Net Minds Blog: Publishing Industry News, Business, Technology

Why Authors Need To Have Chemistry With Their Ghostwriters

Tim Sanders at http://twitter.com/sanderssays — 2013-05-07T17:03:17+00:00

Recently I caught up with my long time friend Glenn Plaskin to talk about why chemistry was the #1 factor an author should consider when selecting a ghostwriter. He's both an author himself, a syndicated columnist and seasoned ghostwriter of several best selling books. While many authors look for credentials or sadly, price, Glenn suggests they first seek out a personal connection.

Tim: How did you get started as a ghostwriter?

Glenn: For me, it all started with magazine writing. After 25 years in that business, one of my interview subjects, a celebrity, had liked an article I'd written about him, and asked me to write a book with him. We would talk on tape, I’d formulate a chapter from our interviews, and then we’d go over that material until it was a fully formed chapter, then a fully formed book.

Tim: Talk to me a little bit about why the author/ghostwriter relationship needs to be collaborative?

Glenn: It’s like going on a blind date except there won’t be any romance, at least there shouldn’t be! But it is a little like dating someone. There has to be that indefinable click. And is anything more collaborative than dating? You have to feel a rapport, some kind of emotional connection that allows the author of the book to feel comfortable with a ghostwriter, to feel that the ghostwriter understands them, not just intellectually, but emotionally. An author/ghostwriter relationship needs to be harmonious. You’ll be working together in very tight quarters. So things have to be amiable. And having a great sense of humor is key too! I once met with a prospective author for what was scheduled as a 45-minutes meetin. We ended up talking and laughing for three hours! I knew after that our writing relationship would be a successful pairing. And it was.

Tim: How do you conceptualize the author/ghostwriter relationship?

Glenn: The author may have a compelling story but may not have the time, skill, or training to write it. The ghostwriter is the conduit. I compare it having a Mercedes. It’s a great car but when you need it serviced, you don’t try to do it yourself. You take it to the dealer. The ghostwriter the book mechanic, who is best equipped to make the Mercedes run perfectly. The author has the ideas and the content; the ghostwriter has the technical skills to tell the story in the way in needs to be told.

Tim: Let’s put you in the author’s shoes. What should an author look for in a possible ghostwriter? You indicated humor previously. What other factors should the author be looking for in those first two general meetings with a ghostwriter?

Glenn: Well, the first thing a prospective author should do is check a ghostwriter’s credits. A simple resume check. Google the name, see what comes up. Go to the ghostwriter’s website. See if it’s professional and well maintained. Make sure they’ve been published. Make an effort to call authors the ghostwriter has worked with in the past and ask them how working with that ghostwriter was. There is quite a lot of pre-prep that can be done.

Tim: And ghostwriters have their credentials readily available.

Glenn: Exactly. Once an author has determined the ghostwriter is professional, step two is the meet and greet. Usually the first iinteraction s conducted over the phone, the second meeting in person. The very first thing I look for is simple likeability. Do you like the person? Would you be their friend in “real life”? Are you impressed with their intelligence? Do they seem to understand what you’re talking about? Did they come prepared? Nothing will impress someone more than knowing something about them. Everyone likes to talk about themselves. Also, is the ghostwriter a good interviewer? Can the ghostwriter fill in the blanks? Are they a good listener? Do they seem to be grasping the verbal cues that you’re giving them and picking up on them and furthering along the conversation?

Tim: Do you always ghostwrite subjects that you are well versed in?

Glenn: Not at all. I met with a pastor once. I really liked the guy, so he passed the likeability test. But I didn’t feel connected with the religeous subject matter of his book. I didn’t actually have much interest in it. So, I turned the project down. A few months later, he came back to me and asked me again. I said yes, I challenged myself. We ended up having a great collaboration. My lack of knowledge of the Bible didn’t hurt the product in any way. I feel a good ghostwriter can write about anything, especially if they have great chemistry with the author, as I did with the pastor.

Tim: Can the author cultivate that chemistry?

Glenn: The author shouldn’t have to. Remember, the ghostwriter is making your life easy. They’re servicing your Mercedes. It’s not up to the Mercedes to do the work. The ghostwriter is the one that has to build the relationship and build the trust.

Tim: As a ghostwriter, can you improve the chemistry with the author?

Glenn: If you go on a first date and then you go on the second date, and by the second date you’re not crazy about the person you’re really not going to go on any more dates. So I can’t overemphasize the importance of the first telephone and in person meetings. If the click doesn’t happen after the first two or three interactions it’s likely that it may not go any further. And maybe that’s as it should be. You can’t improve what never existed.

Tim: What do you do to sustain strong chemistry over a long project?

Glenn: Well, for starters every working relationship needs boundaries. We can’t work in an unorganized vacuum. So it’s up to the two collaborators to decide when are we going to work? How are we going to work? How often are we going to talk? Once these boundaries have been established, a ghostwriter might need to get creative when making sure the author follows them. I once worked with an author and our schedule was a tight one. We needed to finish a chapter every week. The problem was that he wasn’t giving me the information I needed soon enough. So, I gently told him, “The train is leaving the station every Monday. One way or the other.” He heard me and we had zero problems after that. I got the information I needed first thing Monday morning from then on.

Writing a book takes discipline on both sides. And that certainly helps the sustained chemistry stay buoyant. The final thing I’ve learned to help keep the chemistry strong is never responding when angry. In the book writing process, there will be moments of great tension. There’s going to be times when the author is irritated, not in the mood to do his or her part, and there’s also going to be times when the ghostwriter may feel irritated by the client. That’s just normal. One thing that I practice, and I hope this is useful to others, is that when I’m upset is always the wrong time to discuss it with the client. Instead, talk to a friend, talk to your sister, talk to anybody, but don’t talk to the client. By practicing this, I hardly ever have arguments with an author. You want to avoid those at all costs. You’ve got to learn to let annoyances go. It’s almost like you have to take a Ghostwriter 12 step program! I think in order to keep the chemistry going, it’s very important to keep the relationship as harmonious as you can make it.

Visit Glenn Plaskin's Website For More Information

Can You Schedule Your Inspiration To Write?

Tim Sanders at http://twitter.com/sanderssays — 2013-04-22T14:46:15+00:00

Face it: When you don't feel like writing, trying to do it is excruciating. You sit there in front of your computer (or holding your recorder), and nothing happens. You type, delete, retype, save, surf, sigh ... and when you give up on it, you feel like you aren't a real writer. You wonder when the lightning will strike and words will gush off your fingertips. This is the agony of being an author.

But what if it was really in our heads? What if our habits as authors make determine our ability to be productive? Some of us think of writing as a craft, that's fueled sudden infusions of inspiration, causing us to fall in flow and finish our manuscripts. It's unexplainable and magic. When we are denied "the moment" we lose our minds a little. But really, that's just stuff from the movies (like The Shining). When I look into the history of the writers behind some of my favorite books, I realize that they work hard to control the creative process, and not let the elusive meme control them. They found a way to plow through, and craft great works.

William Faulkner once wrote, "I only write when I'm inspired. Fortunately, I'm inspired at 9 o'clock every morning." I took this saying to heart when I was writing Today We Are Rich in 2009. I had a short window (6 months) to complete the book, and had to navigate around a busy lecture schedule as well. I didn't write on-the-go, as travel puts me in the wrong frame of mind to write, given the distractions and poor working environments. I had, at best, three days a week at home, blocked off to write. So insinctively, I put myself of a production schedule. I do by best writing mid-morning, so I blocked out 10am each morning to write for two hours or 1200 or so words. After lunch, I edited and researched. I calculated that I would product 150% of the necessary content that way (my contract had a word count clause), and assume that a big chunk of it would be cut out by the end of line editing.

One of Nolan Bushnell's favorite sayings is, "the deadline is the inspiration," and he's right! In the beginning, I was inconsistent in my ability to plop myself into a chair at 10am and find 1200 words worth saving. But soon, inspired by the schedule, which gave me daily deadlines, I developed a routine that got me back on track. I would get up at 7am, do some review of research from the day before and around 8:30 or so, I'd outline what I was going to write today on my whiteboard. I'd take a picture of it on my iPhone, then plug in ear buds and putter around in the side yard or walking around my neighborhood, listening to music and looking at my outline. I didn't check my email and turned off my cell during this time period. Often, I'd dictate what I was going to write into my phone, then listen to it, thinking about how the words sound against the outline. Invariably, at some point I'd realize I was ready, drop my putter and scramble into the house to sit down at my laptop and do my job.

David Lynch believes that "it takes four hours to get one hour of creative work done." My goal was to cut that in half! By the second month of my writing cycle, I was finding my inspiration on schedule, and often times, producing 2000 words in a furious session of flow. I finished the book one month earlier than planned, giving me time to find new stories and integate fresh insights into the final manuscript. Of all my works, this is the one I'm the most proud of. I'll never write a book any other way!

The lesson here is three fold: Have a publication date or a final deadline. Create a production schedule that includes daily deliverables and then quickly organize each day's work. Develop a personal routine that brings out your creativity, be it physical, aesthetic or mental.

I think writer's block is really the outcome of a lack of preparation, where we expect the words to fall out of the sky. If we realize that we can open the sky with our diligence, we can write anytime we feel like it. NOTE: Some days I was more inspired than others. But I never was devoid of inspiration by 12noon or typed less than a few hundred words. Sure, I deleted some content here and there, but you'd be surprised at how much of the best stuff came during times I felt only mildly inspired.

Should Jensen Do Epic Sh*t Or Just Disrupt!?

Tim Sanders at http://twitter.com/sanderssays — 2013-04-10T15:32:46+00:00

UPDATE: After considering your responses, as well as the responses from his tribe at Ning, Bill has decided to change the title. The new one is: Disrupt! Think Epic. Be Epic. Thanks to everyone for your .02, and here's a nod to the wisdom of crowds.

Net Minds Select author Bill Jensen has a big decision to make with his title. Stay true to one of the mantras or keep it safe.

Bill has two books debuting June 1 with us. Both are the results of interviews with 100 great disruptive heroes including: Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s CEO; Alec Ross, who was Hillary Clinton’s head of innovation; Annie Duke, the world’s best female poker player; Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr; and Jon Landau, the producer of Titanic and Avatar. Bill’s powerful books found the practices and personality traits best-suited for an era of continuous personal disruption. But here’s his dilemma:

The book’s current title…Disrupt! Do Epic Sh*t – 25 Successful Habits for an Extremely Disruptive World…has some people hot’n’bothered over the use of ‘Sh*t.’ He picked it based on a “do epic shit” quote/mantra from one of the 100 heroes. It also supports the messages within the book of be adventurous, take risks, and go for it! Yet some will find it offensive. It's become a saying for many audacious people, and even available as a T-Shirt and motivational poster. However, one endorsement candidate already said no because he could not be associated with that title.

If it were just book sales, Bill is willing to go for it. (For better or worse, message integrity is important to him. And he knows that sometimes controversy sells.) But he also realizes that many corporate invitations to speak may hang in the balance: “We liked that guy’s book, but we can’t hire him … our culture deems even the asterisked word offensive.” Still, authors/speakers like Gary Vaynerchuck do quite well with in-your-face language and messages. Bob Sutton's book, The No Asshole Rule, was successful despite its colorful language. He speaks about it at corporate events often.

The current alternative “safe” choice: Disrupt! Think Epic, Do Epic.

What to do? What do you think he should do? Keep “Sh*t” in the title? Or tone it down? Please let us know through your comments. Thank you!

Lessons Learned About Print On Demand Publishing

Tim Sanders at http://twitter.com/sanderssays — 2013-04-05T19:05:55+00:00

Last year, after a visit to Ingram's Lightning Source facility, we decided to add print format to our mix. Up until then, we had planned on only releasing eBooks. After all, we are a digital publishing startup with an eye on scale. Traditionally published books (offset printing, usually offshore) is not startup stuff, given how wasteful it is and how much money is risked in shipping, storage and disposal of unsold units. But print-on-demand (POD) publishing breaks that mold, acting as a digital product with a physical output.

In other words, a POD book is really a digital file that sits on a server until someone buys a copy (usually from an online retailer). A few minutes after the customer hits the buy button, a process starts where the book is printed, then packed for delivery to the customer. Think "Just-In-Time" meets the new world of publishing. Up until recently, the quality of POD books was poor, as they lacked rugged binding and compelling covers (from color quality to texture). All of that has changed over the last few years as technology has enabled companies like Lightning Source to produce a paperback book via POD that rivals offset printing (which requires a huge print run to be affordable). The other big advantage to POD is that it is never out of stock and when you are doing a great job marketing your book, your Amazon or BN product page will never say, "None in stock, will be available in two weeks".

Our first book, Finding the Next Steve Jobs, was our introduction to the POD process and we took note of the finer points to share with our future authors:

1. Make Every Page Beg For Its Life - The key difference between POD and offset printing is price-point. With offset, your bulk order dramatically reduces any incremental costs created with blank pages at the front or back or in between chapters. However, with POD, your cost structure is the cover (flat rate) plus a fixed cost per page (be it blank or printed). When you add a cover page to each chapter or a blank page after one, it's easy to add a lot of cost to the book. In some cases, you may decide that this is a worthwhile investment and produces enough reader value to justify. But in most cases, the extra pages are just extra costs. So be vigilant about page count to maximize your net proceeds from each book sold.

2. Make Changes, But Not Too Many - The wonderful thing about digital publishing is that you can change the file and re-upload it to create a revised book. The next copy sold, be it an eBook or POD, contains the corrections or additions. That's great, because the book will not go obsolete or continue to sell with known mistakes. With offset printing, you first have to sell through all the books already printed, then maybe, your publisher will authorize changes before the next print run. With Finding the Next Steve Jobs, we were able to fix some mistakes we missed and add a testimonial from Walter Isaacson. But that doesn't mean we'll make changes every time we find a single mistake or receive a marketing element. Why? The book designer has to create a new file, which can have an incremental expense. For your eBook, you'll need to do a new conversion to Kindle and ePub formats, which will also bear an expense. So leverage the ability to be agile, but be mindful of extra costs that it entails.

3. Choose Your Cover Wisely - If you choose matte, the finish is smooth to the touch and feels like a high quality trade paperback. But as one designer pointed out, it's fragile and easily scuffed. The alternative, glossy cover, is much more durable, although it doesn't look or feel as expensive. It's a decision you have to make, based on whether you are looking for durability or tactile quality.

4. Be Patient With Your Retail Partners - Distributors and manufacturers send out a metadata feed (containing all the vital information about the book, including it's cover) to retailers via an ONIX feed. Some retailers are quick to update the metadata, making the product pages accurate and effective. In other cases (like Amazon), it can take a week (or two) for the correct metadata and book cover to populate on the product page. This means that you shouldn't assume that you can go on-sale as quickly as you can publish. This is true for either eBook or POD publishing. They key then, is to build at least two extra weeks into your production cycle to accommodate for the latency of metadata. After all, if your product page doesn't sing, the prospective readers you drive to it will not convert into buyers.

Do you have any insights? Please share in comments!

For more, read: Why Print on Demand Is the Hybrid Technology of Publishing

The Team Behind Finding the Next Steve Jobs

Tim Sanders at http://twitter.com/sanderssays — 2013-03-29T13:55:50+00:00

About one year ago, I met Nolan Bushnell after giving a talk on the future of publishing in Los Angeles. He told me he had a few different ideas for a book, and gave me his email address. My wife Jacqueline had been raving about him, after reading Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. After reading the book, I too was intrigued about his history with young Steve Jobs. Nolan and I met a few times over the next month and settled on a Net Minds project called "Finding the Next Steve Jobs". He wanted the book to be on sale much quicker than what literary agents had quoted: Approximately two years or so. I promised we could cut that window in half, but would want to make sure it was a quality project at the same time.

Nolan explained that he always built A Player Teams around his projects, and this book would be no exception. At Net Minds, we help authors like Nolan build publishing teams including editorial, design, marketing and media relations services. Right off the bat we found his writing partner, Gene Stone. He's the author Forks Over Knives and The Secrets Of People Who Never Get Sick. He's also ghostwritten dozens of books, including books of mine such as Love Is the Killer App. Gene saw the potential of this book right away and after a few discussions with Nolan he was on board. In May of 2012, we sent our first list Net Minds Select projects seeking partners. There were several responses for Nolan's project from designers, marketers and publicists and that got the ball rolling on building out his team.

This Tuesday, the book was published and I have to say, I'm incredibly proud of the team's work. At Net Minds, we also believe in giving recognition for the work, so here's the team:

Gene Stone - Co-author and project manager. Gene not only helped focus Nolan's ideas, he contributed greatly to fleshing them out and making them sing on the printed page. Early reviews by reporters have been universally positive about the book's readability, freshness in voice and value. Gene also managed the ensuing rounds of editing. First, he brought in Miranda Spencer to do a round of line editing. She's highly experienced, and likely, you've seen her handiwork on projects such as Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie. Next in the editorial chain, we brought in magazine veteran Michael Pinchera who performed a round of copyediting. He added great value too. Finally, towards the end of the process, we brought in Gwen Roolf from Queen's English Creative Services for a round of proofreading. Adam Wren conducted research for the book, bringing its concepts into the modern era of business.

Alex Miles Younger - Designer. You likely know Alex's work, as he served as Creative Director at Seth Godin's Domino Project, creating many compelling book packages such as Steven Pressfield Do the Work. He pored over the manuscript and came up with several creative ideas for Nolan to consider for the cover. In the end, taking a page from the manuscript (Creativity Is Messy), he came up with a compelling cover concept that evokes the feel of the 70's with the widely recognizable silhouette of Steve Jobs. His interior design was equally amazing, and his patience with our team during multiple rounds of iterations was nothing short of saintly. His deliverables were also thoughtful, including collateral for the print, eBook and other marketing purposes.

Chris Brogan - Social Media Marketing. Chris is one of the smartest and classiest people in the social space, and gave the team great advice on how to correctly engineer a long-term campaign around socializing the book. He discouraged any tactics that created marketing noise, and instead focused on how Nolan could interact with well-wishers and supporters to create a community around the book for some time.

Alissa Bushnell - Media Relations. She's not only Nolan's daughter, she was a long standing PR executive at PeopleSoft and currently serves as the West Coast bureau chief for 104 West, a leading PR firm. She engineered a release campaign that tapped into numerous media outlets that cover Nolan, Apple, innovation, hiring, and other related topics. Through her tenacity and pluck, she hit it out of the park on release day, delivering coverage from AllThingsD, USA Today, Mashable, ReadWrite, New York Times Bit Blog, Forbes, US News and the Associated Press just to link to a few. Whew. Now that's how you do it!

Finally, Zack Lien and Gavin Bushnell built a new website for Nolan, which showcases the book, his speaking services as well as a slew of other useful tidbits. They did this on a quick turnaround, and they did a great job!

Collectively, this project speaks to the heart of what Net Minds is all about: Team work. Many of the team members are in it for the long haul, taking some or all of their payments in royalty sharing. The net result is a remarkable product that came to market in slightly less than a year. If you haven't picked up your copy of the book, check it out right away.

PS - I am aware that this post was unusually linky. In this case, the addition of links to people, products or websites are intended for deeper dives for interested parties.

How Brian Cuban Uses Friendsourcing To Drive His Project

Tim Sanders at http://twitter.com/sanderssays — 2013-03-22T14:52:30+00:00

Brian Cuban is writing a book titled Shattered Image about his recovery from body dysmorphia. It's part story, part advice, and is shaping up to be a highly successful Net Minds Select project. He uses Facebook not only as a platform to market his interests (such as his online TV show, Legal Briefs), but to validate ideas or make decisions on creative issues. This is truly a collaborative way to run a business or a personal brand. I call this Friendsourcing, which I used in working on my last book (Today We Are Rich).

On his page, he announced his intention to write this book months ago, then updated his following that he signed with Net Minds. He introduced his editor to his following via a picture they took together in New York. Contemplating a new subtitle, he asked his tribe to react to various iterations or submit some on their own. For the PR campaign and the book jacket, he needed to have a new headshot photo. Last week his Cover Design partner James Bland (who is by trade a professional photographer) did a photo shoot with him. When Brian received the proofs from James, he went to his Facebook following for advice.

And they responded. By the end of the the day, there were over 424 comments and the post gained thousands of impressions as it spread. His tribe helped him understand which picture worked best, and became a little more invested in his project along the way. One of the things this proves is that people love pictures, and intercting with them. This helps explain the rise of Pinterest.

According to Brian, "that was a pretty successful crowdsourcing experiement!" But it requires hard work and a small investment. Otherwise, your following may not pay attention or contribute. "The biggest insight I have gotten," Brian continutes, "is that no matter how big your FB following is there is really only a small percentage paying attention, and even smaller percentage engaging on the book topic and even smaller who are actually interested. An even bigger revelation, if you want anyone beyond those people who are paying attention anyways, to see the content and have an opportunity to "get interested' you have to play Facebook's sponsored posts game on both my public page and pay the $7 to promote it on the personal page. To the extent I have been able to engage people using those tools, I have found Facebook to a very valuable crowd-sourcing tool.

Brian Cuban's Facebook Page (subscribe!)

Photos by James Bland Photography.

For more read: A New Way To Write: Friendsourcing

How Many Editors Does It Take To Produce A Well Written Book?

Tim Sanders at http://twitter.com/sanderssays — 2013-03-12T16:15:07+00:00

Last year, as we were recruiting authors for the Net Minds Select, I often heard the following: "I don't need a lot of editing. I'm a very good writer, and at the most, I need someone to read it once through for typos and such." Then, when they gave me their draft manuscript, it was unreadable and disorganized. Many of our authors write in the non-fiction, advice or business genres, and they assume that their gift of gab or experience writing email will suffice. They don't realize that editors are the producers of great manuscripts, while authors are usually the raw talent, to be refined into a compelling read.

I assume this as well, as my four books (released by major publishers) went through an editing process that involved no fewer than twelve eyes on the manuscript before the first galley was produced. My agent and my senior editor often reminded me that in order for a book to be successful over the long haul, "it has to work on the reader." No marketing can overcome a poorly edited book that the reader cannot or will not finish.

I started to read more about the editing process, starting with the essay compilation Editors On Editing: What Writers Need To Know About What Editors Do. It became clear to me that editors have made all the difference when it comes to an author delivering on his or her vision. Take F. Scott Fitzgerald as a case in point. His tome, The Great Gatsby, was in need of a great deal of editing when he first handed it to the great Maxell Perkins of Scribner. Perkins reduced, improved and focused the novel over several passes. He even defended the title internally at the publishing house. Finally, he soothed Fitzgerald's emotions as the process unfolded, giving him authentic praise where it was due and gentle criticism when it was warrented. In the end, the two of them (and a small army of expert readers, line editors and such at Scribner) delivered a classic that endures to this day. This is the same magic Perkins and his editorial team brought to Ernest Hemingway and Tom Wolfe.

If you are writing a book, regardless of genre, you need an editing process too. Here are the editors you may need to employ or recruit for your next book.

Developmental Editor: If you are writing non-fiction, and it's your first book, you likely need a developmental editor. This partner will focus on the core structure of the book. For an advice or business book, it would be: Premise, promise and prescription. He or she may also advise on key decisions such as voice, perspective, literary devices and chapter sequencing. A developmental editor is to authors what a producer is to musicians. They advise, shape and steer the words into a book "that works." Much of their work is done towards the beginning of the writing process, prior to the completion of a draft manuscript.
Line Editor: For either major genre, this editor is crucial to the process. He or she reviews a completed draft manusucript line-by-line to ensure sentence, paragraph and chapter quality and continuity. This editor ensures readability and consistency throughout the manuscript, often querying the author for intent or explanation of certain passages. While the line editor conducts light editing for typos, grammar, etc., this is not his or her key role.
Copy Editor: He or she reads the line edited manuscript for accuracy, consistency, formatting as well as checking it for grammatical, spelling, punctuation or syntax errors. This editor also checks on facts, verifies the accuracy of footnotes and may query the author for additional information to satisfy potential reader questions that the manuscript creates.
Proofreader: He or she is offers the final stage of editing prior to production, and ensures accuracy in terms of spelling, punctuation, grammar, spacing, typos, margins, alignments, fonts and style. In many cases, this editor will look for errors introduced by the book design, formatting or conversion process.

Beyond these four editors, you also need a group of experienced readers (including friends or colleagues) that will augment the proofreader's scan for errors. Save them for the end of the process, though, as their opinions about structure or concept will not be educated and may very well throw you off course.

The pricing for each one of these editors varies by their experience. Many of them charge based on the number of words in your manuscript and some editors (such as developmental) charge a project fee. In each situation, we believe that the Net Minds way of sharing royalties in addition to payment will bring out the best work, where everyone in the production process has a long term stake in the quality of the finished work.

Read: Editors On Editing: What Writers Need To Know About What Editors Do or the exchange of letters between Maxwell Perkins and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

How Bill Jensen Disrupted His Writing Process

Tim Sanders at http://twitter.com/sanderssays — 2013-03-05T15:40:42+00:00

Bill Jensen is the best selling author of several books, including Simplicity and Hacking Work. He's bringing his next two projects to Net Minds Select: Disrupt! and The Courage Within Us: Profiles In Disruption. True to form, he's disrupted the writing process by employing a novel collaboration method. Here's what he has to say about it.

Tim: Bill, I’m impressed with how you’ve approached writing Disrupt via collaboration. You’ve got quite a tribe giving you feedback on your manuscript. Tell us why and how you set this up.

Bill: I needed to walk the talk. If I’m writing about not being fearful of failure, and the value of iteration, I should live it. I selected Ning [for my collaboration platform]. Some of the people that participated weren’t thrilled with the interface, but cost-benefit-wise, overall it was the best solution that I found.

Before establishing the online component I searched [my network] for 40-50 people who would be willing to be a part of a community to read this book all the way through. You really need that many people because over time, only a quarter of them will be reliable for what you send them on chapter-by-chapter basis. I’ve been writing long enough that I have some loyal followers who were easy to connect with via email. I also went through my Twitter following, my blog post comments to select a representative sampling of perspectives and work experiences.

I wanted to be sure that I got the right mix, intentionally selecting some people that completely disagree with my perspective. I wanted feedback to represent the spectrum of the universe of readers. Some people are going to love it. Some people are going to hate it. I wanted all of that without being sanitized. First I enlisted my participants through an email or direct message [via Twitter] asking, “Would you be willing to be part of this?” Then, once I got 40-50 yeses, I set everything up in a Ning forum. Then I sent my participants the chapters, and they responded to the chapters through the forum format. In the past, prior the explosion of social media tools [like Ning] I did this through email. The only responses they saw were their own. This time, it’s just like everybody else, where everybody is commenting on other people’s comments and they’re building on each other.

Tim: What were some of the most useful insights from this group that impacted your manuscript?

Bill: The biggest ongoing impact was the perspective of the stakeholder groups that they were representing. Some people looked at it from an HR perspective. Some people looked at it from a CEO perspective. Whatever comments or changes or tweaks they required were not major alterations. Usually I had to add a paragraph or two in to segue between ideas. To say, oh yes, this is how this applies to you that are being disrupted also. It was kind of like a continuing “also” edition.

The most difficult thing for me to do, and it was hard sometimes, was treat everyone’s feedback as valid from their perspective, then try to match it to my vision for the book. It’s very hard to take critique or feedback from someone whose vision doesn’t match yours and still try to find a value in it. My first knee-jerk reaction would be to discount it thinking that they just don’t get it. I worked very hard to ensure that every single comment had some kind of validity.

Some participants pushed back one of the early subtitles where was I was describing the 25 patterns [of disruptive visionaries], as laws. I got feedback that I got was these really aren’t laws that you should follow, but instead, best practices. We’re still going back and forth on the formalizing what the subhead would be. The current iteration is habits. Changing that one word [in the subtitle] changed the framework of how I treat these things. It was very helpful.

Another thing I discovered is that my participants wanted much more of an instruction manual. That’s not necessarily what I was writing with this book. For example, there are three main sections in the book: Dos, Don’ts, and Guiding Principles. Guiding Principles was where I got the most feedback, such as “but how do I do this? How do I be true to myself? How do I stay true to my gut?” Instead of ignoring those comments, I wrote a pre-amble, which is two-page, this is how “how-to’s” fit in this book. I addressed the reader’s comments up front.

Another example of how this group impacted my manuscript came from comments like, “This relates not just to people who are disrupting, but people who are being disrupted.” I knew the people that are being disrupted don’t necessarily want to break the rules. One pre-reader especially, came back and said, “You’re still not hitting that point well enough. You need to honor these people. They’re like anchors.” That was his word, which I ended up using. They’re like anchors. Their wisdom is sound, and they need to be listened to. They don’t have to be disruptive to be successful. That ended up being a two-page, mini chapter at the end of the book that is now called, “A Tribute Honoring Non-disruptors.”

Tim: How did you prevent design by committee, as we like to call it?

Bill: Oh, that’s easy. It’s my book. I’m the final decider. That’s why I needed to do some introspection before I begin this process. I choose to throw stuff out or to keep stuff. I choose what to pay attention to. I’m the final say and my vision is what matters. For that to happen properly, I need to approach everybody’s feedback as if it’s valid and work hard to say: How would I address this within this vision. It was easy to not be design by committee because it’s a committee of one, me.

For more information on Bill, visit SimplerWork

How Wattpad Used High Touch Tech To Build Community

Tim Sanders at http://twitter.com/sanderssays — 2013-02-25T14:38:25+00:00

Wattpad is one of the fastest growing social startups in the world, with over fourteen million users. It's called the YouTube for writers, where anyone can post/publish content, gain followers and build a direct connection with readers. Over two billion minutes a month are spent on this dynamic platform. Venture capital firms have taken notice too, recently investing about fifteen million dollars in this startup.

Last week, while attending the Tools of Change conference, I bumped into Allen Lau in the speaker ready room. We had a short breakfast together, and in conversation, he revealed his early days strategy in developing Wattpad's community. "When we had only one hundred users (2006), I contacted every one of them to make sure they were having a great experience," he told me. While that might not sound like a scalable strategy long term, it is not much different than Ben Silbermann took in the early days of Pinterest.

"I learned a great deal from talking to them directly," Allen continued. "As a founder of a new community, you can't rely on data or reports alone." His soft spoken demeanor was a perfect fit for the original writers on Wattpad, many of which would have been off put by a hype-ish or corporate personality. Each time a user had a problem, and Allen interacted with them to reach a solution, a die-hard fan was created. This is the magic of high touch relationship management, even for a high-tech startup with a bold vision. Today's biggest success stories in startup world are not "we built this beautiful thing, and people gravitated to it" like you might think.

Great products require vibrant communities that feel like they have a personal connection with the company, and sometimes the founding team. Too often, though, startups fail to offer such personal services early. Some might say that it's because technical people are too introverted for such direct-service types of interactions. But often, early adopter users are just the same, being technical types themselves.

Last year, I developed a friendship with Goodreads founder Otis Chandler, who told me about his early days, and how important it was to make personal contacts with users, both the happy ones and those with problems. (See picture below, where Otis and Allen arm wrestle at dinner for the prize of "Biggest Reading Community In the World.") They offer takeaway value for anyone reading this post: Author, entrepreneur or community builder. Make real contact, be humble and leverage all the feedback to build a better mousetrap.

Visit Wattpad to join the community and start writing or reading today!

When You Should Talk Your Next Book Instead of Typing It

Tim Sanders at http://twitter.com/sanderssays — 2013-02-19T14:05:09+00:00

A book is the realization of an idea. It starts in the mind or the imagination of the author, and then makes it way to the reader through the process of writing. Over time, many tools have aided the author including memory, pen and paper, typewriters, word processors and recorders. Today, most of us use our word processing software and a computer to write. It's become our tool of choice, due to it's convenience, affordability and portability to capture inspiration as it happens.

For non-fiction authors, though, I'd suggest you consider making a recorder you tool of choice when it comes to writing. While many are proficient at typing the thoughts from their heads to hard drives, there are many who are not. My first book Love Is the Killer App was a set of recorded conversations between my writing partner Gene Stone and I over several months, transcribed into a working document. It became a finished book within nine months. I've met many other authors who have also used this method and are very happy with its ability to deliver quality of voice along with speed. You should consider talking your next book if:

You Have Frequent Typer's Block: You sit in front of your computer with an idea in your head or an outline on your whiteboard. You type, review, whittle, delete, type, save and then the next day, can't really follow what you wrote. Likely, there's something in this tool that's inhibiting your full expression of the idea. Seth Godin says that few of us have talker's block. You can likely speak your ideas outloud without seeing them show up on the screen, demanding your editing or deletions. It's like opening a floodgate for your content to come out. (Note: You spend a lot of time describing your book to friends, who usually get excited about reading it and encourage you. What if you captured these thoughts instead for the purpose of writing it!)

Your Typed Words Read Like Business Email: Because so many of us use our computers as our main email communication device, we tend to adopt a cryptic or mediciney style of writing from it. In my case, typed Tim was more "just the facts" and often lacked emotional content. When I'd read it later, I wouldn't see my voice on the screen. When I spoke the content in conversation or on stage giving a speech, my natural language seeped through, along with my sense of humor. If you've read a business or advice book, especially a long one, conveying a unique and personal voice is important to keeping the reader engaged to the last page.

You Don't Have Enough Computer Time As You Are On-the-Go: You'd like to sit down for a few hours everyday, typing out your thoughts for your book, but you are never in one place long enough to do it. You can't possibly tap out your book on your mobile phone and carrying a keyboard around for your tablet is cumbersome. A personal recorder is small enough to fit in your pocket, and every smart phone offers a recording feature as an app. You can keep a running file of a stream of related ideas by pausing between sessions. Later, you'll be surprise at how many ideas you captured, and how many stories you've told.

You Procrastinate Your Writing Sessions: This where having a writing partner or editor on tap for your recording sessions comes in handy. Much like having a personal trainer, your appointment to talk about your book gives you the motivation to stay on schedule. I also think it's a good idea to have a conversational partner because the interaction generates more detail and life from you. It's like the difference between talking to yourself versus talking to your partner. If you do this, however, make sure you are organized for each call and your partner has the outline or the script.

When I first started the talk-to-write approach, it was an expensive process. Transcription fees could run a few hundred dollars for an hour's worth of dictation and software solutions were not ready-for-prime-time. But today, it's easier and cheaper than ever. Consider crowd-powered services like Fox Transcribe, which offers quality transcription of your recordings for a dollar a minute. Dragon Dictation has greatly improved, although you'll either need to speak in punctuation code or plan on spending some time cleaning up your auto-transcriptions. Apple has bundled Siri's Speech To Text solution as of iOS5, which also works pretty well, but not necessarily for conversations.

In the end, you'll realize that time is money, and transcription may be just what you need to get your idea to the reader and kickstart the next phase of your career.

Choosing Between Traditional and Alternative Publishing

Tim Sanders at http://twitter.com/sanderssays — 2013-02-11T14:34:31+00:00

Right now, you are at a crossroads: Go the traditional route, which entails writing a book proposal and finding an agent OR just-do-it, via alternative routes such as self-publishing or the Net Minds Team Approach?

It's not an easy decision, but it's one you'll have to live with later, for better or worse. Over the last few years, I advised dozens of friends and colleagues on this subject. As time goes on, it's becoming a real crossroads in one's publishing career, because alternative publishing is no longer an author's last resort if they can't get "signed" by a publisher.

Not all is peachy in traditional publishing, as many authors will tell you. In fact, a recent survey commissioned by Digital Book World and Writer's Digest reports that one out of three traditionally published authors were considering self-publishing their next book (out of frustration). Conversely, the vast majority of people that used self-publishing services regret their decision, mostly due to poor quality results and disappointing sales.

So the decision is not easy. In fact, it's just as complicated as any decision you'll ever make in your publishing career. Here are three areas you can look at to inform your decision:

ASSETS: Think of a traditional publisher as a venture capital firm. They don't sign authors; they make an investment in you and your book. They only invest in assets, not friendships or affinities to your book's subject.

HEAT. Are you in the news, or widely considered an expert on something? Do you possess some knowledge (a secret) or proprietary research (Good to Great)? Are you a celebrity, big name journalist or touted professor? In short: What's the story an agent can tell forward about you? For non-fiction authors, besides biography, not having heat is a deal breaker to most traditional publishers.
CRAFT. Are you a great writer or are you a good talker or scribbler that can be cleaned up with some editorial elbow grease? For fiction, great writing skills can land you an agent or a book deal. For non-fiction, possessing great content is the key; publishers can bring the editorial to the table. For those who write well, self-publishing may work as you need less editing. Another way to think of craft is in terms of your project management skills. If you are a go-getter and superior organizer, you may really succeed at alternative publishing. If not, the structure of a traditional publisher is required for you to actually finish your book and properly release it.
PLATFORM (This is important, especially if you are a non-fiction author). Platform is the combination of your built in following, tools to reach them and the willingness to ask them to buy your stuff. It's not just enough to have a Twitter following, a well read blog or a radio show. Do they buy from you? Is your book aligned with what you talk to your audience about? Or is it a rock star writing about how to do home improvement? (That's called a "modulation"). If you have a great platform, you don't need a traditional publisher to market for you. Combined with HEAT, though, PLATFORM makes you more desirable to a traditional publisher.

GOALS: What do you want to accomplish with your book? It's important to figure out why you are writing a book. After all, it takes several hundred hours to write the book, and hundreds more to promote it, so you need to clearly identify the Why-Behind-the-What.

MAKE MONEY. If you are writing for commercial gain as your primary motivator, self-publishing is probably not the way to go. Unless you are writing a highly technical book in a space with a lot of information scarcity, a traditionally published author stands a better chance of making a lot of money from her book by muscling the book on the shelves at Barnes and Noble or Wal-Mart, where you will be discovered by casual shoppers.
MAKE MEANING. If you write to change the world, entertain or inspire, then alternative publishing (team or self) may do the trick. You can get your idea out there without having a small group of people at a New York City publishing house determine your idea's fate.
RAISE YOUR PROFILE. Sometimes, authors use publishing to increase their exposure, which fuels other business interests they might have. A best selling book can lead to media coverage, which leads to lucrative lecture circuit gigs or consulting jobs (for business or advice authors). A smash hit might establish you as a prominent writer that should also be considered for movie scripts, magazine columns or television shows. If higher profile is your desire, currently, traditional publishers tend to get more media coverage than their alternatives. However, if you have money (or can crowd fund), you can hire media relations support and if your story is newsworthy (see HEAT), then team publishing or subsidiary publishing (like Greenleaf) may still be a viable option. Media outlets, except the snootiest, are considering books outside of the Big 6 these days more and more.

NEEDS: Another way to look at this puzzle is to consider what you need to get out of your publishing strategy. This might allow you make an easier decision or break a tie based on the above set of considerations.

MONEY. Do you need money to support you while you take time off work to write your book? Do you need to cash in on your fame, secret or expertise? If the answer is "yes" then you'll need to run the traps of the traditional publishing approach. While Kickstarter may work for some, the book category fails to raise much capital outside of graphic, comic or cause.
SUPPORT. Do you need someone to collaborate with you on your book's content or packaging? Besides money, this is the key thing you'll get from a traditional publisher and lack from self-publishing services. With team publishing, you can find support at all levels, and by sharing in the royalties, have them be even more committed than a traditional publisher.
SPEED. Do you want your book to come out in the next year? Then forget about traditional publishing. It will take you six months or so just to write your proposal, get an agent and have meetings with publishers. The idea-to-on-sale cycle is 2-3 years. If you can't wait that long, then pursuing alternative publishing may be your best bet, especially if you want to leverage your HEAT before it cools. This is the #1 reason that traditionally published authors (or whose that could) forgo the traditional approach. This is why Mark Cuban and recently, Dr. Phil refused to use traditional publishing even though they easily could have.
WIDE AVAILABILITY: Do you need your book to be available "where ever books are sold" or does having it available online (or back of room) suffice? This can often be an emotional decision, as an author hates to hear that a potential buyer "can't find his book in the store." For years, traditional publishers have added a lot of value here, because getting your books in front of shoppers can deliver your CRAFT to the world, and make you successful. But shelf space is shrinking, eBook consumption is swelling and increasingly, publishers don't get most of their books on the shelf. If you have money to invest in your book's distribution, you can pursue alternative publishing and pay for placement in airport bookshops or certain chain stores. But it's expensive, and only prescribed for author's who are just trying to RAISE THEIR PROFILE by publishing.

Whew. That's a lot of things to consider, but like I wrote earlier, this is a complex decision. If you take the time to think about these three areas, though, you'll likely have a much clearer picture about which way you should turn.

From Author To Editor: Making the Leap with Michelle Richmond

Tim Sanders at http://twitter.com/sanderssays — 2013-02-08T14:23:00+00:00

Recently, I spent some time with Michelle Richmond, best selling author of The Year of Fog. I noticed that not only was she a critically acclaimed novelist, she also worked as an editor. So I reached out to her to find out how she crossed over from author to editor. Here's her unique and fresh perspective on crossing the chasm:

Tim: So, Michelle, how did you get started in writing?

Michelle: I studied creative writing in college. Right out of school, I took a job as an advertising copywriter, doing freelance magazine writing. Then, I went back to graduate school to do an MFA in Creative Writing, and during that time, I started writing fiction and personal essays.

Tim: You also provide editing services. At what point did you realize that besides being an author, you were also an editor?

Michelle: Around the time my first book came out, I started teaching creative writing, first at City College of San Francisco. Over the years, I taught in the graduate writing programs at California College of the Arts, the University of San Francisco, St Mary's College of Moraga, and, most recently, Notre Dame de Namur University.

When you’re teaching creative writing, you are always editing. When you are reading a student’s work, you’re looking for the big picture of the story, but you’re also very involved in showing that writer how the piece can become so much better by losing the extraneous words, or adding the right word in the right spot.

Tim: When you first take on an editing project, how do you dive in?

Michelle: If it’s a full manuscript, then the first thing I do is read it. Before I ever pick up a pen, I read the first 50 pages or so because I want to get a real feel for it before I start making any sort of decisions and marks on it.

The easy part of editing is the line-by-line work, because it can be so clear to you, from an outside perspective, what can make a sentence or a paragraph better. The bigger job is after you’ve read the complete manuscript, thinking about the puzzle pieces, and how to move things to make the narrative feel more complete and more suspenseful.

Even if it’s a non-fiction, businessy kind of book, there has to be some feeling of where the story is going. So, the more nuanced part of editing is figuring out how all of the pieces go together.

Tim: What do you prescribe if an author friend of yours asks you, “I really want make the leap into editing. What books should I read on the subject?”

Michelle: I don’t really prescribe books on editing, simply because I think the best way to be a good writer and a good editor is to be a voracious, and eclectic reader of literature. I always believe in learning by editing, rather than just reading books that tell you how to do it.

Tim: What advice, then, would you give to an author who wants to setup an editing business?

Michelle: First, I’d ask, “How much time can you really can devote to editing?” This takes away from your writing time, so once you’ve figured out your editing commitment, you can calculate what you need to charge for the work.

You have to find the sweet spot, where you will do the editing joyfully and be happy to have the work. If you undersell yourself, you’ll be thinking, “Well, I could be doing my own writing right now.”

Tim: Good advice on pricing, what about marketing?

Michelle: The most basic thing is to set up a website with your editing services, or have a section on your own author website outlining what kind of editing you do, what kind of projects you take on, and what you charge.

I do it by package. I offer a first 50 pages package, a full edit of the entire manuscript, and a package that includes a second edit of the revision. I try to make packages and pricing very transparent, so that the queries I receive are from people who are actually interested in the service I'm offering.

Once your website is up and running with all of the essential information, engage your twitter followers, facebook friends, and Linked-in connections. Reach out to your friends, acquaintances, and colleagues in the industry to see if they can refer to you to authors who are looking for the kind of editing your want to do. Network!

For more in Michelle both as an author and editor, vist her website.

Why You Likely Don’t Have A Team Working On Your Book

Tim Sanders at http://twitter.com/sanderssays — 2013-02-05T14:02:50+00:00

In research, as well as my experience, teams make the best products. Moreover, feeling a modicum of ownership in its success, they stay involved after they are lauched. The team treats the idea for the product like a baby to be nurtured, birthed and grown into her potential.

Most likely, you don't have a team built around your book. If you go with a corporate publisher, you don’t have a team – you’ve sold it to a VC of sorts that will assign staff to work on it, along with all their other duties. While some of them might take a shine to you or your book, in most cases, they are detached about your vision, and attached to getting your book off their plate.

That’s not a team. That is a supply chain.

If you think that solo-publishing is a team builder, think again. Use a pushbutton publisher like Smashwords or BookTango and it’s all on you. Write, edit, design and promote the book – you are the team. If you decide to buy a package deal of services (for only $999 – $2999 we’ll edit, design and market your book!), you are getting a crappier staff handoff – in some cases (like Author Solutions) to a harried worker in the Philippines.

That’s not a team, that’s a tourist trap for authors on a journey to be published. The staff that gets your assignment is measured more by time-to-finish than the quality of the output or the success of the venture.

OK, so you decide you’ll venture out and find some freelance talent to edit or design your book, that’s a team, right? Wrong. When you hire fee-for-service talent, in many cases, you are creating your own supply chain, not an aligned team that’s ready to collaborate their way into something great.

On a real team, there’s a mutual picking, where both the team and the players agree to play together. Sure, you’ll read about the mercenary NFL star who shows up on Sunday for the check, but soon enough, he fails to deliver on the promise and is traded or cut. Not a team player. A fee-for-service provider is hired to do a job, not weigh in on issues beyond the task at hand. While many of them are committed to a high standard of quality, the ultimate success of your book project is all up to you.

That’s why we’ve created Net Minds. To help you build a real team around your book. Not only do you get to pick them, based on their profile and experience, they are required to pick you – and explain they are attracted to your project. We call this affinity matching, which leads to an engaged team. For example, one of our Net Minds Select projects is a book about dealing with male body dysmorphia. The topic has attracted an editor, marketer and publicist that all have one thing in common: They’ve either had or know someone who has suffered through this condition. And they want to help the author write to it. They have a passion for this project.

The Net Minds team publishing approach also empowers every teammate to have inputs on the ultimate product or promotional strategy. This is one of the thing’s that is broken about the existing publishing industry. The author hands off a manuscript to an editor, who hands it to the book designer, who then reveals it to marketing and promotional leads. This is no way to collaborate!

When I was working with traditional publishers, I never got access to my design team and they never got to talk with marketing. With self-publishing, the process is even more forumlaic and linear.

At Net Minds, we encourage authors to put the whole team together at the beginning of the project, where editorial can talk to marketing and vice versa. Design gets involved early, inspiring the team with early comps and even weighing in our marketing executions. Marketing can also talk to design about integrated campaigns that add value from promotion to reading to sharing.

Then finally, there’s the issue of commitment. A staffer at a corporate publisher usually doesn’t have an economic incentive to the team’s success. There’s no bowl-bonus, should your book become a best seller or a critic’s pick. Go it solo, and you’ll find that your fee-for-service partners make the same amount, regardless of how many copies get sold.

At Net Minds, we enable authors to share book royalties with their team mates in addition to, or in lieu of fees. This hybrid approach helps publishing professionals optimize unsold time, take on passion projects and build up passive income on our platform. The ability to receive a piece of the upside, creates true commitment to the project’s success. The book, then, is a startup, and all the team members have stock in it. And we know how startups can change the world!

If you feel scholarly, download this thirty year review of research on how employee owned companies produce better results.

Photo by JF Schmitz

What Is the Future For Literary Agents?

Tim Sanders at http://twitter.com/sanderssays — 2013-01-31T17:50:52+00:00

In my career as an author, I've benefitted from having a great literary agency, Dupree Miller and Associates. They helped me take my idea for a book and my platform, and package it for major publishers. The result was a mid six figure advance, accomplished in less than a year from concept to contract. Along the way, they secured a writing partner for me early on, helping with the book proposal on speculation. When the book was in production, Jan and Shannon managed publishing politics to make sure I was getting adequate attention.

When the book was published, my agents made sure I was getting adequate resources from book tour support (this was 2002, when there were still tours) to publicity efforts. They secured endorsements of my book by their clients (from Covey to Dr. Phil) that really helped make the book credible and newsworthy. Jan Miller got me booked to speak at the annual Morning Show Bootcamp conference, where I was introduced to several hundred on-air personalities that could promote my book. Her office followed up by acting as my radio PR manager, lining up a few hundred radio interviews in a three month period, which led to my book getting on the New York Times bestseller list 11 months after publication!

Later, they went through the process again and again, as I had new ideas that later became successfully published books. That's what great literary agents can do for you: Proposal Management, Deal Making and Value Added Services.

In the new world of publishing, though, many of an agent's services aren't going to be the same as they were in the past. For example, book proposals are incredibly inefficient with an author's time. They take almost as long to write as the actual book, and much of their contents are superfulous to the reader. Market analysis, marketing plans (which are always scrapped months later), extended biography, sample chapters, etc., all waste valuable time - but publishers demand them in order to calculate their advance offer and determine if the book is a fit for the economic model. I believe in the future, aided by companies like Net Minds, the book proposal will go away and be replaced by a project creation tool that is not only efficient, but will provide potential partners or team members richer insight regarding the book's potential.

Then there's the deal making service. Publishers are dramatically reducing their advance offers (10k is the new 50K, etc.), making the 15% that an agent earns pretty small VS the time they take to travel, negotiate, and serve these deals. For authors seeking team or self-publishing, the 'deal' is merely a terms and conditions agreement which requires neither an agent or an attorney. So, I believe a much smaller portion of authors will need to run the gauntlet of contract negotiations and acquisition by a traditional publisher.

So what's going to the be role of the literary agent in the future? I believe that they will reinvent themselves as literary producers (think project managers). They add so much value in this regard, and many authors will need their services more than ever to select and manage their publishing team from editorial to packaging to promotion. Literary producers will still receive a piece of the gross, likely something in the 10% range for these services (based on other media industries). But since there's no more publisher layer to get through, they'll be able to work on many more book projects, and waste less time on managin proposals that never sell.

LIt-Producers will tap into their network of service providers to complete teams, manage tricky services like PR firms, and be just as indespinsible as ever to an author's success - especially those that are highly successful and too busy to manage the myriad details required to create a successful publishing process. They will guide all the team members through the publication process, including managing their expectations. They will even help authors price their books correctly, and choose the best release dates, based on competition. They'll be a voice of reason for title and design issues as well. These are all services that aren't disappearing like shelf space at Barnes and Noble.

I also think that they will discover people that don't even know they have a book in them, and package them for team or self-publishing, managing the process from soup to nuts. The future of publishing is likely to be more of a Producer-To-Consumer model than the outdated Publisher-MiddleMan-Retailer-Reader model, which means that the secret to success will no longer be the deal, but instead, the project. We will be creating a position on our system (Producer) to facilitate this opportunity for literary agents cum producers, and are excited to see how they will help us reinvent publishing.

READ: The Art of Publishing Project Management

The Art Of Publishing Project Management

Tim Sanders at http://twitter.com/sanderssays — 2013-01-22T16:55:52+00:00

Rarely does a book succeed solely because it's written well. In almost every case, a successful book stems from a masterfully led publishing project. When I first started out as an author, my acquisitions editor (at Crown) served as my project manager. However, as time goes by, he or she is more concerned with the profit and ;oss statement than the actual project, leaving the author to led it. If you've worked on projects before, you know that projects don't run themselves, leaders do. At Net Minds, we are building a project creation and management platform to streamline the process. But there's still an art to it.

Napoleon Bonaparte was often quoted as saying, "the leader's role is to define reality, then give hope." You must be clear on where you are, but keep your team engaged with the promise of success. For our Net Minds Select projects, we believe that the entire publishing project team be assembled at the beginning, including: Editorial, Design, Promotions and Media Relations. This way, everyone can have a voice and synergies can be created. Each member has a critical role in the project, and likely, insights for other team members that will turn out useful. Here are some tips on running a smooth publishing project.

1. Get Your Team To Care About Your Project - Face it, no one cares about your book more than you do. As the author, it's your baby. But if you can transfer some of that passion for it to team members, you'll increase engagement and spur innovation. To do this, make sure your teams know's what I call the 4 M's: Material (they must read the manuscript, either in full or at least what you've written so far.) Motivation (you need to share with them why you wrote the book, and why it's going to make a difference). Market (identify the target reader you are writing the book for, and what your promise is to her if she reads it.) Map (clearly identify the schedule, the milestones and little successes that will be achieved along the way.)

2. Work In Prototypes, Not Word Clouds - Whether it's a design idea, a marketing concept or even a timeline, create a visual prototype instead of just talking about it. The value of them is that your team can point to it and give candid feedback about whether it works. Too often, we discuss ideas abstractly, thinking that the prototype (even a rough sketch or a power point slide) is too hard to do. But in the end, you'll find that rapid feedback is the key to saving time and getting an idea from concept to reality. And one thing I've learned spending time with project master Ed Catmull (from Pixar) is that a successful movie (or book) isn't just a big idea - it's thousands of little solutions that cannot be created in a vacuum.

3. Communication Is Everything - It's likely that most of your communication will be via email over the life of the project. This is where many of them break down. I've participated in deep research on to effectively use email, and several rules emerged that you should follow. Never give bad news, disagree or criticize ideas over email. When giving criticism in person or on the phone, focus on the execution and not the person. Avoid reply to all unless you really need it for project tracking. Less email improves your readership, which is key to leading a project. Break the thread with a phone call if you go back and forth more than three times. A quick chat will likely save you time.

4. Run Effective Meetings - Those times you congregate are crucial, as the face to face element provides critical interactions. Don't run bad meetings that go on and on and never seem to produce results. Always have an agenda, with a defined set of deliverables for the meeting. Start out meetings with a review of what's going right to set a positive tone. Don't use meetings to dump information, send it out prior to the event. Use meetings to either make decisions or better yet, create execution strategies around decisions that were already made. Don't seek consensus, a project is a merticracy and in the end, you run the show. Allowing consensus building will make meetings three to five times longer than they should be and in the end, someone will still feel like he isn't getting his way. Take notes, especially on the promises made and due dates for their delivery.

5. Don't Forget To Give Credit - This is critical in the middle of the publishing project, when publication and sales reports are still months away. I call this period of the project "the Valley of Despair" where we get sapped for energy and can easily get upset at the slightest provocation. Recognize accomplishments, even the small ones, and if possible commerate them with a note or a gift. At Net Minds, all of our books will give credit to every team member for their specific contributions on the title page (as well as the acknowledgements, which are up to the author.) As much as an author wants support for her book project, your team mates need credit just as much.

In the end, your project management effectiveness will show up with a better book that is more likely to find its target audience. Never forget who the project was created for: the reader. By keeping him or her at the center of the table, you'll steer your project to best selling heights.

Publishing Lessons From Seth Godin

Tim Sanders at http://twitter.com/sanderssays — 2013-01-16T16:49:18+00:00

Author, entrepreneur and ruckus rowser Seth Godin made a special appearance via Skype at this week's Author Pow Wow. He answered questions for 45 minutes, dishing great advice for authors and publishers. Here are some of the highlights:

1. If The Milk Is Free, Why Would They Buy the Cow? - He pointed out that a very small percentage of his blog readers bought his book(s). Why? They get enough of his perspective and advice from his daily postings. He pointed out that [business/advice] authors need to create "an uncomfortable moment that can only be solved by buying the book." This flies in the face of recent thinking that you leak/spread big chunks of your book to generate interest. The way to do this (better) is to talk a great deal about the problem, the way the book will approach it and what will happen if you ignore its content. (See his clarification below in comments. If you'd rather sell books than serve people with ideas, this is relevant)

2. The Showroom Effect Is Real - When your physical book is on tables or shelves at a real store, people will experience it much like a car in a showroom. It will lead to more sales through sampling, holding and absorbing the book's packaging (which includes blurbs). He believes that only ~~gift~~ specialty book shops will provide this in the future, which means that the future of the book in his view is limited. He thinks blogs will replace them in this genre.

3. Business Books That Sell One-At-A-Time Will Fail - This is a remarkable observation on his part. The most successful books in this genre, he points out, sell 5 or 10 or 100 at a time. The takeaway is to make sure your book has a message that readers want to share, and likely have already believed in. Another way to write a book that's bought by the carton is to tackle conventional wisdom (like Dan Pink did with Drive or like Seth Godin did with Permission Marketing). If you write a book that leads to a personal experience, your sales will dry up the minute you take your foot off the markeitng gas.

4. Advertising Only Works If the Mention of the Author's Name Triggers Sampling of the Book - He doesn't think that awareness of a title, blurbs or clever copy of the book's promise have any ROI. If the author is famous, that's a different story, he points out. At that point, the ads serve to alert to built in customer base that their new "fix" is ready.

5. You Need To Start Your Marketing Long Before the Release Date - He believes that one year out is the minimum window for an author to buid a tribe around his/her book. They should begin to talk about it and spread ideas (see point #1) as it's being shopped, written and edited. Here's a video clip I shot on this subject when I ran into him at the TED Conference in 2010:

6. For Fiction Authors, Give Your Manuscript Away To See If It Is Spreadable - This is a little different than his advice early, but interesting nonetheless. He counsels fiction writiers to send their Word document manuscript to 50 friends. If her friends don't spread it to 25 of their friends, which then is spread from there, your book probably doesn't work. If a story doesn't sail on its own, he says, you probably need to write a new book.

When asked to give his final advice, he quotes two of his mainstay mantras from his recent books: Go out and create a ruckus. We need you.

For more Seth, visit his fantastic blog.

Why You Should Join the Author (R)evolution

Tim Sanders at http://twitter.com/sanderssays — 2013-01-11T14:42:39+00:00

Next month, Net Minds will launch at the first Author (R)evolution conference, put on as part of O'Reilly Publishing's annual Tools of Change event. I will be part of a panel: How To Put It All Together: Choosing A Production & Distribution Service. The one day event will feature compelling content for authors, including: The value of giving away content, Community Driven Publishing, Marketing & Discovery and Data. The program was organized because in TOC's view, "Business as usual [for authors] is not enough." Hear, hear.

I join them in this idea: The author must evolve, go beyond 'the talent" and take matters into his/her own hands to be successful in the new reality. Gone are the days where publishers act as curators, investors and star makers. They've lost shelf space, much of their financial resources and most of their patience to hang in there when a book doesn't immediately work. It's not personal, it's just the mechanics of a antequated busines model that results in a hits-only mentality.

Most publishers are offering much smaller advances (10K is the new 50K), taking the same most-of-the-pie share of royalties and increasingly expecting the author to do most/all of the marketing. And, they take 2+ years to get to market. So for authors, evolve or be ignored. New perspectives, skills and approaches must be adopted to deliver your idea to any sizable group of readers. When I look at how people have evolved in my career as a dotcom executive (from retail giants to telecommunications companies), I see it in three steps: Adapt, Expand and Grow.

Adapt to the circumstances: This means you accept the new reality of publishing without emotion, then commit yourself to changing your authorship style to accommodate it. Don't write alone, use social media to develop a community around your idea. Start marketing/promoting the book's launch a year before it comes out, likely while you are still writing it. Don't expect publishers (or self-publishers) to do anything for you except provide design (mostly templated), conversion and distribution. Don't let anyone but YOU be the project manager.

Expand into the opportunity: Develop your own platform, even if you have to invest an hour every day. Become a student of promotions and marketing. Build your own circle of proof readers, design consultants and book launch partners. Broker with other authors to build up more resources and share best practices.

Grow from the experience: Cultivate the belief that the author is a creative, just like an inventor or a musician. Erase your notions of literary-greatness or entitlement.

You are not a victim. You are a triumphant survivor.

Recast yourself as an independent-empowered entrepreneur who just wants your idea to find traction, and is willing to accept responsiblity for it's success or failure. Learn to love disruptive technology as the great equalizer. Stop expecting talent to be rewarded by the market and, instead, believe that the reading experience is what makes a project successful.

One final idea: For every author we are working with, we are working with twenty freelancers from editorial to design to promotions. They too are part of the author (R)evolution, and in their case, they need credit for their work. It can take many forms such as financial, marketing or even social.

Our goal is to create a platform where their work is rewarded, either with passive income or marketing power. Without publishers subsidizing authors, we'll see skinnier budgets and crowd funding efforts attempting to bridge the gap. In those cases, Net Minds will give freelancers the ability to require a piece of the action (royalty-sharing) when they work for less than their normal fee.

This is a disruptive idea, which requires freelancers to reconsider hybrid arrangements that have an element of risk involved. But if they do, they have a chance to optimize their time, work on projects they love and build up a passive income stream along with ratings/reviews and credit for their outstanding work. When they work on a book that breaks out, they'll make 200% to 500% more than their standard fee. That's the value of risk reward.

Oh yeah, for the first time, we'll give freelancers the ability to review authors as clients and talk about their experience working them them. That'll close the evolutionary loop!

If you'd like to attend the Author (R)evolution Event or TOC, you can save $350 bucks using our discount code: NM350. Tweet me @netminds if you are coming, and I'll buy you a cup of joe.

Jon Mueller On the Author’s New Challenges That Lie Ahead

Tim Sanders at http://twitter.com/sanderssays — 2013-01-07T14:46:42+00:00

On January 14, I'll be making a return appearance at 800CEOREAD's annual Author Pow Wow, a gathering of business authors and publishing professionals. Jon Mueller is the company's GM, and puts the event together. Last week, he and I talked about the purpose of the event, his perspective on modern publishing and what we can expect from the company in the future.

Tim: What are the greatest joys and challenges in your role at 800CEOREAD?

Jon: Every day, we get any number of books sent to us from authors and from publishers, and we talk to interesting people all the time. It's idea overload, really. So, in some ways, it’s a really fulfilling spot for me, but it’s also really, really intense. Some of these ideas are very powerful, and they’re getting spread very quickly, and very far to many, many people. It’s interesting to sit in the hub of that, and see it all happening, and watch what people are doing and how that process is changing.

Tim: Talk about that how the spreading of ideas is changing.

Jon: Instead of just pushing the book or its big idea, authors spread pieces of them around. For instance, in our Change This manifestos, an author shares his perspective, but not the whole practice. There are videos that they post on their blogs and tweets that dish bite sized ideas. All these little bits and pieces build to that big, whole idea that is the book. It’s fun to see these constellations form, and watch how they develop, and kind of compare them to each other.

Tim: Why did 800CEOREAD create Author Pow Wow?

Jon: The fundamental purpose behind our Pow Wow, is to help authors understand the road that they’ll be taking if they choose to pursue being an author.

When it began, the focus was more on the publishing industry, itself. There was a lot of confusion, and there still certainly is, about what a publisher’s function is, what they’ll do for an author, and what’s expected from the author’s side. Then as well as today, the expectation is, an author writes a book, they hand it to the publisher, and they sort of wash their hands, and wait for stardom to take place. That’s not turning out to be the case. That's when the real work begins.

We have a lot of industry people there such as publishers, publicists, business author consultants and designers. But, we also discuss non-traditional ideas, driven by big changes in the industry. For example, as technology has changed, so has the author’s task of promoting the book and how they connect its idea to an audience.

We also need to consider the rise of self-publishing. Should business authors still pursue traditional publishing? Now, should they just publish themselves? In either case, authors are often ill-equipped to understand what’s expected or necessary, and to do those things themselves. So, we’ve brought in authors over the last couple of years that share their various experiences with publishing and self-publishing. We've also included experts to talk about social media and digital promotions.

Tim: What was one of the most surprising conclusions you’ve seen an attendee author come to?

Jon: Last year, at the end of the event, we did a roundup with everybody on what they took away, and one of the authors said, “I’m not going to write my next book. I’m not going to work on it anymore. After hearing all this information, I realize that I’m not prepared for it. Maybe down the road, when I can think about this more clearly, and dedicate some more time to it, I’ll be ready for it. But, right now, I’m not ready.”

That was a really important lesson for somebody to learn because it is a tremendous amount of work to take this path, and if you’re not prepared for it, your energy and your time is probably better spent somewhere else.

Tim: What were some of the biggest take-a-ways from last year’s Pow Wow?

Jon: Not to point the spotlight on you, but your presentation was really a highlight for me because it spoke to the idea that publishing is not simple, and with technology, its complexity rises every day. It’s not just a one route path. It’s a many tiered path that you need to be conscious of, and have a support system to address. That is what Net Minds is set out to help authors with. It’s about building teams. It’s not just about you. It’s not just about your idea. It’s about who’s involved in fulfilling the spread and the creation of that idea. To do that well, you must have the right people around you.

Tim: What's the road map for 800-CEO-READ? What big changes can we expect?

Jon: We have one site that’s re-launching in January called, Knowledge Blocks, and that deals with, sort of, high-level content, business knowledge in sort of a Twitter atmosphere online. 800-CEO-READ.com is undergoing some big changes. We’re going to be doing a total overhaul on how the site looks and works. It’s going to be much more customer friendly.

As we start to see more authors producing ebook only versions of their idea, we want to be able to facilitate that. So, that’ll be a big change you’ll see with us next year.

For more information, visit: Author Pow Wow

Guy Kawasaki On Self-Publishing, Marketing Your Book and Cheating

Tim Sanders at http://twitter.com/sanderssays — 2012-12-28T16:02:18+00:00

Last week, I spent some time with author and former Apple executive Guy Kawasaki. We talked about his latest book, APE: Author-Publisher-Entrepreneur--How To Publish a Book. He was inspired to write it after struggling through the process of putting out his own book (What the Plus!: Google+ For the Rest of Us) earlier this year. In this interview, he shares some advice for authors, along with his views about ethics in book marketing.

Tim: What are the biggest mistakes you see authors make in self-publishing?

Guy: First, self-published authors often don’t invest in professional copy editing. That is a huge mistake. I’ll tell you a story. I outsource copy editing, so, prior to turning in APE to my copy editor, about 60 people I know went through it. My co-author and I went through it 10 times each.

So, when I turned in a manuscript, I think it’s perfect. I’m thinking to myself, “This copy editor, is going to freaking have a heart attack. This is the rirst time in her career, that she’s received a manuscript with no mistakes.” So, she spends her week copy editing, and I say, “Okay, , how many errors did you get?” She says, “2,900.” I said, “That’s not possible.” She says, “Yes. You’re right. It’s really 1,500 because if I cut a word, and put in another word, or, I move the word, [Microsoft] Word counts that as two transactions? So, really, it’s more like 1,500.”

Just to recap: 60 people, plus 2 co-authors, went through this over and over, and we turned it in to a professional copy editor and got 1,500 mistakes.

Tim: So, the odds of an author using the Word spelling and grammar check tool on his manuscript, reading through it carefully, then publishing it without a lot of mistakes is zero. Next mistake?

Guy: Second, authors do not think through the total process of publishing a book. They don’t think about marketing it. They think that 80% of publishing a book is writing it. As soon as they finish writing it, then, they figure, “Oh, yes. I got to publish it. Now I just go to Kindle, and click on Upload, and it’s done, right?” It isn’t that simple. Then they ask themselves, “How do I get the word out?”

The problem with that is that they arrive at that brilliant insight after they published it, so they have no platform. What are they going to do? It’s too late. They need to blog, do social media, and start the process early to build a platform.

Tim: How far in advance do you think they should start that?

Guy: One year. I have spent two to three hours a day on social media since last year, building up my platform and talking about my new book. It’s a means to an end. My advice to the author is, you spend two hours a day writing and one hour a day on social media.

Tim: Should the author concentrate their sales on a specific retailer, say Amazon, to drive discoverability? Or, if they spread out their marketing buy to any one of these six places, do they end up burying themselves with low sales rankings?

Guy: We went with Kindle Select, so Amazon has a 90-day exclusive. Why did we do that? And, I think, based on the marketing benefits, plus the fact that I think Amazon is about 80% or 85% of the action. If you can get extra marketing benefits by going with the person who has 85% of the market anywhere, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out, you should probably do it.

Now, we have the ability because we kind of have done this before, on the 91st day, when the exclusive expires, we’ll do iBooks, Nook, and we’ll do Kobo. It’s extra business. But, for novice authors if they just stick with Amazon, they will be okay.

I mean, they’re going to, 80% of what they could do with one shot, so, if you make your books accessible with Amazon, it’ll be successful everywhere. But, if you try to make your success, book successful everywhere, and it’s not, adding one more online retailer isn’t going change things.

Tim: What about short cuts to being discovered, like buying your way on to the New York Times best seller list. That’ll get the word out, right?

Guy: This is totally immoral. Both the New York Times Bestseller List and the Wall Street Journal Best Seller List, are proxies for quality. Readers look at those lists and think, “This is on the list; it must be good book.”

After hearing a pitch about doing this [from a marketer], I went to my wife, and said, “Honey, I can absolutely guarantee that [my last major book] Enchantment will be a New York Times Bestseller. Absolutely guarantee it.” And, that has a lot of benefits. Now, you get introduced as New York Times Bestselling author, Guy Kawasaki. That has benefits, right? And, I asked, “Do you think I should do it?” And she said, “If your kids asked you how you became a New York Times Bestselling author, what are you going to tell them?” And, I said, “Okay. I get it.”

So, I didn’t do it. I refused to do it. And, if people knew all the bestselling authors, and famous people who have done it, they would be shocked. Absolutely shocked.

For more information on authors that buy their way on to the best seller list, read: Don't Get Fooled By the Fakes of Publishing

Five Events That Rocked Publishing In 2012

Tim Sanders at http://twitter.com/sanderssays — 2012-12-18T16:25:01+00:00

No one can say that 2012 was an uneventful year in the publishing industry. It's featured buyouts, law suits, disruption, and an everywoman's story of unlikely dominance. All of this while we kept reading, writing and honing our craft. Here are five events that we'll still be talking about next year, and likely for some time after that:

1 - 50 Shades Of Grey Blows Up: This story, featuring E.L. James, started in 2011 when she self-published her novel in the UK. Several social reading websites, such as Goodreads, discovered the book and created a mountain of buzz, which made it a breakout title in 2012. Vintage picked up the book, offering it wider distribution and a packaging/PR machine to take it to the next level. Currently, the book has sold over sixty million copies, eclipsing sales records set by the Harry Potter series. This development is significant, as it's inspired countless scribblers to create their own trillogies, self-help tomes, biographies as well as fan/fan fiction knock offs of the Grey series. This has to rattle traditional publishers, as the uber-successful self published author has tremendous leverage over them in negotiations, relegating them to the role of VC/Distributors. Expect several stories like this next year, albeit not as likely to be as huge in terms of unit sales.

2 - Amazon's DOJ Sues Publishers For Value Fixing: Last year, it became apparent to major publishers that Amazon's $9.99 razor blade/shaver approach to driving eBook adoption was commoditizing their business model. Instead of a book being worth $15, $20 or $30 based on it's content, it was now $9.99, based on its format (electronic). Amazon could maintain this subsidization strategy infinitely, until either publishers or publsihed authors were beaten into submission. So, the Big 6 (allegedly) got together, creating a new model that allows them to set their own price and give Amazon/retailers a 30% fee for the transaction. The result was still a book that was priced substantially less for the electronic version than the costly print version. The DOJ decided that it was price fixing, and now publishers must pay the freight and we are back to buying books at a price point that resembles double issues of magazines and not information products that pass many hours of time or solve real problems. This means that, in the digitally delivered future, it will be harder and harder for authors and their publishers to make a reasonable profit from their work.

3 - Random House and Penguin Unite For Survival: Likely influenced by the year's current events, combined with last year's retraction of retail shelf-space, Random Penguin was created in a shotgun wedding. Consider this the first verse in the musical chairs production we are likely to witness over the next few years. This merger won't be as impactful as a cross-industry merger, such as Time Warner Cable buys Hachette or Google buys Hyperion. The precedent, though, is set for traditional publishers to either unite in collusions or be purchased for parts (editorial, sales channels, back titles) in a fast changing industry. God forbid they ever have to break out their actual operations numbers, which will reveal that they make up for their bad decisions by the occassional hit and the ability to hide inside multi-national conglomerates as a 'boutique division.'

4 - eReaders Get Appified: In less than ten years, eReaders have seen their sharp rise and fall from necessity as tablets and minis swallow their value proposition in a reading app. If you no longer carry a compass (there's an app for that), an address book (sync'd apps abound) or a point and shoot camera (you get it), you can see the future of the eReader. Futurist and Net Minds Select author Robert Tercek sites that this may go down as the fastest obsolescence event in product history. In a few years, eReaders will be incremental devices, sentimentally owned by the same people that collect vinyl records, wear writwatches and print out maps before they leave the house.

5 - A Major Publisher Decides To Double End Its Business Model: In real estate, when you make money on the buyer and the seller, it's called "double ending the deal." You represent both sides of the equation and double your commissions, usually to the detriment of either the buyer or the seller. Earlier this year, Simon & Schuster partnered with self-publishing mammoth Author Solutions (ASI) to wade into the author services business. A simple Google search of "ASI" and "scam" will yield enough hair raising results to suggest that this operation (where editing, design and consultations were delivered by offshore workers on a treadmill) fails to serve the authors or their intended readers. As one pundit sniffed, "they should call the new entity Simon & Schister!" This means that, in the future, the slushpile becomes the money machine, where publishers tell authors that their manuscript isn't worthy of being published - unless the author is willing to mortgage their house. (Go ahead, click on this link for the Google results.)

What were the biggest events of 2012 from your perspective? Tell us in comments, we'd love to hear about them!