Creating a Book Using The Top Ten Technique and Building Products

Today I did a follow up interview with Gale Turner Brown about how she is writing her new book, How to Run a Blab TV Show, which is on creating and managing TV shows on Blab.im. Gail is becoming one of the top experts on developing and running Blab.im shows. Using the Top Ten Technique from my Yes You Can Write a Book program, we developed the initial book outline. We then moved to using an interview based on those questions to generate the text for the book. Today's interview dug into the process and how we did it. Gail can now move on to finishing up her first book. In today's interview we also talked about using your book content to make products and selling them on Gumroad.com and Teachable.com. Books are great ways to develop content that you can later use products. It was a fun, active interview today on writing books, creating content and making products. This video is almost a mini course all by itself.

The Top Ten Tips Technique Quick Steps 

 
1. Write down the 10 best tips or lessons on or about your business, or your expertise. Keep these to one or two sentences each. #1 is your best then follow with 9 more.

2. Write out one paragraph for each tip or lesson, just one paragraph.


3. For each lesson expand that 1 paragraph to 3-4 paragraphs, flush out the concepts.

4. Add an author bio along with a photo and contact info at the back of the book. Add a resource list at the back of the book, an intro for the front, a table of contents and any additional info that might apply to your book. If you offer programs or consulting, drop that in also, give readers a call to action. We are talking 28-36 pages when done. This isn't a manifesto.

5. Have your book edited and proofed. After your book is formatted and laid out have it printed out and re-edit again.

6. Format your book in MS Word or some similar word processing application such as Google Doc, Pages, or Scrivner. If you are going to print your book, create an original document that is the page size of your book. 5 1⁄2” x 8 1⁄2” is a great size and is easy to get printed at a quickie print shop for those first copies. If you have access to Adobe InDesign that also works very well. A local designer can help with this stage.

7. Create a separate file for the cover. For an ebook/Kindle, front cover only and save it as a jpg. For a printed book on CreateSpace, set up a full cover spread, back, spine and front. Both Kindle and CreateSpace/Amazon have online tools you can use to make a cover. If you are using a local quick print shop like Staples you can leave out the spine.

8. If sending your book to Kindle then save it as an html file for the web. If you are going to print, export or save as a pdf file. Also export your cover file.

9. Upload your book files to Kindle, or CreateSpace.com, CreateSpace is the print-on- demand, self-publishing side of Amazon.com, or take the two pdf files to a local quick print shop. If hosting on-line at Amazon, add descriptions, author bio, categories and keywords.

10. Market your book though the popular social media channels; FaceBook, Linkedin, Twitter, Pinterest, your website, and YouTube. These lessons make great videos and blog posts. Give it out to potential and current customers. Make the book available on your website as a pdf download.


I have a companion book that I have been working on that goes with this technique,
Click Here to Download Yes You Can Write a Book, Top Ten Tips Book

To learn more about Gail Turner Brown please visit her site
https://smallbizshowtv.blogspot.com/p/shows.html

Start Writing Your Book by Listing the Biggest Question You Get Asked

Announcing the beginning of my new book writing program Yes You Can Write a Book. We begin with the first step which is getting down a list of the top ten questions you get asked the most. These can also be the top tips, lessons or ideas you have on a topic. Watch the video to get started.

I also have a companion workbook that goes along with the program. The workbook is available at the companion membership site, YesYouCanWriteaBook.com




1. Write down the 10 best tips or lessons on or about your business, or your expertise or your knowledge. Keep these to one or two sentences each. #1 is your best then follow with 9 more.

A. Write down your #1 best business or experience tip or lesson.

B. Now write down nine additional lessons. Keep these to a sentence or two. No paragraphs just the lessons.

C. Use the Google Top Ten Tips in search technique, the Amazon Book Table of Contents or the Book Review technique to find and flush out your ideas.

These are the main tips or lessons about your experience or expertise that you want to pass on to the next person or might be useful to a customer. This is the core of your book. This first pass is a quick exercise. You most likely know all of these right off the top of your head. I usually start this process by asking, “what is your number 1 tip?” Don’t do a lot of thinking on this, don’t self edit, just write down your number 1 tip. Ok now write 9 more and you are done. You can always change these later, but these tips are usually the things you tell people all the time, or the things people ask you about.



Step 1
Write out your #1 best business or life experience tip or question you get asked. If you had to give one piece of advice on your topic this would be it. Don’t think to hard about this, just get it out.

And then write out nine more of your best tips or questions. Keep these to one or two sentences each. I have include work sheets in the book that you can print out or fill in in pdf and save.

Be sure to download the free Workbook, it is in the course preview area in the membership site
YesYouCanWriteABook.com 

After you have written your Top Ten List come over and post them in the FaceBook How to Publish Your Book Group Page

Marketing Your Book by Blogging the Content

Question from our Facebook Group, How to Market Your Book:
Since my books sales have stalled (total of 5 for 3 books in April) do you think that I can now put up chapters on my sites to start and create interest. So far I just put them on Amazon and set out some tweets and Facebook post. So I guess my real question is first of all is it allowed and secondly has anyone found this to work???

My Answer:
I am a big fan of getting your book content out to the world. My recommendation is to blog your book bit by bit. Around 350-500 words in each posts. I have been using this method for quite a while to promote and sell my books. I do it with image books and my non fiction books. By doing this you are releasing quality, relevant content. Google brings interested readers and then you wrap ads for your books around the content and send the readers to Amazon with direct links. Selling books is like selling anything, you need a lot of viewers. I believe you are working in the 1% world, similar to direct mail. You need 99-199 people to get one person to buy. You need traffic.

One question that people ask is how does Google treat duplicate content, Kindle and your website. Google likes to find the best version of your content and an active blog with subject focused content will do that. The question also comes up as to why would someone buy your book when they can read it right there. Well the answer is most won't be buying anyways, you are looking for that one who does. It is also kind of a pain to read an entire book blog posts by blog posts. I always want to reward the visitor for making the effort of coming to your website. Solve the immediate question, and then move the reader to Amazon to read more.

The other thing you are doing is that you are curating content. In between your book content you will mix other relevant content. At the end of each post you put a small paragraph that says this content is an excerpt from your book, Book Title, by author, etc. with a live link to Amazon. You also put a thumbnail of the book on the side linked to Amazon. Google brings readers and off they go to Amazon. Instead of creating all kinds of new content you can use your current content to promote your book. In reality you might have 30-100 blog posts worth of content just sitting there.

The other thing that happens is that you can look at the Google Analytic and see what people like. You are doing market research on your book. You now have a very good idea of what people like in your book and don't like. Maybe you discover your book is focused on the wrong thing, or maybe the title is wrong. Start at page one and blog it out, Pick good pithy titles, maybe add a little more, put the title and links paragraph at the bottom and see what happens. If you book isn't really moving you have nothing to loose and test your content and see what happens. Once you post, then Tweet, Facebook post, Google +, the post. Make a video of the post, and put it up on YouTube. Get it out to the world. People aren't going to book stores and most of us aren't in book stores with our self-published book, you have to let the world know what you have.

Stats page from my Google Blogger Website

  Click Here and come over and join our Publishing Facebook Group and join in the dialog

General Online Book Marketing

Promoting your book is something that you need to do continually over a long period of time through a lot of different channels. There isn’t one specific method or way to do it. The goal here is to be continually marketing your book. This chapter contains a variety of different ideas that you can do.

We start with having your media kit ready if you are connecting with a podcaster or blogger. Media outlets need cover shots, bios, descriptions and more. You want these ready to go. We all have some kind of phone, usually with the ability to record audio and video. Once your media kit is ready then start building some video and audio content that you can use to spread your message.

 One of the things that we tend to forget is that we have a lot of electronic fingers out into the world. We have bios, online listings, signatures all kinds of stuff. We need to keep these updated with out latest bios and accomplishments including our book. And remember to give clear links to your Amazon sales page.

 ___Produce some promo book cover photos made in 3 sizes for each book, 6”, 4”, and 2”, rgb format, at 72dpi and 300dpi which you will use for print applications.

Same specs for the headshots also. If you are giving a talk they will want a head shot and book shot for promoting the event.

___Promo headshots.

___Promo headshots with book cover.

 ___Produce several book announcement videos, very easy to produce with a smart phone. Host these on YouTube and then share across your social media platforms.

___Produce several book trailer videos.

___Continue to make videos around your book topic.

___Connect videos to all social media sites. Be sure to have healthy video description with live http:// links and calls to action.

___Press releases written and edited.

___Press releases sent out to PR sites, free and paid.

___Build your book media page on your website or blog.

___Put an ad graphic for your book on your site, link it to the Amazon sales page.

___Fill out Amazon Author Central page once your book is live.

The above text is from the International Best Selling Book by J. Bruce Jones, Book Marketing Checklist for Self-Publishing is available at Amazon in Print and Kindle. J. Bruce Jones is the author and creator of over 40 books and training courses for authors who are self-publishing their books.

 To Buy a Copy, Please Click Below

Print: Book Marketing Checklist for Self-Publishing with Complete Action Plan 

Kindle: Book Marketing Checklist for Self-Publishing with Complete Action Plan