Is writing and self-publishing a nonfiction book on your list of goals for 2019? If you really want to make sure you follow through and achieve that goal, it’s time to start planning NOW. There are three big things you should be doing now to make sure your dream of self-publishing a nonfiction book in 2019 becomes a reality. Listen to the episode to learn what those three things are, and to learn about some great free resources I have to help you get there.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE PODCAST:
Episode 56: How to Start to Outline Your Nonfiction Book
Episode 57: Finalize Your Plan for Your Nonfiction Book (Outlining Your Nonfiction Book Part 2)
5-Step Guide to Creating Your First Book
5 Easy Steps to Become a Health & Wellness Author
Episode 89: Where Should Self-Publishers Spend Money on Services?
TRANSCRIPT: 3 THINGS YOU SHOULD DO NOW TO SELF-PUBLISH YOUR NONFICTION BOOK IN 2019
(This is a direct transcript of the episode. Please excuse any typos.)
In this episode, I want to talk to those of you who have a dream of self publishing a nonfiction book in 2019 as of the time this episode is being released. We are in late 2018 and that means now is the perfect time to start getting your ducks in a row and to take some steps, three big steps really to help make sure that you can meet that goal of writing your book in 2019 and self publishing it. And if you’re listening to this, there’s a good chance that self publishing a book was on your list for 2018 and maybe you never really figured out how to finish it. Maybe it was a knowledge gap that was holding you back. Maybe it was time. Maybe other things were just a priority that happens. But what I want to do today is talk you through again the three things that you should be doing now to make sure that you really do self publish your nonfiction book in 2019 so that it can do all of the amazing things that it will do for you and your business.
So that it helps you build instant authority and credibility so that it helps show the world that you are really a thought leader in your niche and so that all of that and just having a book in general and the information in the book can help you build your business. All right, let’s get down to it.
1. CREATE AN OUTLINE
The first thing that you should do to really make sure that you publish your book in Twenty 19 is creating an outline, and I talk about this a lot because it is so, so important and this is particularly true for nonfiction books. I know fiction writers, sometimes they need to do a little bit of writing and explore who their characters are and where they’re going before they can write the rest of their book. But for nonfiction authors, you should have a strong vision of what your book will do and that begins with having a strong vision of who your ideal reader for your book is, what they need, what they want, and what your book is going to do for them, and then once you have that, you can start to plan out your outline.
Really, what I teach in the framework I use for my clients and my students in my course is again, this fast author framework when I have them do is start out by number one, defining who their reader is, an in that figuring out where their readers at right now, so mentally, where are they at physically, where are they at, and with relation to the book, what do they know, what do they not know, what do they not even realize that they need to work through and in that it can help inform you what you need to put in your books so annoyed the starting point, and then you also need to know that end point for your reader. So what is the transformation you want your book to bring about in your reader? What do that you want them to feel at the end of your book? What do you want them to be able to do?
Do you want them to be empowered to do something? Do you want them to be able to actually just learn a new skill? There’s a lot of different things that your book could do. I know, for example, I’ve worked with some rds recently and for some of them, even the beginning could be somebody who has maybe a bad relationship with food and the goal is to get them to a better place emotionally and mentally with food and in that some of that transformation is breaking through some of those really strongly held beliefs that are holding them back from having a healthy relationship with food and so thinking through those and especially those mindset shifts that need to occur and then think through in your outline, how are you going to walk them through each step and really how can you help them get from point a where they’re at now before they’ve read your book to point b, which is that transformation that you want them to have at the end of the book when they’re done with it.
So if you need extra help writing the outline for your book. I’ve got two podcast episodes that I’ve done on the podcast that you should go back and check out. It’s episode 56 and 57. You can find the show notes for those and access to the, um, the episode at bloggertoauthor.com/56 and then again bloggertoauthor.com/57. Alternatively, you can just go back and find those episodes wherever you are downloading and listening to your podcasts. Another thing I do want to mention when it comes to writing an outline and resources is that if you haven’t yet, definitely make sure you get my free five step guide to creating your first book. You can find that bloggertoauthor.com/download. It actually walks you through a lot of these steps that you should be taking now. Uh, but in addition, if you are specifically in the health and wellness niche, I’ve modified that Freebie so that it’s more applicable to what you are doing.
And you can find that at bloggertoauthor.com/health. So either way, whichever version you download I, it’s still going to be really, really valuable to you and it’s gonna help you get started on that outline, which is going to make your entire writing process easier. It’s going to make it more focused and it’s going to make the prospect of actually writing your book seem a little less daunting because you know what needs to go in it and once you have that clear vision, it’s easier to get your first draft written and I can tell you that for almost every single person I’ve talked to, in fact really everybody agrees with me on this, but I’m sure there’s one or two people who don’t agree out there, but they all say that writing the first draft is the hardest and then going back and editing it and adding to it is much easier.
But it’s that blank page. It’s that figuring out where to get started. That’s the hardest. So if you can come up with your outline, that’s going to make the entire writing process a lot easier. So that’s the first thing that you should do now to publish your book in 2019.
2. CREATE A PLAN FOR COMPLETING YOUR BOOK
The second thing you should do is to create a plan. Figure out exactly how you are going to get the writing done and the editing done and everything else that you need to do. So what do I mean by this? Well really when it comes down to is setting goals and setting deadlines for yourself. I personally really liked to work with quarterly goals. I think that, especially for books, having quarterly goals set is really helpful because most of us don’t have the time to sit down and write an entire book in a week or two weeks.
I know I’ve interviewed people on the podcast who have done that, but I know for most of you you’re running businesses. You’ve got a lot going on. You don’t necessarily have time to explicitly dedicate to your book, but if you sit down and write whatever type of goals or I guess whatever time duration you work with, again, I really suggest those quarterly goals, but if you’re a monthly goal type of person, that’s fine, but just come up with those endpoints that you need to have to stay on track. So if your goal is to publish your book in June, then maybe you need to get a chapter written a week and then that will give you some time at the end also to edit and take care of all of the formatting you’ll need to do to get your book into print, for example. So just find out your end date.
So Kevin minds a time when you want to publish your book. You don’t have to share that date, although it’s incredibly motivating if you do, um, but from then, then reverse engineer the dates when you’ll need to have your different milestones done. And really what I would recommend doing there is taking a look at your, you know, the number of chapters, even the number of sections and you don’t have to at this point necessarily know exactly what chapters, but you should know that chunks of information that you’re going to include in your book so that you can kind of divide them out equally so that you can set those deadlines for yourself to make sure that your book gets written. And then the other thing you really need to do is schedule out time. So some of this comes down to planning. Maybe you need to talk to family members if you have children and figure out how you can get some child care to help out with, uh, the time that you’ll need to write your book.
I know I absolutely had to do this with my husband when I was working on my second book I had at the time an infant at home. And so I would have to negotiate with him that he would take care of our daughter while I would go to a coffee shop and work for a couple of hours on Saturdays. And that allowed me to get a lot of writing done that I didn’t really have the capacity for during the week. And that worked really well for us. But your schedule might be a little different. But the thing that I do need you to do and that I do think you should do, is make a plan for when you’re actually going to get your writing done. Like when during the week do you need to wake up early? Do you need to stay up late? Do you need to figure something else out, but have that plan in place because when you know how you’re going to execute it, it makes actually executing the writing and the editing and just having time to create your book much easier.
So that’s the second thing you need to do right now to self publish your nonfiction book in 2019.
3. DECIDE IF YOU WANT TO HIRE ANYONE TO HELP YOU WITH YOUR BOOK
The third thing is to think through where you’ll need help with your book and just to have that in your mind or even to think through what you might need help with and to help you with this, definitely go check out the last podcast episode I did, episode number 89. You can find that at bloggertoauthor.com/89, but that entire episode really talks you through where you might want to hire someone to help with your book or a really helped you think through what you might want to delegate and what you might want to do yourself kind of talks you through some of the steps that you will need to take. But then in addition, it also helps you really figure out, okay, I can do these parts and I can have somebody else do these parts and helps you sort of prioritize what you might want to hire out because I know that that can be a really difficult part to figure out, especially if you’re on a limited budget.
While I can’t pay somebody to do everything. So what should I have them help out with? Well, the episode will help you figure that out. Um, but really what you need to do is sit down and again, think through absolutely everything that’s going to go into the creation of the book. So even thinking through your outline and maybe whether you need to hire somebody to help you think through or even create your outline or do you need to hire a developmental editor, which is definitely a thing to help you make sure that your ideas are in the right place and that you’re not missing anything. Like developmental editors can even come in at the outline level to help you with that. They can certainly come in after you’ve written a little bit as well. Um, if you’re really busy, do you need to hire somebody to help you with the actual writing process?
I know for my clients, I’ve helped. For example, some people who have blogs, I’ve helped them then reorganize that blog information into their book, done a little bit of editing that way, and again, they really wanted to have a book, but they didn’t have the time to go put it together, but they’d already done a lot of work in terms of writing blog posts. And so they had me come through and take care of the process of making sure it all flowed together and going through and placing the blog posts in the correct places. Similarly, I’ve also done this for clients who are live video people and who have, for example, video transcripts that need to go into a book as well. So that is something you can hire help with if you have the budget and if you don’t have the time to write it.
Alternatively, you can even hire a ghost writer for your book and you can have somebody completely write the book for you in your voice using your stories. Um, and so that can be places to start sort of early in the process. You can obviously hire editors to help you publish your drafts, or excuse me, Polish your drafts, and make sure that it’s the best version of your book possible. You can hire proofreaders to help make sure that there aren’t any typos going into your book. You know, somebody to look through it a last minute. Also, if you’re following any particular style guidelines, your proofreader can help make sure that you’re following those guidelines to eight t, um, and then you can hire help with the design of the book. So you could hire somebody to create your book cover. You can hire somebody to format the interior, can hire somebody to even design the interior and really put that professional looking touch on the interior of your book.
And then you can help somebody or you could hire somebody to help you through the actual publishing process. And then you could hire help with publicizing your book. So if you need help really getting the word out with your book and marketing your book, there are different people you can hire there. So really that’s not a completely exhaustive list, but those are most of the places where you might hire help. Again, go back to listen to episode 89 if you need help choosing where to hire help, but definitely have that planned out so that you can put it in your budget for 2019 and so that you can have the time to find the right service providers. And then also your service providers are going to need time to work as well. So make sure that you have that time factored into your timeline. For example, if you’re having a person designed the interior of your book, you might actually need to give them, you know, a month if that’s their timeline.
And so make sure that you’re talking to your designer and figuring out, okay, you know, you’re going to need a month, which means that I’m going to need several weeks after that just to make sure that the files are formatted correctly, maybe make any corrections that I need to, and then allow yourself some time to get that to the book printer. So again, just factor all of that into your timeline. And so that’s why I’m bringing this up now. All right, so quick review. The three things you should do now to self publish your nonfiction book in Twenty 19. Number one, create your outline. Number two, make sure that you have a plan to write your book, including figuring out how you’re going to get through any obstacles, creating essentially deadlines for yourself so that you can make sure that you’re staying on track and then even scheduling things in your calendar like time where you’re actually going to go out and write. And then the third thing is to think through where you might need to hire help and where we might need to bring somebody else in so you have that part of the plan in place. And then once you have all of those done, it’s going to really help give you a leg up on self publishing your nonfiction book. In 2019.
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