How to Write a 36-Page Short Book in a Day (Even If You're Not a Writer)

Ever thought about writing a book? And further to that, have you ever thought about writing a short book? Hmm. A short book is a very specific kind of book that Mila Johansson is here today to explain what it is, how we might think about utilizing it to grow our business or grow our brand. And then we're going to talk about how easy it is to publish a short book. So Mila, so great to have you here on Cash In On Camera today. Let's start with the definition. I think we kind of gave it away in the title, right? That it's a 36-page short book and you're going to talk about how to write that even if you're not a writer. So don't worry if you're saying to yourself, I don't like to write, we got you covered. But really, let's talk about the definition of a short book. Like, is it, is it an ebook? Is it— what is it exactly that you're talking about when you say short book?

Well, first of all, thanks for having me here to speak with you today. I'm very honored. And, um, yeah, there's a lot to it. It's, it's very easy. Uh, the shortest book you can put on Amazon with a spine— it's nice to have a spine— is 36 pages. And you can go up from there and go to, if you want your name on the spine and the title of your book on the spine, you need to do 98 pages. And a lot of people— yeah, yeah, these, this is So that's just kind of the statistics. And then the next one is that a lot of people are opting to do is the comfortable 120 to 135 page book. So, but you know, what I say is anyone can write a 36 page book in a day or two, get it edited. We don't want more bad books, so we want them to get edited and then put it up on Amazon in a week or two and they'll walk you right through it. And the 36-page book is attainable, attainable to anyone, even if you're not a writer, because you already know your material. And so if you get it down, then someone else can help you edit it.

But can you— we were just talking about the spine of the book. Can you show some examples of what you mean by the thickness of the book? Because obviously, if a book is very thin, let's say 36 pages, it's it's too thin for us to put any text on there. Is that what you mean?

Yes, Amazon will not put the text on until you get to 98 pages, but I have a solution for that. So, so here, here's the thing is, this is my big book, From Cowgirl to Congress, that I put out about my famous suffragette grandmother who taught Eleanor Roosevelt to speak. And, and this is a 300-page book, which is normal. We're not doing 500-page books anymore. We're not doing Michener. This is my book about 101 Surprising Tips to Promote Your Book, and you can see it's a lot thinner. This one's 75 pages, but even a 36-page book would be a little thinner but still with a spine. And so what— here's what I suggest. I suggest you write your 36-page book, get it up on Amazon, get published so you can hold your book in your hand and then expand it into the longer book if you want. I have developed the modular book publishing program because I have written 22 plays and musicals that go all over the world, and I realized years ago that most schools and theaters don't have time to do the hour-and-a-half play, so I wrote them— I condensed them down to 100— to hour and a half hour. And so now I'm teaching people to do the modular book style. Start with your short book and then move up and make your longer book. And then maybe you want to do the 200, 300 page book because books will help you promote your business. They will make you the expert in your field. Many people are writing their books and actually even paying ghostwriters a pretty penny and not making that money back from the books. They're making it from their coaching programs.

This is such an important point to understand where we're at today in terms of the usage of books and the validity or the advantage of having a book. It's very different for, I think, business owners for the most part than it is for someone who's aspiring to be a professional writer and who is really building a business to sell books and make their money that way. There are so few people who do it that way and are And so let's talk more a little bit about that, the usage. How, what are some cases where we could use either 36 or 75, as it was the case you just showed, a short book to be able to build your brand and business?

Well, what it does is, is everybody's impressed when you write a book, you know. So, so what I suggest, actually, here's my little program, is, is to write your book and put it into a paperback first so that your family and friends and colleagues will buy it and have it on their shelf. And that's actually where you're going to make some money to recoup. And, and, but don't worry about the money because it's going to come later with your coaching and all that if you're a business person. But then I say wait a month and then put up your, your, uh, ebook because you don't want everyone to buy the ebook instead of the regular book, and you want them to have it on their shelves. So then you do the ebook. And I actually know many, many, many people right now. One of my mentors, Eric Lofholm, He has 28 books out and only 3 are paperbacks and the rest are PDFs. Some people are opting to just do PDFs and put a lot of books out because the more books you have on Amazon, the more you build your algorithm. So it's not that you're, you're having more books to sell. It's more like it's the algorithms and it brings people to you. And then I say, okay, so we're going to do the paperback. And now, and Amazon just now in the last year offered that we can do hardbacks too. So I would do paperback and hardback. Because sometimes TV stations and people that you might be speaking for want the hardback and/or for reviews. But then you do the ebook and then you do a PDF to give away, like on a program like today. I often give away my 101 Surprising Tips as a PDF to people. I've probably given away 2,000, 5,000 on summits and speaking gigs I do, and I haven't sold even near that. So then you do that. Then the fourth thing, if you want and if you have the chutzpah for that, is to get it made into an audiobook. And Amazon—

I love that.

Yeah, yeah, it's wonderful. Amazon, like, you already have a setup, you could read your own, but Amazon has a program called ACX. They work with another company and they put out— they offer you that you can either read it yourself, which I don't really suggest, or you can audition people they have already lined up to read it for you, and then you share your profit with them.

And yeah, and we actually have had someone— we had the CEO of Voices here on the show, and they do a similar, you know, thing where you can hire out voiceover talent to, to do a variety of different things. And one of the things is to read an audiobook, because you're right, probably most people aren't going to want to or have any desire to read their own audiobook. But I love that you kind of showed the progression there, right? Paperback, ebook, hardback, which I do agree as someone who is formally in media, right? Like that you— we probably do want to see the hardback. Um, the PDF is interesting too because now you have a list building tool to be able to put that out and build your email list, and then the audiobook. So this is like almost like an ecosystem that is derived from this idea of starting with the short book rather than feeling like, oh, it's such a daunting task. It's going to take me a year. It's going to take me 2 years to, to write, you know, the book. And so the short book approach gets you going. It gets you started on the path. How long does it take to do a proper short book from beginning to end?

Well, I teach a program every quarter of the year, and it's called Write Your Short Book in a Day. And we do 5 hours. And I, I show everyone on my, um, my PowerPoint, if you do this exact list, you will have your book finished today or by tomorrow. But most people don't. They want to write the longer book, but they get a good start. And most everyone says, oh my gosh, I've done more writing than I've ever done before. And but if they did do that, they could do the short book and then make the longer book later. Remember that we don't have to do it all at once. And here's something really else that you'll really love is that a lot of us, and especially someone like you who's doing these shows, already have a lot of material. I had one student come into my big program and she was a podcaster and she said, oh yeah, I have transcripts of all my podcasts. I go, go in and edit them and put them into a book. I have another client who has written 500 beautiful blogs. I go, oh my gosh, you have 5 books there. Let's make 5 books out of your blogs. So you probably already have a lot of material that you could use to put into a book. It's almost like you won't even have to write new material for some of you.

Yeah, I love that. I mean, you do need to have the through, you know, the, the narrative or like the through line for how you're going to put on and assemble those things together there.

Well, okay, here's, here's the thing is that It's very easy to do if you go on to Amazon. It's called KDP, Kindle Direct Publishing, KDP, and you join it now. Join it even a year before you might even be publishing. Join now and get your, um, they give you an author page. And the great thing about Amazon, oh my God, it's so amazing, is they give you samples. Like this particular book here, my thick book about my grandmother, is it— this one is $4.50 for every copy I buy, and then I can take them when I'm speaking locally, you know, in person, and, and every single person there will buy one. And that's really a great way to build funds. And this one here is only $2.50 for samples. So you get samples, you give them to your beta readers, you, you know, your first readers, people who might help you, uh, just editing and knowing what's working, what's not. And, and then Then from then on, you can do that before your book is published. So you can see it. There's hardly anywhere else in the world you can do that, where you can look at your book, you can say, oh my gosh, I don't like that, I want to move that. And the great thing about KDP is they have templates. So you sign up, you go into KDP University, and you can get a template, start typing your book right into the template. Don't even put it anywhere else. And that way your book is all ready to be published, then you can go to a place called Fiverr. Do you know Fiverr with the two Rs?

Yes, yes.

Yeah, and, and there's so many people there who will help you do everything you want to do. There's some beautiful cover makers there, and there's people who will load your book for you. There are people who will format your book. You have to kind of test them out to make sure you're getting the really good people, but they have reviews and they all want to have a good review, so most of them are, are fairly good. I've had really good luck with Fiverr.

Yeah, and finding, finding freelance help. I mean, there's, there are a lot of people who do freelance work, gig, the gig economy, and they just, you know, will do gigs like that. Fiverr, Upwork is another place where you can go to find people who are just project-based, will do that one thing for you. Um, I have a niece who self-published a book of poetry and she used Amazon and was raving about it and really, really enjoyed the process. My husband has self-published several books, but it was many years ago, long before I think Amazon had the publishing branch that you're describing today. But the idea of self-publishing is intriguing for some people.

I, I actually have a couple mentors and people I study with, everyone I mentor, so many people. But I also have mentors, which I think is so important to always have people who know more than you, you know. And, and this one woman, I, I take her classes sometimes, and sometimes I take classes to see what's going on and how people are phrasing things for my own work, you know. But also, she, she was a traditionally published author. Of course, she has a name from that, but she decided she was making more money self-publishing, so she's gone totally into self-publishing and really believes in it. And And I know many, many people who feel that way. So maybe I'm holding back a couple books that I think are bigger books, maybe to try traditional publishing. But mostly I'm self-publishing, and I'm trying to publish a book a month. There's a, there's a, there's a place you might want to go look up. It's called 20 Books to $50K. It's a Facebook club.

Oh wow.

Yeah, community group. And, and they're, and they, they have so many hints and incredible advice on how to get your book noticed and everything. And, and so they say if you, if you publish a book a month, it really builds your algorithms and you'll really get known. And that's where, you know, you might actually make money doing that. So you can make money selling your books while you're doing your coaching program. But here's one more big hint, because I have this, this is the book I teach from, um, 101 Surprising Tips to Promote Your Book. It actually would work for anything, but I actually put out to go with my 6-week program a workbook to go with this. And mine's not a workbook where you fill fill in the answers. Mine's a to-do list. When you're ready, don't be overwhelmed, but when you want to do this and this and this and this and all the things that will lead you to the advertising for your book as well. And it goes through everything from self-publishing to traditional publishing. I'm just getting ready to publish it on Amazon. And so I, I put that along. So that's what you can do. You can write your 36-page book, then maybe make it a longer book, and then maybe make a workbook. To go along with your teaching program.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. I, you know, it sounds like your experience, especially when it relates to Amazon, is really on point. So if you're listening or watching this, whether you're watching this on YouTube, my Facebook page, group, or profile, LinkedIn, or Twitter, or listening to this in the podcast, then, you know, you might want to reach out to Mila if you have questions about Amazon because she's very knowledgeable in that area. And I would love to know how people can get in touch with you if they're interested to know more.

Yes, if you go to my website, mila-johansson.com, pretty simple, mila-johansson.com, I have all my programs there. Write Your Short Book in a Day. I have a laser program you can sign up for, and, and you can contact me as many times as you want in like 3 months, 6 months, whatever you sign up for. I'm also just starting to get back into teaching speech like my grandmother taught Eleanor Roosevelt to speak and taught me. And I'm doing a wonderful speech program, um, on— let's see, in 2 weeks, uh, what are we into— May 14th. And it's just going to be 3 hours, super reasonable, and you come in and by the end of it you will have no more fear and you will know where to get gigs. And it's— I have these techniques that are very, very simple. You know, joining Toastmasters is another thing. If you ever want to get over your speaking fear or just work out the kinks, Toastmasters. I was in for years and I just think it's one of the most wonderful programs. Have you been in that?

You know what? It's funny. When I was, gosh, I want to say 18 years old, I was in a Toastmasters program and I think it was instrumental in helping me at that time. I was painfully shy, so I ended up hosting a television program not long after that, or around that period of time. Around 18 is when I started doing public speaking. So yes, I am a believer in it. Yeah, I want to ask you, I want to ask you something really quick before we go today, which is, you know, we have a little segment called Stop Marketing Like It's $19.99, and I'm going to ask you for a marketing tip that's helping you to market yourself today. It could be related to books, or not, what is something that you find is really working for you to help you market yourself?

Well, you know, I just, I just writing a ghostwriting a book on leadership right now. And one of the big chapters I'm putting in is email. Do you know that, that email is 40, 40 times more effective than any other format? And the reason is if you do Facebook, which I teach that too, but if you do Facebook and you post at a certain time of day, by the time most of your friends get on, it's down to China, right? It's gone. And, and so when you do when you do email, they have to read at least the title. That's why the titles are an art in itself. So I, I really believe in email. I've been building my lists. I, I work with Keap, which I really like. Keap, it used to be Infusionsoft, but they've really upgraded themselves. And I also work with a new one called InfluencerSoft. And so between the two, I write these beautiful programs that I do email, and I really think that they're right about email because no matter what, they have to at least read your title.

There's an intimacy with email as well in that where it's showing up in people's mobile devices or desktop, but like there's an intimacy with email. So despite what some people say, oh, email is not dead, it is definitely an important part of the equation. So wonderful to have you on here, Mila, today for Cashing on Camera. I really appreciate your tips on how to write a short book, what it is, and how we can best utilize it. Thank you so much for being on the show today. We really appreciate it.

Oh, thank you so much. I, I, it's been a