This post is part of the “I Know I Can” WNFIN 10-Month Training.

Today marks the end of muddy sports week here at Write Nonfiction in November. It is also my daughter’s birthday. My angel is now seven. Yay! Remember how I talked about how my daughter invented the concept of muddy palace and how it surprisingly led to a writing prompt about dwellings? Something similar happened with today’s topic – – mudd volleyball – – which surprisingly led me to write about fundraisers. Your job is to be equally inspired by mudd volleyball and research and write about five unique fundraising activities.

(To continue reading this post and discover the writing prompt, click here.)

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Blogging for Authors—Lesson #4

Many people—not just writers—don’t understand blogs. They don’t really know what they are or what function they serve, which means they don’t know why they would need one. In fact, a blog serves as a website, and serious writers, aspiring authors and published authors need a website. That’s why it’s important for writers and authors of all types to understand blogs.

You don’t need a website and a blog, although some people have both. You can save yourself a lot of money and trouble by simply creating a blog. For non-techy writers, a blog is also the easiest type of website to use.

What is a Blog?

The word “blog” is a contraction of two words: web log. Web logs began as shared on-line journals in which people posted diary entries about their personal experiences or hobbies.  Now, blogs tend to be much more targeted at particular markets and on specific subject matter.

Many still contain personal experiences or opinions or revolve around hobbies, but they are anything but personal in the sense that they are published in cyberspace for anyone and everyone to read. Composing a blog is about as public as you can get with your writing.

Blogs often combine text with images and links to other similar blogs, websites and online resources. Some blogs contain audio and are called podcasts. Some only contain videos, and are called video blogs, or vlogs.

Blogs are Websites

A blog also constitutes a type of website. For writers who may not feel they have the skills to manage a website, who have no desire to do so or who don’t want to pay a webmaster to update a website, a blog provides a way to have an online presence that is manageable by even the least tech savvy of people. I call blogs “website solutions for the technologically handicapped” for that reason. They really are pretty simple to use.

In fact, blogs are content management systems. Websites are also content management systems but they use a lot of fancy and hard to understand code. It’s like reading another language. Blogs do what they say—manage your content, but they do so without all that fancy code (for the most part). You create content, and the blog organizes and manages it in a logical manner. You will understand the language used in most cases.

Once you get the hang of blogging, you can write content, add photos or graphics and make changes pretty quickly on a day-to-day basis with little help. That means a blog is effective from a time and cost perspective.

How Blogs Differ from Websites

Websites tend to be static. They sit in cyberspace like brochures, unchanging. Blogs are dynamic. They change each time you add content to them.

When you add content, you increase the chances your blog/website will be discovered by readers and customers. Your content is filled with keywords and keyword phrases that get cataloged by the search engines. This helps you rise up in the search engine results pages, which, in turn, helps you and your blog get discovered. Most websites don’t have constantly changing content, like blogs; thus, they are less discoverable.

Plus, blogs are interactive.

• Readers can leave comments.
• You can reply to reader comments.
• You can survey and poll readers.

Why Writers and Aspiring or Published Authors Need Websites

As a serious writer or an aspiring or published author you need a “home” in cyberspace where editors, agents, publishers, and readers (fans) can find you. Reviewers and journalists also will search for writers and authors on the internet and expect to locate them easily somewhere besides Amazon.com or Facebook.

An author website provides that home. It’s where you can feature:

• a well-crafted bio
• a media kit
• social proof (well-known places where you have spoken or where your work has appeared previously as well as reviews or testimonials)
• contact details
• information on your products (books) and services

You can link a blog to your website or even embed it in a website. The easiest thing to do is to simply use a blog as your website. If you have had a website for a long time, though, you may need to consider your options. Consult with a blog specialist to find out what these are.

Want more information on Blogging for Authors? Watch for the next post in the series and fill out the form below.

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Most aspiring authors believe their ideas are unique and readers absolutely need to read their books. Like these writers, you probably feel convinced your book idea is new, fresh, timely, different, and essential. You know readers must read what you have to say, the information you have to offer, the arguments you want to make or the stories you have to tell. You possess a sense of urgency to write and publish your book now—and, if you don’t want to do as an indie publisher, you just know a publisher will want to take on your project and get it into print ASAP. Great!

I have often felt that way about my book ideas, and I still do when an idea first strikes. It’s great to feel passionate, enthusiastic and confident when the proverbial light bulb goes off, but those feelings—and your conviction—simply aren’t enough reason to publish a book. You must have facts to back them up, facts that unequivocally prove your idea is unique and necessary in the marketplace. These facts must convince a literary agent, first, and an acquisitions editor, second. They also must convince you.

Passion, Intuition or Gut Instinct Don’t Produce Successful Books

Unfortunately, your passion, intuition or gut instinct (and I’m a big believer in all three) are not enough when it comes to book publishing—at least not if you want to publish a successful book. If you just trust your gut or take inspired action, you may lose money on your book project. If you self-publish, you won’t sell many books or make back your investment. A publisher likely won’t take the risk if you can’t show hard data and research to back up these emotional responses to your project. That’s why Step #4 in the Author Training process asks you to do the evaluation necessary to Discover if Your Idea is Unique and Necessary enough to succeed in the target market you chose in Step #2.

Just yesterday I sat across the table from one of my book coaching clients. She had shelved one book idea for another (in the time frame of just one week) as she followed her passions and interests. This second book idea arose from a talk she had been asked to give for an organization. She was excited about this speaking opportunity and about her topic, which related to the overall subject matter about which she originally wanted to write. She said she would come back to the other book idea, but now she wanted to pursue this concept, which she believed was singular and felt passionate about.

Preparing for her presentation caused her to realize she had the foundation for a book, she explained to me. The process of determining what she would talk about had required her to go through a similar process to outlining the contents of a book; she’d even come up with an acronym she liked and that worked well. Indeed, she had most of the elements that comprise a book if she angled it correctly for her market—women who wanted to assume leadership roles at work.

Here’s the rub. This writer had no idea how many other books had already been written about women and leadership—16,774 were listed on Amazon when I looked. She hadn’t even thought to look at similar books in a bookstore or on Amazon.com. Not only that, she had not considered:

• how her book would be different from other books already written and published on the topic
• how her book might complement other published books in some manner
• how to make her book stand out from the pack

Why? She felt certain it was unique and necessary because she’d thought of it and she was excited and inspired by it. She just assumed her book would be different, unique, and necessary, especially since she worked with and spoke with the women in her target market.

The more I explained how her book had to be different, unique, necessary—how it had to “fill a hole on the shelf in the bookstore”—the more her excitement turned into disappointment.

Like her, you have to determine if there is, indeed, a space on the shelf where your book would sit in a brick-and-mortar bookstore, a spot where a book currently is missing, a book that has not been written yet and that is unlike all the other published books in your category—a unique and necessary book. (A category is the place in a bookstore you would find your book, such as self-help, history, science fiction, or women’s studies.) You must evaluate if a place is waiting for your book if it were to make it onto the Top 100 list at Amazon in your chosen category.

The Competitive Analysis and How it Helps Angle Your Book

In fact, my client’s idea still might have been a good—even great—idea if carried out strategically. That last word—strategically—is the key. I didn’t mean to put the kibosh on my client’s project, only to make sure she evaluated her project against the competition, something required if she sent her idea on to an agent or publisher. Her idea would have to stand up against the books already published. Not only that, it would have to rise above the competition.

To discover if your book will fill a hole on the bookstore shelf—or if there even is a hole waiting to be filled, compare your project to existing books in its category and evaluate the pros and cons of the competitions as well as the pros and cons of your project. Based on this comparison you can determine if you can do a better job with your subject than authors who have come before you. Indeed, if you can produce an objective
“competitive analysis,” you can evaluate how you need to change or tweak your book concept to make it matchless in its category and indispensable in its target market.

This competitive analysis, which takes place during Step #4: Make Sure You Write a Unique and Necessary Book, parallels the nonfiction book proposal section called “Competing Books” (or sometimes called “Competition Analysis”).  In this section of a proposal you provide agents and acquisitions editors with a detailed look at what traditionally published books have been written on your topic and how your book compares to them. (Publishers don’t care about self-published books.) This convinces a publisher that the book you plan to write is different and adds something new to existing titles. For the sake of the Author Training process, you do not need to focus on traditionally published books. In fact, if you are planning to self-publish your book, your analysis might benefit from an evaluation of bestselling indie published books that compete or complement your book project.

For your business plan, look at 10-15 books you consider direct competition to yours—books that cover the same type of information or that tell the same type of story, then narrow the competition down to five you feel are closest in subject matter. These should be the most direct competition to your book. List these by bestseller status or by date of publication first. Gather this information as well: title, subtitle, author, publisher, copyright year, number of pages, paperback or hardcover, and price. From your research on the books, write two statements (which do not even have to be full sentences) that make clear the positive and negative aspects of each book. Finally, include a paragraph comparing these books to your proposed book and you as an author to these authors, if that is relevant.

This post is an excerpt from the draft of my new book, The Author Training Manual (Writer’s Digest Books, Spring 2014), which I am blogging here on Write Nonfiction NOW! You can read previous posts here. Only select pieces from the manuscript, a “working draft,” are being posted—not the complete manuscript. I’d love to hear your thoughts and get your feedback. Leave your comments below.

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The post Do You Know If Your Book Idea is Unique and Necessary? appeared first on Write Nonfiction NOW!.

This post is part of the “I Know I Can” WNFIN 10-Month Training.

Today is a great day to talk about the Mississippi mud cake, or do I mean the Mississippi mud pie or perhaps I should call it the Muddy Mississippi cake?  Better yet, let me add the word “slide” to cake and call it a day. Inconsistent names for this dessert plus its endless variations within the basic recipe got me thinking. Your job is to create your own varieties of a basic dish, chicken and rice, and write about it.

(To continue reading this post and discover the writing prompt, click here.)

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Blogging for Authors—Lesson #3

While some might argue that blogging does not present a worthwhile activity for writers or authors, I heartily disagree, as I noted in my first post in this series. In that post I focused on three main reasons to blog—a blog provides you with a website, makes you and your work discoverable and connects you to social networks. Today, I’d like to discuss in further depth the other five+ reasons I mentioned in that post, which I feel provide writers, and especially aspiring and published authors, necessary tools for their trade. (I also wrote about one more reason writers might want to blog—earning potential—in the second post in this series.) I’ve distilled these down to four more reasons I think writers and and authors should blog.

Blog to Build Author Platform

This reason has been discuss ad nauseam in many places, including on this blog but bears repeating…again. Blogging remains one of the most effective platform-building tools, or pre-book release promotion activities, in a writer’s or author’s tool box. It’s an easy on to use because it primarily requires that you write, which you are good at. A blog makes all other forms of platform building easier. Here are just a few reasons why:

• You can share your content on social networks, thus building platform on those networks.
• You can tie your blog into social networks to encourage connections on those networks and increased fan base.
• You can use social sharing tools so other people can share your content and connect with you on social networks.
• Your content is filled with keywords with helps you and your blog become “searchable” and “discoverable” on the Internet.
• You new content gets cataloged by search engines helping you become more discoverable.
• The more discoverable you are, the more people (fans) find you and connect with you on social networks or via your blog.

A blog, all by itself, with enough readers or subscribers, serves as an author platform. Add to it a mailing list you build from loyal blog readers, and that becomes another platform element. Add to it the people that connect to you on social networks because of your great and consistent blog content, and that’s several more platform elements–all because you decided to blog.

Blog to Promote Your Book

A blog offers you an efficient way to promote your book for many of the reasons just mentioned. In particular, a platform makes post-release promotion easier and effective. however, the more you write about…

• your book
• the topic of your book
• the theme of your book
• current news that relate to your book
• anything that possibly can be related to your book

…the more discoverable you make your blog for anyone searching on the internet using related terms. And people search for everything on the internet these days, including authors and books–or just topics in which they have an interest. If they find your blog, they may also discover your book. (It should be featured on your blog.)

If you have a blog, it becomes easier to do a virtual book tour, get found by reviewers and even land interviews.

You can promote your book while you write it by blogging your book. Write your book in post-sized bits on your blog and promote it at the same time, thus creating a built-in readership for the finished product when you release it in pbook or ebook format.

Blog to Develop Expert Status

According to a recent survey conducted by Technorati.com, an aggregator of blogs, 56 percent of all bloggers in their study said their blog helped them establish a position as a thought leader within an industry. In addition, 58 percent said they are better known in their industry because of their blog.

The more you blog in a focused manner on any one topic, the higher up in the search engine results pages you and your blog will rise. When someone searching for information on a particular topic on the internet discovers that you dominate that subject area, they will consider you an expert. If they also see that you have written a book—or are writing a book, your authority level rises even higher in their eyes. (That’s why blogging a book or blogging an ebook also can work well.)

Blog to Build a Business Around Your Book

A blog provides a wonderful place to build a business around you books. Face the facts: Your book or books likely won’t make you rich. You can, however, make some additional money by creating products and services related to your books. Many authors have done this with:

• Ebooks
• Teleseminars
• Webinars
• Home-study courses
• Membership sites
• Online courses
• Consulting and coaching

If you go to my www.howtoblogabook.com site, you’ll see that in conjunction with my bestselling book, How to Blog a Book, I offer blogging and blog-to-book coaching and coaching groups through my main business site, CopyWright Communications, for instance. You can find products and educational offerings, like classes and audio courses, there as well. Soon there will be a membership site as well. I also make money by speaking and consulting, not to mention by editing and critiquing writer’s manuscripts and proposals.

These days it’s very easy to create products and services if you are nonfiction writer, but even fiction writers can apply the same principles to their work by pulling out themes and subjects and blogging about them. Of course, the more you blog on these subject, the more of an expert you become. That makes it easier for you to build a business around your book.

If one or two of the reasons I’ve covered in the first three posts of this Blogging for Authors series hasn’t spoken to you, then maybe you just aren’t cut out to become a blogger as well as a writer or author. If they have, please fill out the form below to be notified when my new FREE membership site, Blogging for Authors, is up and running. It will offer you many more tips and tools to help you become a successful blogger. And watch for the next post in the series!

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Once you know the size of your market—big or niche—it’s time to evaluate your book idea with that market in mind. Determine if your project seems viable or how to make it viable based on the information you have accumulated. Should you:

• continue forward with your project?
• go back to square one and conceive a new idea with a bigger market or a more viable niche market?
• rework or re-angle your current book idea to target a market, thus making it a salable project?

Evaluate Your Market

Some book ideas will need to be abandoned if they have no market at all—sad but true—if you want to produce a successful book (one that sells more than an average number of copies) by publishing industry standards. You can pursue these projects if you like as an indie project—and as a book of your heart. However, an agent or publisher won’t take on a project that doesn’t have a promising market. As part of your training, you need to realize this and learn to evaluate your project objectively with this in mind. Know you are taking a risk if you choose to proceed—a risk a seasoned publishing professional would most likely not take.

Small publishing houses might be willing to take a risk on a book with a small or niche market—if some other factors are in place as well, such a strong author platform and promotion plan. Additionally, an analysis of competing books must indicate that your proposed book might meet or exceed their sales figures. Mid-sized and larger publishers will be less inclined to even consider a project that has no market or a small niche market. Knowing this, if you want to have your book traditionally published, you will need to look at your market statistics and make an objective determination about what type of publisher to approach.

Re-angle Your Book to Target a Market

If you have a market, moving forward may seem a no-brainer. However, sometimes a large market isn’t necessarily the best thing. An agent or acquisitions editor might look at your book idea and think, “This book might not sell well in this huge market because the market is so large. It’s not unique enough to gain traction there.” In such a case, a smaller market serves your book better. That means changing the angle of your book to target a portion of the market or a niche market. Learn to evaluate your project with this in mind as well. Consider smaller and niche markets and if your book might sell better to these readers.

This post is an excerpt from the draft of my new book, The Author Training Manual (Writer’s Digest Books, Spring 2014), which I am blogging here on Write Nonfiction NOW! You can read previous posts here. Only select pieces from the manuscript, a “working draft,” are being posted—not the complete manuscript. I’d love to hear your thoughts and get your feedback. Leave your comments below.

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This post is part of the “I Know I Can” WNFIN 10-Month Training.

Cool Mud Folks, Week #2

This week, we have talked about people whose names have some variations of “mud” in them. We started off with singer Muddy Waters, moved on to the band Puddle of Mudd, and today, we finish with blogger Muddy Kinzer. Your job is to find out who Muddy is and write a profile of her.

(To continue reading this post and discover the writing prompt, click here.)

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Not every book has to have a huge market. It’s possible to sell a lot of books by targeting your work to small niche markets. You do, however, have to have a target market that, upon evaluation, has the potential to meet your sales goals.

A book about a topic that might seem to have a small audience might still be a viable project. A small hobby or interest could have hundreds of thousands of potential readers—and that’s just in the United States. If you also consider the potential of selling your book internationally, the audience grows larger.

You Need Numbers to Determine the Size of Your Market

An agent or a publisher who receives a query or proposal for a book with no discernable market, or a market that appears small, likely will send a rejection to that author—even if the idea is a good one or the writer is skilled in his or her craft. A platform and promotion plan will not save the idea. (To whom would the author promote the book? With no market, the author has no potential book buyers, no potential readers.) Remember, the publishing industry revolves around selling books. No market, no one to whom to sell the book, no book sales.

As you create your market analysis, try to be specific. Use numbers to describe your market size. Imagine if you were an agent or an acquisitions editor and received a proposal for a book about creating change in people’s lives and the author described the market for her book this way:

“In the general self-help market, a huge and ever-popular area of publishing, [Book Title], will appeal to readers wanting to improve their ability to receive their desires, to fulfill their purpose, to develop a connection with God, to raise their consciousness, or to manifest what they want in their lives. Anyone looking for a way to better themselves, move farther along the spiritual path, or improve their current conditions will find this book useful.”

What might you think? Would you be inclined to back this project? As an indie publisher, would this be enough information to make you feel secure that your book has potential buyers, confident enough to put your money into the project?

What about if the same author sent you this information instead?

“[Book Title], a self-help book, will appeal to readers interested in the Law of Attraction, conscious creation, deliberate creation, creative thought, and manifesting dreams and desires. It targets the same 70,000+ people who attended Oprah’s internet class with author Eckhart Tolle to discuss his last book, A New Earth. Additionally, the market for this book includes cultural creatives, a group of people who in the last half century have grown from 50 million in number to hundreds of millions around the world.

If this author wanted to take this further—which she did—she could also tell an agent or publisher that her book targets women. Women purchase the majority of books and make up more than half of the US population.

Use Search Engines to Find Statistics

Sometimes you may not know the exact number of people who make up a market—you may not have the statistics. Other numbers you can find will support a market for a book. This is where Google, or some other search engine, “becomes your friend,” as the saying goes. Begin inputting questions in the search engine.

No matter into what category of fiction  or nonfiction your book falls, you can discover market statistics of some sort—how many people exist, or large groups of people, who would be interested in purchasing your book.  If you wanted to write a book about how to grow a particular type of orchid, you could use a search engine to discover how many people purchase that particular orchid or how many people purchase orchids each year. I did just that on Google with the keyword phrase “how many people purchase orchids,” and here’s what I discovered, thanks to the University of Michigan, Department of Horticulture, Orchid Research Program:

“Orchids are currently the second most valuable potted crop in the United States with a total wholesale value of $144 million in 2005…In 2005, 18 million potted orchids were sold at wholesale, with an average unit value of $8.00 (USDA 2006b).”

Now, not all of those were sold in the U.S., and the information was not current. Yet, given that I purchase orchids and I know other people who purchase orchids, I know orchid lovers are extremely engaged in orchid growing and buying and spend a lot of money per year on products related to orchids. They also attend orchid shows. You need only glance around at any grocery store to see that orchids are a popular plant to purchase even if you don’t know much about specialty orchids. If you were writing a nonfiction book on orchids—or on one particular orchid, you could take the time to make some phone calls—such as to the University of Michigan or to the American Orchid Society or to any one of the many orchid shows around America—and get some more current sales figures as well as additional statistics that would help you create a picture of your market size (such as how many people attend the orchid shows each year).

This is how you determine the size of your market. Then you evaluate if that market will support enough sales of your book to meet your goals or the goals of a publisher.

This post is an excerpt from the draft of my new book, The Author Training Manual (Writer’s Digest Books, Spring 2014), which I am blogging here on Write Nonfiction NOW! You can read previous posts here. Only select pieces from the manuscript, a “working draft,” are being posted—not the complete manuscript. I’d love to hear your thoughts and get your feedback. Leave your comments below.

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As a writer who wants someone in addition to yourself to read your work, you need a market for your book. You can’t write “the book you want to read” and make it successful unless lots of other people are just like you or have the same interests as you. This means that before you write your book you have to discover if, indeed, other people like you exist. Or else you have to write a book that lots of other people who aren’t necessarily like you want to read (and hopefully that you want to read, too—although some writers write books they have no interest in reading but that lots of other people do want to read).

In the publishing industry these other people who might be interested in reading (or buying) your book are called your book’s “market” or “target market.” In Step #3 of the Author Training process, Determine How Many People Really Might Buy Your Book, you train yourself to see if your book idea has a large enough market to make it a viable publishing project.  As you do so, you find your readers and get to know them. This requires:

• Identifying your readers
• Profiling your readers
• Familiarizing yourself with your readers
• Identifying how many potential readers exist for your book
• Determining where your readers “hang out”

If you want to publish a successful book, you must have a market that produces enough book sales to reach your sales goals or those of a publisher. Many aspiring authors write their books without first evaluating markets to determine if enough interest exists to support sales of their books and, thereby, publication. Or they propose books to publishers without doing so only to be rejected because no market exists for their books.

Training yourself to look at your book’s market critically accomplishes five things:

1. You discover if enough potential readers exist for your book; if so, you can move forward with the project.
2. You get the chance to consider new potential markets to target.
3. You can re-evaluate the angle of your book to target bigger or more profitable markets with your content.
4. You can identify how to target bigger or more profitable markets with your promotion plan.
5. You can write for your reader.

From a publisher’s perspective, the bigger the market for your book, the better. The reason why is simple: The more potential readers for your book, the more potential buyers for your book; the more potential buyers for your book, the more potential money your book might earn over time. That means if your book targets a big market, it could turn into a money maker for the publisher and for you. Your venture capital partner—the publisher—might earn back his investment and make money—and so might you. If you self-publish, you will earn back the money you invest in your own project.

This post is an excerpt from the draft of my new book, The Author Training Manual (Writer’s Digest Books, Spring 2014), which I am blogging here on Write Nonfiction NOW! You can read previous posts here. Only select pieces from the manuscript, a “working draft,” are being posted—not the complete manuscript. I’d love to hear your thoughts and get your feedback. Leave your comments below.

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This post is part of the “I Know I Can” WNFIN 10-Month Training.

Mud and Kids, Week #1

When you think of mud and kids, one thought should come to mind immediately – - mud pies! Remember those? Mud pies are what kids invent when they’re playing with dirt and add a little water. Voila! An instant mess and hours of enjoyment with a simple outdoors game. If we’re associating mud pies with games that kids play outdoors, as per this month’s creative brainstorming “association of related concepts” strategy, your job is to describe five old-fashioned games that kids play outside.

(To continue reading this post and discover the writing prompt, click here.)

If you want to Achieve More Inspired Results as a writer and author,sign up to receive a FREE 5-DAY PUBLISHED AUTHOR TRAINING SERIES. Submit your name by clicking on this link now!

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