Tamela Rich's Blog, page 16

Self-Publishing: Book Prototype for Publicity and Advance Sales

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.

Intro and First Chapter of Live Full Throttle: Life Lessons From Friends Who Faced Cancer

Nine ways to use your book prototype

Send it to possible reviewers to see if they'd like to provide a blurb
Include a link to it in your social-media and traditional press releases
Query with it for interviews with podcasters, bloggers, radio, TV and other media
Post it on your social media outlets to build buzz (including LinkedIn). While we're talking about social media, listing it on Scribd will help it gain a wider audience and Scribd provides great statistics on readcasts.
Get your book listed in catalogs by the time it's in print. For example, there are motorcycle accessories companies that carry books and I'm using prototype to go through their screening process before they'll  include it in their inventories
Want to speak at a conference?  Most will ask if you've published a book. Send a link to the prototype with your speaker/panelist proposal
Going on tour? Send it to interested groups to get on their calendar by the time the book is back from the printer
Send it to professional magazines/journals for possible syndication
Use it to generate advance sales (speaking of which, you can do that today!)

Self-Publishing: Everyone Needs An Editor

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.

When putting together my team for Live Full Throttle I knew I'd use Aprill Jones (@aprillwrites on Twitter). Aprill writes copy and is as an account social media content manager with an area advertising agency, in addition to being a freelance copywriter and editor. We've hired each other to edit client's book projects.

Editor as Reader Advocate

There are different kinds of editing assignments. One is a "conceptual" editor and another is "copy" editor. The conceptual editor  is akin to an architect and a copy editor to a home inspector. The conceptual editor guides the writer in how to present the material for maximum impact, while the copy editor makes sure the final output doesn't distract the reader with inconsistencies, punctuation, grammar and other details of craftsmanship. Some projects call for another layer of edits between conceptual and copy, because familiarity with the work dulls the senses (and that familiarity begins with the writer). Editors are the readers' advocates for the project.

For Live Full Throttle, I asked Aprill to focus somewhere between conceptual and copy edits on the first round.  I originally wrote:

In 2005 Karen was diagnosed with Choroidal Melanoma, a form of eye cancer. Five years later, in a three-month period, her position with an Episcopal parish was terminated, her husband left her, and she was literally run over by a Mack truck while riding her motorcycle out of state.

She described cancer was "a skate" compared to the triple-whack.

What's a laid off minister facing divorce do with a paid sabbatical? Take a motorcycle trip on a Suzuki Boulevard, of course. But what began as a wind-in-the-face opportunity to assess life and career options ended in an orthopedic exoskeleton from neck to waist.

After Aprill's feedback it became:

In 2005 Karen was diagnosed with Choroidal Melanoma, a form of eye cancer, which she described as "a skate" compared to what came five years later. In a three-month period during 2010, her position with an Episcopal parish was terminated and her husband left her.

So what's a laid-off minister facing divorce do with a paid sabbatical between employment and unemployment? Take a motorcycle trip on her Suzuki Boulevard, of course.But what began as a wind-in-the-face opportunity to assess life and career options ended in an orthopedic exoskeleton from neck to midsection when Karen was literally run over by a Mack truck several states from home.

Advice for self-publishers

If you are a business professional planning to use a book as a door opener for speaking engagements or as a leave-behind with clients, remember that old saw about judging a book by its cover: people will judge YOU by your book. Your book should be at least as professionally designed, written and edited as it would have been in the hands of an experienced publisher.

No matter how well you write, you need an editor or two. Non-fiction writers, I'm not telling you to hire the local high school's British Literature teacher as an editor, I'm advising you to hire someone who will read your work on behalf of your intended audience. Works of high literary fiction read very differently than self-help and inspirational books, which is how Live Full Throttle is categorized.  The white papers, newsletters and books I write for financial professionals are different from both Brit Lit, too. Command of the language and its conventions is just the starting point when looking for an editor.

I wrote a post last year about how to find the right ghost writer for your project. Some of that applies to finding the right editor:

Before you hire someone to write for you, be sure they have domain expertise. My specialty is business writing and nonfiction because I have the background and education to do the job well.  If someone asked me to write for pharma or hi tech I'd have to take a pass — actually I'd have to question why they called me in the first place!

The right relationship starts with due diligence, including work samples and client referrals.

For self-publishers hiring book design firms, ask if the firm can refer editors they've worked with in the past. Some firms even have copy editors on staff.

When I ghost write, I also function as conceptual editor, but I wouldn't take on a copy editing job. If you'd like to work with Aprill and me on a project, send me an email.

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Self Publishing: Mission, Goals and Cover Guidance

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.

[image error]If you were my client, I'd take you through the process of defining a mission and a set of goals for your book. I did both before I began writing Live Full Throttle, before I hired Christina Shook to provide photographs, before I left on my motorcycle this summer.  The mission changed a bit over time, which is to be expected, but the cliche is true: if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.

Mission

Live Full Throttle: what you can learn about life from women who've faced cancer* will encourage readers to embrace their mortality and wring the joy out of their lives. It will give people whose lives have been touched by cancer (or any serious illness) hope that, despite their diagnosis or prognosis, their lives can be joyful and productive.

Short- and long-term goals

Live Full Throttle will be the book that launches my platform as an author who specializes in books that make people think about their lives in new, more optimistic ways. Readers will want to give a copy to those with a life-threatening diagnosis or who are in any kind of life transition.

The photographs will make people buy and hold on to it. The visual nature of the book will introduce a general audience to motorcyclist philanthropy. People who wouldn't normally pick up a "motorcycling book" will read this one and will remember me as its author.

I must make money on the book itself, and it will give me paid speaking opportunities at motorcycle events, cancer fundraisers, author's conferences and some places I haven't yet considered.

It will pave the way for paid sponsorships and opportunities to travel more widely.

It will teach me about self-publishing, which will help me when working with self-publishing clients.

A second book, Lean Into Life: Lessons From the Road  is a combination memoir/daily meditations book. It leads with the memoir, based my experience with business/financial/emotional devestation and how long-distance motorcycle travel gave me a rebirth and a new way of looking at life's hardships. The 365 days of meditations will average 200 words of anecdote and end with a pithy takeaway. The occasional photo might be nice — or maybe 365 photos in watermark behind the words…too early to tell.

Live Full Throttle will connect with a set of VERY loyal audiences, women, motorcyclists, and the cancer community (or should I call it "the chronically ill"?). These audiences will evangelize the second book,  Lean Into Life, for me. 

Guidance for the book designer

Here's a recap on why I hired SPARK Publications to design the book. I provided SPARK with my mission and goals as well as this little memo to kick off the creative process.

The book's voice and the exercises encourage readers to lead a purposeful life that's full of Spirit.

Here are some covers I like for various reasons:

Female Nomad  I like the top/bottom treatment and the sharp colors
A Woman Alone A different take on top/bottom and I adore the font
Paulo Coelho's biography for the simplicity and the use of black
Reaching Beyond for the way the title echos the blue sky to white snow/cloud of the photo
As a Man Thinketh lets the compelling photo dominate and the font works perfectly

Interesting results when you search with the terms "photo essay" on Amazon – I don't like any of these covers. I don't want "girlie" and curlicues. I love the combination of black with red & beige. Think of a German Shephard with a red collar.

Fonts for inspiration: Dante  Cassandra  Elegant Vintage Caps of the '20s.

Whether you are considering publishing a book yourself or selling it to a publisher, you need a mission and goals for the book. If someone else publishes it for you, your wishes for the cover might be considered, but will likely be ignored.

NEXT POST: The prototype.

*Subtitle is changed from the original. It now reads "Life Lessons from Friends Who Faced Cancer."

Insider View of Self-Publishing

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.

Live Full Throttle: Life Lessons From Friends Who Faced Cancer will go to press some time in November and I should have it back by January. Between then and now I'm working with a book design firm, printers, and my marketing intern, Alex Boss.

Live Full Throttle's back story

In 2010 I learned to ride a motorcycle, then joined a group of women bikers dedicated to raising money and awareness for breast cancer causes. After hearing hundreds of stories about facing the ultimate sink hole—death–from women doing it with grace, humor, moxie and joy, I decided to share what they taught me in this book.

Why self-publish?

I decided to publish the book myself after walking through the list of questions I would pose to a client trying to make the  same decision. Here's a recap of my thought process.

Timing

I saw no reason to wait 12-18 months in light of the people I had waiting to buy it. I'll be riding with the breast cancer fundraising group again in 2012 and they want to see this book NOW.  Not taking into account the time required to get an agent and then a contract with a publisher, which is considerable, publishers have production queues that I have no means to influence.

Greater profits for savvy marketers

Even if a publisher picked up the cost of designing, editing and distributing the book, the hard costs (and hard tasks) of marketing it would be up to me.  With the extra margin that publishing gives me, I'll reap more of the financial rewards from hard-won sales than I would have realized with a publisher in the food chain. In other words, for the same amount of effort on my part I'll make more money.

As my own publisher I can cut deals to consign the books with shops, vendors and speakers. I can co-brand the book with like-minded organizations and work out creative fundraising opportunities for nonprofits. I even can run a personalized edition for companies that would like to offer it to their stakeholders.  Authors with total control over their P&Ls can do this; authors with publishers have to go hat in  hand.

Unconventional format

Live Full Throttle: Life Lessons From Friends Who Faced Cancer is a hybrid of memoir and photo essay. At the end of each chapter I provide exercises designed to help readers apply the life lessons. An experimental format is difficult to sell to publishers, and I knew there was a strong probability that they would change the concept anyway, whether I was on board with their changes or not. Who needs that kind of creative castration?  That's why I'm freelance in the first place!

Platform

Publishers want authors with strong "platforms," which is jargon for how many people already know about you and are waiting with bated breath for your book to roll of the printing press or to finish downloading. An author platform is gauged in a variety of ways, including the number of social media followers and blog and newsletter subscribers, speakers bureau representation, and so on.

For a first-time author planning use a book as a means of building or growing a platform, the whole "come back and see us when you have a big platform" line is like telling a teenager they can't take the car out at night because they've never driven in the dark. In the time it would take me to convince a publisher that I have enough book buyers to warrant publishing it, I can just start selling the book.

 Choosing a designer

I believe in putting out a quality product. Research shows that even ebooks with attractive "covers" sell better than those with cheesy ones. I'm not a designer and don't aspire to be. Yes, ebooks can be formatted in Word and converted, but my book is full of beautiful photos by Christina Shook and needed real design expertise. I wasn't about to skimp on design.

I also believe in the power of tribe. It's always nice keeping dollars in your own community but that's not the only reason why I chose Spark Publications, headquartered here in Charlotte, NC, to design my book. I wanted to work with a design firm that KNOWS BOOK PUBLISHING, and Spark has designed a raft of successful book projects. The president of the firm, Fabi Preslar, knows how difficult it is to be a self-published author, since she 

Lessons from the Road

Helmet time often produces deep thought. On my motorcycle for 40 days this summer, I had a lot of helmet time. Among other things, I pondered relationships, physics, environmental economics, disease, mortality and the direction I want to take my life.

Fear as a motivator

I thought about the role of fear in our lives and how it seems to motivate people more than anything else. Americans seem to particularly fear failure.  Surrounded by crumbling institutions, people are living their lives as if there's no margin for error.

I almost took my life after a business that I owned failed and took down family and friends financially. A lot of people can relate to that experience, sadly. I've drained the dregs of failure's cup and have decided to move onto a different beverage.

During my 9559 miles of summer I thought about my life's lessons and how easily I could contextualize them with motorcycling metaphors. Helmet time has that effect on me. Here's a start:

Lean in, lean out: Techniques used to control the motorcycle also apply to life
Everything wobbles:  But a wobble doesn't inevitably lead to a spill
Blind corners abound: Ride your best ride and take uncertainty as it comes
Exploit the detours: They're usually providential
Embrace the switchbacks: The safest way to the mountaintop isn't the shortest

Taking those lessons on the road

People are fascinated by motorcycle travel, especially when undertaken by someone who breaks their stereotypes of who's a biker. In the last year I've been asked to speak to business and community groups and been interviewed for newspapers, radio and television. Thanks to helmet time I've decided to reach out with the lessons I've learned in a more proactive manner, through a book, keynotes and presentations. Here's who I'm reaching out to:

Teams getting together to review results or chart a new direction will frame the wobbles, detours and blind corners of the past while mapping a series of switchbacks to the top
Groups concerned with personal growth will glean takeaways for how to better lean in or out as they navigate through detours, blind corners and switchbacks
Organizations kicking off a new initiative will accept that wobbles, detours and blind corners are an inevitable part of the journey and that there is no straight path to the pinnacle — only switchbacks

I look forward to meeting you in person or an audience in the near future. Namaste.

Summer on the Road for Breast Cancer Causes and a Book

I'm riding my motorcycle across 20 American states and 4 Canadian provinces through July 28 raising money for breast cancer causes with other American and Canadian motorcyclists .

While on the road I'll also be interviewing women motorcyclists who've battled cancer for a book I'm writing called Live Full Throttle: What you can learn about life from women who've survived cancer.

I took a similar trip last summer and managed to keep my clients projects moving and I'm equally committed to keeping the plates spinning this year. Please be a little patient as I return phone calls and emails with some time delays…but always within 24 hours. Most of my time will be spent in Mountain and Pacific time zones.

Check out my itinerary here and let me know if I'm in your town so we can grab a cuppa.

Please support my causes generously. One woman in eight is affected by breast cancer.

Review: The Biker's Guide to Business

Sure,  management consultant and avid motorcyclist Dwain DeVille could have delivered a book with lots of worksheets and case studies to walk a business owner through the difficult process of strategic planning. Thankfully he approached the subject from his own hard-won experience with entrepreneurial road rash and used motorcycling metaphors to keep our right brains engaged in the process.  He uses the straight talk and occasional cuss words that people seem to expect from bikers, too.

Hell, ask me where my company needs to be in five years, and I'll answer without a moment's hesitation. However, ask me where I want my life to be in five years and I couldn't begin to tell you. And after all these years in business, that's a pretty crappy place to be. I'd allowed the needs of the company to drive my personal life for too long. It was high time to anwer the question "What's Next" and redefine my dreams. It was time to focus on my lifestyle.

Written for the business owner, not a cog in a big corporate wheel, The Biker's Guide to Business: When Business and Life Meet at the Crossroads, DeVille's philosophy sounds familiar to those of us who've read one of the eMyth books, but DeVille has his own spin on how to steer a company to serve its owner instead of the other way around.

DeVille is quick to point out his disdain for traditional business plans that end up collecting dust on the shelf. He insists that business owners who follow his process will walk away with a plan that can/will be executed. He provides these tools and instructions on his Bikers Guide to Business web site as well.

Dwain DeVille's book

Beginning with failure

DeVille pulls no punches in describing a business venture he took on for all the wrong reasons and the financial and emotional aftermath. That experience taught him that "the key to success isn't recognizing opportunity, but instead recognizing the opportunities you should not chase."

No sooner had he straightened things out on the business front, Deville faced a cancer diagnosis and the loss of a kidney. Wham-Bam.

He decided it was time for a road trip through the American west on a rented Road King, a move I totally understand! The fruit of his trip was a strategy for his own management consulting firm and the outline for this book, which is also available on Audible, narrated by the author in his delightful Louisiana accent.

Now DeVille leads three-day motorcycle retreats for business owners to help them achieve the same degree of clarity that his seminal trip provided to him.

The book is written not written exclusively for bikers; indeed DeVille does an excellent job explaining the motorcycling metaphors to the uninitiated. That said, I think bikers like me are bound to enjoy it on a deeper level.

Note to aspiring business authors

If you're thinking of writing a book on a dry subject, like business planning, consider DeVille's approach of filtering it through a metaphor or a simple tale (ex: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari).

A couple of weeks after downloading a Kindle version of The Biker's Guide to Business: When Business and Life Meet at the Crossroads, I received a personalized copy from its author, whom I "know" through Twitter. This is the first book that I have in both formats and it helped me see exactly how books differ between print and digital.  With that homework done, I recommend that business authors distribute their books in all three formats: print, digital and audio.