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Best Practices Growth Skills

How to Edit Your Own Work

You’ve written a report, speech, newsletter, or other document. You’ve put a lot of time and thought into it. You have an investment in it. Now you need to edit it.

You can find lots of practical advice about how to edit your work. However, none of these suggestions will work for you until you address issues that have plagued the best writers who ever lived.

You’ve Worked Hard on This and You’ve Lost Perspective

This happens to every writer. It means that you’ve immersed yourself in your subject matter. Even when you haven’t been writing, you may have been thinking about the piece and getting great ideas about what would improve that troublesome middle section.

When you mentally write “The End,” you have to mean it—for a while. Put some distance between yourself and what you’ve written. Your involvement and identification with what you’ve written has to loosen before you edit it. Otherwise, you’ll feel as if you’re amputating pieces of yourself when you pick up a pen to make changes.

Repeat “This Is Not Me.”

Even when you do allow a period of time—which will vary, according to your time constraints—to pass before the editing phase, you may feel attached to what you’ve written. This will especially be true if you’re new to writing.

As you gain experience in writing, this feeling will dissipate. It’s normal to feel attached to the first big report or speech you’ve ever written. Once you’ve written dozens, the attachment fades.

You can speed up the process of detachment by telling yourself that this paper isn’t your child or pet. It isn’t your car. It’s a vehicle for you to express facts, ideas, and principles. Do it to do this accurately and in a way that communicates with other people.

It’s a tool for doing that.

Be Ruthless

With the concept of “tool” in mind, approach the editing process as if you’re not the writer but the reader. Many writers find it helpful to read their work out loud. You must do this if you’ve written a speech.

Be honest. Make notes wherever you think your phrasing is awkward. Flag anything that’s unclear. Notice if you repeat words or if your language is too formal.

Being ruthless means boldly making changes that will make your work shine. Consider these style elements.

Make your writing to the point.

If you want to explain why you were drawn to the area of finance, don’t describe all the careers you hated before you discovered the one you loved. It’s like a road trip; detours make the journey longer, and you forget where you were going.

Make paragraphs short.

Limit a paragraph to one idea. This gives the reader the opportunity to pause to absorb one concept before reading another. I recommend a maximum of four sentences per paragraph. Don’t exceed ten lines of text. Your reader needs a brief place to pause before moving on.

Go easy on the adverbs and adjectives.

This is a subject in itself. To give you an idea of this rule’s power, compare the effect of “spoke loudly” versus “shouted” or “very attractive” as opposed to “beautiful.”

Strong verbs and nouns also give authority to your writing. When you have a point to make, you need that authority. If, for example, you’re presenting industry statistics, you don’t write, “These figures suggest.” You write, “These figures confirm.” Be definite.

Walk Away From Your Work. Repeat “This Is Not Me.” Be Ruthless.

These principles will help you hone your writing. Practice will sharpen it into a  powerful tool to serve you.

Pat Iyer is a ghostwriter, editor, and online course creator. She serves the C Suite through the C Suite Network Advisors group. Contact her through her website Editingmybook.com

Categories
Growth Leadership Skills

How to Publish a Book

How to Publish a Book – What are the Options?

You have a wealth of knowledge about running a company. You want to share your knowledge in a new way – through publishing a book. You may have a body of work ready to repurpose (such as a blog you’ve maintained for several years) or a ghostwriter at the ready. Or you just really like to write; you find that writing the book comes easy.

How do you share your book? How can you get your book published? There used to be only one option: a traditional publisher. Now you have several choices.

PDF Ebook. Probably the simplest method to publish a book, all that’s required with an ebook is to click “Save as…” in your Word document and choose “PDF.” Then you can sell the resulting file on your own website, or upload it to a number of other ebook marketplaces online.

However, as a member of a c suite, you may want a higher profile product. Ebooks don’t have the authority that printed books carry. But this can be a viable option to get you off the ground. It’s also a great way to share your book with people who will write reviews for you before you publish your book. Advance readers will give you those all-important testimonials.

Kindle. Amazon’s Kindle marketplace makes it easy for you to publish your book. In fact, with just a few minutes of formatting, and another several minutes spent on their step-by-step uploading system, you can have your book on their virtual shelves in less than an hour. You can also readily find people with experience in formatting a book for Kindle. Check out a site I use, http://upwork.com, where you can hire people for a project like this.

With its incredible popularity and the ability to offer “free days” during which anyone can download your book at no cost, Kindle is a great way to build a buzz quickly.

Print on Demand. Print on demand means just that. Someone orders your book and it is printed in response to that order. Print on demand is a more economical model than vanity presses which require you to pay for hundreds if not thousands of copies up front, leaving you with a room full of books to sell on your own.

Create Space is the giant in this industry. As part of Amazon, Create Space makes it easy for you (or your graphic artist hired through Upwork) to load a book and its cover.  I recommend you hire someone to do this. It is not hard, but there are steps best tackled by someone who understands the process.

Buyers order your book from sellers such as Amazon and the book is printed and shipped the next day. This makes it easy and cost-effective for everyone to become a published author. But not all self-published books are well-written. Invest in an editor to polish your manuscript, to catch those embarrassing typos, and to help ensure that what you wrote is going to be clear to others.

Traditional Publisher. The options for self publishing have had a profound impact on traditional publishers. Their world has shrunk, and this affects you as an author if you are seeking a traditional publisher. They are bombarded with manuscripts and are very selective about the ones they take on. There are advantages to signing on with a traditional publisher. Getting your book published with a traditional print publisher will get you the most audience and press. The publisher may hire a publicist to get you on radio interviews, for example.

It is extremely difficult to get a traditional publishing house to take on a new author. An agent can be effective in getting the attention of a publisher. Your name, your brand, your platform (the ability to attract buyers) are crucial and may be even more important to the publisher than your content.

If you do manage to get a publisher, your royalties (the amount you earn from your book) will be very small—maybe as little as 8% of the net cost. The publisher may ask you to purchase a specific number of copies of your book and will rely on you to help promote it.

Indie Publishers. These publishers vary from the pattern of traditional publishers in the sense that they may expect you to make a substantial financial contribution to underwrite some of the costs of producing a book. The publisher spreads the risk to you, knowing the sad truth that the majority of books don’t sell well.

Be sure to thoroughly read a publishing agreement so you understand the terms of a traditional or indie publisher, if you decide to take this option. I recommend having an attorney familiar with publishing contracts give you some guidance.

The important thing is to get your book written, and then publish where you’re most comfortable. The rest will come naturally.

There are an unbelievable number of books languishing on hard drives because the author did not take action to release them to the world. Share all that knowledge you have learned through your experiences in a corporate world!

Pat Iyer is a ghostwriter who has written or edited more than 800 books, chapters, online courses, case studies or articles. Her website is http://editingmybook.com – check it out for more information.

Categories
Leadership Marketing Skills

5 Reasons Every Business Owner Needs a Book

Are you wondering how to expand your business? Has a major segment of the market shifted away from buying your products or services? Are you questioning your marketing plan? There’s one simple answer you probably haven’t considered:

Write a book.

It’s true. This one thing—especially if it’s an actual printed book rather than a Kindle or eBook—has the power to grow your business beyond your expectations. You’ll experience a whole new world of opportunities simply by having your name on the cover of a book.

Authority

Imagine you’re at a conference or local networking group and you meet two CEOs who both specialize in business branding—something you know you need help with.

One CEO says all the right things. She’s been in business for years and worked with some top-notch business owners. She has great ideas for how she can help you solidify your branding and assist you with marketing.

The other has a similar history and story, with one added bonus: she’s just handed you a copy of her latest book. It’s a professionally printed, substantial publication that practically exudes confidence.

Which person do you think shows more authority in her field? The one with the book, of course. There really is nothing better when it comes to establishing your authority in any niche than having a book with your name on it.

At this point, I have written or coauthored more than 800 books, articles, online courses, chapters or case studies. This factor more than anything else helped people in my field get to know me.

Expertise

Why does a book speak so highly of you and establish your authority so well? Because it gives you a platform to show off your expertise. It’s like being invited to present on any topic you choose on the world’s largest stage.

Not only that, but your readers are a captive audience. They’re listening—in that moment—only to you. That’s a powerful position to be in, and one that gives you an opportunity to really show off your stuff.

Market Reach

No matter how many readers Google sends your way, no matter how much traffic your YouTube channel receives, nothing will ever compare to the number of potential readers Amazon and other online booksellers can bring your way.

Positioned correctly, your book can reach millions of new readers, and thousands of potential clients. Combine that with the expertise and authority we know comes with being a published author, and that’s a recipe for success that can’t be beat.

Better Than a Business Card

If you’ve ever been to a conference, you’ve no doubt collected a stack of business cards. You get home and toss them in a drawer, and six months later you throw them out, without ever having contacted the people who gave them to you.

But if one of those people handed you a book instead, what happened? You’ve likely read it (or at least leafed through it). You almost certainly didn’t throw it away. And you remember it—and the person who wrote it.

Press Opportunities

Turn on your television to any interview show, browse through Huffington Post, or listen to any of a number of popular podcasts or radio shows, and you’ll quickly see that most of the guest speakers and interviewees have written a book.

The fact is, interview shows depend on interesting, insightful guests to keep their audiences listening, and there’s no better applicant than an author. Writing a book will open up many, many opportunities for appearances that you may never have without your name on that cover.

Do you have to write a book to be successful? No. But there’s no denying the fact that a published author will find she has a much easier time growing her business than the business person who keeps putting it off until later.

Do you have a book in you? Contact me to discuss my editing and ghostwriting services. I’d love to see your book take shape.