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Paul Jarvis ( Everything I Know), Sacha Greif ( Discover Meteor), and Nathan Barry ( Authority) invited me to host a Self-Publishing Hangout with them this week. It was a great opportunity for me, because I’m about to publish my first “book” ( Amplification). Our Google Hangout ended being a 2 hour marathon of us sharing our experience with writing, publishing, and promoting eBooks, as well as answering questions from everybody in the chat room.
In Part 1 we cover choosing a topic, whether you need to be a good writer, writers block, fear and quality!
Show Notes
Paul Jarvis ( Everything I Know), Sacha Greif ( Discover Meteor), and Nathan Barry ( Authority) invited me to host a Self-Publishing Hangout with them this week. It was a great opportunity for me, because I’m about to publish my first “book” ( Amplification). Our Google Hangout ended being a 2 hour marathon of us sharing our experience with writing, publishing, and promoting eBooks, as well as answering questions from everybody in the chat room.
In Part 1 we cover choosing a topic, whether you need to be a good writer, writers block, fear and quality!
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On September 1st, I’ll be releasing my first downloadable course called Amplification. Creating great content isn’t enough; to get it seen by thousands, you need amplification. I’ll show you my experience with viral posts like “ This is a web page” and show you real stats from my website. Then I’ll share with you the steps for amplifying your posts to bigger audiences.
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Notable quotes
Nathan: “If you try to wait until you’re a great writer, that’s bad. I had someone contact me who read every one of my blog posts. He said in his email: ‘Man, when you started you were a horrible writer. But I could see you getting better each post you wrote.’ I would say: start writing, and use that to get better at writing.”
Paul: “I feel the same way. I don’t think I’m a great writer, but I know that I’m a lot better now than when I started writing. The only way I got better, was by writing. I write every day; I don’t publish work every day (that’s not the point). The more that I sit down and write, the more ideas that I come up with that are worth publishing.”
Sacha: “I didn’t have a fixed amount of words to write every day. I approach writing like design: start with a sketch, low fidelity mockup, high fidelity… every iteration comes close and closer to the real thing. I start with outline of the chapters, and start filling them up. For Discover Meteor, we must have gone through each chapter about 10 times, it was really iterative.”
Show notes
Paul Jarvis: Everything I Know
Sacha Greif: Discover Meteor
Nathan Barry: Authority
Justin Jackson: Amplification
Creators and Guests
Host
Guest
What is Product People?
A podcast focused on great products and the people who make them
Paul Jarvis, Sasha Graef, and Nathan Barry invited me to host a self publishing hangout with them this week. It was a great opportunity for me because I'm about to publish my first book, Amplification. And our Google hangout ended up being a two hour marathon of sharing our experience with writing, publishing, and promoting ebooks. Part one, we discover choosing a topic, whether you need to be a good writer, writer's block, fear, and quality. This show would not be possible without these great sponsors, sprint.ly.
Speaker 1:They've been with me from the beginning. Perfect for software teams of three or more people. Sprint.ly is the easiest way for managers, developers to track the software development process. You and your team can try sprint.ly for free. Go to www.sprint.ly.
Speaker 1:When you sign up for a plan, use my promotion code, product people TV 2013. Get 10% off. And on September 1, I'll be releasing my first downloadable course called amplification. Creating great content isn't enough to get it seen by thousands, and you need amplification. I'll show you my experience with viral posts like this is a web page and show you real stats from my website.
Speaker 1:Then I'll share with you the steps for amplifying your posts to bigger audiences. Just for my listeners, go to productpeople.tv/download and get $10 off. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the self publishing hangout. Today, we're gonna explore some, writing, publishing, and promoting your own e book on the web.
Speaker 1:And, the four of us are going to share our experience with self publishing so far. And I think each of us is probably at a different stage. And so hopefully you as participants out there, I think we've got probably about a 100 people in the chat room so far. A 150. Hopefully, you guys get a variety of perspectives on, publishing an ebook.
Speaker 1:So I think what we'll do is we'll start by having each of us introduce ourselves.
Speaker 2:Sasha, jump into your introduction then.
Speaker 3:So I guess I'm mainly a designer maybe let's say 51% designer 49% developer and I've wrote so my first book, first self published book was about design and I wrote that about, one year and a half ago now. And it was a really short book called, step by step UI design and I sold it pretty cheap for about $12 but it was really successful. So it inspired me to write a second book and this time it wasn't about design, but about coding. And it's called Discover Meteor, about the Meteor JavaScript framework. And I sold it for a much higher price and it was a much larger book as well.
Speaker 3:And it also did really well. So yeah, I mean, the reason I got the idea for this whole Hangout thing is because all throughout working on both books, I was really inspired by what other people were doing like Nathan and also listening to product people, and seeing what Paul was doing. So I thought it would be interesting just to get together and compare our approaches, and what we do the same, what we do differently, and just get to hang out. Alright.
Speaker 2:Alright. So Paul, you wanna jump in next with your intro?
Speaker 4:Cool. So yeah. I am Paul Jarvis. I'm also probably about 51% designer, 49% programmer, and about and I've been doing that for about fifteen, sixteen years. And a couple years ago, I decided that it would be easier for me to write a book than to keep emailing people all the same information all the time.
Speaker 4:I was a vegan cookbook. It's called eat awesome. And I sold that for $5. Now it's a dollar, and I did that two years ago. And then last year, I wrote and pop self published a book called be awesome in online business.
Speaker 4:And that is about web design from the perspective of clients. So if somebody's starting an online business and they need to get a developer from or a designer developer, content people, that sort of thing. So how to kinda take your business from start to finish in building it out or refreshing it online. And I'm writing a new book right now called Everything I Know, which should be available in September. And the Kickstarter project goes live on the first day that Kickstarter Canada happened, which is September 9.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. Cool. Nathan, how about you introduce yourself too?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I'm also a designer. I think that's a prerequisite to be on this panel. Maybe not. No.
Speaker 2:So, I started as a web designer and then gradually moved to software and interface design. Worked at a startup leading their design team for a few years and then left to sell some iPhone apps and go back to freelancing and consulting. And then wrote the App Design Handbook, which is my first really successful product, and that helped me move out of the consulting world into the product world. And then started building an audience with that, followed that up with designing web apps, and then launched ConvertKit, which is an email marketing tool to help launch and sell products. And then most recently wrote Authority, which is basically everything that I've learned over that whole process on making ebooks profitable.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. And I'm Justin Jackson. I'm not a designer, so I'm I'm the odd man out here. I'm a product manager during the day. I think I'm actually also the only person that has a full time job right now.
Speaker 1:I think the rest of these guys I'm not. So I'm a product manager during the day. I host a podcast called Product People. And I'm about to release my first book on September 1. It's called amplification, and it's the lessons I've learned about getting building an audience and getting content out to lots and lots of people.
Speaker 1:So I'm at I'm at that stage. I'm just about to publish my first thing.
Speaker 3:Cool. One thing I want to talk about is why you decided to publish it in a format that's not an ebook. So I think that's going to be interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's get going. All right. So let's start with writing.
Speaker 1:And maybe specifically, how do you choose a topic? How do you decide what you're going to write about in the first place? Let's start with Paul. How did you decide what you're going to write about?
Speaker 4:Sure. And I mean, for me, I typically the books that I've been writing are I've started small. Like, I've started with tweets or emails to people, and then if people are enjoying that and retweeting what I'm tweeting, or if I find I'm sending the same email to people over and over again, then I might turn it into a blog post or an article for another website. And then if that seems to do well and gain traction, then I think, yeah, well, this could possibly be a book. So the Vegan Cookbook, I did that.
Speaker 4:I was writing the same email to people who wanted ideas for recipes and information about being vegan and same with the Be Off in Online Business, the second book. I was writing, I was telling my clients basically the same thing, and I've been doing this for fifteen, sixteen years. So I found clients were having the same issues and asking the same questions for lots of of time. Lots So I figured if I wrote a book that was kind of about web design, but not for web designers. There's a lot of books about web design for web designers.
Speaker 4:If I wrote a book about web design for people who are just looking to do web design, then maybe that would be helpful. And then the new book is about creativity and stuff, and that's just my random ramblings about creativity and fear and that sort of stuff. So mostly the topics come naturally and then I write a bit about them. Then I write a bit more, then I write a bit more. And then they eventually turn into books.
Speaker 4:If I try to book from scratch, I don't know if I
Speaker 3:could do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'm just laughing because someone in the chat room asked the first question, which was what kind of product do I use in my hair?
Speaker 2:Would be Chase Reeves from Fizzle and Think Traffic. And yeah, the the other comment of, oh god, Chase is here. Good luck staying on topic is very accurate.
Speaker 1:He already derailed us.
Speaker 2:I love you, Chase. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I feel excluded on that topic because I can't really talk about hair products.
Speaker 4:Maybe I have like a little beard comb or something.
Speaker 1:That's gonna be our first collaborative book is all about men's grooming.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Let's get back on topic. Sasha, how did you choose your topic for your book? So
Speaker 3:although both topics are pretty different, I think one thing they have in common is they're both things I was already doing. So I was already designing an app, and I decided to write a book about that process. And for the Meteor book, I was already working on an open source app, and the book is kind of a, you know, a compilation of all the knowledge that that I got through that app. So in both cases, you know, I didn't set out thinking, oh, what will I write about now? It was more, you know, I was already doing it, and writing a book was a good way to well, the case of the open source app, the app is free.
Speaker 3:So the book is a way to indirectly monetize the app and support the development of the app. So I think, me, since I'm not a full time writer, it's important to find a way how writing can integrate with the other things you do. That's how I choose my topics, I guess.
Speaker 1:Perfect. And Nathan, how about yourself?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, since my first book was about app design, that just came about because I had lots and lots of people asking me about that topic. What I was most of the freelance projects I was doing were iPhone and iPad applications. And so I got asked about it all the time. Lots of developer friends wanted to know how to make their apps better, and I didn't have a good place to point them.
Speaker 2:And so I decided to start writing down what I was working on. And we can come into this later, but one thing that inspired me is I worked on it just as a hobby. I was trying to help out friends, I had no idea that you could make money off of it until Sasha published his post about the money he made from step by step UI design. So thanks, And we'll get into pricing and making money for it and all of that. But that was a big turning point for me when I realized that writing a book didn't just have to be a hobby or a labor of love, it could also be a business.
Speaker 1:Perfect. And for myself, I've gone through a little bit of a pivot, I guess. I have I decided I was gonna write this book called Build and Launch at buildandlaunch.net. And I had about over a thousand people sign up for that mailing list so far. But as I was I started emailing them right away and asking them questions.
Speaker 1:So what do you want to know about? What's your biggest struggle? Etcetera. And during that time I wrote this essay called This is a Web Page that ended up going really crazy. And I had a bunch more people kind of jump on the list.
Speaker 1:And just from what was coming back, I realized a lot of people wanted to know how could they publish things like blog posts and get a lot of people to pay attention. So I decided to in some ways shelve that idea for the first book and instead write a little mini course on the subject of amplification as a response to all these people I'm talking to on my mailing list. So for me, the topic came from just talking to the people on my mailing list and figuring out what they actually needed, as opposed to what I wanted to give them.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 4:That's I don't think any of us were were writers. At least I know we weren't none of us were writers full time before we wrote our first book. Just an interesting thing to to note.
Speaker 3:Well, I think we had blogs, but, yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. But not book authors.
Speaker 3:Right. Right. Yeah. Well, think it's because the books we wrote, a lot of it is our own personal experience. So if we were just writers, we wouldn't have that experience designing, developing, running apps.
Speaker 2:Yep, that's true. So we all write on things that other people saw us as experts on in some way. So Paul, you had tons of people asking you about vegan recipes and that kind of thing. And what I always tell people is think about what people ask you, and that's what people in your circles are perceiving you as some kind of an expert in. Your grandma asking you to fix her computer over the holidays, she perceives you as some kind of an expert in that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:And so just always look, not that you should write a book about that, but just always look around for what people are asking you. And if you're hired for a particular job, either through clients or a full time job, then your boss thinks you're enough of an expert in that topic that you're worth paying. And so I think there's a decent chance that you know something on those topics that other people would pay to learn.
Speaker 3:So do you guys think it's important to be a good writer? Not Shakespeare, but how important is writing skills compared to actual knowledge and being an expert in a field?
Speaker 1:You have to be at least interested in learning the craft and getting better. I mean, think I'm an amazing writer, but I like communicating. I've always liked communicating. And I think that definitely helps. What do you think, Nathan?
Speaker 2:I think what you said about communicating is important. I think we all care more about communicating effectively than maybe writing perfectly. But if you're waiting to start writing until you're a good writer, then that's really, really bad. I had somebody email me maybe three months ago and they said, I started reading blog. I read the most recent post and then I went back and read your very first post.
Speaker 2:And then I read it chronologically from the first post to the most recent. And my first response was to be a little bit terrified because I didn't think that anybody would care that much, but also that those first posts were really terrible. And that's actually what they said. They said like, Your first posts were really, really terrible. And they didn't have any confidence in the writing.
Speaker 2:It seemed like you didn't know if you're providing any value. But they said that as they read through it over the next year of posts, they could see the writing getting a tiny bit better, that I had a little bit more confidence with every single post, and that I was delivering more value to the readers with every post. So, I would say start writing and use that to get better at writing and just focus on communicating clearly and you'll get there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think a good point on that, just hearing you say that, is sometimes I get the feeling like I'm not sure if I'm the oldest one here. I'm 33. And so sometimes I watch the young guys in our industry and they start, you know, they just jump into stuff and they start doing it. Sometimes that can be a little bit debilitating thinking, well, you know, all these guys are way ahead of me and I'm jumping in now basically at square zero. The problem with that thinking is that means you're never going to start anything.
Speaker 1:And I think the best advice I've had is the best time to start was yesterday and even the next best time is to start today. And even if you're an old guy that's way behind everyone else, the only way you're gonna get better is by starting today and not worrying about, you know, catching up or whatever.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And to I mean, I'm older than you, but Oh. Man. But, I mean, I kinda feel the same way. Like, don't think I don't think I'm a great writer, but I know I'm a lot better now than I was when I started writing.
Speaker 4:And the only way that I got better was by writing. And I think, Nathan, you even touched on this in your book Authority, how writing 500 to a thousand words a day, like making it a daily practice. I think you even hit like a whole year of doing that every single day. And I've been working at that as well and it really helps to And it's not stuff I think people Like I get emails from people saying like, I don't see published work every day, and I don't think that's the point. Like, of the stuff I write is crap, and I would never publish it.
Speaker 4:But the fact that I'm sitting down and I'm writing every single day is helping me get better ideas. And the more that I show up to do that writing, the more likely I am to have ideas that are worth publishing eventually. Like, if I sit down seven days a week, one of those ideas might be good enough to be a blog post. But if I sat down once and it wasn't good, then there's another week where I don't have anything to say publicly on on my website or someone else's.
Speaker 3:And I think there's a few questions in the chat room about the process of writing, yeah, you mentioned Nathan's Thousand Words, and also just which software we use, and, you know, like, when we start writing, what steps do we actually take?
Speaker 2:Why don't you lead off with that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good one.
Speaker 3:Sure. So I didn't have a fixed amount of words to write every day. I think I approach writing more maybe like design where start out with sketch, and then maybe you have a low fidelity mock up, then a high fidelity, then you start coding, and every iteration gets closer and closer to the real thing. So for me, was really like this where I would start with an outline of the chapters, and start filling them up. And I mean, I think every chapter, at least for Discover Meteor So I co wrote the book with Tom Coleman, who's a very good Meteor developer.
Speaker 3:But together, we must have gone through each chapter maybe 10 times or more, you know, just fixing things and making things clearer, rewriting stuff. So it was very, very iterative, at least for that book. But, like, Nathan, do you look like you just write the whole thing in one go or is it also
Speaker 2:Start at the first chapter and just write straight through the end. No. So what I do is I write a really rough outline, probably like those outlines that you wrote in high school for essays or whatever, just indenting for different sections or different thoughts. And then what I do is refine that a little bit and I use a program called Scrivener and I make a blank document on the side. So I make a folder for every what I think will be every chapter and then a blank document for every section within that.
Speaker 2:And then what I do is I I mark each one of them as unfinished or as, like, that I haven't started them. And then when I come to sit down to write for the day, I look at that, scan through it and see what am I most interested in writing about? Do I want to write about using email marketing to promote your book or do I want to write about the writing process for authority? And so then I just jump in, like all the topics are predefined, so then I just jump in at the specific one that interests me the most at the moment.
Speaker 4:And
Speaker 2:then one of the reasons I like Scrivener so much is it makes it really easy to rearrange those sections. And so I feel like I can try out different the book flowing in a different way, and then I can click one button and see it as one long manuscript. And so then I can go work on all the transitions and things like that. So that's how I write. Like someone mentioned earlier, I read a thousand words a day.
Speaker 2:That's inspired by Chris Guillebeau. And he has a great post. I think it's on his homepage about writing 300 some thousand words a year. I highly recommend reading that. And I track that writing in an app I wrote called Commit.
Speaker 2:And so I have this little reminder that pops up at 04:00 every day and says, hey, were you gonna write a thousand words today? And so I just check it off and say yes. And it's at, I should look, it's at about three hundred and eighty days in a row right now.
Speaker 4:I have the same reminder, but mine swears at me. That's what I need to actually get it done.
Speaker 1:Nice. A beginner, I started writing my stuff. I created a, like a text outline and then just in like text edit. And then I started writing right in iBooks. So I just created the sections and just started writing right in there.
Speaker 1:And about halfway through, I realized I needed to do things like collaborate, get an editor to look at it. And I also wanted to track how much, like how much time I was spending writing. And so about halfway through, I switched to draft. That's, draftin.com. And for myself, idea of writing a thousand words a day doesn't motivate me.
Speaker 1:What motivates me is when I get an idea and I'll just stay up all night writing it, and then I'll be done. And I might have three or four days of nothing, but, and maybe I'll change my mind, but that kind of regimented, like every single day hasn't worked for me yet, but kind of following the passion and just writing when I feel like writing is working for me so far.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I'm with you on that because especially for a technical book, you know, sometimes you'll write a thousand words, sometimes you'll write, you know, 10 words and then hit a stumbling block or something that you don't know how to explain. So it's really hard to set a fixed goal like like this, at least for me.
Speaker 4:I like to use IA Writer because there's no you can't format it, and I would spend way too much time trying to pick the right typeface, and the right line height, and the right I would spend too much time tinkering with it, so I start all of my writing in IA Writer just because I it is what it is, you can't do anything to it. And then once I've written it, then I bring it into something else, and I I start playing with it, and I start rearranging it, and that sort of thing. But I write the the reason I do the the the daily practice as well, and obviously this might be different for Nathan, is because I'm trying to get better at expressing myself through writing. So even if what I'm writing is just like stream of consciousness or just total crap, I'm still trying to get out. And sometimes I write about topics that I would never publish, but I'm just trying to get it out and trying to because writing in your own voice is is harder to do than it seems.
Speaker 4:It seems easy to be yourself in your writing, when it really is difficult and it takes a lot of work sometimes to be able to do that. So the daily practice has really helped me with that for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:One of the other reasons I hit a specific goal every day is because not doing that, I would hit a writer's block of some kind and then not push past it. I would just go, oh, I'm stuck. I'm not inspired. And I give up a few minutes in and not push past it and force myself to do it. Often, get stuck in a particular area and I switch to writing for a different project, writing a blog post, something like that.
Speaker 4:Do you find you get less writer's block the more that you write?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Another thing, perfect solution for me for writer's block is I go down to my favorite local cafe, either get a glass of wine or mimosa, depending on the time of day. I always write much more.
Speaker 1:One thing that's I highly recommend
Speaker 2:a little bit of alcohol.
Speaker 1:Yeah. The one thing that's really helpful for me in terms of getting writing done is having a deadline. So when I said I was going to publish this thing September 1, that's what helps me. So I might not be writing every single day, but I I know that I've gotta get this thing done by September 1.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I wanna jump in with one or I guess two quick writing tips that I got from It was Tim Ferriss and Neil Strauss did an interview. You can find it on Tim's blog. And it was done through CreativeLive and it was really good. But two things I got out of it were, one, write to a specific person.
Speaker 2:So especially when you're writing these technical stuff where it's really prescriptive, like do this, then do that, you can either come off super casual or really patronizing and, I don't know, stuffy. And so Tim's advice on that was to write to a specific person. And so I actually wrote the book Designing Web Applications to my brother-in-law because he was a web designer learning to design software and he was right at that exact point. And so I didn't write it in these totally vague terms. I thought, what does Philip need to know about this particular topic?
Speaker 2:And I wrote it what I wanted him to know about that. And that helped me get past so much writer's block. Sometimes I even put in Philip comma, hit enter twice, and then start writing that section as if it was exactly an email to him. And that helped me a lot. The other thing is when you hit something that needs research, so a date, anything specific, just type in the letters TK and move right along.
Speaker 2:That's just a way of saying you could write to do or something else, but it's just saying like, I'm going to come back to this later. And that way you can keep your thought process going. And the only reason for TK is because it doesn't really appear in the English language. Though it does unfortunately appear in the name of my app, ConvertKit. So it doesn't work for me.
Speaker 2:But anyway, those two right tips had helped me a lot. And I think now we should do questions.
Speaker 1:Yeah. First question, how have you gotten over the hurdle of not feeling like enough of an expert to self publish something people will find valuable?
Speaker 4:If you get paid to do that, then that's a good Nathan said that in the beginning. If you get paid to do something, then chances are you're an expert enough to write something that somebody else will wanna read. So that's always a good thing to that's an that's the easiest way, think, is that somebody's paid me to do web design for fifteen years, so I feel confident as an expert to write about that. I've owned a business for fifteen years. I feel confident that I can write about that.
Speaker 4:So that that's a really good point that Nathan brought up in the beginning.
Speaker 1:Maybe talk about what scares you most about publishing your own stuff. Was there any time where you guys were in the midst of releasing something that you had any kind of fear?
Speaker 3:I think what scares everybody is releasing the book and then nobody buys it. Simple as that. And I mean that's why there's books like Authority that teach you how to minimize that fear and that risk. Of course, you can make it go away completely, but there are steps, you know, like setting up an email list or doing stuff like that. So there are steps that you can take to minimize the risk.
Speaker 3:And for me, for my last book, I wasn't really that afraid that it wouldn't sell because I there was a demand. I knew there wasn't any reason for people not to buy it. From that, no fear.
Speaker 2:I think you'll always have fear of some kind. When I came up with my first book, I had no idea if people would buy it and it sold really well. The second one, whether rational or not, I had the fear of I can't repeat the success from last time. And I was able to. And then even for authority, I thought, Okay, I'm successful with design books, but nobody's going to buy a book where I talk about writing books.
Speaker 2:And I was wrong every time, but I guess my point is that I've come to terms with that I'm always going to have some kind of fear like that, and I need to push through it and launch and build the product anyway.
Speaker 4:Same, and I think that you brought up a good point with I think I was more scared the second book because you've already established that, oh, well, you can sell so many books. You can you can do this, and your name's out there as an expert or an authority or as an author or something. And then you put something else out, and it's like, well, if that flops, then I'm gonna look way worse than if I put something out that nobody really knew who I was anyways. So then so I don't know. For I think it gets worse for me every time I I launch something or I release something, and I just get more afraid.
Speaker 4:But I mean, everybody brought the same point. Like, I think we're all afraid in some way and we all just kind of push past that because we know the reward is accomplishing something and that's a good thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I think that it's normal to be worried at different parts of the process. I think it's actually good to talk about that because sometimes in our industry we have a lot of people that are really self confident and or seem to be really confident and they never get anxious about anything. The truth is if you're like the night before launching something, you're going to have some anxiety about what's going to happen.
Speaker 1:Maybe the best thing you can do is ask what's the worst thing that can happen. You know, like no one's going to die if I release this and no one likes it, right?
Speaker 4:Yeah. James Altucher has pretty much the same thing. He says, if I have this if I try this idea, will I die or will I never be able to have another idea again? If the answer is no, then it's not as bad as you think it's gonna be. Even if the very worst thing happens, it's not gonna be the worst thing that could ever happen.
Speaker 1:Exactly. I think this is a good one. From the consumer perspective, self published works are a minefield of quality. What steps do you take to ensure that you have a quality book? Do you hire editors, illustrators, etcetera?
Speaker 4:Yes. I can I can take that one first? I have an editor that I work with that I work with for all my books, and she the the job of an editor is to push you to write more and to write better, and also to make you seem smarter. Because they know like, I don't know the, like, the ins and outs of all the grammar or the English stuff. So and it looks bad.
Speaker 4:Like, if you publish a book and there's spelling mistakes or typos with that, obviously that happens sometimes, but you can minimize that if you have a copy editor or an editor or that sort of thing. And I think the other thing is that because there's a lot of e books now, is having that social proof. It's just like if you're trying to sell any kind of product. If you have social proof, then kind of put that forward. If you have testimonials or people are talking about it on Twitter or if a magazine or publication mentions you, showing all these things that you exist and that your product exists outside of the website that you constructed is a good selling feature to give people the trust that they need to click the buy button and to put in their credit card.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think about this a lot actually. And maybe one thing I wanted to talk about was if we all think the market is getting saturated for self published books. So maybe we'll end this section on that topic. Right now I use Draft, like I said before, and you can hire an editor right in their interface. I think it's like $15 or something like that.
Speaker 1:So I've used that a couple times. And between that and sharing it with other people and having them read it and give me feedback, that's what I'm doing for editing and quality control.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I guess I'm a bit lucky in that my mother is a professional copy editor. And so she edits all of my books.
Speaker 4:Nice.
Speaker 2:And that's worked out really well. Paul, like what you said, I seem a lot smarter because of her. There's a lot of stupid stuff that would have made it into my book if I wasn't paying someone to make sure that didn't happen.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Editors make a huge difference. And even even if you can't afford an editor, having a friend or two just proofread it. Like, even if you have no money and you're putting something out, have somebody else read it before somebody's paying for it to read it. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And mistakes will happen. You're not going to to get a perfect book out there. That's okay. It's an ebook. You can release more versions.
Speaker 2:You didn't just kill a thousand trees to to print it.
Speaker 1:Next week in part two, we talk about is the market for self published books getting saturated. There's a lot of kind of big names getting into it as well as a lot of other interest from self publishers. Is there room for somebody just starting out? We also talk about what tools we've used to create the end product, if we outsource, and if you should publish your book online for free. If you like the show, please give us a review in iTunes.
Speaker 1:It's as easy as searching for Product People and clicking five stars. You can follow me, Justin Jackson, on Twitter MI Justin. You can even follow the show at ProductPeopleTV. Wanna send me an email? People@bizbox.ca.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you next week.