 10,000 to 20,000 words, and that equals about 60 to 70 print pages. And this is the length of most of our short kindle ebooks, like we. And, and we've even put those into print and people love them like they buy them. And a lot of them are not long enough to even put the title on the spine because you have to have a certain width to even be able to put the title on the spine. So a lot of ours are, you know, too short to even do that. But people buy them and it's amazing. But, you know, your book can be anywhere from 6,000 words to 20,000 words. So my book, 21 Prayers of Gratitude, I think it's like 6,600 words or about 60 pages. I don't know. It's something around there. It's like one of our shortest books. And yet people love it. And it's because they get so inspired by it. And it's, it's. It's serving them and it's encouraging them and it's giving them value. So you don't want to just publish something just because you can. You want to publish something that's really going to give people value.

So your next step is to decide, like, what kind of book do I want to publish? And then what is an idea of a book that I could do? So the. Let me go back over to the.

To the, the. The title one. So you can see here, here I am pointing to my iPad. My book, Kingdom Writers now, this one is in print now, but we published that in the beginning ebook only. We did not publish that as a print book until I think maybe six months later. But that's like. So you can do that. You can put it on a Kindle device or something. And then, you know, that way it's like you're still holding up your book and doing it. But we did that with. And that was like a signature book for us. But we didn't even do it in print right away. I wanted to get it out. I wanted it to impact lives. And it's, it's a bit of an anthology because it has some of your stories in it of our members. And so we had people being able to share about it. And I actually sold it on my site first instead, and then I released it to Kindle and then we did the print. So there are so many options and there are so many ways that you can do this. Like what, what is one of your main goals, right? Is it just to simply get published or is it to grow your business? Is it to. To make profit and to make sales and, you know, what are some of the things that you can do? And I was praying and in a business meeting with God, God gave me this idea for this book and of how to then release it and to start with a short Kindle ebook. So I just want to let you know that there's so many things possible for you and you know, there's, there's so many things that you can do. So let me know in the chat box if you're here live, what book do you think you could publish in this way? I would love to hear about it. And we're gonna have time to go into it. We can even talk through strategy with you, case studies, you know, and I can give you ideas of what I'd suggest. But first I wanted to invite you into working with me to be able to publish your short Kindle ebook by the end of the year. So would you like me to personally help you publish a short Kindle ebook before the end of the year so you can reach your writing goals? So whatever that is, if it's to, to fulfill your dream of being a published author, if it's to, you know, market your other books or whatever your goal is right now, this is something I'm good at. This is something I have done many times. Like I said, it's the primary thing we've done in our publishing career. So I really believe I can help you. And so I'd love to help you publish your first or your next book. And I'm offering this support in my brand new group coaching program called Procrastination to publication live. So we have a workshop by that same title, but this is completely different content. It's a completely different flow of curriculum and everything. But I just love the title. I was like, I have to still use the title. And you'll get coaching calls twice a month with me for clarity. Step by step training released weekly to decrease the overwhelm. So when you join Christian Book Academy, you get everything and it's an all access and people love that. But sometimes it is easy to get overwhelmed. You will not be able to work ahead. Some of you won't like that. But some of you, it's going to really, really help you because you will only have that week weeks lessons released. And so that's what you're working on. You're not going to be jumping around to all the different other modules and all the things and then accountability to help you stay on track and motivated in the midst of a busy life. So life is busy and it's easy to put our writing on a back burner and do all the other things. But especially when you invest and when you say, okay, I'm going to come in here, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this by the end of the year. Its motivation. So with this program, you'll be able to make strategic decisions and I can help you make these decisions on our calls or in the member area. But you'll choose a topic, create an outline and finish the first draft of your book. Then you'll move on to your final draft with our simple seven step editing process. You'll, you'll get the help you need. So you can hire a team. Like a lot of this you can do on your own with a short Kindle ebook. But we're going to show you how you can hire a team to help you do all these steps as well, if that works better for you. And then you're going to complete the steps to publish by preparing your book for publication with keywords and categories and you know, spoiler alert. I've said this many times like you can update these things later. So if you just need to get a book out, you can always get it out and then update these things later. So don't sweat the small stuff. And then you're going to press, publish and share, upload your book and publish on Amazon so God can use it to impact lives around the world. And it really is amazing. Like, I think a lot of you don't fully understand the doors that God can open once you take the obedient step of like publishing something, getting something out in the world, becoming an author, having a book. Like there could be so many things that then open up for you. And that's happened to us over and over through the years. And so there's just a lot that can happen and God is the one that gets all the glory. Amen. So you'll get twice a month coaching calls. I, I now have 16 years of publishing experience, 20 years of marketing experience, online marketing experience. I published my first website in 24,004. So it's been 20 years. It's crazy. But I published my first book 16 years ago and we've been doing this over and over and over. And so I can help you personally with some of these things. You'll move forward with confidence. And the video replays have transcripts that are keyword searchable. So if you have a specific question, you can just search in there, find your name or find your question, just go right to it. You don't have to waste time watching the whole video. And that's True. With all of our replays even in Christian Book Academy. So your price for this program, three months of coaching with me and of this program is $299 using the coupon code save100now. So you have to put that coupon code in and let me just show you. You'll go over to procrastinationtopublication.com and then if you come down to the bottom, I already have added the coupon code. But it's just save 100 now. Let's say if I delete that and I put that in save 100 now. You just have to click apply and make sure it shows that 299 on there so that, that you can get that price. And I'll put this link in the chat box so you can check it out. And you have about a week to decide if you want to join this program. We're going to be closing the doors next week and the early bird price will go up on Wednesday. So.

All right. So ask yourself, can the coaching inside procrastination of publication live help you make all the decisions so you can move forward and eliminate the decision fatigue? Some of you just may be stuck right now because you're just, you have all these little decisions. We do have a next steps call every month inside Christian Book Academy and I can help you there. But if you feel like this could help you as well just to get extra coaching, this might be a program for you or maybe it just helps you save hours. You know, trying to figure all this out on your own, going through the, the videos and the downloads and the things like you just want a little bit more hand holding. You know, Christian Book Academy people have used it for years to just get in there, get the training, publish their book. But maybe you're someone that just wants a little more help or maybe it's just something to help keep you accountable so that you launch your book by the end of this year instead of putting it off until next year because everything else seems to take, you know, tyranny of the urgent. Right. So join us and publish a short Kindle ebook by the end of the year in my brand new group coaching program procrastination to publication Live. It'll be fun. We'll have a lot of fun on these calls and there will always be replays. If you're not able to make it live. You can submit your questions early, all of that. So just go to procrastination of publication.com and enter the coupon code save100now, so the chances are you have a couple questions and we're going to be able to answer all your questions and I can even strategize with some of you on the type of book to, to create. But you know, you might be asking, how is this different from Christian Book Academy? So many of you are already members in Christian Book Academy and you could totally just use our, our curriculum and everything we have for you in there. The, the membership Christian Book Academy, you get access to everything. Like I said, all of our training on writing, publishing and marketing and there's hundreds of other writers as members and this program is going to be a smaller group. So I really am hoping to keep it to 25, about, you know, or less and with more personalized coaching with me. So. And it will have a single focus of publishing a short Kindle ebook over the next three months. And you know, like I said, you will only get what you need for each week. So instead of, you know, all of the stuff and all of the things that you could do, it's going to be very focused. And some of you might think, what if I want to publish a print book? That is awesome. And that's what we've done. Like we have, we have released short Kindle ebooks, books like Kingdom Writers and then we went to format it and publish it and print later. You could do that as you have the funds. So if, if you chose budget book for the book that you want to, to create as a short Kindle ebook, then later you can save up your money and later then you can have the finances to, to do it as a print book. We love seeing your books in multiple formats, but I also think this is a great way to test an idea or to test a new market. So you could release the Kindle ebook, see if it sells to your audience, see if it's, if it hits a nerve, see if it's something that people want and if you're finding that it's selling for sure, put it in print. But if not, maybe, maybe move on to something else. Another book, a different idea. And so it's a way to even test ideas without breaking the bank, right? Without spending a ton of money and effort and time first. So how much time will you need to invest in this program? So instead of, instead, instead of spending years thinking about your book in this program, you will have a published book you're proud of within three months. And the weekly lessons, like I said, are broken down into easy to digest videos. So just like Christian Book Academy, try to keep it around 15 minutes or less, but you can fit it into your busy life. And you only get the, the curriculum for that week. And so you'll just be focused on what we're, what, what is the, the step, what is the action step for that week? I also am creating weekly action plans. It's kind of like our progress trackers in Christian Book Academy, but that's a weekly action plan to keep you focused. So, you know, this is what I have to do. And I, I made it three months for a short Kindle ebook because, I mean, I have done it in the past where I had you publish it in 30 days, but that's pretty fast for some of you. And some of you are, you're doing this on the side as, as you know, as a ministry or as a hobby. And so you don't have all day, every day to be working on this. And so we've, we've spread it out over three months so you will have more time to get everything done. And I will encourage you to repurpose. Repurpose. Repurpose. So do you have blog content? Do you have journals? Do you have presentations that you've given? Do you have other content you've already written? And that will save a lot of time on writing the first draft. Draft. So how long does this program last and when are the calls? So we kick off next week, September 5th, with our kickoff call, and then we will have a celebration call and a final call on December 5th. So it's literally like this round. It's literally September 5th to December 5th. It may not work that way in the future if I decide to run this again, but.

It'S going to be those, those are the starting and ending dates. And like I said, you'll have coaching calls with me twice a month for personalized feedback and Q A for. But you'll have a total of seven calls. So like the, the initial kickoff call, like, we'll be working on stuff there and the, and the final celebration call, we'll be working on things there, but I just added in an extra call for you in that way. And then we're going to host them on Thursdays the same time. We're hosting this right now at 1pm Eastern. So, you know, that's just what works in my schedule. And, but we will have those replays and you can submit your questions ahead of time. We have a form that you can submit your questions. So that's different than anything I've done in Christian Book Academy. You can like go in, write out your question and then that way I can really have that detail question to answer on the live calls for you. So again, you can get it right now for 299. This is the first time I'm running the program, so I'm also discounting it a little bit more. And you can use the coupon code Save100Now to save an extra $100 off the early bird price of 3.99. So you can go to procrastinationtopublication.com you can also do I think I did it to where you can do a, a payment of three or four payments. I can't remember if it was three payments or four payments. But that way you can break it down and if the big chunk doesn't work out for you, but if you do the full pay in full, you will get one publishing SOS lifeline with me, which is where you submit a question to me and I will record a video. So if you get stuck somewhere and it's in between calls or whatever, like if you pay in full, you'll have one of those that you can use during the program and you can submit that and then I will record a video, get it back to you so you can keep moving forward. You'll also be able to post post in the member area. One of our mentors, Lana Allen, she has agreed to also help me moderate this. I'm going to be very active though in the comments in this particular program. And then we also have mentors, Deb Butterfield and Katie Erickson. They're joining us. And they've also both offered discounts on their services. So you cannot get these discounts anywhere else. They're offering them to you if you join this program and so you'll be able to get that as well in the program. And then finally, if you you publish your book by December 5th, I'm going to promote your published book to my email list of thousands of writers. And so that's just a little another little motivation to finish by the end. So Ephesians 3:20-21 says, now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations, forever and ever. Amen. So let's do it for his glory, Amen. Not for ours, but he's able to do, you know, incred, you know, infinitely more than we might ask or think. And those of you that are Christian Book Academy members, you can take this Information and you can run with it. You can get your book done by the end of the year using Christian Book Academy, using our coaching calls and all the things we have in there. But if you want a little bit of extra time with me and coaching and you want some less overwhelm and you just, you want a group program, then I encourage you to check us out at procrastination of publication.com join us. And I'm not 100 sure I'm going to run this program. Again, just full disclosure. I, I just don't know. Just to be very honest, you guys know I'm very honest. We had a lot of members cancel in July and August and so God has led me through my business meetings with him to launch this program to help fill the gap financially for us, but to also serve you. This is something I'm really good at. This is something I've done for years and I have had this as an idea on my hard drive for a really long time. And so how many of you have had book ideas like you just store these book ideas away? I have business ideas, I have group coaching ideas, I have program. I have all sorts of ideas. And I was so busy last year updating Christian Book Academy. I mean I didn't even have room to do anything else. But now I have some space, I have some time and so, so I'm not 100 sure I will run this program again. But it's pretty, there's a pretty good chance I may run it once a year. But this may be the cheapest that you can get it because it's the first time I'm offering it. So let me just answer any questions and if you want some coaching on this and just ideas of how to do this for your book, let me know. I'm going to allow you to unmute if you want. Go ahead and raise your hand if you want. If you have a question, if you want some coaching from me today on this call, I am here for you and want to help you out. So.

Go ahead and if you have a question, just go ahead and raise your hand. Just click the.

Reactions react and then raise hand.

All right.

Yeah, it's four payments of a hundred. So you could do it that way which you would get the discount on that.

Yeah, that's great. Jill says the beginning of the year works better. That's awesome. You can use Christian Book Academy and you can go through this and you can do this, this at the beginning of the year. I will not be hosting this program at the beginning of the year. So if I do it again, it will probably be at the end of the year again. All right. Susan, you had a question? Yeah, Shelly, I love this idea and I'm definitely going to try it. I'm wondering what you have seen in terms of how you price your books and what, what quantity of sales are.

I don't know, maybe the average.

I'm sure it's different with every book.

But are you selling hundreds of books.

Or thousands of books? What's that like? What could we expect? Yeah, so I think it just depends, you know, that's the answer we hate is it depends. But what kind of audience do you already have? So if you already have an established audience that you can release something to, obviously you're going to get some initial sales right off the bat. If you don't already have an audience, then you're going to need to use some of the promotional and marketing techniques and we teach those in Christian Book Academy. I love doing the 99 cent, you know, launch. And so if you price your book at 2.99 as a short Kindle ebook, you can lower it to 99 cents and then you can submit it to all of these sites, sites that promote bargain books. And then if they choose to promote your book, you get introduced to all these new people. You can also run Amazon ads to a short Kindle ebook. So we've had a lot of luck with Amazon ads, especially for my book. Broken crayons still color the. The profit margin is not going to be as high, so you may not be able to break even on that. But there's a lot of ways to, to promote a book book. But it really just depends, like I said, on the type of book, the interest that's out there, your audience that you have. But I would definitely recommend getting out there promoting it as a bargain book. Also, with a short Kindle ebook, you can do it for free. So having that option to do it for free and then introducing people to you, you know, obviously if you're wanting to profit, then, you know, you may not want to lower it to free for that book. But that's what we use a lot of our Kindle ebooks for, is to introduce people to us. So I can't really say exactly. We have, we, we give away a lot of books. So we usually promote one of our short Kindle ebooks every month for free. And CJ handles all of that. And so we have so many, so we just rotate through them. And so we've had a lot of people come in that way. And if it's a book like the Gratitude Journal, then they might be interested in the other books in this series. But to be honest, I haven't really looked at that in detail to see you're going to get a burst of sales in the beginning and as you're, you know, promoting it. And then just like any kind of marketing, you have to continually reach new readers in order, you know, to see that go, or you're building your tribe. So there's a thing called your 1000 fans, I think is what it's called. And if you build an audience of about 1,000 that are, are really dedicated and following you and want to get everything you have, then when you release a course on the same topic, you know, those people are going to be able to purchase. If you release another book, you can, you know, if you have that email list or you know, an audience, then you can, you know, you can release them to the same people and you're not necessarily having to find new people every time, you know, so that, that's kind of an exciting way to do it as well. And honestly, that's what I'm doing here. All of you that were invited to this call are here because either you have been a Christian Book Academy member, you are one, or you've bought my procrastination of publication workshop. Not everybody on my list was invited to this. So this is just for buyers. This is just for people who have, you know, followed me and they, they, they enjoy what we have to offer. And so that's something that you can do as well with your book books and all of that. All right, Carol.

As I remember, when I published my first book, at least for the paperback and the hardback, there was a minimum price that you had to charge for those books. And on the Kendall books, is it the same way or since they don't have any output, it. Can you give it away free and not end up paying money or.

That was my question. And how much do they kind of generally charge? They have so much. Like if I, I put a Kindle book on that is only.

10,000 words, how much is, am I going to have to pay out of the, the profit? You know what I mean? In order to see any profit at all, if they charge me, I've got to charge them something. So when I give them a free book, book, how does that work?

Yeah, so I'm not sure if I can find it right now, but there is a min. A, a small cost, depending on the size of your book for them to deliver the book. It's very minimal, it's very small. And I know I have the link in Christian Book Academy, you know, in the, in the Path, but if you want that link, just email us later. I can look it up. But it's, it's just a very small amount because they're, they're delivering the book digitally. But if you have a big book file with lots of images, with lots of big files, it's going to cost you a little bit more to deliver that book. So that's why I recommend compressing the images. If you have images in your book, making the book size smaller. But it really is negligible in my opinion. It's not like a print book where they're going to charge you like a certain amount and then you have to take that off. So if you're charging even 99 cents, you're still making money on the book. So it's just a very small amount.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah. And I think I was going in the wrong order. So, Tricia, I think you might have been actually the first.

Okay.

So I was going to ask about pictures in the, in the ebook. Like I've got a. I usually do a Christmas booklet that I could probably do as an ebook and. But it has pictures in it. And so I was wondering.

Is that a good idea or should I leave the pictures out or.

Yeah, I, I recommend including pictures in our like 21. I think it's 21 prayers of gratitude. We have a picture for each of the prayers and we just compressed them. So there's a way. I think it's tiny JPEG or tiny png, either one of those. I use that all the time to compress images for my website. But you can just do that for your Kindle book too. Tiny jpeg, it's free to use. And you can upload your images there, compress them down so they're smaller, and then use those smaller images inside your Kindle book. Now in a print book, you have to have images that are print quality. So you know, you, you know, it's different. But for a short Kindle ebook, you can have the images in there. Just compress them first. Okay.

And that tiny jpeg, it's like a program I could just get or. What is it?

Yeah, it's online and you just go there. Let me just show you the. I'll share my screen. I use it all the time for my website.

Okay.

So you just click here, you upload an image here and let me see if I can just.

Find an image real quick. Okay. I've been working on our next, our next.

Conference. So let me just take one of those images and you can see it went down to 87 kilobytes and it decreased it by 43%. So that's awesome. And then I just click download. You just click this download link and then you can download that to your computer and you can, you can title something different if you want. I usually put web W E B. So it's like a web optimized but at the end of the title. So I know which one is smaller and larger. If I needed the larger image for something else. Super simple. See how easy it was? And then that's all you have to do for your images to be optimized. Okay, thank you. Which reminds me, I should probably do a quick win video on that for you guys in cba. That's a good idea. So I'm going to write that down.

All right. So Carolyn, I think we all are, or several of us are on the same page because that was my question, was going to deal with the idea of pictures because I do like to write and have pictures going along with, with it. And so when you, when you compress them like you're talking, that doesn't affect the size on the page. Like, like, is that or does that affect like it. Does it become a tiny picture on the page or you can still do a half page picture or, or how does that work?

Work?

And the cost was the other question I had. And color is okay, I'm assuming still. And you're saying it would be a minimal increase, but it still would not delete everything that you are making on it. Yeah, yeah. So what this does is it usually I, I'm not an expert in all of this, but from my understanding is it takes the same size of image and it just compresses it down. So you know, it's not like it makes it teeny, teeny tiny. You know, you can also make your images super small and then that will decrease the size as well. But it just, it, you know, and it makes it to where you can still see it quality like on a webpage or in a Kindle book. But it probably wouldn't print well. So that's like, you know, you wouldn't want to use this and then put that in your print book. You need to have 300 dpi in a print book. And we explain all of that, that we actually have a bonus in Christian Book Academy in the tech library all about images. Teresa Mills has Children's books. And she has researched all of this. So if you're curious, go into the bonuses under tech library. She has a lesson. She goes into much more detail on all of this. But.

And then for price. Yeah. So we have a children's book. We. I just, I just was trying it and I can't even remember some. Henry Goes to the Big City or something like that. I should find it on Amazon and show you guys. I only ever published that in ebook. And it's all. It's full color.

Let me see if I can. Henry Goes to the Big City.

We never did a print book of that. And it's. It's full color. So let me just show you what it looks like.

And it was kind of just testing the process. Like we don't have the greatest reviews. And that's one other reason it didn't really go over as well as I had hoped. So. But it's full color. And let me look inside, see if I. If you can see much about it.

It'S probably. You probably can't. Okay. Okay. So you can see here are the images and they look a little bit smaller in this. Look inside. I'm not exactly sure I did this so many years ago, but.

As long as they're on a device that can see color, they'll see them in color. If not, they'll see them in black and white, the images on their Kindle device. But yeah, you can do that. And then you can always, like I said, test an idea and test something. And like, I also did my book Broken Crayons Still Color as a Children's book book. And Jennifer Waddle helped me to write that book because I realized I'm not really like, with that book. I. I wrote it and I'm like, ah. I just don't think that's my gifting as children's books. So. But she's really gifted at that. And so she wrote the book and then I hired out the illustrations and people who buy my book, Broken crayonstal Color will buy that children's book. It's in both print and ebook. So some people just like having the ebook version of a children's book and with the pictures. But. But yeah, you can totally do that. And it doesn't. The color doesn't change the price. It's just the size of the file. So as long as you compress your images and everything. And like I said, it's really negligible. It's not really that much that they're charging, but it is Just a small fee that they'll charge you to deliver that file. Thank you. All right, so Nala. Nala. Oh, I'm so sorry if I said your name wrong. It's Naila.

No worries at all.

Nailah. Yeah.

Ideas on how to use a Kindle ebook.

I kind of joined because I wasn't.

Thinking of Kindle at all.

I was thinking in direction of print books. So that was already helpful I think because I was thinking about print books. I was also thinking you need to kind of put a whole strategy in place before you launch and especially if you're not published yet, pre launch strategy.

Pre launch marketing campaign.

So I'm wondering for short Kindle ebooks and those kind of goals that shared and how you can use them, which was really enlightening, how would you go about pre launching? Do you think that's still necessary in that case? Like if you don't have an audience yet? Yeah. So if you don't have an audience yet, then probably doing like a 99 cent book launch and you know, submitting it to all these websites that are publishing books, doing like solo email swaps where maybe you and another author, you share, you know, even if your audience is very, very small, you know, you know, you could build it up a little bit and then do something like that. But, but yeah, I don't think that you necessarily need to do that. Now with Amazon kdp you are able to do pre orders of digital books. So if you want, you could get the book cover done and then you know, do a, a, a pre launch of that Kindle ebook and you know, then you know, sell some copies before it's officially done. So if you do have an audience, that for sure is something that you can do. And it looks like we're going to do book cover design on week seven so that you know, you could get your book designed in week seven, put it up if you wanted for pre launch and then you know, I'm, I'm not really encouraging you to do that in this program because I just want you to stay focused and not get overwhelmed, but that's definitely something that you could do.

All right, anybody want a little bit of strategy as far as like what kind of book to do.

Or your idea, what kind of book?

That was going to be my question. What kind of book?

Yeah. So what, what are you thinking as far as for you, which of the seven options were you thinking? Angela?

I have two things in mind. One is a devotional journal and the other one is about my journey through cancer.

Yeah. Which one do you like? Do you have an audience already?

I do.

Which one do you think your audience would be more interested in?

I think right now they would probably be more interested in the devotional journal. And my thought was to do the one on my journey through cancer next year because that will be the 10th anniversary.

Me. Yeah, that's a great idea. I love that. And then you could, if you, you know, get this devotional out first and have like what I was saying, the audience builder where you're have, you know, having a call to action to join your email list so that you're continuing to build your email list as you're then getting ready to publish the other book. I think that's a great idea.

So did you have specific questions about the devotional book?

Yeah, I didn't. I'm thinking an ebook. I, I am a physical book human, so I don't. And it's literally just 52 weeks of a devotional journal on identity. So I'm thinking, how do, how would that go as a short ebook?

Okay, so you could take those 52 weeks. You could pull out, let's say 15 to 20 or 21 of those. And like, I think my Broken beyond or bro Beyond Living Beyond Brokenness, I can always think, I think that one was maybe 12 or 15 devotionals. It wasn't very many. Like, if you could take some of the key ones out of the 52 and then like you can still use them and publish a bigger1 with 52 later. But is that something you think you could do two? Yeah.

Okay.

Now that you saying break it down.

Yes. Yeah.

Instead of trying to do all 52 by the end of year, that would.

That'S, that's what I would, you know, that's what I'm, I, you know, that's where like I'm, you know, here to help you. And even like, you know, in our next steps calls with Christian Book Academy, I can keep helping you, like brainstorm these things, but sometimes it's just the little things of like, oh, I could break it down from 52, you know.

Yeah, I could because could either be a 14 day or 21 day and that's it.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm still trying to. I sometimes forget where I saved things, but I'm trying to find where that book is because I'm thinking It was like 12 to 14 or 15 devotionals. So it doesn't have to be. And that's the thing you, you all like with these short Kindle ebooks, you're not promising the whole thing, like the moon and back. And you're. You're giving that. Them a certain thing and that's what you're promising to them. You're giving them that. And you know, you're going to give them what they had, you know, purchased, but it's going to be a lower price. And so typically. And so you don't have to feel like you have to do this big, giant project. That's. That's the whole idea. And so, yeah, I'm excited, you know, for you to possibly, you know, pray about this more, journal about it, see if the Lord is leading you. You to do. Might be fun to get a short devotional book out now and then your journey through cancer next year. And then maybe the next book is the full 52 weeks devotional that you follow up that other book with. Does that make sense? It does.

And he is saying, I need to finish a book this year. That's why I joined. I need to finish.

Yep. So that might be the best thing. It looks like I have 12 devotions and I'm just gonna just show you here again. I think sometimes we overthink things and we think it has to be bigger or has to be more or whatever. So this is my book and this is the table of contents. There's an introduction, a conclusion, and there's 12 devotionals.

And it's 79 pages. So, like, it's not a. But people love it, you know, people like. And it's something that I can also give away as gifts. Gifts, you know, like our. Our books for writers. They're all short, but we love to give those out as bonuses for those of you that sometimes, you know, occasionally we'll give those out when you join Christian Book Academy. So you can use once you have a book, you know, and then if you want to publish it in print later, you can. But again, it doesn't have to be long or hard or drawn out. And you. And I really recommend. Many of you probably already have content that you don't even need to really write. You're just gonna, you know, organize it, massage it a little bit. And I bet you already have some content somewhere that you can repurpose, right?

Yeah, Tina says I have loads I need to organize and release. So, Tina, do you want to brainstorm what that might be?

I need to. I mean, I have several books. It's just ridiculous. Yeah, I released one book in. In 2019. I'm working on a book now. I have at least three ebooks, you know, material that just Needs to be organized and edited. So it's like, I have no excuse. You make me want to sign up and I'm already in cba.

Yeah. So you can just go through, go through the Kingdom writers path, go to the final draft module. Just start going through those lessons. And we had Jennifer Nelson join and she had, she was like you. She had several drafts already and I think hers were close to final drafts, but within 10 days she published her first book. 10 days. And that's because she had the content. So, you know, but she just took the steps and the lessons. In cba, you could do that. Now if you want a little bit of extra handholding, this program is available, but you don't need it. Like you can literally just go through and say, okay, I'm going to do this, but today I want to help you decide which one to start with. So which one do you have a sense from the Lord that is. Would be the easiest, quickest, maybe most profitable best for your audience? Like which one do you think would. Would be the best to start with?

I'm.

I know it's like decisions, decisions.

Right now I need to do an ebook on simplicity of prophecy.

Okay.

Simplicity of the prophetic.

For an ebook.

Yeah. Yeah. And how much of that do you already have written?

Well, I'm offering a course right now, an eight week course, and if I could just write it out, it really doesn't take long.

Yeah. So what you might want to do is do you have audios that you could transcribe? Yes. Okay. So are you, are you currently still recording those or are they already recorded?

I have two that are recorded already. And five more weeks, four more weeks.

Taking people through this.

Yeah. What you can do, I think OTTER AI allows you to upload maybe a couple files for free each month. But there are other sites you can get transcription that you can get that done. But I would, I would look at transcribing those first two. See what content you have, upload those. Rev.com rev.com that's a place you can get it pretty affordably. But I think Otter, OTTER AI, or even if you just join for a month just to upload, you know, the audios that you have and then you can cancel after you're done. But.

And I have Otter.

Okay, well use it. Yeah.

So no brainer, right? No brainer.

Upload, Upload the first two to Otter. Get the transcript and then see, see how, how what you can take out of there. Copy, paste, start a document, whether it's Word or Google Docs. Or whatever you want, paste it in there. And then for these next calls that you have, I want you to think before you record.

What would I want to. How would I want to include this in my book? And so you might want to even have a little bit more detailed outline. I have found if I have a detailed outline and I teach from that I can get a transcript and turn that into a book pretty quickly. If I just take a live video where I really didn't have an outline and I'm just talking and interacting with people and. And that's fine too. But it just takes more or editing. So you could, if you think about it just a little bit more beforehand, have a little bit more detailed outline of this is how I would want to include it in the book. Then when you're recording that, it's going to be much closer to what you're going to actually put in your book. Get it transcribed and then it's going to be. You'll have the book by the end of this program, you know. Right.

Thank you so much.

Yes, I'm excited. Let us know. And somebody else says they use temi tmi.com that is. Is I think it's a company under Rev and they do more of the AI so it's AI generated. Rev.com is human transcripts. So it just depends on what you want for that. But Temi definitely is a lot cheaper.

All right, awesome. Who else? Anybody else feeling like they're just not sure what to start with. You have a lot of content and you want to talk about it it before we end. Anybody else interested?

Shelly, this is Dar.

Hey Dar.

I. I couldn't find the raised hand thing. I used to know where it was, but I didn't know where it was. Sorry.

No problem.

As I've said to you before, I have a lot. I have an eclectic thought but I really believe I need to get into. I want to do a nonfiction series about the police, you know, community policing.

How to approach, you know, but do. And the ebook. Listening to you today. The ebook gives me a great idea of doing it as a non fiction series in sections and then eventually doing it as a full book. You know what that they can, you know, but maybe get people interested. And also I had told you about a.

The learning the true meaning of love through the Bible and maybe implement that into that as well to get them to understand, be kind to love everyone as a person and not, you know, that everybody is the same.

And.

And I don't. My problem is I don't Know where to start. I know how to start on a research paper.

Paper.

I have no idea how to start on a book.

Yeah.

And that's what. That's my struggle.

So I usually recommend brainstorming, like, what you would want to put into it. So, like, what are some things that you would want to put into a book like that? Like, what are. Is there some stories or is there, like, different research or different, like, just teaching or different things that you would like to include?

It would be a lot of personal experience. I wrote 15 years as a civilian. Ride along 15, you know, off and on over 15 years with a civilian right along. I also have experienced the personal death of a family member being ambushed by, you know, when he was on duty.

I also have a master's in criminal justice. So it's what I call, for lack of a worse word, an eclectic.

Knowledge base of experience and.

School learning knowledge. Research done and everything. But I want to try to make it more human with some statistics so that they know, so that there is accurate information going out rather than.

Biased.

Yeah.

And let everybody know that they're all human. Yeah, everybody's human. We all hurt.

Yeah. So are there certain steps, though, that you would recommend when, like, people are thinking about, like, this topic?

Basically, I want to. I wanted them to see what they do first off. I want them to know they're human, then let them know what their jobs are, what they do, what they have control of and what they don't have control of. Just to let them see their human side, even as a police officer.

Okay, so there's. There's a brief outline right there. They're human. That could be a chapter. What is their job? Like, what. What are they to do and what are they not to. And, like, what they have control over? What? I think there's three. Three chapters right there. Why don't you start writing those? And then I think you'll see it will start to flow. Okay. All right.

Thank you.

Yes, you're welcome. And Laura says, I just realized I have a course that I can take a module and turn it into a short ebook and steer readers to the course. Wow. Yes. It is amazing. Like, it. That would be like, the marketing side, right. Is, you know, you. It'd be a billboard book. So you would be using that book. And same thing with you, Tina. You could use the book then to encourage people, if they want more, to go in to the course. And Rebecca said you can take a messy transcript, upload it to Chat GPT, which is AI, and have them clean up the transcript for a good first draft. You can do that. However, please know that anything you upload to Chat GPT Free account is going to go into the database of AI and this is your proprietary content. I personally don't feel comfortable uploading my book content to AI, so I would be very careful about that because I just wouldn't want my book content to be out there than for other people to draw from and put in their book books, you know what I mean? But if you feel, if you feel okay about it, if it's general content and that you feel okay, you can use AI to clean up transcripts. I think it's especially good for like programs or courses, you know, like we have, like I, I could use that for transcripts we have and stuff like that. I haven't, I mean, I have a tool that I probably could use for that. But yeah, I would be careful about using Chat GPT if this is going to be book content because that's copyrighted material. But then it, it ends up, that copyrighted material ends up going into the world of AI and anybody can use it. So yeah, I would be careful.

Shelly, I don't see the place to raise your hand either. So is somebody else waiting to ask a question?

Yeah, go ahead.

I also have written a course and I have a couple of years ago actually written to parents because it's a children's Bible memory course with specific tips and tricks to help them retain these verses.

Yeah.

And so the eight page book I put out and never sent to Amazon was to introduce the parents to what the course would be like and why memorize Bible verses in a way that you can retain them? And I'm revising it now because originally it was for the beginning of the end of the school year. School's out and you know, this is a good time to focus on this. But then I realized everybody goes on vacations and everything. So I'm starting it again and I want to, I want that to be the Kindle book which would promote the course. Now it's only eight pages. I have a couple of books by a very well known Author that's about 12 pages. And I, I love his little short books and he's an excellent preacher and writer. So I thought how long should this be?

When you say eight pages? Is this like an illustrated book or it's like how many words I didn't put.

I really don't know how many words without looking.

Okay.

But you know, it gives a lot of Bible verses on why to memorize And I think, well, if these parents are, you know, a part of my audience, which I don't have, by the way, then they're probably already well aware of why you should memorize. I had that as the title, why Memorize Bible Verses? And I thought, well, they already know the answer to that if they're going to go by the verses that I'm putting in here. But I have so much more to add to it. But how can I say that in the title? Yeah, I mean, so many, especially in this day and age.

Yeah. So to me, that eight page document sounds more like either like a really, like, ultimate list of, you know, content for a blog post or maybe even a lead magnet. Do you have a lead magnet for that book yet or that course?

No, I don't. I have.

So I have.

My lead is about.

Seven best tips.

I'm sorry, Evan Brain.

But I would consider using that maybe as a lead magnet. And I think it's a little too short for a book unless it's just really good content they cannot get anywhere else. But what, what if you published a short Kindle ebook with stories of parents and, and like, case studies of like, how they taught it to their, their children and what worked for them and then the practical steps of applying that and make it kind of like my anthology, the 21 Stories of Gratitude. Make it something about, like, how you can have success, you know, teaching your children to hide God's word in their heart or something like that.

And I have two examples of that. And I started doing a doodly video for YouTube on two of my sons, who, one is a pastor, the other one is ministering and he is currently a detective. But when he's done with his stint with the police department, he's going to go to school to become a pastor. And he's been doing a lot of preaching and he and his wife are witnesses everywhere they go. And I, these are the two who really did a lot of scripture memory when they were younger. And so I've had, I've got those two examples and I'm sure I could find lots more.

Yes. Yeah. And there might even be people on this call or other writers that would have stories. And then that gives that writer, it gives them exposure. It's like, you know, in the anthology when you have different people writing. So if anybody has a story of how you maybe have memorized scripture when you were a child or how your children and want to connect with Marlene, let her know in the chat box. Amen. But yeah, Marlene Hauck has stories I, I'm sure, I'm sure you could find 15 people in at least even in CBA that would be willing to like do a story and then you put a link to their website or their books and, you know, and it's just another way for them to get published. Yeah. Bible memory goal. That's my friend Josh. Right now. He is trying to find places. Do you have a, a podcast?

No, I don't.

Okay.

He's trying to find places to get interviewed and so he might be a good one to connect with. I think it's just Josh. Biblememorygoal.com he's having a book launch next month, so that might be just something. But you can reach out to people who already have a platform about memorizing. Maybe they have stories too. But I love the everyday stories like, you know, the, the parent or the grandparent or, you know, how like it, you know, might have impacted my life and I would have a story. So anyways, I would, I would encourage you to think about something like that and then turn the eight page thing more into a lead magnet that then you can link into that book to build your email list to share the course and stuff.

That sounds great. Thank you so much. And what you said, Josh at Josh Bible memory.

Okay. Bible memorygoal.com or just go to Bible memorygoal.com and let him know Shelly Hits sent me because we're good friends.

So thank you so much.

Yeah, you're welcome. Carol says I could take my book from my backyard and make it into a journal prompt to use in their journal. I'm now writing a humorous book about growing up in Colorado that could be put into several short ebooks books as a promotional. I could also write humorous short ebooks about remodeling our house as a way to increase my audience. Yeah. There's so many ideas. How many of you have gotten at least one idea that you could turn into a book? I'm seeing a lot of this. Yeah. And you have everything you need in Christian Book Academy. You do not need this program. I'm not trying to, but if you want extra time with me and like this kind of, you know, coaching, like to help you, like, really, like, let's work out the detail. Let's make this as effective of a book as possible. You know, this is available if you want to join it. I may have missed a question if I did just put it back in. Oh, Kim Steadman said, put your email here. Marlene, we can help you. Yeah. So Marlene, put your email in the chat box. And anyone who has a story that would want to be featured in a print book like that or in a published book, reach out to Marlene and let's get this book published. Let's do it.

Oh, so good. All right. Any other questions? Anyone else just want to talk a little bit about what book to choose or anything.

Just looking back to see if I missed any Microsoft Word transcribes for free. Yeah. Google Docs does it as well. So you. I have, I have a video somewhere, but you can open Google Docs and use the transcript option on there. I've used that before.

Yeah.

Tapi says I have several journals I've written over the years of raising.

Raising children as a single mom. Yeah. So you could have a lot of content already in those journals that you can turn into a. A book.

Mandy says, you suggested to me that I repurpose one of my books and target a different audience. I did that and it has been the book that has sold the most over the years. The new book is about 20% as long as the original one. That's awesome. Yeah. Mandy has been following us for many years, so. So that's so fun. I love that.

So Rebecca says if you have a workbook or planner that has enough words, can you publish that as a Kindle ebook even though it doesn't have any way to write in it?

Perhaps give an image with a handdrawn form and direct people to grab a notebook? Yeah. So.

Like, like when I have prompts, like, I, I don't think, think like you can just do like a necessarily. Or I wouldn't personally just do a low content journal, you know, but if it's a devotional and then you have a section to write in it. I've done those books as Kindle ebooks before. You may want to format it differently than you do the print book. So in the ebook I would just say, you know, because you're reading this on an ebook, grab your journal and your pen and answer this, this, you know, this question or here's some reflection questions for you or a journaling prompt. But yeah, you could totally do that. You could put an image in there with the lines. But I don't think I would in a, in a Kindle, I would, I would just put that in the print and then the Kindle, you can just give them the prompt to get there. Look, but I would, I would make sure it was. I would make sure that it was meaty enough like that. You can really use that. That. Okay. Solomon said, how Many more extra courses than like this would we incur in Christian Book Academy. Other than the membership fee, it's good to have an idea of the cost beforehand. So, yeah, I'm not sure if you're a member yet or not, but you get access to pretty much everything in Christian Book Academy and all of the content in this new program is it's stuff you have access to in Christian Book Academy. I'm just really helping you focus and get it done and giving you additional coaching in addition to what you have in Christian Book Academy. But Christian Book Academy is a one time fee and then you would have the cost of editing. If you choose to hire a formatter, you could do that yourself. And then I always recommend hiring a book cover designer. Even if you do the initial book cover, it just, it just, you know, a book cover designer can really add the little extra pizzazz in there. And yeah, Dee says thinking publication for Christmas shopping might be the best timing. Yeah, so a lot of people get Kindles over Christmas too. So even if it's a Kindle ebook, that's there as well. So I think I, I got all the questions. Anyone else if you have any other questions.

Yeah, so Susan has joined us. Let's see, is September 5th. So excited.

Marla says writing an ebook scared me, but you've helped me to make this something not complicated. It's not. It's like the easiest way to get published, you guys. And if you want to use it as a marketing tool, it is a brilliant idea really. So Rebecca said her journal is about 12,000 words. Yeah. So I would say go for it. Try it. See, see how it goes. So the replay of this, I'm going to edit it and then it will be up on procrastination of publication.com at the top of the page. Page.

Yeah. Marlow says I'm going to beef up my business meeting sessions with the Lord after your testimony. Yes. I mean he has the best ideas. It's amazing. And I just, he. He gives me not, you know, it's like not all the time and not every minute. But the best ideas have always come from him. So on this page, if you just scroll down right now, I have this video here, but this will be replaced by the replay. So I will put the replay in here and that way you can watch it later. And then I'll also put the replay in Christian Book Academy in the replay section and on our private podcast so you can listen to it there if you're currently an active member. So this is where we will add the replay. So just procrastination to publication.com.

All right. And.

Yeah, so early bird pricing ends at the I have this timer set for when the early bird pricing ends. So you want to get in before that ends. And then I will close down registration for everyone Thursday morning because we're kicking it off. That's our kickoff call. So I don't want anyone joining late. So you have should have until Tuesday, the end of Tuesday to get the best price. So if you're thinking and considering it, you can email us supportraining authors.com with any questions and then the last available time to get in will be early Thursday morning my time. I'm going to shut it down before we have our kickoff call.

All right, let me just see.

Yeah, no, the replay is for anybody. So you can go to procrastination to publication.com and the replay will be there. But I'm not advertising this to everybody. So those of you that are here, you're either in Christian Book Academy have been or you've purchased my procrastination of publication workshop. So I'm not right. I may send out one or two emails depending on how many people we get signed up. I think we have nine signed up already before today. I haven't checked to see who has signed up during the call. But yeah, so it'll be fun. It'll be a smaller group. I'm going to be much more active in the comments. You'll have more coaching calls with me. And it's just, you know, the more time you have with someone, the more you're gonna invest a little bit. But I want to keep this as affordable as possible. So definitely want to help you out. If you're interested, just go to procrastination of publication.com and would love to work with you.

So.

All right, well I'm gonna end this call. How many of you are glad that you signed up? You feel like you learned something, you have an idea and like I said, you have everything you need inside Christian Book Academy. Go for it. Get it done. Just do it. Join a progress pod and get the accountability there too. So you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. And about the pace of God's grace, it may not be his pace to finish it by the end of the year, but you know he'll show you. So anyways, let me pray for you. God, thank you so much for today. Thank you for everyone that is here or listening later, we just pray your blessings over their life. We pray that you would be glorified through our writing. And, and if there are to be short Kindle ebooks published out into the world, I just pray that they would get published, that they would get out there and that you would receive all the glory and the honor. And we just pray this in Jesus powerful name. Amen. Amen. Anyone get in a God idea on the call? Anyone feel like they got that? I was praying for that. So if you didn't know that God, you know these seeds have been planted and now when you're walking or you're taking a shower or whatever, you might have that God idea come to you. So be ready to write it down. All right? Now tomorrow those of you that are members, we have the next steps call and then Friday we have a virtual writing retreat. So this is a jam packed week. We have lots going on. So excited to continue working with you. So if you want to get even more coaching on this, come to the next steps. Call tomorrow if you're a member and I'll be there to help you work through it. And then you can start writing your short Kindle ebook this weekend on the virtual writing retreat. How fun would that be? So many people have gotten short Kindle ebooks. The first draft done in a two day virtual writing retreat. I'm just saying, I'm just saying it's possible.

You could have a first draft by the end of this weekend. So, so excited for you and let me go ahead and pray. So Lord, thank you so much for what you're doing, how you're working in each of these kingdom writers lives. Just thank you for every Christian Book Academy member and that everyone that has invested with us over the years. We thank you for them. We thank you for their writing and what they're doing and how they're just impacting lives or will impact lives in the future. And so we just pray that you would continue to work, work in and through them and if any of them are to join this program, if this would be the right fit for them, I just pray you would show that to them and they would join us. And we just thank you. We thank you for what you're doing and we pray this in Jesus powerful name. Amen. Amen. Yeah, so the recording is going to be at procrastination to publication.com I have to edit it and upload it so it takes a little bit of time. And then it will also be in the Christian Book Academy area in the replays. Do you guys know where the replays are? I can show you.

You just click on re the you're on on the homepage. I always say just stay on the homepage. Everything's on there that you need. But let me just show you.

Okay, I have it up. Let me share my screen.

Just.

I always think it's good just to show you guys how to find things. So if you're on the homepage of Christian Book Academy everything know here's all our events, here's the downloads every month. Here's where your your next step because in the kingdom writers path I give you the steps I recommend in that order. And then right here is where you'll find the replays. Just click on there and it will take you to the replays. So we put the replays from writing week last week. Our live calls in there. This live call will be going in there. So any live calls that we have, they come in here and and you can go through and you know, here's a right now you know that one's not available all the time, but it is for you. So anyways, there's different replays here and they also go on the private podcast and if you are not on the private podcast and you want to be just email supportraining authors.com and my my team can help you. So just one more time if you want to join us us procrastination to publication.com use the coupon code.

Save100Now and get in before next week because the early bird price will end the end of Tuesday. So you can you have all of Tuesday to get in and then the end of Wednesday or first thing Thursday morning I'm closing it down completely. So so excited to I know several of you have already joined and and we'll be excited to work with you see what books get published as a result. So hope you guys have a great rest of your day. Talk to you.