Writers, How to Get Unstuck and Get Motivated, How to Publish Your Book Show 1/26/15, 2pm EST

Join me Tuesday at 2:00pm EST with Becky Norwood of Spotlight on Your Business and we talk about getting your writing and staying motivated. Writers, Getting Unstuck and Getting Motivated




Techniques mentioned in the broadcast for keeping your motivation going.

• Cooking timer method, no editing, blah, blah, blah
• Perfection Freezes Progress
• Top Ten Technique
• Hitting the Publish Button
• Steve Pressman quote
• Make a sample book
• Dictate your book into your phones voice transcription
• Conduct an interview and then transcribe the text
• Change your location
• Exercise, daily walk
• Set a Deadline with penalties, money or task
• Get an accountability partner
• Have a comfortable writing location
• Set a schedule for your writing, same time every day, set amount
• Writing a letter to your sister technique

I will fill in some resources for getting transcriptions here.

Author Hits Number 1 in Style on Amazon with Color Your Home Bohemian Using How to Market Your Book Course

I had a wonderful message today from author Stacy Taylor who used my How to Market Your Book course to get some pretty cool results with the launch of her new book, Color Your Home Bohemian.

Bruce! I'm so excited I just had to share with you! I took your online course & look at my Amazon rankings! And on my very first book with less than 10 people on my e-mail list, and a modest social media following, too! I did it! Yay! A huge thank you hug for teaching me how! I'm telling everyone about your awesome instruction! You rock! Have an awesome day, Bruce!

Thanks, Bruce! I watched your course How to Market Your Book. And clearly it works! I have several new author friends & I've been telling them all to check out your courses. You give such great clear instruction, & I was absolutely blown away when I saw how well it worked! I sat there staring at the computer screen when my Amazon rankings came up and thinking, wow, this can't be true,....how could that be possible,...then realizing it actually WAS true, & screaming with joy so loud I'm sure I woke up all the neighbors! Haha! Yes, I would be honored to have you share my results! You may post my results and / or comments anywhere you like. Thanks again, Bruce!
Hahaha! I'm so excited! I can't believe this is happening! Thank you so much, Bruce!!!!!

Well done Stacy, this is very exciting.

Check out Stacy book on Amazon; Color Your Home Bohemian: A bohemian Home Decor Book/Adult Coloring Book

Self-Publishing Questions Answered with Bruce Jones and How to Publish Your Book Show

I will be on Blab, Wednesday afternoon at 2:00pm answering any question you have on publishing your book with my How to Publish Your Book Show. I will talk on Print or Kindle ebook. Come on by. Today we start off the show with Why CreateSpace? See you there.

In today's show I mentioned Gumroad.com, I love it as a place to host and sell content.
And you can see all my publishing courses here on my Publishing School site, Click this link, http://bruce-the-book-guy.usefedora.com/

How to Come Up with a Title for Your Course Using FaceBook Polls

My very scientific survey recording device.

I just ran an interesting experiment in several Facebook groups to come up with a title for my new course. This exercise can also be used to survy a book title or really anything that you want. Using the poll feature on a post you can test several different ideas and see which resonate with your audience. I posted 4 different titles in 5 different Facebook groups that related to my topic, Formatting Kindle Books. Almost within minutes you start getting results and they continue to come in over the next day. This is also another reason to build out your own Facebook Group, it is a very powerful tool. (I have a course coming soon on how to build a Facebook Group for your business or cause.)

The titles I tested were
• How to Format Your Kindle Book, 16 responses
• Kindle Formatting Success, 3 responses
• Formatting Your Kindle Book, 2 responses
• Kindle Formatting Simplified, 10 responses

I also researched Google and Amazon using the instant search box to see how the crowd and search sees this topic. I have settled on
How to Format Your Book for Kindle

Doing this does a number of things.
1. It announces to the world that you are releasing a product. It is a product announcement without being salesie. It give you some time to get all the parts working
2. You get feedback very quickly, sometime withing seconds.
3. People feed you new ideas. One title that was interesting was How to Format Your Kindle book in 3 Days. I didn't use it as a title but I might use something like in my course promo copy.
4. It gives you a great reason to interact with your audience. You are giving them something to do.
5. You see which of the groups you post in has activity and a good idea of where to come back to when you launch.

If you want to be notified of the launch date or other info around the course be sure to sign up over on the right. I will keep you informed as the course gets closer. Estimating launch for Feb 15, 2016.

How to Format Your Book for Kindle Course is Live!

My newest course, How to Format Your Book for Kindle is now up and live. This online video course addresses one of the biggest questions I get on how to format a book for Kindle. Having your book up on Amazon Kindle and selling is really cool but first we have to get it there. How do you prepare you manuscript for Kindle. This course tells you how step-by-step. I cover from your MS Word file all the way to hitting the publish.

This course covers:

• Kindle Formatting Guidelines, an overview
• Converting Text and File Prep for Kindle, this one video answers the question that has people pulling their hair out.
• Cleaning up Text for Kindle, Spacing
• Kindle Formatting, Returns, Spacing Before and After
• Kindle Formatting, Styling Text
• Proofing Your Kindle Book Using Kindle Previewer

Then we move on to images, Table of Contents for both Mac and PC and cover design
• Kindle Image Guidelines, Kindle Image Test, I went out and tried a bunch of different size images to see what happens
• Creating a Table of Contents for Mac and PC
• Cover creation, including using Canva.com and PowerPoint to design your cover

Uploading and Publishing Your Kindle Book
• Setting up your Publishing Account on Amazon
• Kindle Prep
• Uploading and Publishing Your Book

To learn more please visit the course page, click below
http://bruce-the-book-guy.usefedora.com/courses/how-to-format-your-book-for-kindle

Journals and Workbooks Are Easy Items to Make and Sell on Amazon and Expand Your Products

Journal Books are hot these days along with all of the coloring books that have flooded the market. Think of them as coloring books without pictures. They are easy and fun to produce and sell on Amazon using print-on-demand though KDP.Amazon, what we use to call CreateSpace. Journal books can also add nice additional product to your mix.  If you have written a book, journals and workbooks make a great extension to your current book and as a product to sell.  

Howard Hales' new Marketing Journal, made with PowerPoint

There are many different kinds of journals that you can make, these include: Prayer Journals, Meditation Journals, Gratitude Journals, Travel Journals, Exercise Journals, Food and Recipe Journals, Medicine Journals, Planting and Gardening Journals, Inspirational Journals, Doodle, Art and Sketch Journals, Baby and Pregnancy Journals and many more.

Journals can be simple with just lines or complex with different page designs, ideas and tasks. They can be stand alone like a travel journal or be part of another book, such as a workbook that is a companion to a tips or lesson book.

By Becky Norwood

One of the ways I think about getting ideas for journals is to look around you for repetitive tasks that need to be recorded. Like a diet journal, every day has to be written down. Journals can support another book or a period of time. The advantage of building one around a period of time is that the customer will need to buy the journal again and again. Something to think about when you are looking for ideas for your next journal project.

See Becky Norwood's Networking Journal book based around keeping track of business contacts. A great use of a journal based on an activity.


Think about how you can take the type of journals above and mix them into these different journal structures.

• Simplest would be just blank pages.

• Add some lines or grids for drawing and writing.

• Add some quotes to the lines or grids, inspirational, tips, spiritual says.

• Add some illustrations to the pages, jazz them up a little, part coloring, part activities. How about adding puzzles and activities.

• A task driven journal that walks the reader through a series of steps, 100 days to a better life, that kind of book.

• A log journal, like a seasonal gardening journal, or health journal for diabetes or dieting. A book where you record daily activities and results. This kind of journal has a time frame on it, you need to buy it again and again.

• A journal that supports a book, the companion workbook. This is a great way to expand an existing book and add sales. Add some videos and you have a course.

• Lots of us produce information books, 52 tips, lessons learned, that kind of book. At the end of each chapter we often ask the reader questions or we start discussions around our books topic. Take your current book and expand out the questions or come up with some new ones, add lines for writing the answers, maybe make the book size bigger. It is a version of the workbook idea above. This book includes all the text of the original book, just expanded out with all the activities. Again this becomes a nice add on sale to the original book. Add the word workbook on the front cover.

Journals are pretty easy to produce using programs like InDesign, PowerPoint and even MS Word, really any program that can edit text and produce a pdf file. Use KDP.Amazon for printing and selling.

To learn more you can check out my latest course on How to Make Journal Books. In the course I show you how to set up your journal book using InDesign and PowerPoint. Yes PowerPoint, you can a make a book with a program you probably already have on your computer. I have even seen people make them using Google Slides Presentation. So it can be pretty simple. The course also includes pages and cover templates for both InDesign and PowerPoint for a 160, 6" x 9" journal, along with step by step instructions. Check out the video intro above.

NEW TEMPLATES I have now added a full 140 page, 6" x9" with cover template that you can open, add art, customize and publish on KDP.Amazon. It comes in both PowerPoint and InDesign. It includes a title page, legal page, and all the pages set up with lines ready to go. The package also includes a laid out ready cover template for a 140 page book.

Sample pages from the InDesign and PowerPoint Journal template

J. Bruce Jones is an author of over 50 books and a product developer of lots of stuff, Want to know how to publish your own book? Check out my latest book Self-Publishing SECRETS, Create, Publish and Launch Your Book. Click here to pick up a copy.

Congratulations to Becky Norwood on Her New Business Networking Journal

Congratulations to Becky Norwood of Spotlight on Your Business, for the release of her new Networking Journal Book created from the lessons learned from my new course Easy Journal Books, so cool. I love seeing results and action.

Here she describes it in her own words

"So, after having J. Bruce Jones as a guest presenter in my Journey to Authorship class, on how to create a journal/devotional/coloring book...I put together what I wanted and had my cousin Krista put it together after she attended the class. Well, she finished it, and together I walked her through how to upload it to CreateSpace.com to be available on Amazon.com. Well...we did that last night...today she already has it in her hot little hands! Me? I ordered copies to give to my BNI (Business Networking International) group. Because I ordered enough for my own chapter, I'm told it will be here in 3 weeks! Talk about exciting! This journal is a tracking system for people who use networking to grow their businesses and is available on Amazon...ALREADY!"

To check out the book on Amazon.com, Click Here http://amzn.to/1VC9Tzm

To learn more about the Easy Journal Books course please visit our course home. Click Here, Easy Journal Books

How to Line Up Text so it Matches the Lines on the Page when Making a Journal Book

A question from a student from my course on Easy Journal Books: How do I Line up Text so it matches the Lines and spacing on each page.

Answer: When Making a Journal Book in PowerPoint the trick for getting your text and lines to line up is to use the leading feature in type specing to line stuff up, You want to match the leading of your text with the leading of your lines. Leading is the space between lines type. Type is written like this 10/12, this is ten point type with 12 points of leading between each line, but that is also a measurement that you can use to line things up. All of this will be done on the master slide

1. Make a block of text that is the size and spacing (leading) that you like

2. Change the text to lines using the underscore key stroke. Use the block of type and instead of making words, make lines. Adjust the spacing, top to bottom

3. If you don't like the line thickness of the Underscore character, then use them as a template that we can draw lines on top of. Draw lines on top of the underscored lines.

4. Use the Alignment feature of PowerPoint to even out the spacing of the lines

5. Delete the Underscored lines and keep the drawn lines. Group them to keep them together and you should be ready to go

To learn more about the Easy Journal Books course please click this link 

Be sure to sign up for my free How to Market Your Book course over on the right.