If you have enough information to speak for one hour about your speciality topic, then you have a book inside you. It's easier than you may think to write, then publish, promote and use your book to attract the clients you want, who will pay the fees you are worth based on your specialist expertise.
Here's a summary of how to write a book:
Decide on your topic - Develop your book topic into its main points – expand each into 3-4 main sections and write approximately 3-4 chapters for each section. Each chapter should be approximately 2-3,000 words. This will make your book approximately 18,000 – 48,000 words long (ie, from 100 – 200 pages depending on formatting). Use a folder to gather together and separately hold each section and collected information that you can take anywhere and work on at any time.
Get your manuscript professionally edited - Don’t rely on your own judgement or that of your ‘cousin’s sister’s son who’s just finished high school and can spell really well’. Invest in the services of a professional editor so that your book is groomed and refined, and targeted to your specific market. Add the Acknowledgements, introduction, foreword, about the author and additional marketing pages. Then get it edited again. Make any required changes and then have it properly proofed.
Have your book professionally designed - Don’t use a standard graphic designer who thinks they can create a book for you – use a professional experienced book designer who knows the rules of typesetting, cover design (front and back) and has experience as a book designer, including someone who uses appropriate software such as InDesign, or Quark.
Apply the finishing touches - Send review copies out before printing so that you can have endorsements and quotes added to the front/back covers to help saleability of the book.
Decide how you will print your book - Hard cover, paperback, colour or b/w, 50 copies or 50,000. These will have a bearing on whether you elect to digitally print, POD, or offset print, in NZ or offshore. A book packaging specialist will help you with this if you need it. Don’t just go to any printer – select one who is a book specialist.
Have your book published in half the time with none of the frustration of dealing with publishers
Once you've written your book then you have to deal with marketing, distribution, promotion and then there's all the things like website sales, follow through on your publicity, and even packaging and sending the individual sales you get from your website.
If you are working with most publishers, these things are all part of the deal and you really only have to wait to receive the royalty cheques and turn up for the launch party. If you wish to be a regular guest speaker at events, then you need to consider all your publishing options carefully.
However there are down sides to this, and a whole lot of restrictions, which is why many professional knowledge merchants prefer to self publish. When you know how to write a book, then you'll realise that the writing part is relatively easy. It's the pulling it all together, getting the best designers, editors, printers and then getting your book to market that can be the biggest and most expensive part of writing a book.
The Maruki Books Self Publishing Services
If you wish to self publish and take a lot of short cuts through the learning curves of how to write a book, we can help by offering you access to a range of our servcies that are aimed at complimenting your own efforts, helping you to get your book completed, published, marketed and in the hands of your potential readers quickly and efficiently, so that you can enjoy all the benefits of being an author.
Our Services include:
Mentoring and training opportunities
Publishing a Book
Distribution of Books
International Representation
Literary Agent Services
Maxmising your being an author and increasing your speaker profile
Or email us for more information -
info@marukibooks.com
Writing a book is easy when you know how to write a book. But we make it even easier, and we've done it for a growing number of very happy authors in Australia and New Zealand.
