The Power of Kindle Publishing

This is episode two of Author Audience.

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message. Create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Welcome to Author Audience where I'm on.

A mission to help you reach more.

People with your message. It's time to let your light shine. Today I'm rolling out the red carpet in inviting you to join me as I continue the training on Procrastination to publication.

My name is Shelly Hitz.

I'm the author of over 35 books.

And the list keeps growing.

I've coached thousands of authors through my books, training programs, online events, seminars and more. I'm best known for inspiring those around me to take action.

So if you're an action taker, you're in the right place.

I believe you have a God given message to share with the world. The question is, are you ready to shine?

It's time for this week's Center Stage Spotlight training. This is where I share training and strategies to help you grow your business or ministry through writing and publishing books, marketing online, and creating products and services to sell on the back end. I'm not just about books, but so much more. I'm here to help you connect with your audience in the best way possible. Today's podcast is episode two. It's the second part in the Procrastination to Publication series titled the Power of Publishing Kindle Ebooks. I know this is going to bring you one step closer to getting your.

Message to more people, so be prepared to shine. Why do I recommend short ebooks? There are so many reasons and I've been writing these short ebooks for several years and I've realized that people actually enjoy reading the smaller ebooks. We're all busy, we all have a lot to do. And if I can find one book that that is focused on solving one problem and I can read it quickly in an hour or two, get the answer to my question and move on. I'm a happy camper. And so with nonfiction books, you can literally write a shorty book focused on solving one problem and you can satisfy your readers. It's easy for your readers to consume. A lot of people will read over their lunch breaks or if they're in a big city, maybe on a subway, on a commute, or in the evenings when they have a few minutes. And for you as the author, it is quicker to write. I recommend about 10,000 words. That's about the length of most of my short ebooks. It can be anywhere from 6,000 to 15 or 20,000. However, about 10,000 is a good spot to make it. And what you can do then is on your broader topic, whatever your business is, whatever your main topic is you speak about or you blog about, or whatever it is that you know a lot about, you can make that your broader series and then each small ebook can focus on a different problem. But it helps you build authority in that niche. It helps you build authority that you are somebody that knows your stuff in this area. So I love creating series. I've been doing this, like I said, for several years and one of the first series I ever created was actually a vegetarian cookbook series. Now I've since retired those cookbooks because I just don't have the passion for it. They needed updated and needed some work and I just, I decided instead of investing a lot more time into them, to simply retire them. However, there were seven books in the series and they sold really well. Each book in the series then promotes each other and you just focus on a specific thing. So in my cookbook series, one book was on soups, one book was on salads, one book was on main dishes, one book was on desserts and etc. So you can then create an entire series around one main topic, vegetarian cooking, but then break it down into different parts. I hope you're getting the idea. I also have a series on graph that's done really well. This series has four books in it and one is a gratitude challenge, one is Gratitude stories, one is Gratitude Prayers of Gratitude, and then one is a compilation of all three. However, what seems to work the best is when you have six to seven books in the series. That seems to be the sweet spot where Amazon really starts promoting the other books for for you and doing some advertising for you on customers who bought this also bought this. They may even send out emails about your books for you and you may think, oh, six to seven books, that sounds like so much. However, if you think about only 10,000 words or about 60 to 70 pages, that's like 70,000 words. 60 to 70,000 words. And that is less than some full length novels. Think, think about your writing one big book in small chunks of six to seven smaller ebooks. It is powerful. I want you to really consider this. I encourage you to consider writing one small ebook per month. So you would devote one month to each ebook and then within six to seven months have your entire series finished. Like I said in the beginning, I can finish them faster. However, I still don't, I don't publish books Week after week after week after week, all the time. It would just be hard to maintain that kind of speed while I do the rest of my business. But you know, if you are writing full time, you might be able to do them even faster. Step number two is writing. And this is where the real meat happens. This is where we're going to get you from procrastination to publication. Going to help you get unstuck, stuck, and actually get the book done. Most people don't struggle with the publishing part and all of that. It's just getting the content written. And there are some different considerations when you're writing that I want to talk to you about. The first thing I encourage you to do is to track your progress. I have an Excel spreadsheet that I use. You can actually get this spreadsheet@shellyhits.com.

Spreadsheet. What you will do is actually write your date. You'll write what you have written, whether it's a blog post, a book, whatever. It was, the time of day, what your word count was for that session. So that's easy to figure out in your main word processing software. And then the total time. And then in this, I've automatically figured out the formula so that it will take the word count divided by the total time and give you the words per minute. And then you can write whether you dictated it, you typed it, whatever you did. And then what this will do is it will give you clarity, it will show you what time of day you write best. It will show you whether you're able to do better dictating something or writing something. So it will give you a lot of clarity and it will give you encouragement because you'll see progress being made. So I encourage you to check that out definitely. Then find out when you're most productive and really take the time and be intentional to write during those specific times. When you're writing. I encourage you to write as if you're having a conversation. Especially with nonfiction and self help type books. People are reading it and they want to be able to read it and have it flow well. And the easiest way to do that is to write it as a conversation. Write it as if they're sitting across the table from you in a coffee shop and you're teaching this to them. Or write it as if you're in a room teaching a room full of people, sharing this information with them. Most people do prefer this style of writing. Now, there will be certain types of nonfiction books that are more technical in nature. However, I want you to Consider writing as if you're having a conversation. Ask yourself, what questions would your readers ask about this topic? So if you ever get scared, if you ever just are sitting there without something to say, ask yourself, what would be the next question? Somebody would ask me about this. And have that conversation in your mind and write it out, write it out to get the flow going again. And if you get stuck, ask the five W's. These are the journalistic questions that journalists ask when they're doing an investigation. They're trying to find out what the story is about something. So the question is who, what, when, where, and why. What you can do then is you can use those questions to get unstuck. If you ever get at a standstill with your writing, what comes next? You could ask yourself, or when do I need to know this? When is this important to know? And why should I do it this way? You know, you can ask yourself these questions as you're writing, and that can really help you. Now, there are three different options that you can choose. Choose for writing your book. I've actually done all three. More often than not, I have written my books in blocks of time. However, recently I'm realizing that as a speaker, it's easier for me to speak my book than to type it out and to write it. And it's faster. I should say, not necessarily easier, but it's faster. I can get it done in a lot quicker time. So you can speak your book. And I encourage you to use this method if you have more money than time, because you will have to spend a little bit of money on dictation and getting it dictated. And if you prefer speaking to writing, you can also use the dictation method on your mobile device. I use it on my iPad or my iPhone at times. Or you can use Dragon Naturally Speaking. I've had trouble with Dragon Naturally Speaking. I've had trouble being able to train it to my voice and to me, and I end up doing a lot more editing. However, I find that the dictation on my iPad or my iPhone is actually pretty accurate. So I will do that at times too. You can typically speak more words per minute than you can type. There is research that's shown on Wikipedia that the average human being handwrites at 31 words per minute for memorized text and 22 words per minute while copying. Now, if you're actually then writing from scratch, it may even be slower than that, but let's just say 22 to 31 words per minute when someone is recording an audiobook the same source says that audiobook is Normally read at 150 to 160 words per minute, and slide presentations tend to be closer to 100 to 125 words per minute for a comfortable pace. So let's say that you can speak your book at 100 words per minute. Let's be conservative and let's say that you can write it at 25 words per minute. That is four times faster to speak your book than to write it. Now, if you're using my Excel spreadsheet, you'll notice the trends and you'll notice what works best for you. You'll notice how many words per minute you tend to write versus speak versus dictate, that sort of thing. And it can help you to know something fun that I added to my website is a calculator that will calculate how fast you can type. Typically, you are still not able to type as fast as you speak. So definitely consider that when you're choosing which method you want to use to write your book. Now, once you have recorded yourself speaking, you want to have it transcribed. First, you'll need some recording software. So many times you can just record through your phone. They have different apps that you can use. For instance, Rev.com has an app for your phone and you can just pull up that app, speak into that app, record your book, record your chapter, and then send it right over to them to have it transcribed. I think it's around $1aminute. And then transcribeme.com is similar to Rev. It has an app and has similar pricing. I introduced my mom to Dropbox as an app on her phone to record audios quickly because all she has to do is press the red button, record the audio, and it automatically will upload to her Dropbox. It's really easy, really simple. She doesn't have to figure out how to get it off her phone. It's automatically in her Dropbox, which she can access from her computer and upload to her website. You'll also need a microphone if you're going to record on your computer. I personally use a blue Yeti microphone. And then you will need the software to record from your computer.

And so right now I'm actually recording this using Camtasia and my blue Yeti microphone. And so you can do that. You can also use a free software called Audacity. And you know, you can look up on YouTube and find free tutorials on how to use it. It's very simple to use once you learn it, but you know you can also record on your computer. So there's different ways that you can record for those that are busy, and most of you are probably going to fall in that category. I really recommend looking into using your smartphone or a mobile device to be able to record on the go. So while you're waiting for your kids, you know, picking them up from school, or while you're waiting in the line at the car wash, you know, or whatever it is, you can actually record things and send them off to be transcribed and then, you know, have that done in the little bits of time that you have throughout your day. Once you've recorded it, then you'll need to get it transcribed. And that's where Rev.com or transcribeme.com will both then transcribe your audio for you that you recorded on their site. You can also use fiverr.com and look up transcriptionists on their site. What I recommend doing is sorting by rating so you get the highest rating first and then looking at the reviews and just know that on Fiverr it can be hit or miss. Some people can be really good. Once you find someone that's really good, you can stick with them. But you can get typically you can get 15 minutes transcribed for about $5. So that's option number one. It's to speak your book.

Light camera Action. Are you ready for this week's take Action tip. This week I recommend that you start tracking your writing. So develop a system that works for you. You can use an Excel spreadsheet like I recommend in this training, or you can use a notebook or or your favorite software. Also, make sure to get the show notes and all the resources from Today's episode@authoraudience.com 2. That's the number 2. Authoraudience.com 2 Before we end, I want to give you a backstage pass in this week's Godly Gains segment, which is all about keeping Christ at the center of all we do. When I think about writing, I think about the Bible and how it was written by so many different people. I was thinking about how God used people and the Bible is Inspired by Him. 2nd Timothy 3:16 says, All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to.

Make us realize what is wrong in our life.

It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. But I love how it says all scripture is inspired by God. And I recommend as you write, that you ask God for His inspiration for your writing, that you ask for His Holy Spirit to inspire you and to give you the words to write.

I'm excited to see the books that.

Are birthed from you and the message that you have. I believe in you and I am cheering you on.

Keep fighting the good fight.

I'd love for you to join me on my next live webinar.

If you're interested, please make sure to.

Sign up@authoraudience.com.

Webinar and don't miss next.

Week'S episode, which is part three of the Procrastination to Publication Training. And we're going to finish out the different ways that you can write your book as well as talk about editing. So I'll see you next time.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to read, write and publish your book using her Six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.