Producing and Publishing Your Book Quickly
Writing and publishing your book doesn’t have to be a long process. In fact, you can probably put together a short book of about 50-100 pages in 2 to 3 weeks. Here’s how.
Think Small
A good way to get your book out quickly is to divide it into smaller books, so you get something published, and later combine these together into a longer book. Once you have about 50-75 pages, that’s enough for a mini-book, and some people do even shorter books of 25-50 pages.
This mini-book approach works well for how-to, self-help, and popular business books, where you give out tips on how to do something. It is also an ideal approach if you plan to use the book to increase your credibility, visibility, authority, and branding to get more customers or clients or set up speaking engagements. But if you want your book to appeal to bookstores and libraries, your book should usually be about 150 pages or more.
But start small, so you can turn your ideas into a print and/or e-book quickly and have something to quickly show for your efforts. Then, you can start thinking about all the ways to publish your book in other formats and how to use your book to promote yourself and your business.
Recording, Transcribing, and Editing Your Book
Another way to quickly produce your book is if you record, transcribe, and edit your book.
If you record your book, you can talk into your phone or other recording device, do an interview, or record a workshop or seminar. Afterwards, however you do it, get it transcribed. Then, figure on editing the manuscript yourself or hire an editor, since you can’t normally go directly from a transcript to a finished book. There are some software programs to automatically turn your recording into text, such as Dragon software, but automated transcribing generally only works if you have a single clear voice. Otherwise, if you have a workshop with multiple voices or record in a noisy environment, the software can get confused, and you can end up with gibberish featuring short phrases, skips, and other mishaps, as I discovered in sending some workshop files to a couple of automated online voice-to-text services. So where you have multiple voices that sometimes talk over each other, you need a human transcriber, typically at $1 a minute from a service like Rev.com or a local transcriber.
Once you have the transcript, figure on about an hour for editing and rewriting for every 750-1000 words. Plus you may want to add other ideas suggested by the topics you cover briefly in your recording -- and some editors knowledgeable about your subject can add material for you if you don’t do this yourself. Aside from top of your head additions, Internet research is another source of additional material.
* * * * * *
GINI GRAHAM SCOTT, Ph.D., J.D., is a nationally known writer, consultant, speaker, and seminar leader, specializing in social trends, popular culture, business and work relationships, and professional and personal development. She has published over 50 books on diverse subjects with major publishers. She has worked with dozens of clients on memoirs, self-help, and popular business books, as well as film scripts. Her websites include http://www.changemakerspublishingandw... and http://www.ginigrahamscott.com.
Think Small
A good way to get your book out quickly is to divide it into smaller books, so you get something published, and later combine these together into a longer book. Once you have about 50-75 pages, that’s enough for a mini-book, and some people do even shorter books of 25-50 pages.
This mini-book approach works well for how-to, self-help, and popular business books, where you give out tips on how to do something. It is also an ideal approach if you plan to use the book to increase your credibility, visibility, authority, and branding to get more customers or clients or set up speaking engagements. But if you want your book to appeal to bookstores and libraries, your book should usually be about 150 pages or more.
But start small, so you can turn your ideas into a print and/or e-book quickly and have something to quickly show for your efforts. Then, you can start thinking about all the ways to publish your book in other formats and how to use your book to promote yourself and your business.
Recording, Transcribing, and Editing Your Book
Another way to quickly produce your book is if you record, transcribe, and edit your book.
If you record your book, you can talk into your phone or other recording device, do an interview, or record a workshop or seminar. Afterwards, however you do it, get it transcribed. Then, figure on editing the manuscript yourself or hire an editor, since you can’t normally go directly from a transcript to a finished book. There are some software programs to automatically turn your recording into text, such as Dragon software, but automated transcribing generally only works if you have a single clear voice. Otherwise, if you have a workshop with multiple voices or record in a noisy environment, the software can get confused, and you can end up with gibberish featuring short phrases, skips, and other mishaps, as I discovered in sending some workshop files to a couple of automated online voice-to-text services. So where you have multiple voices that sometimes talk over each other, you need a human transcriber, typically at $1 a minute from a service like Rev.com or a local transcriber.
Once you have the transcript, figure on about an hour for editing and rewriting for every 750-1000 words. Plus you may want to add other ideas suggested by the topics you cover briefly in your recording -- and some editors knowledgeable about your subject can add material for you if you don’t do this yourself. Aside from top of your head additions, Internet research is another source of additional material.
* * * * * *
GINI GRAHAM SCOTT, Ph.D., J.D., is a nationally known writer, consultant, speaker, and seminar leader, specializing in social trends, popular culture, business and work relationships, and professional and personal development. She has published over 50 books on diverse subjects with major publishers. She has worked with dozens of clients on memoirs, self-help, and popular business books, as well as film scripts. Her websites include http://www.changemakerspublishingandw... and http://www.ginigrahamscott.com.
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