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Why Write a Book

Welcome to Creative Live and welcome to How to Write and Publish Your Ebook. I am really excited about talking about this topic, guys because I have been writing and publishing ebooks now, for five years. I have four different books out there and we're gonna talk more about that in just a little bit, but what ebooks have been able to do for my business, to me is staggering. It's still staggering when I think about it. In all the prep we were doing for this workshop, they kept asking me, so what exactly have you been able to accomplish because of ebooks, and the list of things I've been able to accomplish, simply because I was willing to take my ideas, put them in book form and put them out on the internet for other people to consume and engage with is staggering, if I do say so myself. My ebooks have allowed me to travel around the world speaking to entrepreneurs. They've helped me make hundreds of thousands of dollars selling high end programs to clients like you guys. And they have j...

ust really transformed my ability to get in major media like Fast Company and Forbes and Inc. and do interviews with big named podcasters and radio shows, even. So if you're interested in writing a book, there's never been a better time. There's never been a better opportunity for you to turn your ideas into the printed word and into real business results. So let's talk about that first. Why write a book? Do you guys know why you want to write a book? Yes? Okay we need to wake up a little bit more now, okay, yeah, all right, so you guys know why you wanna write a book. I'm gonna go down a whole bunch of reasons of why you might wanna write a book, what you can do when you become an author and then I'm gonna ask each and every one of you to tell us today, why you are writing your book. All right, so you guys be thinking about that and maybe something that I pull up in this list will trigger an idea that you didn't even realize you had. So here's what you can do once you become an author. First of all, you can put your book in your byline. There is, to me, nothing cooler than being able to introduce yourself as, Hi, I'm Tara Gentile, I'm the author of Quiet Power Strategy. Or in the byline of an article. Yeah you can find my article in Fast Company and it says Tara Gentile is the author of Quiet Power Strategy, that's pretty frickin cool, if you ask me, so that's one of the most simple things you can do once you're an author. The next thing you can do is use your book to land speaking gigs, and I mentioned that I've been all over the world speaking based on my book topics. Is speaking something you guys wanna do? Yeah, books position you perfectly to be able to do that. You can also pitch your book to local news and media, you can pitch major media. So if you've ever, one of our other Quiet Power Strategy clients, Shawn Fink, she was just on a local television show talking about her book, The Slow Family and you know, that's just, how cool is that, to be on TV with your book, whether that's in your local area, whether it's major media, I've seen people, one of our guest experts, a little later, Srini Rao, he actually got tapped on the shoulder by Glen Beck, of all people, and was on The Blaze with Glen Beck. That turned his book into a Wall Street Journal Best Seller and that was just a self published book like what we're gonna put together this week. You can also introduce yourself to new prospects with a book. There's no better business card, as far as I'm concerned than a book, whether you can email it to somebody or hand it physically to somebody. It is a phenomenal way to introduce yourself to someone who might be a perfect candidate for you. And you can also take advantage of new distribution networks. One of the most overlooked and under utilized marketing network that's out there, is Amazon. Amazon is a great way to get your ideas, your name, your business, your concepts and message out to new people who would have never heard of you using traditional social media, that's funny I just referred to social media as traditional, traditional social media or your content, your email marketing, blog marketing, Amazon is a phenomenal marketing network because it's a distribution platform and of course, as an author, you can make money. Publishing books has been a great revenue stream for me. And so, you can do all of that and more by writing books, so I wanna get a quick run down from you guys. You're gonna have lots of opportunities to tell us more about you and your business but for now, just tell us who you are, what you do, and why you want to write a book. So Brit, that's start with you. I'm Brit Steele and I wanna write a book because I'm a Yoga Teacher and I teach yoga teachers how to take what they do on the mat and really live it in their lives completely and I live on a farm and at a retreat center where every day, I'm doing things and thinking, oh my gosh if I could share this with my audience, the way that I wake up in the morning, the way that I use feeding my animals or growing things in the garden to live my yoga, so I wanna bring it out to more people in that way. Awesome. I'm Lacy Boggs, I run the Content Direction Agency which helps other small business owners learn how to use blogging and content marketing to actually support their business and I wanna write a book to reach new people and take advantage of those different distribution channels. Fantastic. I'm Shannon Dolittle and I'm a Fundraising Mentor which means I teach non-profits how to raise money and I wanna write a book, one just because I wanna create a real amazing positive ripple effect in the world, but the other reason why is because I really want a new power keynote topic. Excellent, good reason. I'm Stacy Howlott and I teach entrepreneurs how to create better training and exactly like you said, Shannon, I wanna get a book to use to get more speaking opportunities. Fantastic, well let's talk a little bit more about that and the way we're gonna talk a little bit more about that is I'm simply gonna share with you my history of publishing. Just give you kind of the down low on what I've published and what it's helped me accomplish, so my very first book was called The Art of Earning and book is a very strong word and we're gonna talk about that in just a little bit. But basically it was a compilation of essays that I wrote on my own progress with my money story. Being an entrepreneur brings up all sorts of money issues you did not know you had. Well The Art of Earning is my struggle and journey and kind pseudo-resolution with that, although we're all dealing with these things all the time. The Art of Earning allowed me to do many, many, many, many things, but one of the best results I got from publishing The Art of Earning was actually being invited to come speak at Etsy Headquarters up in Brooklyn. Not only did I get to speak at Etsy Headquarters, but they live streamed it to tens of thousands of people watching at home and for years, after that talk, that was published in 2011 and I did that talk that fall. For years after that talk, I would get people responding back to me on Twitter who had watched that talk, asking questions, engaging, say how much it inspired them and of course I still get people Tweeting me, Facebooking me, emailing about what The Art of Earning has done for them, so that was that first fore into self publishing was an amazing way to get in front of a whole new group of people. Now my second book was called The Art of Growth, and I'll be honest with you, this is my least selling book, lowest selling book that I've done. A lot of that was my fault and we'll talk about Marketing in the fifth lesson as well and what you can do to avoid that. But The Art of Growth has been excellent for me because some of my top clients, clients who have come back over and over again. That is actually the book that they cite. So while I might not have sold a ton of that book and while I might not be asked to speak on The Art of Growth, some of my absolute best clients, people who pay my bills, pay my mortgage, are, that's the one that they cite as being, I knew I needed to work with you after I read that book so that one had great results as well. My third book is called Quiet Power Strategy, and that's also the name of the company that I run and this one is sort of, this one is the most booky of all of the books. It is about 30,000 words, so still not a long book, but it's got some substance to it. It's the most kind of long form and it really lays out my philosophy for approaching your business as a new entrepreneur in this new economy and that book has gotten me speaking gigs in Scotland, in Wales, in Cancun, things that I get paid for, paid travel, this doesn't suck, guys. (laughing) And so I love when people say, I read your book, I organized this event, I would love to have you come, just talk about what you talked about in the book. Yes, I can do that, thank you. So that's fantastic and I've spoken on that topic many more places than just those but I think those are the most romantic. And then my last book was actually my smallest book, coming in at just under 9,000 words called The Observation Engine. The Observation Engine is sort of a book on how to think like a marketer and it's, I use that in all sorts of different ways, but the main way I've used it was actually as a kick off to a six figure launch for one of my programs, so for that, it was less about being able to book a speaking gig or just having an extra book by my byline, and was much more about letting people know that the way I think about things is different than a lot of other people think about things, and maybe if you think like me, you should come work with me and it's worked really, really well. That said, it's also gotten me some pretty great media and speaking gigs as well. I'll be in Denver, the Digital Commerce Summit speaking specifically on The Observation Engine and so that's copy bloggers conference, guys, that is a big frickin deal. so all of that just from publishing these four simple small books. So, we need to set a goal for our next set of lessons together, the five steps that we're going to be embarking on because our goal isn't just to learn how to write and publish a book. It's to actually produce a book and sort of my own little goal and our producer's little goal here is to get as many books out into the world over the next five days, over the next week as possible. You guys are gonna help me with that, right? Okay, cool and I'm gonna try and pull my weight on that too, we've got something in the cooker. (laughing) So hopefully, hopefully by the end, this is over, we will have that book out as well. Our goal for these next five lessons is to achieve these kind of results, booking you new clients, introducing you to new prospects, getting you speaking gigs, making you some money, landing you in major media with a small book. So our goal, like If you wanna have a word count goal, I would say our word count goal is between 8, and 10,000 words, that's very small. That's like 8 to 10 medium sized blog posts. This is not a big deal guys. The big deal is thinking it through, creating the strategy, setting the goal, reaping the results, that's the big deal. Okay, it's not actually doing the thing. But we're gonna work all the way thought that, okay? So a small book based on content you already have. I don't know about you guys, actually I do know about you guys, but I have tons of content. I have been at this for seven and a half years now. I have hundreds of thousands of words in multiple blogs. I have podcast transcripts, I have video transcripts, I have keynote talks that I've given. All of that is content, all of that is available to you to turn into your book. So really what I'm not asking you to do is to write a book. I'm asking you to compile a book and we're gonna talk about that as well, obviously. So our goal is to achieve those amazing results that I was just talking about with a small book based on content you already have. Sound doable? Excellent, all right, here's how we're gonna do it. We've got five steps. Step one is to choose a topic and build an outline. That's what we're gonna do today. The second step is to write your book the fastest way possible. That's exactly what I just outlined. Taking content that you have, fitting it into that outline and turning it into one concrete, consistent work. The third step is to edit and format your book. I'm gonna show you guys the actual software that I use to bang out Kindle books. It's really easy, it sounds hard. It is so easy it's not even funny. Okay, I'm gonna also show you how to distribute and publish your book. Again, so easy, that's probably the smallest lesson that we have, actually, it's kinda like here's where you upload things, here's the publish button, go. And then finally how to market your book. As any author will tell you, that is probably the hardest part. The hardest part is not producing the work. The hardest part is marketing your book. And so we're gonna talk about three concrete ways that you can do that and do it fast because I'm all about fast, I like moving fast, I like pivoting fast, I like producing fast. So I'm gonna show you how to market your book fast.