Got A Business Book Stuck Inside You Sims Library 3 21 12
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With all your business experience you could write a book. Here\'s how to get started.
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Got A Business Book Stuck Inside You Sims Library 3 21 12
- 2. “Got a Business Book Stuck Inside You?” Simsbury Public Library Wednesday, March 21
- 3. Writing • What’s a book? • Goal • Outlining • Process • “I think I can, I think I can”
- 4. What’s a Book? • Not your grandfather’s book • Tom Clifford’s 55 page e-book • You may have started without knowing it
- 5. Reimagining • Presentation • White paper • Instructions • Website content • Journal article • Blog posts • Resource file • Chapter at a time
- 6. Writing/Goal • Document • Showcase • Raise • Distinguish • Sell • Other?
- 7. Correct & Collect by Rachel Baugher
- 9. Writing/Outlining • Find gaps and research • Organize yourself • Assure flow • Assure coverage • Assure consistency (voice/style) • Very reassuring! • Chunk it
- 10. Example of Outlining • Financial Basics • Retirement Income • Investments • Risk Management • Estate Planning • Glossary
- 11. Outlining One Step Deeper • Financial Basics – Retirement Income: Perception vs. Reality – How Long Will You Be Retired? – Are You Ready for Retirement? – 9 Reasons People Fail Financially in Retirement – Setting Goals – Using Credit Wisely – Controlling Debt – Making Compound Interest Work for You – Consistent Investing – The Rule of 72 – Procrastination: A Costly Mistake – Stress and Retirement – Inflation – Income Taxes – More
- 12. Writing/Process • Down • Up • Dental
- 13. Q: What’s the first thing you should do as you start working on your book? Chris Amorosino Amorosino Writing, LLC 860.673.0089
- 14. A: Don’t Start Writing • Don’t write; don’t outline • Do ask yourself: What are the 10 or 12 most important points you want to get across to your audience?
- 15. Most Important Points • Some foods that cause allergies • How to know if you have a food sensitivity • Difference between sensitivity and allergy • Where to get help • If diagnosed with gluten intolerance • If must eliminate dairy
- 16. Q: What’s the second thing you should do as you start working on your book?
- 17. A: Build Your • Book12Storage Facility Have your 10 - major points? • Congrats! Chapter headings! • Build Storage – Word doc – File folders – 3 X 5s – PowerPoint – Shoe box – Whatever’s comfortable Chris Amorosino amorosinowriting.com 860.673.0089
- 18. Reimagining, Again • Start by reviewing resources you already have – Blog posts – Emails – White papers – Journal articles – Instructions – More
- 19. “I think I can, I think I can.” • Motivation – Clear goal – Clear direction – Clear audience – Clear distinction
- 20. Dorothy Parker "I hate writing. I love having written."
- 21. Roy H. Williams "In your business writing, you must choose among boredom, shouting and seduction. Which do you choose?“
- 22. Warren Buffett “To succeed I don't need to be Shakespeare. I must, though, have a sincere desire to inform."
- 23. Your Turn • What else? • What’s unclear? • What’s holding you back?
- 24. Thank You!
Editor's Notes
- This is you. And me. We all have a book stuck inside us. We know a lot of things about our business. In book form those things could help other people. But the book’s stuck inside us. Nancy Simonds, Kay Green and I are here tonight to provide you with the your first step in getting that book unstuck and outside into the world where it can breathe, shed light and flourish.
- This is our topic. This is where we are. This is today’s date. Anyone need to know the exact time?
- Tonight Kay will talk about book design. Nancy will talk about editing and proofreading. I’ll talk about writing. More specifically, I’d like to talk about your goal in writing your business book. Outlining your business book. The process of writing your book. And motivation. Remember that little engine who thought he could and thought he could? Without motivation nothing else matters, right?
- If you think you want to write a business book then ask yourself why. Why do you want to write a book? Do you want to document a critical process you use in your business? Do you want a book to showcase your expertise and make prospects more likely to do business with you? Do you want your business book to raise your visibility so people can find you more easily? Are you in a crowded marketplace and do you think a book will help distinguish you from your competition? Do you want to make the NYT best-seller list and have your book be a big revenue generator? (This is by far the hardest goal and one I’m not much equipped to help you with.) Know your book’s audience and your goal before you start your book. If your goal is documenting your business process you’ll write a different book than if your goal is to raise visibility. A documentation book will be more detailed and precise. A book designed to raise your business’s visibility will have a more marketing flavor to it.
- Here’s an example of a book, actually a training manual that a local utility analyst wrote to document her process for starting your own business as a utility bill analyst. Nancy, Kay and I all worked on this project. The author, Rachel Baugher, wanted to provide her clients with a step-by-step process from structuring the business to finding clients to review utility bills to working with clients and more. Rachel needed a detailed and through approach. Her goal wasn’t to write a best seller or raise her visibility.
- Here’s a book with a different business goal. This book was written by a market research expert to help correct some common misconceptions about market research and to showcase the author’s expertise. A book like this can be like a calling card. It can open doors for you by proving to your prime audience that you have a lot of knowledge and are willing to share that knowledge. It builds credibility and a sense of expertise. So you start by defining the goal for your book. Let’s go on to the second writing topic. After you know the goal for your book what do you do next? Here’s a hint: Don’t start writing yet.
- Before you build a stone wall you collect all the stones you need. Before you build a book you collect all the ideas and information you need. Outlining is one way to organize that idea collection process. You can outline in a rude and crude way. Just jot down all the major topics you’re thinking of covering. Then arrange them in a logical order. That will help you find any gaps. You want to build a strong, solid stone wall of information. By outlining you’ll know where (if anywhere) you need to do some research. Outlining also assures flow. You want readers to feel like the content of your book is in logical order. Otherwise you risk confusing them. Outlining will also help assure you cover everything you want to and that you’re consistent in the voice you use and the style of writing. See, isn’t this all very reassuring? By “chunk it” I mean to not look at your book as one massive project. Divide it up. Think of the logical pieces or chunks that will be part of your book. Take one chunk at a time. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
- So here’s an example of outlining. A huge financial services agency wrote this book that agents use to help educate corporate employees during a series of lunchtime seminars. The entire book covered the topic “Financial Strategies for Successful Retirement.” But the outline broke the book’s topic into these subtopics. They are in a logical order. The book starts with financial basics, goes to retirement income, then goes to investments. Risk management was left for part four because it’s not a topic people like to talk about. The book’s theory was let’s give them what interests them first. Most of us are interested in having income for retirement and in investments. While covering those topics the book alludes to the need for protection against risk. Once the need for risk is more top of mind, then the book went into how to manage that risk. Finally the book covered estate planning because the need for that topic occurs more in the middle age years or later and not everyone needs to do a lot of estate planning.
- Let’s look at outlining one step deeper. Here are some of the topics covered in the first section of this book. Looks like a lot for a lunchtime seminar, doesn’t it? But every topic is short. There are many pages where the attendees fill in figures and answer questions. With an outline like this you can quickly see if you’ve covered all the financial basics. They hit all the hot buttons: credit, debt, compound interest, retirement facts, goal-setting, inflation, taxes, you name it. This is an example of chunking down the book’s topic. People can easily find a subtopic of special interest to them and go immediately to that topic.
- So we’ve covered setting the goal for your book and outlining or gathering and organizing your material. Now let’s get into my final topic, the actual writing process. I’m in love with Anne Lamott’s book, Bird by Bird. It’s a book on writing. In it Anne hits upon a great strategy for your writing process. First you write a down draft. In the down draft all you’re doing is putting your ideas down on paper or down on the screen. You just want to capture all the content without thinking about wording, spelling, order, logic, tone or any other issues. The down draft is just to gather all your wisdom in one big pile. Then you do the up draft. In the up draft stage you clean up your writing. You polish it up, you spruce it up, you put it in logical order, you use a consistent voice, etc. Later you do the dental draft. In the dental draft you’re like a dentist – checking every tooth, looking under the tongue, making everything clean. This is when you proofread and edit and become Nancy Simonds.
- ( Take several answers. Next slide reveals my answer.)
- The first thing you should do is NOT to start writing. If you’re thinking of writing a book I’m assuming you have decided on your overall book topic and the audience you want to address. You’ve set your goal: showcase expertise, distinguish yourself from the competition, etc. With your audience in mind, with your book’s goal understood—you’re ready to start gathering. You gather by asking yourself the question on this slide. Start collecting the answers to that question in whatever form works for you.
- Here’s a true story Nancy Simonds shared with me. She has a client who is a naturopath. The naturopath wanted to write a book about food allergies. The writing process, even the outlining process intimidated her. Nancy’s advice was to just gather her most important points. I’ve listed some of those points here.
- Once the naturopath has her 10 or 12 major points together, she’d have her chapter headings. Those major points get filed in what I call your book storage facility. Nancy suggested typing those points, those chapter heads into a Word document, in no particular order. Over a couple of weeks, the naturopath can begin to add information, concepts, thoughts, cut and paste, etc. to those chapters. Once each chapter is a few pages long, she could begin first round of writing. It doesn’t matter how you gather and organize your book material. It’s like exercising. Your heart doesn’t care if you walk or you swim or your bike – your heart just wants exercise. So gather your material in file folders or a Word doc or a shoe box or whatever’s comfortable for you. Nancy’s client, the naturopath, was relieved to hear she didn't have to start by writing! Gather enough material and guess what? The writing almost starts itself. Ideas rub up against each other and you’ll see gaps to fill, explanations to make, order to change, etc.
- Remember the little engine that could? The children’s book? Well, part of being and staying motivated to write your business book is saying positive things to yourself about writing the book. Yes, you can do this. Yes, you can do this. Clarity also helps. You’ll be more motivated if you have a clear goal. If you have a writing process that’s easy for you will have a clear direction to take. That helps. And what about your audience? Who will read your book? Get a clear picture of that audience in your mind. Know as much as you can about what they’re looking for and what types of books they like to read and how they like authors to talk to them. Also check out what else is already written on the subject that you’ll be tackling. You don’t want to write a book in a similar style with similar content to a book that’s already readily available. Make sure there’s a clear distinction between your book and the other books on the market.
- We want to provide you with all the knowledge you need so you can not worry about your book but can sleep like a baby.