A book can be the ultimate marketing tool for independent professionals.
It can establish you as an authority, boost your credibility instantly, attract higher-caliber clients automatically and more. It can give you the edge you are looking for in the new economy.
With all these benefits, you would think that every forward thinking independent professional would have their own book.
But, as you know, that’s not the case.
As I mentioned in last week’s eZine, although 81% of adults “want to write a book someday,” most never even start it. Of those who do, most never finish it.
My friend, publishing and marketing expert John Eggen, knows this firsthand. Over the past 27 years he has worked with countless independent professionals who are authoring their first book. He sees the struggles they face.
John says the #1 reason people give for not writing or finishing their own book is: “I don’t have enough time to write a book.”
If time is precious to you, and you want to write and publish a book, here are 10 steps from John’s system that will allow you to create your book in the time you’ve got.
1. If your time is more precious to you than your money, then you could get your book written in just an hour a week for 13 weeks or so by hiring a ghostwriter. Fifty to 80% of all business books today are ghostwritten, according to John’s research. If you know where to find them, there are many qualified and talented writers out there who can do it for you, even on a tight budget.If you don’t want a ghostwriter, here’s what you can do:
2. You can create a great deal of quality content quickly by writing in short, 30-60 minute bursts. Set your kitchen timer, start writing and don’t stop until the timer goes off. You’ll be amazed at how much you can accomplish.
3. Write your first draft like all the pros do, without editing it. When you don’t stop to edit you put your analytic mind aside temporarily and just open your creative flow, unencumbered by those pesky backspace and delete keys. You build up a very powerful momentum when you do this.
For the average-sized business book, John teaches that, if you write just 2 unedited pages a day (fast, when you avoid editing), you can get your first draft written in 90 days and have your book in your hands in 6 months.
4. Speak it into print. This is even faster. If you speak at 100 words a minute (as most of us do) and the average business book is roughly 50,000 words, then you can speak your unedited first draft in just 8-9 hours and have a 168 page book published within 90 days.
5. Keep your book simple. John teaches that there are strategies that allow you to create a quality book using simple ways to organize the chapter content that save a lot of time.
For instance, one proven strategy to write a book fast is to organize your content as "101 Ways to _____." Simply fill in the blank with your topic. For example, bestselling author and speaker Wayne Dyer wrote a popular book called "101 Ways to Transform Your Life."
6. Make appointments with yourself to work on your book. Put them in your calendar and make those appointment times sacred. Don't miss one of them for anything less important than a medical emergency.
7. Make money from your book before it’s even published, and use it to pay for the time to write and publish it. John has quick, free and easy ways to do this. Using them, my clients have reported earning from $22,000 to $150,000 in new revenue while writing the first draft of their books.
8. Turn time devoted to time-wasters (such as watching TV) into time you invest in creating a client-attracting book. If you watched television just half an hour less every day, you would instantly release at least 15 hours a month for writing.
9. Make better use of your down time. This includes your commute to and from work, lunch times, or times spent in waiting rooms, or airline flights, etc. This is time you could be using to write or dictate some of your chapters. In fact, entire books have been written this way. If you devote just 15 minutes of down-time every day, that equals 8 hours every month.
10. Always carry pen and paper and keep some in every room of the house and in the car for those random moments of inspiration. If you rely on memory you will lose some very inspiring ideas. It happens every day so don’t let it happen to you.
And here’s a bonus step from his system:
Of course, if you use the above steps, John says you’ll probably never need to use this step.
But many people have reported writing their books successfully by getting up an hour earlier and using this “Golden Hour” to write while the rest of the world (your family, anyway) still sleeps. If you're more of a night owl, then turn off the TV and try writing for an hour before you turn in.
Using steps like these is how busy professionals write and publish books in the time they’ve got. More than 244 of my clients have worked with John and succeeded by using these steps.
To help you get the book inside you written and published successfully, I have asked John if he would let me interview him in a teleseminar. Join us! You will learn how to:
"Get a Client-Attracting Book Written, Guaranteed"
I will be tapping his decades of experience to uncover what it really takes to get a book written, published and leveraged for maximum impact. And how to do it with a busy schedule.
Here are the details:
Date: Thursday, March 11Time: 5:00 PM until 6:15 PM Pacific time
Where: By teleconference
Price: Free
To Register: http://tinyurl.com/yhw9p3m
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The More Clients Bottom Line: Don’t make "lack of time" an excuse for keeping that book of yours inside of you. Take advantage of all the big benefits that having a book affords you, and write one successfully using what you will learn in this teleseminar.
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Which of these ten steps will you use to free up your time to write your book? Please share your answer on the More Clients Blog by clicking on the Comments link below.
Robert, I absolutely love the "Golden Hour" tip. Other than the fact that I have absolutely no distraction, it also seems to be the best time of the day for me to get inspiration. Looking forward to the teleseminar.
Posted by: Jean | March 09, 2010 at 02:03 AM