Wanna Write A Book?
Current situation for aspiring authors
Writing a book is an awesome achievement. Once completed, the authors face up to getting it publishing. Typically, they buy a book on publishing. Once published, they realize they have to market the book so they buy another book, this one on marketing.
In effect, the author treats this as three separate projects. This approach is the result of the way stuff is explained. Books on publishing rarely, if ever, mention marketing. Books on marketing don't mention publishing. Consequently authors treat these as separate projects to be worked on sequentially. In other words, they don’t have a plan!
The reality
The reality of the situation is that writing a book is a long-term, multi-phase, overlapping project. The phases are:
* Planning the book
* Writing the book
* Publishing the book
* Marketing the book
* Dealing with author business issues
Another factor that is ignored in the current situation is that marketing has to begin long before the book is published. And the business issues? They should be addressed early on, not after the fact.
To summarize: writing a book is best accomplished through an approach that integrates all five phases into a single project. Unfortunately, it is a rare first-time author who understands this situation because it is never explained this way.
My response
I've written, published and marketed books for over a dozen years. I know how newbie authors approach a book project and it's a wrong approach.
A while back, I decided to document a different approach. One that incorporates all five phases into a single project.
Whiteboards
My initial work on this project involved white boarding. I chose this approach because I like to see information presented graphically rather than in a list or a table. To create the whiteboards, I chose to use Scrintal.com, a software app I often use for developing whiteboards. Ultimately, I needed seven whiteboards to adequately explain the project. The last one is a concept map that explains the author business from the time the book is written to the Profit & Loss statement. It links the entire process together.
The whiteboards are:
* Wanna write a book? (an overview of the entire process)
* Fiction writing workshop
* Publishing (Including initial marketing tasks)
* Marketing
* Author business
* Concept map for an author business
Whiteboard link
The seventh whiteboards is an overview with links to the other six whiteboards. You can find it here https://beta.scrintal.com/b/creating-your-first-book--f83yr
WritersARC website
Over the last five years, i've created a lot of content on all the phases of the book project. This includes books, courses, articles, videos, spreadsheets and checklists. Unfortunately, this material is spread all over the internet, much of it on obscure websites. I’m now accumulating this content to make it available on a single site
.The objective of the site is explain this reality and to help authors address all phases of the book project.
Creating a book
Another project I'm working on is to turn the whiteboards into a book called: Creating Your First Book
A comprehensive guide spanning the entire long-term project: from planning through marketing and starting your author business.
Look for it in the Fall
Check out the WritersARC website. New content is added all the time.