Zoom H1n voice recorder

[Hardware]

Ghostwriting starts with what I call the collection of ‘raw material’, which in most cases means at least some interviews with the person I’m writing for, and possibly others. For this a digital voice recorder is essential. 

While the recorder on your smartphone can do the job ­– I still use mine as a backup – for ‘archival’ or broadcast quality you’ll really want to use a dedicated recorder. What I like most about the Zoom H1n (which is a successor to the original H1 model I have) is its small size and, most of all, its simplicity of use. Turn it on, press record and away you go. A small red light shows that recording is in progress (easy to glance at during your interview), and the batteries last for hours. At the end you simply attach it to your computer, download the files and job done!

Otter.ai transcription service

[Cloud-based software]

After an interview I need to turn the audio into words – that is, transcribe the conversation. This used to be a slow and tedious process but has now been made much easier thanks to otter.ai. Create an account, upload an audio file and within minutes Otter will have created a transcript of your conversation. It’s not 100% accurate – not even a human transcriber is 100% accurate – but it’s way ahead of any of its predecessors. 

Otter has a free level that’s limited to 40-minute conversations and 600 minutes total per month. For around $10 a month you get 6000 minutes and up to four hours per conversation (which should be ample). If you price that against the value of your own time you’ll likely find yourself streets ahead.

Scrivener

[Mac/PC; iOS]

For over a decade, there is one piece of software that has been my absolute don’t-know-what-I-would-do-without-it tool for organising research, outlining, drafting and re-drafting my book projects. It’s called Scrivener. 

Scrivener is much more than a word processor. When you create a project in Scrivener it becomes a central place for storing transcripts, background documents and research. You can then refer to those on one half of the screen while you work on the writing on the other half. But that’s just the beginning of it. Scrivener allows an enormous amount of flexibility in the way you approach a project. I find this essential, as no two projects are the same. And it is so much easier to work with than programs like Microsoft Word. In fact the only downside of Scrivener is that when it comes to collaborating with my clients (once a draft is ready), I need to move out of Scrivener and into MS Word. Scrivener has limited collaboration features, and even if they were better, it would be too complicated for most people. There is a bit of a learning curve to the application which would really be a step too far for most people who are only going to do this once or twice.

A free trial is available for Scrivener and to buy it costs only A$77, with no subscription. An absolute bargain.

Aeon Timeline

[Mac/PC; iOS]

Aeon Timeline allows me to create detailed visual timelines which can be really handy on a memoir or history, but is also useful for project planning. Often I don’t need it – Scrivener’s outlines are usually enough – but for more complex stories it can be a saviour. It can do a lot more than I’ve ever needed.

Aeon Timeline is also available on a free trial, with a one-off purchase price of A$68.

Unfinished business: collaboration

The one ghostwriting tool that remains unresolved for me is the ideal collaboration tool. Once a draft reaches a certain point, I need to share it with my client. For the reasons I mentioned, that means moving out of Scrivener and, usually, into a Microsoft Word document. The Word document bounces between myself and my client, with ‘track changes’ and comments the method by which we share and refine edits over time.

The biggest problems with this are that we can’t work on the document at the same time, and we need to be careful about version control, lest changes made by one person get missed along the way.

There are various tools available for online document collaboration now. Google Docs is probably the most well known, though I prefer to avoid ‘free’ Google products. Microsoft 365 (aka Word online) is much better than it used to be and a reasonable candidate, arguably easier to work with than Docs. Other options are Apple Pages online (one of you needs to be a Mac user) and Dropbox Paper, which both have clean interfaces.  

Of course the biggest problem with all of these is that they require both parties to be comfortable reading and editing documents online. If you’re working with someone who always prefers a paper copy, no online tool is ever going to fit!

If you use any nifty writing tools you’d like to share, I’d love to hear about them.

Photo by Mona Eendra on Unsplash.com

Being willing to reveal a bit of yourself, especially through a bit of self-effacing humour, will lighten your text and give your readers something to connect to.

But this blog post is not about that sort of vulnerability.

No, this time I want to remind you of two of the less inspiring but just-as-important vulnerabilities every writer faces. Those vulnerabilities are backup and data security.

What is your backup strategy? You have one … don’t you?

I was reminded recently about this by a rare computer crash that led to me losing a small amount of work. It wasn’t important and was easily recovered, but it could have been so much worse. Imagine losing a whole book to a hard drive crash!

Backing up your data is one of those things that everyone knows is important but far too many people never get around to doing. I’m not going to reiterate all the reasons why backing up is important. It’s been done before, many times and, as I said, you already know it is anyway.

All I want to do here is prompt you to act if you haven’t already. I think one of the reasons many people don’t get around to having a good backup plan is that they get confused by all the options. (I did look at some of them in a previous post on this subject a few years ago, much of which is still valid.) So here I’m going to skip what you could do and share with you what my current setup is, with just a couple of alternatives.

My approach isn’t perfect, but I know it’s better than those of many. If it works for you then great, problem solved. If not, alter those parts that you need to. Whatever you do, get a reliable backup system in place now.

My approach is three-fold, including offsite sync, local daily backup and offsite backup.

• My most important data is constantly synced to my Dropbox account every time a change is made. Strictly speaking, Dropbox is a ‘file sync’ service, not a backup service (there are subtle differences), but I’ve found it very reliable over a number of years and it’s highly secure with two-factor authentication. And it’s a piece of cake to set up. (Similar options include Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and Apple iCloud.) My paid Dropbox account also stores older versions of files and deleted files for 30 days, reducing the risk of accidentally deleting something for good.
• I have an external hard drive permanently connected to my desktop computer. Each evening, Carbon Copy Cloner ‘clones’ my iMac’s hard drive, effectively making an identical copy of it. If my iMac’s drive were to fail, I could reboot from the CCC backup and continue working. CCC also keeps older versions of files and deleted files for a limited period. (CCC is Mac-only – this article lists some Windows alternatives.)
• I have a separate external hard drive onto which I backup critical data weekly, also using Carbon Copy Cloner. That drive is stored ‘offsite’, i.e. outside the house (in my shed). This is probably the weak point of my approach. It’s good to have offsite backup for the worst-case scenario, but the ‘hard drive in the shed’ version requires that I retrieve that drive and plug it in every week, which doesn’t always happen. A better alternative would be a secure online backup service like Backblaze or iDrive, which I’m looking into at the moment.

I could certainly improve things, particularly on that last point. But with my three-fold approach I think that if circumstances were such that I were to lose everything, I’d probably have bigger concerns than what had happened to my data.

How secure is your online life?

This topic is only tangentially related to book writing, but while I’m in the pulpit I might as well complete the sermon.

Simple question: what’s your system for securing your online life? Do you have a single password that you use for every online account, from your bank to your Facebook account? Have you chosen that password for ease of remembering rather than difficulty of guessing? If either or both of these apply to you, you’re certainly not alone. But you’re certainly not safe either.

Bottom line. You should have unique passwords for every website you access, and at the very least for every website that is either valuable to you (e.g. the bank) or which is likely the target of hackers (e.g. prominent sites like Facebook).

Obviously remembering tens or hundreds of unique passwords is nigh-on impossible, which is why we have tools available to us like Lastpass and 1Password. They both have free and cheap options. They can take a bit of time to set up and start using properly, but once done they will certainly make your online life safer.

The message is simple: use one.

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash.com

It would be great if all these stories could be told. As Spanish philosopher George Santayana famously wrote, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’. Ideally, the stories would be recorded in books because books last. They go onto shelves and into libraries. They won’t disappear or become unreadable with new technologies.

Why so many stories will never be written

Unfortunately, many terrific stories are never written down. Sometimes that’s because their owners don’t want to share them. Often it’s because their owners (usually mistakenly) don’t see any significance in them.

And sometimes it’s because their owners, while keen to share their experience, don’t have the resources they need to do so. The unfortunate reality is that telling a story in book form requires resources. If you have the skills needed it will still take time. If you lack the skills or don’t have the time, you’ll need to hire someone else to do it, which will require a reasonable investment. (I don’t wake up for less than, well a bit less than Linda Evangelista but a good quality full ghostwrite can cost more than many are willing or able to pay.)

Does that mean you have no hope if you don’t have skills, time or money? No. All it means is that you’ll likely need to adjust your expectations, particularly regarding speed.

Four ways to keep your book dream on track

Here are four things you can do that require less skills and money, and smaller chunks of time, but still keep you moving towards getting your book written.

1. Just write anyway. Many people avoid writing because they think they need to churn out Hemingway-esque prose at the first try. I used to think this myself. It’s just not true. Even the best writers rewrite their work, sometimes multiple times over, until they get it ‘right’. Sure, that last bit of getting it right does require a level of skill, but the resources needed in time and/or funds will be much lower if you’ve already created a draft, no matter how rough it is.

2. Interview yourself. If you find any form or writing or typing tedious, try telling your stories to your phone. There are some very clever recording apps around now – Otter is one I use – that do a pretty good job of transcribing voice recordings on the fly. In this way you get to write without writing. If you lack inspiration talking to an inanimate object, ask a friend, spouse or grandchild to spend some time with you while you share your stories.

3. Make it a priority and use your spare time. Another myth of book writing is that it has to be done in one go. You know, the author locking themselves away in a hut in the middle of the forest and living uninterrupted until the manuscript is complete. We’d all love to be able to do that, but who’s got the time? What we all have is five minutes here, half an hour there, perhaps a whole day once in a while. Now, instead of spending that time on your phone or watching Game of Thrones reruns (the ending won’t get any better), spend it writing (or recording) – again, no matter how rough. Two hundred words will soon turn into a thousand will turn into 10,000. Get to, say, 40,000 and you’ll have a good first draft on your hands.

4. Get a coach. You may have noticed a theme in the previous points: it’s all about doing it yourself, doing it over time and just keeping going. If you find one other critical resource – self-discipline – then working with a coach might help. A coach will involve a smaller investment than hiring a writer but can give you structure and direction when you feel you are all at sea. (Look at the websites of Kelly Irving for business books and Ann Bolch for fiction and other non-fiction for an idea of the services writing coaches offer.)

Once you have complete first draft, then you can think about whether you want to rewrite it yourself and carry on with the remaining steps towards getting your book published, or seek out some external assistance with those steps. But get the draft done first.

My last piece of advice on this topic is to set aside any initial thoughts of stardom or having publishers fall over themselves to acquire your book. Those things can happen (if rarely), but they shouldn’t be the motivation for writing a book.

Tell your story because you want to tell your story – because you feel it needs to be told. Then worry about getting it out there.

In the 2010 Roman Polanski film The Ghost Writer, Ewan McGregor plays a ghostwriter working for a former British prime minister. In the end he knows too much and ... it doesn't end well.

In the Netflix series House of Cards, Paul Sparks plays ghostwriter Thomas Yates who, after struggling to extract a decent memoir out of the president, fails to keep his professional distance, you might say. It takes a while – three seasons in fact – but it doesn't end well for him either.

And now we have Australian writer Richard Flanagan's latest novel, First Person, in which the narrator is a ghostwriter hired to author the memoir of a notorious conman. The story was inspired by Flanagan's own experience, very early in his career, of ghostwriting the autobiography of fraudster John Friedrich) in 1991.

Given Flanagan's protagonist Kif Kehlmann is telling the story himself, I don't think it's giving too much to say that this particular ghostwriter survives this particular tale. For me, at least, that was a relief. Though he goes close to not doing so.

First Person is not a comfortable read – which is not a criticism. It was probably intended that way. Kif's narration has a resigned feel to it throughout. You don't get the sense that he so much as smiles the whole way through, and he has some disturbing traits as a person which make him hard to like. In fact I don't think any of the characters is particularly likeable.

The book doesn't have the atmospheric feel of much of Flanagan's other work. While Flanagan does portray the dreariness of the main setting – light-industrial Port Melbourne and an off-the-shelf modern office – very well, it's simply not as nice a place for us to be as, say, the Tasmanian bush portrayed in The Sound of One Hand Clapping, my favourite of Flanagan's works.

The story moves fairly slowly, and ultimately there isn't a whole lot that happens. That's fine for the most part, except that it goes on a bit long. The last act in particular is excessively drawn out.

However, First Person gives us a convincing insight into the publishing world and into the process of ghostwriting. As a ghostwriter myself, I could relate strongly to the challenges Kif faced in extracting his subject's story (though thankfully I've never had an assignment quite as challenging as this one). His portraits of people in publishing are caricatures to some extent, but they also feel real and they had me laughing out loud at times.

So despite the challenges of this book I won't forget it in a hurry, and I would still recommend it to lovers of Australian literature – and to other ghostwriters. I just look forward to the day when I can read the story of a ghostwriter who lives happily ever after.

First Person by Richard Flanagan is published by Random House Australia

Photo by Simone Hutsch on Unsplash

Take Around the Grounds, for instance – a book that will be released by Finch Publishing on August 1.

For this book I've been working with former ABC radio broadcaster Peter Newlinds. Peter's story is a celebration of sport, but from the spectator's side of the fence. This perspective gives the story a level of accessibility that most sporting memoirs, written as they are by former players, can't have. Few of us have the ability to play elite sport, but all of us are more than capable of joining in from the relative safety of the stands.

Of course we don't all have access to the commentary box as Peter did, though I suspect any of us who enjoy our sport have harboured fantasies of being a sports caller. Peter's yarn reveals a host of insights into the broadcaster's world – including his entry into that world – which offer numerous surprises.

Peter is about my own age so an extra special part of helping to tell his story has been that I can remember many of the incidents he describes. Take John Dyson's catch – no cricket fan needs any further description – which Peter watched as a teenager from inside the old SCG scoreboard where he was working at the time.

As Peter and I started working on the book we realised that a nostalgic look at sport in an era when it was less polished and precise than today, but no less engrossing, was a big part of what we wanted to share with the book's readers.

In describing his experiences across the numerous sports that Peter covered – including Aussie Rules, Rugby League, soccer, tennis, the Sydney Hobart and lots and lots of cricket – he also celebrates many of the memorable colleagues he worked with, all of whom are also familiar names, and voices, to those of us who followed sport from the seventies onwards.

In the telling of his story, Peter's passion for sport, for the people in and around sport, for the real people behind the public faces and for the emotions and nostalgia that sport elicits in its fans all shine through. It helped me watch the recent World Cup with fresh eyes, realising the extent to which that contest is about so much more than the game on the pitch, so much about the people in the stands and in front of televisions literally all over the world.

It's so easy to dismiss sport as nothing more than a pastime. Peter reminds us why, for so many, it is so much more than that.

It's been such a privilege to play a part in bringing Peter's story to life on the page. Here's hoping it finds its way to the readership it deserves.

Around the Grounds will be available in bookstores from August 1, and can already be pre-ordered from many online stores. Ahead of the book's release, Peter has been writing some interesting blog posts here.

Photo by Tom Grimbert on Unsplash.com

I will, however, claim some extenuating circumstances. Put simply, over the last 12 months I've had a lot of work to do. And when push comes to shove, as they say, it's work for my clients that comes first.

During the last year I've helped four separate books come to life: a business book and three memoirs. My involvement in these has varied from drafting and re-drafting all 80,000 words to heavy editing and rewriting. In three cases I've assisted with self-publishing while the other book will be trade published next month (more on that next time).

Working on four books at once

While I've thoroughly enjoyed working on each of these books, the challenge has been that I needed to work on all four at once. They were all at different stages at different times, but none of them could be left completely alone for very long. In addition the books were all quite different from one another in terms of their content, style and tone.

Moving between them without losing too much concentration was not always easy. The secret to my success, I believe, was that over the years I've become quite adept at compartmentalisation of my time and focus.

What does that mean in practice?

Basically it means working in chunks of time. I do that in part by using the 'pomodoro technique' – working in 25-minute blocks of concentrated work followed by a five-minute break. I've used that technique for many years now.

But when compartmentalising my work I go further than that and work in groups of pomodori. My ideal day would consist of four of those 25-minutes blocks first thing, all spent on one of the book projects. After a short break, which helped to clear the head, I would then switch to another project and do another four pomodori.

After lunch I would do, typically, a 3 x 25-minute session on another project (three instead of four due to a lower energy level in the afternoon). Then a good walk with the dog or a trip to the gym, followed by a final three- or four-pomodoro session in the late afternoon.

Obsessive, but flexible

Now that might all sound a little obsessive, but bear in mind what I've just described is the ideal day. Many days didn't/don't turn out exactly like that. I would rarely get time on all four books in one day. I'm human, and some days procrastination got the better of me. Other times other work or meetings got in the way.

By far I'm most productive in the mornings so I try hard to make sure that those two morning sessions went to plan. I would focus those sessions on whichever projects needed the most concentrated work at the time, and on some days, if I got on a roll, I would spend the entire morning on one project.

And if the ideal structure of my day just falls apart? Well ... there's always tomorrow. I don't let myself get too fussed about it.

Of course I have the luxury of working on my own with minimal interruptions which does help me stick to a plan most days. However I do believe that aspects of compartmentalisation can be applied – and can help – with many jobs, particularly where you have a big, longer term project (such as writing a book) on your to-do list.

Our phones give us 'something to do' from the moment we wake until the moment we turn out the light – and even beyond that. We can fill every spare minute of our day, whether waiting in line, waiting for a coffee or waiting for a partner outside the change room. Even walking the dog has become time to be filled by checking email, social media and news updates.

Does this matter? Isn't it just the modern way?

Well, yes, it does, according to psychologists. Especially if you're trying to do something creative such as write a book.

I've written before about how turning off our devices can improve our ability to focus. But that's just the start of it. It turns out that if we want the ability to be creative when we are focused, we also need to give our mind a chance to wander – aimlessly – on a regular basis.

An article on the 'Big Think' blog points to various research showing that creativity is hampered by ceaseless busyness, which includes the busyness smartphones allow us to create for ourselves to fill the gaps between the routine busy periods in our life and work.

Essentially, if we want to be creative, 'we need to find ways to give our brains a break', according to Stanford's Emma Seppälä. This can mean doing something as radical as regularly going for a walk without your phone to playing with the dog to taking up a new hobby. Basically doing anything that isn't work and doesn't involve staring at a screen.

The point here is not to find more time in your day to write that book, though certainly less screen time will help with that. No, the point is to free up your mind and give it the space it needs to be creative. It's about escaping the constant noise in which we can so easily envelope ourselves without even noticing.

Who knows? You might even have a great idea for your book while your mind is wandering free. Just make sure you have a pen and paper on hand so you can capture it!

My job now, in both cases, is to sort out the existing raw material and start to give it some shape. From there I'll be able to create initial rough outlines, which will help with refining the material (in the first case) and identifying gaps (in the second).

The sorting step is a point where many inexperienced book writers can get bogged down. The task often seems insurmountable, especially when you have a lot of material, some of which is written down and some of which is still in your head. It's a bit like cleaning out our home's roof space when it is so clogged with 20 years worth of clutter that I CAN HARDLY GET THE DOOR OPEN TO MAKE A START!!! (Did I say that out loud? It's another story and I shouldn't bother you with it.)

The trick to it (sorting for your book, that is) is to approach the task with a very open mind. No rules, no preconceived ideas.

What you want to do is break the information up into manageable chunks, each chunk encompassing just one theme, one example, one story or one point.

A physical method of doing this would be to use sticky notes or index cards, with one 'chunk' on each note or card. It's difficult to explain this without doing it, but briefly the idea is to start by getting everything onto notes without making any attempt to sort them at the outset. Just get the information down. Spread the notes across a wall, whiteboard or table.

Once you have all the information 'chunked', then you can start sorting. Start to group together notes that have some relationship to each other. Add 'heading notes' as the groupings start to take shape. Keep sorting and shuffling both groups and notes around until, in the end, you have what are starting to feel like some 'natural' chapter headings. You may have some sub-headings as well.

The way I approach sorting is to work digitally. I use a powerful piece of software called Scrivener (reviewed previously here and available for Mac and Windows). It allows me to bring all the raw material I have – interview transcripts, early drafts, powerpoint slides, etc. – into a 'research' folder within the program. From there I can break the content up into chunks and sort them onto virtual index cards just as I would if working with paper notes.

Other software options include Ulysees on the Mac (similar to Scrivener but less complex/sophisticated) and Microsoft's OneNote on both Mac and Windows.

When writing Scattered Pearls we had 2500 pages of notes to start with. Sorting them out was a major exercise, to say the least, and took a good amount of time. But sorting is a classic 'keep putting one foot in front of the other' scenario, and eventually we got there. You can too. And believe me: the time investing in sorting out will make your drafting stage easier and more effective.

As usual, if you have any questions or comments, please add a comment below or contact me.

Post image by MrsBrown on pixabay.com

This time I thought it might be worthwhile bringing these two posts together and doing some number crunching. What do the economics of self-publishing look like in Australia in 2017? A warning: what follows may be a bit dry (unless you're an accountant and into such things).

To make these numbers real, I'm going to focus on a typical example. We're going to publish a 200-page non-fiction paperback book of about 30,000 words. The inside of the book is mostly text, with perhaps half-a-dozen diagrams, and it will be printed in black-and-white on standard paper. The cover will be full colour, gloss or matte and perfect bound.

All the numbers I am quoting are based on actual services but they are also indicative in the sense that prices chance all the time. These numbers assume we are dealing directly with any service providers. If we were to hire someone to manage the publishing process for you, there would be some extra cost involved, though it shouldn't be too much. If you are ever quoted prices substantially above my indications you may want to shop around.

Book costs at each stage

1. Writing

The cost of writing our book is the hardest part of this equation to quantify. How much time will it take, and what is our time worth?

In terms of the former, it will vary widely. An average rate of 500 words per hour is certainly doable for non-fiction, which would equate to 60 hours. However we need to add planning and research time to that, plus rewriting and proofreading, so to be conservative you would probably want to at least double that to 120 hours and probably more. This is time dedicated and focused to the task too – it doesn't count time spent staring out the window wondering what to do next. In your case the total time could be substantially more depending on your comfort with the process.

Only you can answer the latter question when it comes to the value of your time. In purely economic terms you might work it out by calculating how much you could earn if you spent that 120+ hours doing your 'real' job. If you can afford it, it could be that hiring someone to do the bulk of the writing for you, or some rewriting, would be more cost effective. (Yes, that was a blatant plug!)

2. Editing

Copyediting of our 30,000 word manuscript will cost in the range $150 to $1000.

Why such a wide range? Like anything, it boils down to guaranteed quality and how much peace of mind we want. At the higher end we would be paying to work with a local professional editor with many years of experience. Prices at the lower end are available on freelancer websites like fiverr.com and upwork.com. These can be reliable but they do vary as we would never be entirely sure who's at the other end of the line.

3. Layout/Typesetting

Typesetting of our text-heavy book will cost in the range $250 to $1500.

Again, the price range demonstrates the variation between more-or-less anonymous online services such as ebook launch through to local book designers who we can deal with face-to-face, and everything in between. We'll pay more for more experience, peace of mind and a lower risk of hassles.

4. Cover Design

A similar story to typesetting, with prices ranging from around $400 to $1500 or more, with online suppliers who we'll never meet at the lower end and local professionals at the higher end.

5. Administration

We need an ISBN for our paper book, plus another for the ebook version that we will inevitably want to publish. These can be organised quickly and easily through Thorpe Bowker (www.myidentifiers.com.au) in Australia at a cost of $44 for one or $88 for a block of ten – the best option as we need two anyway. (Visit this page for ISBN agencies outside Australia).

Thorpe Bowker and others offer to produce an ISBN barcode for your cover at a cost of $45, but this can be created at no cost on numerous barcode generation websites, and some printers will do it for you anyway.

6. Printing

This is where things are really changing quickly. It used to be that printing required the biggest cash outlay in this process, and a minimum order of at least 200 copies, and preferably 500 or 1000, in order to keep the unit price down at a reasonable level, i.e. something less than $7.

However, as I discussed in my recent blog post on the topic, print-on-demand (POD) printing, which enables us to order books economically one at a time, is now the real deal. To print our example book with IngramSpark, with the printing being done in Melbourne, will cost us $5.20 for one copy, plus a handling fee of $2.20 and shipping of $4.38. The total cost with tax for that one copy is $12.44.

Now, that is more than we want to pay for multiple copies of the books to sell, but it's fine for printing one test copy for ourselves to check out. That price drops to just $5.90 each (delivered and tax inclusive) if we order 10, $5.44 if we order 50 and $5.08 if we order 100 copies at once.

If we really wanted to print a larger quantity of books because our customers are lining up ready to buy, we could get the unit price down closer to $4 if we ordered 1000 copies. We might get a better price still by using an offset printer, though these days we would probably be wanting over 2000 copies for these guys to be substantially more competitive. And if that would mean the risk of boxes of books being stacked up in the garage or pushed under the bed, is the lower price really worth it?

Summary

So what's was the damage? Leaving the writing aside for simplicity, the cost of producing the first copy of our 200-page book ranges from close to $900 at the low end to over $4000 at the upper end. Add another $100 to $200 for creation of an ebook version of your title.

You may still think that sounds like a lot, especially the upper figure, but consider that just a few years ago I was advising my clients to budget closer to $10,000 including an initial print run, and it should be clear that the 'price of entry' has dropped substantially in recent times.

As I say, these figures are only indicative, but they would be close if your book matches my specifications. For more or less pages the layout and printing costs will increase or decrease a little, while if you want a full colour interior for your book your printing price will jump to $12 or more each. More complex layouts due to multiple photos or diagrams will also increase costs.

As usual, if you have any questions or comments, please add a comment below or contact me.

Post image courtesy of Gianni Crestani

The aura didn't last long. Unfortunately I knew the truth: that my newfound esteem was misplaced. My new friends had fallen for the Great Author Myth.

There's always been a strange glamour associated with being an author, particularly a published author, i.e. a writer who a so-called 'trade' publisher has recognised as being worthy. It's this glamour that gives a book its power to bestow immediate credibility on its creator – something that also applies to a well-prepared self-published book. It also generates, in the minds of many, the notion that publishing a book is a good way to make money.

Here lies the myth, on both counts.

The Great Author Myth

First, most writers will tell you that the glamour is undeserved. Authors are ordinary people who happen to have and use a particular skill. The fact that writing (like acting or being an elite sportsperson) is a public skill doesn't make that skill any more worthy than any other.

Second, the vast majority of writers make very little money directly from their books. In fact, if you were to count the time that goes into writing a book, most authors – trade published or self published – are probably earning well below the minimum wage.

This point was brought to the fore in a couple of articles recently published in the Fairfax media. The first was analysis of ATO data showing average income for a wide range of professions. That data suggested that authors earn, on average, just over $62,000 per annum, a smidgeon over the average annual wage.

The second article delved into this statistic a bit more, after a number of authors questioned its validity. They pointed to another report, from Macquarie University, showing that authors earn an average of only $12,900 a year from their writing – with many earning much, much less. It turns out that when the average author earns $62,000, most of that income is coming from jobs on the side, related or unrelated to writing.

What does this mean for those who want to publish their own non-fiction book, such as a business book or memoir?

A reality check

Whether you write a book yourself or pay a ghostwriter to do it for you, there will be a cost (in time or money) and that cost is going to take a while to offset – whether you are trade published or self publish. If you self publish there are the additional costs of producing your book.

That's not to say that your book can't be profitable. The trick is to use the credibility that comes with the book to help you derive extra income from other sources. In the case of a business book – say by a consultant – your book only has to help you win one or two good jobs and you might already be in the black. A memoir, too, might help you get paid gigs as a speaker. Or it might just help you stand out from the crowd with your next job application.

It's not just about the money

Regardless of the financial reward, having a book with your name on the cover is enormously rewarding, so I don't want to discourage you from pursuing your writing goals. There's more to it than the money. However the financial realities are something about which you should have a clear understanding before you launch into your publishing project.

(Next time I'll post about the economics of book publishing.)

As usual, if you have any questions or comments, please add a comment below or contact me.

Image by Paul Morris: https://unsplash.com/@oldskool2016

A blog, on the other hand? No big deal. Tell people you're writing a blog and some will be impressed while others will secretly be wondering if you'll manage to get out more than three posts.

Nevertheless, a blog seems more manageable than a book. A post once a fortnight, say. About 600 words. You don't need to be a writer to do that – just capable of writing a few coherent sentences. Put your mind to it and most people in business should have that much to say in the way of sharing what they know, providing a few tips or some salient advice.

And here's the thing. If you were to do that – if you started a blog and wrote 600 words a fortnight for a year – guess what? You'd have 70 per cent of a book written, and the momentum to finish the rest!

All you'd need to do is gather your blog posts into rough categories (chapters), perhaps combine two or three posts here or there into a longer section, and do a bit of extra writing to smooth the flow between each part and fill any gaps, and voilà, you have a manuscript of a bit over 20,000 words – a 150 page book – ready for editing.

Sure, 20,000 words is on the shorter end of the book spectrum. It's no War and Peace. But guess what? A short book gives you as much credibility as a long one, and it is much more likely to actually be read. (Only this week, author Nick Earls won the People's choice award in the NSW premier's literary awards for his 20,000 word novella Vancouver #3.)

From there it's a matter of editing and design, along with a little administration, and your book is ready for printing. And event that is a relatively cheap and easy task these days, as I discussed last time.

Now I know that some of you may be thinking that a book comprised of a collection of blog posts doesn't seem like a valid 'book', anymore than a greatest hits album is a legitimate album. But that's the wrong way to look at it. Some very successful books (and albums) have been collections. Chicken Soup for the Soul and Seth Godin's Purple Cow are just two examples of highly regarded and very high selling books that are essentially collections of articles.

The point about writing a book isn't to be high brow. It's to get your ideas out into the world.

Now, to come to the point of the title of this post. Have you already been regularly blogging for a year or three? Or writing a company newsletter? Perhaps it's not you but your business – a collective effort if you like. However the content has been generated (and assuming it's original), the thing is that you actually have the content. That means you get to skip most of the writing bit and jump straight to publishing. You may even have the luxury of picking and choosing your best content and still having enough for a book.

If this is the case, your book is so close you really have no reason for waiting. It's time to act. Time to publish. Your credibility will thank you for it.

As usual, if you have any questions or comments, or if you need any advice on writing or publishing your book, please add a comment below or contact me.

A couple of days after that, the print book was available for order literally all over the world, via several major online stores including Amazon US and UK, Book Depository and Booktopia. The ebook version will soon be available from all the major vendors as well.

This is the way of modern independent publishing. Very quick and remarkably inexpensive. To a large extent the future that was originally promised by print-on-demand has arrived.

No longer does publishing a book mean printing hundreds of copies and hoping most of them don't end up stacked under your bed or in the garage. No longer is the selling of your book limited to your own city, let alone your own country.

The book I mentioned, by the way, is State of the Nanny by Louise Dunham, which provides insights into the nanny industry (including where shortcuts are being taken) and a timely reminder that children need to be the first priority in all policy decisions in the child care sector. It really is a must-read for anyone involved in the sector, including parents.

The front end of this process hasn't really changed that much of late. Thanks to the benefits of the digital age, editing and design can be achieved very efficiently, especially when you're working with people who know what they're doing.

Print-on-demand changes things

What has really changed big time is the printing side of things. It wasn't that long ago that having a book printed required a minimum order of around 1000 copies to make it cost effective, due to the high initial setup cost associated with offset printing. Print lead times were at least two weeks, often longer.

Digital printing improved that situation a lot, but until recently has still required an order of 200 or more copies to be worthwhile, and turnaround times were at least a week.

With services like IngramSpark (formerly Lightning Source), you can now have a single copy of a book printed for the same per-book price as printing 100 copies. And it can be printed and shipped same day, if necessary. Print-on-demand (POD) is literally that: print copies of your book as you need them – no more, no less – without being penalised on price.

Even better, IngramSpark have printing facilities in Australia as well as in the UK and US, so the old 'tyranny of distance' for independent authors based in Australia is melting away as well.

All of this makes the idea of publishing your own book a reality for everyone. If you've been writing a regular blog or newsletter for a while, you already have most of the content you need: your book could be out in a matter of weeks. Even if you were to start from scratch it could be done in quick time if you put your mind to it (and/or sought help to bring the content together).

Paper books still carry a lot of credibility and are a brilliant way to position and promote your expertise. And now there is no excuse not to have one.

As usual, if you have any questions or comments or need any advice, please add a comment below or contact me.

We were together as a family for a few days and dipped in and out of this conversation over that time. Quite a few stories came up too – stories of my parents' childhoods, the early years of their marriage and so on. Some I'd heard before but there were quite a few special ones that were new to me ... which isn't bad given I'm on the 'wrong' side of 50.

All of which got me thinking.

The challenge of capturing memories

The 'typical' approach to capturing a family history – as a company history – is to sit down and interview 'the people with the memories'. Those interviews are recorded for later transcription. Mostly this is done individually, sometimes in couples or small groups. Sometimes the interviewer knows the family (or business), sometimes they don't.

The problem with this approach is that it relies on salient memories coming to the surface during the interviews. That can be hard to achieve, particularly where (as is often the case) the interviewee is reticent about telling their stories, is spooked by the relative formality of an interview or is put off by the idea of being recorded.

While interviews can generate some great yarns, they can also lead to plenty being left on the mental shelves of their subjects.

The 'catch 'em as they come' approach

One of the reasons interviews have long been a popular way of capturing stories is that, until recently, few people carried a tape recorder in their pocket.

That's all changed now. Virtually everybody has a smartphone with them nearly all the time, which means they also have a voice recorder of decent quality with them too.

If we are conscious of it, we all have the ability to whip out the phone and open a recording app at any time the stories start flowing. Over a cup of tea, during or after dinner, in the pub or a restaurant. Similarly in a business context.

Obviously this needs to have the agreement of the people being recorded, but if you explain that this is going to reduce or remove the need for formal interviews, I think most people will agree.

The recording apps in modern phones aren't archival quality, but they are very good – and certainly better than nothing. And a benefit of using a phone over a recorder is that it doesn't look as scary.

Make it a habit

I've written before about approaching the task of book writing in small bites, rather than trying to find large chunks of time to dedicate to writing. What I'm suggesting here is really a similar approach, applied to interviewing and story capture.

As it does with writing, the approach will work best if you make a habit of it. Better still, get a number of people in the family or business to take on the task of capturing the stories and have them email or upload their recordings to a shared folder on Dropbox or a similar service.

As usual, if you have any questions or comments, please add a comment below or contact me.

While I completely understand that a potential buyer needs to have some idea of cost, the challenge for a ghostwriter is that we can't afford to lock in a price that is unrealistic, and there are a lot of variables that determine how much work will be needed to write a book.

The most obvious influence on the cost of having a book written relates to the length of the book. More words = more work = more cost. But even that is an oversimplification as it is quite possible that a short book could take a long time too, depending on how refined it is.

Let me try to break the ghostwriting task down into its components and explain how they will affect the cost of a ghostwriter.

Information gathering

I've had clients who were able to give me the draft of a book they've been working on, while others have had nothing more than a few bullet points, if that. In the latter case I will usually end up conducting a number of face-to-face interviews, the recordings of which then need to be transcribed to provide me with my raw material.

Bottom line: information gathering can vary from not much to many hours. If you want to minimise the cost, the best way is to gather or draft as much content as you can before you engage a writer*.

Information sorting

Another form of raw material is presentations. I've had clients who are speakers or educators who are able to give me copious workshop notes, PowerPoint presentations and video recordings of their presentations.

This obviously reduces the cost of the information gathering phase, but it can add a substantial amount of time in another way. All that information has to be sorted and sifted in order to isolate the gems which will go into your book.

Bottom line: information sorting can also vary widely in cost, but again costs can be minimised by doing as much as you can yourself.

Creative input

This is often the biggie. Once the content for a book has been collected and sorted into some sort of order, what you have is essentially a bunch of words. What you don't have is a book – that is still to be written.

The variation in workload for a ghostwriter at this stage comes from the level of creative input that you would like made to your book.

At one end of the scale is a fairly straightforward rewrite of the collected material, involving just enough buffing and polishing to make it all read coherently.

At the other end of the scale, your writer will use the collected content as a painter uses a palette, that is, as a starting point. He or she will then craft a complete narrative from that raw material, usually in frequent consultation with you, the expert. This takes both skill and time, and is therefore more expensive. But if a quality product is what you are after then it can be worth the investment.

Bottom line: creative input can seem highly intangible to the person hiring a writer. It is, however, the principle reason for doing so. That said, your decision about how much to budget for creativity should include consideration of the purpose of your book. If, for instance, you book will mostly sold at the 'back of the room' for people to take away as a souvenir/reference of your presentation, a high level of creative input is probably not required. If you want to attract a mainstream publisher, on the other hand, you may need more creative input.

Writing a book is a big project. That's why books give their author so much more credibility than an article or a booklet. Which in turn is why hiring a professional ghostwriter can be a worthwhile investment, both to ensure the book gets finished, and to ensure that it is of good quality.

As usual, if you have any questions or comments, please add a comment below or contact me.

In the interview, Schwartz pulls back the curtains on his time with Trump, essentially to make a case that the Trump he worked with is manifestly unsuitable to be president of the USA.

If nothing else, this article is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in how the ghostwriter/author relationship can work.

Every such relationship is different, of course, but one of the points illustrated is that sometimes a ghostwriting subject can be less than forthcoming and the writer needs to get creative in order to collect meaningful material. Schwartz's experience bears a number of similarities to that of the fictional Thomas Yates in House of Cards.

But that's not the source of the controversy. Debate has arisen from a perception by many who feel that Schwartz has broken a golden rule of ghostwriting by speaking out.

There's a reason why ghostwriters are so-called. We are 'ghosts' in the sense of being invisible. In the truest ghostwriting/client relationship, the writer is strictly a behind-the-scenes assistant. He or she is a gun for hire, paid to do a job that starts with the book idea and ends when the writing is complete. What goes on in the 'locker room' of the project should stay in the locker room.

Certainly that is the way I regard any ghostwriting assignment on which I work. And on that basis there would seem to be no doubt that Schwartz has been disloyal, at the very least.

But ... it isn't quite so simple.

There are at least two extenuating circumstances in this case.

First, Schwartz was not a ghostwriter in the truest sense as his name is on the cover of the book. He's a co-author. That changes things quite a lot. His name is publicly attached to the book and its contents.

The real question of Schwartz becomes why he agreed to that in the first place when – as he describes in some detail to The New Yorker – he knew the book was full of falsehoods and that it paints a grossly trumped up (was ever a word more apt?) portrait of its subject. What's more, at the outset, he had already written about Trump previously and didn't like either the man or what he stood for. "He knew that he would be making a Faustian bargain."

The reason why Schwartz agreed to having his name on the cover is, to put it bluntly, money. For a writer, a huge amount of money. Trump agreed to Schwartz's terms for taking on the project, namely that Schwartz would be a named author and that they would equally share the publisher's advance of half-a-million dollars and of ongoing royalties. Those royalties have reputedly been worth many millions of dollars since. As a young journalist, Schwartz was set up financially to an extent that 99% of his colleagues could only ever dream of.

It seems easy now to point the finger at Schwartz and tell him he sold out, but he freely admits that he did so. And I would suggest that the vast majority of writers would in the same circumstances.

The other extenuating circumstance in this case are the stakes are much higher with Donald Trump having won the Republican party nomination for the US presidency.

When Schwartz worked with Trump on the book, Trump was no more than a loud, dodgy businessman. For the most part, the only real harm he could do, and was doing, was the ripping off of other businessmen. It wasn't ethical, but it was just business. This was before Trump had any real profile outside New York. It was before The Apprentice), which made Trump properly famous. In fact that television show was spawned by The Art of the Deal.

How things have changed. There is now a very real chance that Trump could become the next US president, and this seriously worries Schwartz, who knows Trump better than most. As president, no longer would Trump just be conning a few other dubious business colleagues. His would literally have the power to put millions of lives at risk. As Schwartz tells The New Yorker, "I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization." And this is only one of his fears about Trump. I strongly suggest you read his interview to get the full picture.

So how to judge Schwartz? While not entirely comfortable with them, I can understand his actions – both originally and recently. I think it's difficult for any of us to honestly know how we would react in similar circumstances. Schwartz clearly would have preferred to keep 'mum', and did so through the nomination process hoping that Trump wouldn't win the primaries and the dilemma would melt away. It didn't, and finally he felt he had to speak.

As for the ethics of ghostwriting, I do believe this is a very special and rare case. I know my clients and those of the vast majority of ghostwriters can rest assured that their confidences will be kept forever. Unless you're a narcissistic demagogue running for the top job in the most powerful nation on earth, you have nothing to worry about.

As usual, if you have any questions or comments, please add a comment below or contact me.

Image by Gage Skidmore on Flickr.com used under Creative Commons license.

This is not good. Humans weren't designed to spend most of our time sitting. If we were we wouldn't need expensive chairs with height, tilt and lumbar adjustment – none of which ever seem to be quite right. On top of which we now have those pesky scientists exposing numerous risks to our health from prolonged sitting.

So what to do? Those same scientists tell us that regular exercise is not enough. While exercise has its own benefits, and I do my fair share of it, extended periods of sitting are a problem no matter what is done between those periods. (The jury is still out on the relative risks and benefits of Pokemon Go.) Bottom line: we need to find a way to spend some time standing while we work.

My first attempt at dealing with this challenge was to stand for a few minutes in my pomodoro breaks. I've used the pomodoro technique for a few years now – an approach to work that gives me a short break every half hour – so it made sense to use those pauses to interrupt my sedentariness.

But it wasn't enough. Increased risk of obesity, heart disease and cancer aside, and despite having a good chair and reasonably sound ergonomic desk set-up, by the end of a typical work day my back and neck were telling me quite clearly that they had had enough. Headaches due to shoulder and neck tightness – something I've put up with for a long time – remained routine visitors.

Enter the standing desk. I'd heard about these for a while, including from my physiotherapist, but I was resistant to spending the money on one because a) they seemed expensive, b) they seemed very complicated with motors and hydraulic controls and c) my perception was that they were slow to raise and lower, which would make using them as intended less likely.

I'd read in a number of places that standing all day isn't much good for you either, and I knew my ageing back wouldn't put up with all standing for hours on end either, so any option had to allow both standing and sitting with a fairly swift transition between the two.

After looking a bit harder I found that some of my perceptions were wrong. There were actually a number of more affordable options, including the Varidesk. The Varidesk is not so much a whole desk as something that sits on top of an existing desk. It uses a relatively simple 'springs and counterweight' approach to raising and lowering (taking a couple of seconds to move up or down). And it had the added benefit that I could have one delivered in Australia and try it out for a month risk free.

Three months later, my new standing desk 'ain't goin' nowhere. I've become an advocate for the whole standing desk thing. While my neck is happier than than ever, the biggest revelation has been a noticeable boost to my productivity. Energy lows can be overcome simply by shifting from sitting to standing, or vice versa. My concentration levels are much higher, especially in that lazy straight-after-lunch period. The difference is really is quite remarkable.

If you're someone who spends most of your day sitting, I highly recommend giving this standing desk caper a go. Google 'diy standing desk' and you'll find a million (give or take) temporary and permanent home-made options. If you find that one of those works well for you, investing in a 'proper' option could well be worth your while.

As usual, if you have any questions or comments, please add a comment below or contact me.

Unless you are associated with or particularly interested in book publishing there is a good chance this issue has passed you by. However, if you are a book reader who believes in the importance of an Australian writing culture, now is the time to take notice. Your vote in the July 2 federal election could influence the future of the Australian writing industry.

Let me explain as best I can. Unfortunately this is a complex issue that really requires more than a blog post to fully describe so I'm going to have to summarise. However many others have also written on the issue (here, here and here are just three examples) so a bit of googling will get you a long way.

A little industry background

The global publishing industry operates on the basis of 'territorial rights'. What this means is that the author of a book – who by definition owns the copyright to their work – can grant to a publisher the right to publish and distribute their work either globally or only within certain countries ('territories'). For instance, as authors of Scattered Pearls, Sohila Zanjani and I have granted publishing rights to Simon & Schuster Australia within Australia and New Zealand. We retain the potential to negotiate the licensing of our rights in other territories^✝.

Territorial rights, particularly for books and authors that are in demand, have value. Australian authors (for instance), along with their agents and publishers, can earn some income from selling those rights into other markets such as the UK and US.

Since 1991, one of the ways in which territorial rights have been enforced in Australia (as in the UK, the USA and elsewhere) is via parallel importation restrictions. These rules forbid the importation of books 'around' local publishers. So, using Scattered Pearls as an example again, Australian stock of this book cannot be exported to the UK – for the book to be available for sale in the UK, a UK publisher would need to buy the rights (from us, the authors) to publish it.

Conversely, the territorial regulations require that Australian booksellers buy bulk stock through Australian-based publishers (including the Australian outposts of international publishing houses). Booksellers cannot import multiple copies of a book directly from overseas suppliers unless Australian publishers choose not to produce a local edition^✝✝.

If you're thinking that this sounds anachronistic in a global economy and the age of the ebook, you are probably right, to a point. Really this system is fundamentally no different to the way in which national borders are used to govern and protect trade in any other product. An open and free single global market sounds great in principle, but in practice we are a long way from it.

The Productivity Commission

The Productivity Commission recently recommended (as they have more than once in the past) that the federal government repeal the parallel importation restrictions on books.

The Productivity Commission's recommendation is based on a research report it released in 2009. Put simply, its argument is that parallel importation restrictions skew the market and result in Australians paying higher prices for books than they need to. They argue that removing these restrictions and allowing unrestricted import of books from overseas markets will see prices drop. They argue that lower priced books will not affect what authors can earn because cheaper books will mean that more books are bought. At the same time they argue that any 'cultural externality' – a euphemism for the potential impact on local authors – could be ameliorated via some form of subsidisation.

The Liberal/National Coalition government has committed to accepting this recommendation in its next term, if it is re-elected at the coming election. Labor, the Greens and Nick Xenophon have all stated that they have no intention of removing parallel importation restrictions. The Coalition make no mention of any plan to reduce the impact of those 'cultural externalities'.

The implications

It should go without saying that the idea of opening our borders to the unrestricted import of overseas-produced books – without, it has to be said, any reciprocal arrangement with any other country except New Zealand – is likely to have a detrimental effect on the local publishing industry.

These effects will be numerous – too numerous to list here. However, let me touch on a handful.

• When the next Harry Potter-like success is published in the UK, its publisher will ship copies directly to Australian stores, bypassing any local publisher. (In practice a local office may play the role of marketer, but that's pretty much all they will do.) No local publisher will earn any meaningful revenue from the sales of those books. Multiply this effect over a number of popular books and, very quickly, local publisher earnings will drop substantially. In today's conditions, these earnings would be have been used in large part to fund the publication of both new and established Australian authors. Every new book is like a new business: it requires upfront funding to get established. Less funds means less books. Less books means publishers will need to take less risks if they want to remain profitable; they will do this by publishing established authors ahead of new and unknown authors.
• Australian territorial rights will be worthless. With the borders removed, there will no longer be an effective Australian publishing territory. (It is ironic that a government that is so loud about 'border protection' is happy to remove our borders entirely in this instance.) Those rights may maintain some value for books published only within Australia, but if, say, Sohila and I sold the rights for Scattered Pearls to an American publisher, that publisher would be free to export copies of the book back into Australia, undercutting the local publisher. This will further reduce author earnings because those exported books would earn us less than one-third of the royalty we earn on locally produced copies^✝✝✝.
• Where a book is produced and published in Australia, that book will go into stores in competition with high numbers of cheap imported books. Obviously, in order to compete, local 'recommended prices' will need to fall. This is exactly what the Productivity Commission intends. However it ignores the fact that this will further diminish the earnings of local publishers, distributors, authors and their agents.

I could go on, but this post is already getting way too long. Needless to say it is difficult to see any upside for local writers and publishers. The only potential upside is that book prices may drop across the board. A good thing for readers, but at what price?

Ideology over evidence

The Productivity Commission's findings are essentially based on circumstantial evidence. There is only one country – New Zealand – that has taken the action they propose, and they do not draw on that example in their report. If they had, they may have noticed that book prices did not drop to any meaningful extent in New Zealand, but that open borders have had a severe impact on New Zealand publishing.

The Commission, and the government, are also ignoring the fact that since the Commission's 2009 research, book prices have dropped in Australia in any case. There are less dedicated book retailers competing with 'big box' stores like Big W and Kmart that regularly discount the titles they sell. (Scattered Pearls is regularly available in these stores for $19.) And, of course, there is ample online competition.

As well, the Productivity Commission and the government are placing no value on the economic benefits that come from an industry that supports 20,000 jobs and contributes $2.2 billion to the GDP.

It is difficult to conclude that the Productivity Commission, and the Turnbull government, are seeing this as anything more than a battle of neo-liberal ideology against the 'soft touch' of an industry whose inherent value lies 'hidden' in its cultural contribution. They see what they regard as excessively high book prices through a lens of protectionism. The government, in the meantime, is more than happy to offer protection to the mining industry, in the form of the diesel fuel rebates, or to the shipbuilding industry in the form of incredibly expensive submarine contracts, or to numerous other industries where they perceive more obvious economic benefits.

Perhaps parallel importation restrictions are a form of protection, but if so, surely that is a reasonable price to pay to maintain a thriving local publishing industry that supports Australian voices? After all, it is a form of protection that does not cost the taxpayer a single cent. A form of protection that is entirely market driven and which book buyers can readily and legally work around if they choose to do so.

Making a point at the ballot box

In any case, regardless of their underlying motivation, the fact is that the Turnbull–Joyce Liberal–National Coalition, if re-elected, will dissolve the national borders of Australia's publishing industry. Every other book publishing nation, in the meantime (with, as mentioned, the exception of New Zealand) maintain their own borders. The end result of this will be a vastly depleted local publishing industry and significantly reduced opportunities for new Australian authors. If this matters to you, you can make your views heard at the ballot box this weekend.

^✝ The point of using my own book as an example here is not to cry poor – we are very grateful to have been published at all – but to hopefully make the explanation a little clearer. My understanding is that our publishing contract in relation to Scattered Pearls is fairly standard.
^✝✝ There are a number of rules and regulations around this that I can't do justice to here. For instance, there is no restriction on individual Australians importing books for their own purposes, which is why Australians can readily buy books from Amazon.com or bookdepository.co.uk (which, as an aside, is an Amazon subsidiary). Book stores can also import individual copies of a book for one of their customers.
^✝✝✝ Authors generally earn a royalty of 10 per cent of the recommended retail price for books sold in territories for which they have sold the rights to their work. That applies regardless of the price the book is actually sold for. For exported books, on the other hand, royalties are based on the publisher's actual earnings, equating to around one-third of the 'domestic' royalty.

As usual, if you have any questions or comments, please add a comment below or contact me.

At the moment I don't have a clear idea of what the finished product is going to look like structurally. I have some major headings in mind, but what order they will be presented in is unknown. And those topics may change too. There might be a few 'ins' and 'outs' along the way.

But that's okay. What I've learnt over the years is that uncertainty at this stage of a book project, or any large creative project for that matter, is quite normal. Embracing the unknown at this point frees me up to keep going; worrying about it won't achieve anything and is likely to cause stagnation.

In these early stages I'm working in Scrivener, my go-to app for the task of sorting out raw materials – a job that is a bit like unscrambling eggs. I'm working through the transcriptions to isolate and categorise segments of the interviews under rough headings. Later I'll keep working in Scrivener as I create my outline and then work on the first draft.

Along the way I'll using another application – Aeon Timeline – to create a timeline of events. At some stage I might use a mindmap or cover a wall in sticky notes as I experiment with different ways of presenting the history.

Gradually, over the next couple of months, the project will start to shape itself into something with a more recognisable form. From there it will take on more and more definition until, after a couple of drafts, a polish, a good edit and then the final production process, the finished book will be born.

How can I be so sure that it will work out in the end? Because it always does. What I'm dealing with here are, in the infamous words of Donald Rumsfeld, 'known unknowns'. What I know is that there is no 'one right answer' to what this book should be. There are many right answers, and as I keep plugging away one of those right answers will reveal itself to me.

As usual, if you have any questions or comments, please add a comment below or contact me.

If you're being honest with your readers, your case will be built on a solid foundation of evidence. You won't present an ideological view that you then back up with evidence that supports your case, no matter how tenuous, while conveniently ignoring anything to the contrary. That is the domain of neoliberals, climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers.

Rather, you will use real evidence. But what is 'real' evidence?

In the context of a business book, as opposed to an academic dissertation, there are two main forms of evidence.

Your own experience, case studies and research

Obviously the most powerful and original material you can share is that you have collected yourself. Case studies of real-life situations you've been through can be particularly useful to others in similar situations. Even more so if you have a number of similar situations in which similar actions have been taken and similar results achieved.

The standards of evidence in a business book are rarely as high as they would be for an academic paper, in terms of strict sample sizes and repeatability. Nevertheless, if you want to be taken seriously it is good to be able to provide quantifiable results linked to specific initiatives. A sample size of one will never have a lot of credibility. Nor will assumptions and generalisations.

Others' experiences, case studies and research

No matter how much experience you build up you'll never be able to 'do it all'. There will always be things to learn from others. And of course, as an expert in your area, there will be external sources you're aware of that your readers may not know about. So there's nothing wrong with citing other information in your book.

However, this should be done responsibly – at least if your aim is to be honest. This means doing more than a quick Google search, grabbing a few statistics that appear to support your argument and then quoting those numbers – even if you reference the sources.

For a start, especially in business, a very large number of so-called studies are anything but. Dig just a little beneath the surface and you'll find that most of the statistics floating around the web are based on self-serving surveys conducted by individual firms with a product to sell. Unsurprisingly, these statistics always seem to support the use of said firm's services.

If you're going to quote statistics, or any other external evidence, make sure you find your way back to the primary source (i.e. not the article quoting the evidence but to the original source of that evidence) and verify its impartiality. In business, two of the best sources are outlets like Harvard Business Review and McKinsey Quarterly but there are plenty of others.

Of course, there is nothing to stop you saying whatever you like in your book and using as much evidence of ill-repute as you like. You can completely make stuff up if you want to. Plenty of people do this all the time and get away with it. Much of the supplements industry comes to mind. My hope is that that is not what you are interested in doing.

As usual, if you have any questions or comments, please add a comment below or contact me.

Regular readers of this blog will have known that Scattered Pearls, a memoir of Sohila Zanjani, co-written with myself was due to hit the bookshelves in Australasia in early April this year. And indeed it did – on April 1, no less. It's incredibly satisfying to have the book out there, especially as it's taken a long time to get to this point.

So how did we get to this point? It's a question I've been asked a few times, and I think it's a good tale that I hope provides some insight into the writing and publication process. (Please forgive the longer than normal post.)

1. Find your subject

Sohila and I had known each other a few years before we started on this project. I had done some work for her as a consultant, and kept in touch via an occasional (paper) newsletter. As I moved the focus of my work to writing, I added the word 'Ghostwriting' to my list of services on said newsletter. Sohila noticed that and gave me a call.

2. Take a punt; make a commitment

We met. I knew something of Sohila's story but not a lot. What I did know was that she was passionate about sharing where she had come from, warts and all, including the details of her abusive marriage. She asked me if I would help her write her book. It was a punt because unlike my commercial work there would be no payment unless we were able to sell the story, but in the end the story was just too interesting to pass up.

3. Extract the background

Ghostwriting a memoir is different from writing one of your own because, of course, it 'ain't your memories that are going into the story. This means you have to extract the information from your subject, which can be done via interviews and the collection of archives. In Sohila's case, she had an early version of her story already written, along with over 2,500 pages of journals and diaries, so there was plenty of material to work with. There was only one problem: most of these were written in Persian ... and I can't read Persian.

In the end we slowly worked through that early version of the story together, Sohila translating while I recorded, on audio and in writing, what she was telling me. Subsequently Sohila worked through all her other notes, making voice recordings of the English translations along the way and sending those recordings to me. I listened and transcribed the over 500 voice memos in the end.

All of this took a good while, as both of us could only work on it part time – very part time at times – due to other commitments. In the end the task was probably spread over three years at least.

4. Structure and write

As the information started to come together we began to think about how it might be structured. I started some tenuous attempts at writing. Around this time I was studying a course in professional writing and editing at Melbourne's RMIT University. Thankfully one of the subjects involved non-fiction writing which gave me some impetus to write, along with the opportunity to get some feedback on what I was writing.

That said, writing was in some ways the easy part. Sohila had provided me with such a huge amount of information that trying to sort it all out and identify the most interesting parts of her story was a very significant and time-consuming (but enjoyable) part of the exercise. In addition, as I drafted sections I would send them to Sohila for review, which mostly prompted more memories for her and more information to sift and sort.

5. Find an agent/publisher

With three chapters written and reworked to a point that we were happy with, along with outlines of the other chapters, it was time to try and find a publisher. We had committed to finishing the book regardless, and self-publishing if we had to, but that was probably going to take a very long time without a deadline. Not to mention the extra cost.

At RMIT I learnt the finer points of writing a book proposal. I also approached Jacinta di Mase, a literary agent who I knew, and asked her to have a look at our proposal. Thankfully she was very enthusiastic about what we had done and where the story was going and agreed to represent us. She help us refine our proposal, which involved a bit more writing, and then she approached a number of major publishers. We were very grateful and excited when Simon & Schuster Australia enthusiastically took the project on.

From final proposal to agreement to proceed only took a few months, which is not long in this industry. It demonstrates the great benefit of having an agent on your side.

6. Write and re-write

At the time we signed our contract with Simon & Schuster, we had three complete chapters written. Now we had to write the rest – another 14 chapters and what turned out to be nearly 80,000 words of the final word count of 95,000. We had seven months to do it.

Needless to say the next few months were head down and bum up. I still have a gantt chart on my wall on which I had planned out the work. To cut this long story short: I drafted; Sohila commented, fact checked and edited; I polished ... and we continued this cycle until the middle of February 2015 when finally we submitted a full manuscript to the publisher. Along the way Sohila and I met regularly to nut out the details in certain areas. (I look at my chart now and wonder how it actually happened.)

But that wasn't the end of it. Once the publisher's editor had been through the text with the proverbial fine-toothed comb, they came back with a number of suggestions, most of which involved a desire for more information in certain areas. So over the following June and July there was more drafting, re-drafting and polishing, and a lot more discussion, as we created what would be very close to the final manuscript.

7. Wait

Now it was up to our wonderful publishers to do their thing. As the book is a memoir with references to people who are still alive, they had their lawyers look it over. The text was laid out and a really wonderful cover developed. There was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing over minor things here and there, including a last round of minor changes to the text. We were invited to meet the Simon & Schuster team and the pre-publicity machine started to wind up.

About two weeks before release a box of publicity copies of the book was delivered. Now it felt real! But then when we finally had the chance to see it in bookshops on April 1, 2016 and it felt really real.

Of course there are many other authors who have been through, or are going through, a process like this right now. Many will be longer in gestation than Scattered Pearls. And for them, like us, how successful their book will be only time will tell. Regardless, Sohila and I are incredibly proud of what we've achieved ... not to mention relieved to have got it done.

As usual, if you have any questions or comments, please add a comment below, contact me, or visit the 'Scattered Pearls' Facebook page.