1.
James,
what inspired you to pen Don’t Write A Crappy Book!? Well, I’ve been working with business authors
for 4 years now, and I noticed a big hole in the whole process. These authors -
brilliant, talented business people - kept on making some of the same mistakes
over and over again, and those mistakes were getting in the way of the results
they were looking for in their businesses. The worst part was that most of the
time they didn’t even know they were making them. And the book “gurus” they
enlisted to help make their books great often overlooked or even encouraged
many of those mistakes. Frankly, I got so sick of that that I couldn’t NOT
write this book. There was just too great a need to name these totally
preventable mistakes and provide clear guidance on how to avoid and counter
them.
2.
You
highlight 17 mistakes that will kill a business book. How do some savvy
authorpreneurs avoid them? Well,
the shameless plug answer is that the savviest of authorpreneurs avoid those
mistakes by reading my book! But in all seriousness, the best way to avoid
those mistakes is to educate yourself on what they are. And like I said, a lot
of the resources out there are NOT teaching these mistakes or how to avoid
them. One of the biggest, sexiest examples of this is the directive to write
your book as fast and cheap as possible. So be very careful who you listen
to--and especially who you pay--for book creation advice. All these programs
and so-called experts out there promising you substantial results with a book
you write in 30 days, a week, even a weekend, and then spend little or no money
on good editing or design - they’re not setting you up for the success that you
want. If you’re at all familiar with principles of project management, you know
that something can be quick, cheap, or good, but you only get to pick two at a
time. So if you’re going for quick and cheap, don’t expect the end product to
be very good. Just letting go of THAT idea, that you can write a great book
fast and cheap, will do wonders to save your business book from certain death.
And that’s just one mistake to learn about, one shark in the waters to avoid.
Go out of your way to find resources and people who care about quality
books, not just flashy Amazon bestsellers or high-churn get-published-quick
schemes, and learn your book strategies and tactics from them.
3.
How
can writers connect their book to their readership? First, tell stories! Stories can literally make
or break your book. This goes just as much for non-fiction writing as it does
for fiction, by the way. Non-fiction books with no stories are the things
people joke about reading to put themselves to sleep on sleepless nights, and
you do NOT want that book to be yours! Not only do stories keep the reader
engaged and able to absorb the information being transmitted, but they create
that much-needed connection between author and reader. And second, understand that people are not
reading your book to learn about you, they’re reading it to learn about themselves.
So you’ve got to have a connection to your readers - you’ve got to know
who they are, what they care about, and what they want and need. Once you know
who they are and how they’re hurting, you can tell stories that they
specifically relate to and give them guidance that solves their individual
problems. Otherwise, you’ll just be talking about yourself on page 150 when
your reader couldn’t get past page 15.
4.
Why
do you encourage authors to talk about their book while they’re still writing
it? It’s an easy way to do
marketing and writing at the same time, so you’re not thinking about them as
two separate things that you have to strategize and plan for independently of
each other. It also allows you to connect with your audience before your book
comes out, and can get them ready and as excited about your book as you are
about it. And it’s an easy way to get into a marketing mindset. Oftentimes book
marketing can feel like a really unfamiliar thing, like you’re trying to speak
in a different language, or you’re trying to take on a task that you haven’t
been trained to do, and this tactic helps you approach the marketing in a way
that doesn’t feel like that. It enables you to take the idea of book marketing
from feeling like, this is a big scary thing that I have to do but don’t
know how to do, to feeling more like ok, maybe I don’t know how to do
everything, but I know how to talk about things I’m excited about, and I’m
really excited about this book! It’s a much easier and more natural
approach to the whole process.
5.
Why
do authors have to have a good editor? Editors help you say what you want to say better than you could
say it yourself. They take your precious words and make them clearer, more
consistent, and more commanding. And they help you fix the mistakes you will
make in the writing process--and you will make some (whether you read my book
or not). I’ll let you in on a secret: I made at least two of the mistakes I
address in my book while I was writing it. And my editors caught them
and helped me fix them, because I was too close to my own writing to see where
I’d gotten messed up. I won’t sugar-coat this: you aren’t as good a writer as
you think you are. No writer is, myself included. If you don’t want to end up
writing a crappy book, you’ve got to have a good editor on your side.
6.
Why
do you tell writers to let go of perfectionism? Perfectionism slows you down. When you get
bogged down in feeling like you can’t submit your text to your editor until
it’s “perfect,” you’ll never finish! Perfect doesn’t exist, and the more time
you waste trying to get it there when it’s already pretty great, the less
available you are to do the work that you’re writing this book to support. Let
the editor help you take it those final yards; that’s what they’re here to do. I
have a love-hate relationship with the concept of “done is better than
perfect.” I think most book gurus take it way too far and sacrifice the quality
of your book on the altar of just getting it published already. But there’s one
(and only one) time where that idea is 100% on target: with your first draft.
The job of your first draft is to suck as much as possible, so that you and
your editor can improve it as much as possible. Of course, you want to put your
very best into it, but no matter how much you do that, it’s still going
to be a shitty first draft. So the faster you just get it done, the sooner you
and your editor can start making it better.
7.
Why
are there so many crappy books in the marketplace? Well, we already talked about the overarching
prevalence of authors making these mistakes that they don’t know they’re
making, like trying to write a book as fast and cheap as possible or not
telling stories. But I think the biggest reason authors inadvertently write
crappy books is that they lose sight of writing a book that they’re really,
truly proud of. They sacrifice the quality of the end result, their book, in
the name of just getting it out there, often before their business is even
ready to support a book. If you insist on writing your book when you’re in
survival mode - you know, living paycheck to paycheck, painfully aware of every
last penny that goes out or comes in - you won’t have any money to invest into
the support you need to make it great, and you’ll ultimately write a book that
doesn’t represent your business well. A lot of books in the marketplace today
came into being exactly like that, so they were crappy before their authors
even got started writing them. If the authors had been willing to wait a year
or two, build up their business further, and take their time, they’d have
written a high-quality book that represented them perfectly. Which would you be
more proud of, a product you rushed through before you were ready, or a product
you took the time to make truly excellent?
8.
What
advice do you have for struggling writers? First, if you find yourself struggling while you’re writing your
book, go back to your outline. And if you haven’t written one, do that! I
interviewed 26 other book professionals for this book, and the #1 mistake every
single one of them said authors make without realizing it is that they
don’t use an outline when they write. That blew my mind! I knew it would be
toward the top of the list, but I had no idea it would be first. But it makes
sense. People often ask me about writer’s block, and I have to say that I
thankfully don’t experience it very often, which I totally ascribe to the
practice of creating and writing from a detailed, straightforward outline. I
mean, it tells you what to write next! And if you don’t feel, for
whatever reason, like writing the next part, you can easily jump around to a
section you do feel like writing, without losing the overall structure
and flow. An outline actually goes a long way toward lessening the struggle for
writers.
And second, don’t be afraid (or too proud) to
ask for help. Book professionals like me and some of my friends, who care
deeply about helping entrepreneurs write high-quality books, do exist--and we’d
love to hear from you. We start where you finish, so the combination of your
business skills and our writing or coaching or editing skills will create
something stronger and better and more powerful than either of us could have
done alone. We’re here to partner with you. Let us help you through the
struggle.
9.
Where
do you see the future of book publishing heading? Hopefully in the direction of people writing
more high quality books that really represent their businesses, brands and
messages in the most positive, professional, and proud light that they can! I
know there are a lot of voices in the book publishing industry right now who
are on the opposite end of that spectrum, who are very much for the quick and
cheap side of things, and there’s been a market for those people. There
probably always will be on some level. But I’m very hopeful that the future of
publishing, the future of self-publishing, and frankly the future of writing in
general is going to start to swing back in the other direction, to the idea
that if you’re going to write something, it needs to be the best that you can
make it. If you’re going to put a book out there that’s going to represent you
or your business, it needs to be a good book first. That’s my mission,
that’s what I’m here to help people do, and I’m very hopeful that that’s where
things will be going in the next five to ten years.
To
learn more about James and The Master Wordsmith, please see: jamesranson.com. For more information about his book, see: https://amzn.to/2DzSNUB.
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