Four Octobers ago, in the mountains of West Virginia, my friend Jill took this photo of me. It remains one of my favorite shots—as a photo, and as a memento of a gorgeous day with a dear friend. When I wrote my new book, Hit The Road: A Woman’s Guide …
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Within the last week of 2011 over four million Android devices were activated. What does this mean to the business professional who has been waiting to write a book? You'd better get with it.
For a couple of years now I've been telling you to harvest your blog posts, white papers and newsletters into a book. Could it be that Mark Cuban has been listening all along?
The last step in the self-publishing process is getting the book into the reader's hands (or reading device). I'm not talking about marketing in this post (I'll talk about that later); I'm talking about dead-tree distribution here because that's how I published Live Full Throttle, for reasons I outlined earlier in this series.
When you're publishing your own work, you're taking on all the departmental responsibilities of a publisher: editing, design, printing, financing, distributing and marketing. Unless you're publishing an e-book you'll have to choose a book binding.* Deciding between hardback and softcover lies at the intersection of finance and marketing.
So far we've talked about the need to hire a book designer and editor. I took the step of developing a prototype for Live Full Throttle: Life Lessons From Friends Who Faced Cancer. Mine is in a PDF and included the cover, introduction and first chapter, but you could include less. You'll see that I used the Flash capabilities of Scribd to embed it here.
Ask any professional writer about the need for a fresh set of eyes and they'll tell you it's essential. I don't have an editor for my blog posts and newsletters, but when I write long form, whether a white paper, article or book, I always collaborate with one.
Welcome to the second installment of my self-publishing adventure. Because I ghostwrite books, I'm sharing my process so that potential clients who are interested in this option will know what to expect or anticipate.
After writing about how to roll blog posts, newsletters and articles into books, self publishing, writing book proposals and what a book can do for you professionally, I invite you to walk with me down the path of self-publishing a book of my own.
