This is one of the most interesting reads I’ve seen on being an author and the publishing industry.
I’m working on my third book (Eight Lunches) and have a fourth on the back burner. I’m addicted to writing books, I guess.
Check out Thom Singer’s experience and learning from a publishing industry conference: The Changing Faeces of the Publishing Industry.
Folks… WOW. I asked for help and you came through, thank you!
I closed the comments from the original post because feedback is coming in and I need to digest it all and take time to rework the book. This will be the third draft… and then I’ll send it out for another round of review. Anyone who leaves a comment on THIS post will get an email with that draft, hopefully in the next few weeks.
I’ll share some feedback that I’ve gotten as soon as I get permission from the people who have given feedback.
THANK YOU!
UPDATE: I am not sending out any more versions of THIS draft, but will send out versions of THE NEXT draft… just leave a comment on this other post and I’ll shoot it to you when I’m ready. THANK YOU so much for helping me get this far!
I just finished editing (second draft) my third book, which is titled Eight Lunches. You’ll see why it has that title in the excerpt below, which is essentially the intro (or, chapter zero).
Writing a book is easy and hard. Okay, maybe it’s just hard… writing isn’t hard for me, but when SHARE my books/ideas with people, very smart people, I become vulnerable (an easy target). But that’s the way it is… and it’s time to become vulnerable… so here goes… if you want to review my draft just leave a comment on this post and I’ll send you the book (I had people contact me directly but it’s going to be easier if you leave a comment). What I’d like is this:
I’ll share more of my vision for this book in a future post… here’s the excerpt:
EIGHT LUNCHES
“I’m about ready to wrap it up and get a job,” said Paul, clearly dejected.
“Why? I thought things were going pretty good… what’s really going on with your business?” asked Jason. They were at Kneaders, a local sandwich shop, for their almost-monthly lunch. They started these lunches about a year earlier, after they met at a network meeting and realized they lived in the same neighborhood.
Jason’s business was a couple of years older than Paul’s and Paul asked if they could meet regularly to compare notes and share ideas and leads. They both worked out of home offices so they didn’t get the face-to-face socialization they had at their corporate jobs. There’s nothing wrong with a workday without a commute, or unnecessary interruptions by colleagues, or sharing a community fridge, but both agreed that meeting for lunch with someone who has similar business challenges is more than refreshing.
“Considering how well your business is doing, I’m embarrassed to admit where I’m at. I mean seriously, I read your blog and see all the comments and announcements and can’t even imagine having a business as successful as yours.” Paul was desperate to know how to fix his business but it was hard to open up, or ask for help, from Jason.
“Ha, that’s funny,” Jason said with a big grin, “looks can be deceiving!” Everything can be deceiving, he thought – from website traffic to blog posts to buzz about your business.
“I’ve really been thinking about my business and where I’ve come from over the last few years. I actually started writing down some ideas… principles of my success, that have helped make my business what it is today. What if we meet more regularly and talk about these principles and how they apply to your business?”
“Sounds intriguing Jason, but I’m not sure doing what you have done will help my business-our businesses aren’t even in the same industry. You market online, I sell locally. Yours is a web-based product, mine is not technical at all.”
“I realize that, but remember, I’m talking about principles. It shouldn’t matter what industry we’re talking about, or how big your business is, or even who your customers are. I’ve actually been thinking about developing a system for entrepreneurs to help them with their business. I’m not a business coach, and I don’t plan on becoming one, but I love to understand business strategies and systems. Talking about these success principles will allow me to test the ideas in a totally different industry – what do you think?”
“Sounds too good to be true,” said Paul, chuckling as he’s thinking it probably won’t help.
“Maybe it is too good to be true, but I’m game to try it! I’m sure it will help my business too, as I’ll have to critically evaluate my own business and how well I’m doing with these ideas.”
“Okay, I’m sold… what next?” Said Paul, thinking it couldn’t make his business any worse.
“How about we start next Friday? We can have lunch here every Friday from one to three, for the next eight weeks.”
“Perfect. What do I need to prepare for next week?” asked Paul.
“I don’t know – let me figure out what we’ll talk about next week. One thing, though. To make this work I want you to be comfortable sharing stuff you might not have shared with anyone else. I might ask you some tough questions and to make this work you need to be honest with me and yourself. I’ve had to ask the same questions of myself as I’ve grown my own business… agreed?”
Paul didn’t even hesitate. “Not a problem Jason, at this point I’m willing to do what I need to get my business back on track.”
“Cool – see you next Friday,” replied Jason, wondering if he knew what he had just committed to!
And then we jump into the first lunch (aka, chapter 1)!
My heavens, every time I hear this I cringe.
“I wrote a blog…”
No, you didn’t, you newbie! You wrote a BLOG POST.
You don’t write an envelope, do you? NO. You write a letter.
“Hold on, I’m writing an envelope to grandma!”
Get it?
Blog vs. blog post.
If you blog, learn the difference.
(now, someone find me a ladder so I can get off the soapbox :p)
I am using Google Docs to write something and did the spell check… of course JibberJobber was flagged… surprisingly here are the options:
Hm. Not even close! When I have some time (yeah right) I’ll go check those out to see what they mean :p
I started my business with lots of money… no wait, no money. No money. Lots of time, but no money.
No one wanted to talk to me, because I was a nobody and people were waiting to see if I was a flash-in-the-pan entrepreneur.
So, with no money, and nobody wanting to talk to me, and lots of time, I wrote.
And I wrote, and I wrote.
I wrote blog posts and articles, and I wrote lots and lots of comments on other blogs.
This became what I now call part of my Blog Marketing Strategy.
If you want to get your name and brand out there, and find evangelists and customers, and get traditional press and new media buzz, you NEED to incorporate blogs into your marketing strategy.
I put together a video recording, about 2 hours, of what I did as part of my blog marketing strategy. You can get it for $50. It is one of my favorite recordings, because I LIVED this stuff.
And it worked for me. And it can work for you.
Here’s what Kathy Bitschenauer, Certified Career Management Coach, had to say about it:
GREAT webinar, loved the way you presented it, and gained a ton of new information and explanations of things that I had not understood, such as what’s the value of Technorati, or the ways to use Google Alerts to your advantage. This is one I’ll review over and over. And I learned how important it really is to get going on creating a blog and writing in it.
Tools. Your own blog. Other blogs.
Strategy and Tactics.
This webinar is AWESOME (yeah, I’m biased).
If you want it you can order it here. Or learn more here.
(update: 12/28/09 – had to turn off comments as something with blogs and marketing gets a TON of spam comments.)
My mind is in online etiquette (netiquette) as I’m finishing up my netiquette book.
This morning in my Google Alerts I found out about a post someone wrote that referenced my book. I have had the post up in a tab for a few hours trying to figure out how to handle it. I was going to put a link to the post and a screenshot but I really don’t care to “out” this person… since it might be embarrasing to him.
I do, however, want to voice the issue, and share some blog etiquette 101, as I know a few people follow my blogging stuff.
There are specifically two things that this person did wrong. In fact, as I think about what he did, the words “gross negligence” comes to mind.
Why? Because he might have tried to write the post to get on my radar (not to be presumptious, but some people do that kind of thing (including ME))… but the reality is once he got there I was, as an ego-driven blogger, OFFENDED.
Okay, maybe all caps is too big. But still, fixing these two things could have left him with a strong post and had me think highly of him. Here are the two things:
For point #2 I would suggest (if he were a blogging client) that he puts 2 or 3 or 4 points, and then says “to read the rest of Jason’s ideas, check out his book on Amazon or on his book blog.”
I try and do that all the time – quote a little bit of stuff from someone but point the readers to the original post (or source) for more.
Lesson to anyone using blogs as a business or marketing tool: respect others. Stroke egos of bloggers. Do that and you can create an army of evangelists for your stuff.
If you followed my Multiple Streams of Income posts on JibberJobber you would know that I am an executive editor for my publisher for the Now What??? series. I have lofty goals for this series… and today is a special day. Why? Check out part of an email I just got:
Hi Janet,
Congrats! Your book is officially at the printer. I’ll keep you
up to speed on how that goes and when we can ship you your
copies…Your eBook is now live on the Happy About shopping cart. Feel
free to start sending folks there. It’s also attached.Have a great weekend.
How terrific is that?
The first book was I’m on LinkedIn — Now What??? (currently in it’s second edition), the second was I’m on Facebook — Now What???, and this is officially the third book in my series!
Congratulations to Janet, newest author – Sept 4, 2009 is a special day for you! The next special day is when a box of YOUR books arrives at your door – what a thrill!
Janet wrote a terrific blog post titled The Journey of Writing a Book.
I have a webinar that you should get if you think you have a book in you called Write Your Book.
I started blogging three years ago this month. It was a fantastic environment where you had your own “bully pulpit” … a place where you were in charge, you had the mic, and you could say whatever you wanted.
I soon learned that bloggers had quite the ego. They used their bully pulpit to talk about boring stuff (that we were supposed to be interested in) as well as though leadership or subject matter expert stuff. Bloggers had enough rope to hang themselves with – and some did. Others became fantastically popular (Seth, Guy, Michael, Chris Brogan), and even internet celebrities.
One of the most empowering, ego-feeding things for a blogger is the comments – or, NUMBER of comments. When someone leaves a comment on your blog it means (a) you have readers (aside from your momma), and (b) you touched someone intellectually to the point they wanted to weigh in.
Getting comments on a blog fed a blogger’s ego like Golden Coral feeds a hungry boy scout. There are even bragging rights associated with getting comments.
Read a blog that doesn’t get comments? You might just be the only reader of that blog. Obviously, a blog with a few comments (if there are consistently a few), or dozens, or hundreds, or even tens of thousands, really validated the blogger.
And fed their ego.
Fast forward a bit and we come to the evolution, or perhaps the problem (if your ego is tied to your comments): the introduction of other social platforms where discussion can happen.
For example, three years ago I might have written a thought-provoking post and gotten 15 comments on the blog post – my ego is fed, I’m validated, and everyone knows I’m a force to be reckoned with.
Today, however, it’s different. I write a blog post, and tweet a link to my Twitter followers. I get NO comments on the blog.
But my tweet gets RT’d 6 times.
And 4 people reply to my tweet with their thoughts.
And 7 people comment on my “status” on Facebook, since my Tweets become my Facebook Status.
There are two problems with this scenerio:
The first problem is artificial… it isn’t really a problem, although it crushes the blogger’s ego. If you get no comments on the blog, you start to look like a chump… right? What happened to all of those validating comments? Maybe you should QUIT BLOGGING?
You might have heard that blogs are dying (they aren’t!)… I think people who see the conversation go elsewhere wonder why they still blog and are somehow convincing themselves they should follow the discussion (as it travels through various platforms), as opposed to continue to initiate the discussion (on their blog). I think this is a shortsighted mistake.
The second problem is what really irks me. It is that someone who reads my blog post WILL NOT get the benefit of the wisdom of the crowd.
I try and write my blog posts from my perspective, and always wonder what other smarter folks would say – either agreeing or disagreeing – I don’t care their position, but I do want to get a well-rounded discussion.
It’s no one’s fault, but when people respond a little bit here (Twitter) and a little bit there (Facebook), and even in Facebook they respond on the Wall and/or the Notes section, the conversation is fragmented, and NO ONE can follow it, except me.
It makes me sad that the wisdom of the crowd gets lost amongst the platforms, and no one else can get the value of the conversation.
Are blogs dying? No. But there is an interesting evolution of where and how the conversation happens…. and this is an evolution that hasn’t been fun to watch 
Today on my JibberJobber blog I announced the Now What??? series, where I have authors writing books, and I’m the executive editor. It’s pretty cool, although I was jazzed about starting it.
A few days ago I was on the phone with my publisher and said “okay, I’m going to draw a line in the sand. I’m telling you [and now I'm telling all my blog readers] that I’m going to have a Now What Authors Conference in Fall of 2010 in Salt Lake City.”
The vision for this conference is to have my authors (dozens? more than 100?) come and learn from people on how to leverage being an author into other revenue streams.
I’ve thought about the buddies I’ve met at NSA, and others who have created various types revenue streams, to come in and speak. Perhaps some workshops… who knows what it will be.
2 days of fun, education, inspiration, stories, ideas, networking, etc.
This wouldn’t be limited to just my authors… it would be for anyone who has (or wants to have) a book, and/or wants to take their “multiple revenue streams” to the next level.
Exact date? Dunno.
Price? Dunno.
Location? Somewhere in or near Salt Lake City.
Speakers/Presenters? Dunno.
Cool, huh? What would you suggest to make this event amazing?
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