Jumpstart Your Book with Book Blueprinting

Do you have a book in you waiting to come out, yet you don’t know how or where to start? Do you wonder how to tackle a project so large in scope? Do you dream of becoming a published author but the dream seems to escape you?

Or perhaps you know how to write a book – maybe you’ve even written one (or several) before – but you’re too busy to write one now. Maybe you’ve been suffering from writer’s block and you’ve got a deadline approaching with a publisher.

Whatever the reasons you’re not getting where you want on your book, what you need is a firm (but gentle) motivational kick – you know, the proverbial kick in the arse!

There’s no doubt about it: Book writing is challenging. The process brings up all sorts of questions and bafflements. Where do you begin? How do you end it? The words aren’t flowing. (Do they ever, really?)

Should you decide to get outside help, three solutions are available to solve your book-writing challenges: hire a ghostwriter, hire a book coach, or commission a custom book blueprint. Let’s discuss these options.

Hiring a ghostwriter is often the easiest (and quickest) way to get your book done. However, this option isn’t cheap, nor should it be. You want high quality, don’t you? After all, your name is going on the finished product. A professional ghostwriter will produce a quality manuscript in a timely manner.

Coaching is popular these days for achieving spectacular results in many fields including fitness, emotional health, leadership, etc. The same holds true for (book) writing. A book (writing) coach won’t actually write your book for you. Instead, she’ll be your personal cheerleader along the journey of your book’s development. She’ll help you set goals, review your progress, stay on track, and, most important, make you accountable if you don’t do what you say you’re going to do. Usually cheaper than having someone write your book from start to finish, book coaching might be a good idea if you really want to do (almost) everything yourself and just need a consistent motivational spark along the way. Although this option is typically less expensive than ghostwriting, it is costlier than the next option, book blueprinting.

So, what is book blueprinting anyway? In a nutshell, it’s the process of creating a detailed outline of a book’s topic written in question format. We all know how difficult it can be to write anything from a command or statement. Our brains are wired such that it’s much easier to write from a question. Let’s take a look at an example: Please write a brief essay about your childhood.

Many people will tense up upon reading the above sentence and have no idea where to start. Why should it be so difficult to write about something we know as intimately as ourselves? This difficulty stems from the programming we received in school in regards to writing.

Okay, now try this: What were some of your most favorite and least favorite memories as a child? See what I mean. Writing from the just-mentioned question seems much easier doesn’t it?

So, in order to write your book – quickly and easily – you have to outline it using questions instead of statements. Each question is then answered briefly by several keywords to help your creative juices flow while composing the full response. These keywords serve as nice hooks upon which to hang additional writing.

A book blueprint can also help you gauge or even determine the length of your finished manuscript. For example, after you know how many questions there are, you can decide how long (the number of words) each answer should be in order to create a manuscript of 50,000 to 75,000 words (approximately 150-300 finished pages, depending on book size, page layout, and page density). If you wish for your book to be longer or shorter than this range, you can adjust the length of each answer accordingly.

Once you've answered the questions, you can simply pull them out and link your answers together using transitions. Transitions are words that help relate one idea to another. Some examples include: therefore, however, nevertheless, finally, likewise, and afterwards. Alternatively, you can leave the questions in place if you’d like your finished manuscript in Q&A format, popular in many non-fiction books these days.

After linking the pieces and producing your best work, you should have a professional edit your manuscript. All writers – from Stephen King to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Frank McCourt – need an editor; i.e., an impartial set of eyes trained to review, enhance, and even make corrections when necessary.

Using the methodology briefly outlined above will help you quickly get your book together. Don’t delay! The hardest part of writing a book – like anything else – is getting started.

How much is your book worth as a career booster, as a marketing tool for a business, or as a message to influence the way the world thinks? Oftentimes, the value obtained from becoming the author of a published book is priceless. Get going on your book today!

Best wishes on your book-writing journey!

Self-Publishing Your Book: The Ultimate Do-It-Yourself Project

Do you have a book in you? We all have life experiences worthy of recording in a book. How then will you bring your message to its appropriate audience? Really, there are only two choices—either find a publisher or publish your book yourself. Here are 5 reasons you shouldn’t self-publish.

1. You only want to make 5-10% of the proceeds the book generates in the form of an author royalty.
2. You enjoy editors telling you to basically rewrite your entire manuscript in their preferred style, ultimately changing the intended meaning of everything you want to say.
3. You enjoy waiting 1-½ to 2 years for your book to be in print. You’re in no hurry.
4. You’ve spent months or even years writing and researching your book and now want to relinquish your rights to it (such as copyrights, serial rights, foreign rights).
5. You are sadistic and enjoy rejection from literary agents and publishers.

Joking aside, by self-publishing:

1. You may make more money.
2. You will retain control over your work.
3. You can deliver your book to the public faster.
4. You’ll retain all legal ownership rights to your book.
5. You maintain the ultimate decision determining whether or not your book is published.

1. Make More Money

Publishing industry profit margins are quite narrow. Industry statistics indicate that a profitable book will create a 10% profit for the publisher. Add that to your 10% author royalty and you’ve doubled your profit. Also, because you will have control over costs, as a self-publisher you may be able to reduce them to a level that creates an even higher profit margin.

2. Retain Control Over Your Work

Editing and proofreading are crucial to producing a quality book. It is highly recommended that an author have professional, outside help perform editing and proofreading services. It is all too easy for an author to overlook the errors within his or her own work. However, by maintaining control over the editing and proofreading process, you have the ultimate say over what stays in and what goes out, ensuring that what you wish to convey to your audience is what’s actually published.

3. Get Your Book to the Public Faster

The publishing industry typically works on an 18-month or longer cycle from the time of accepting a manuscript to the release of a new book. By self-publishing, you can bring your work to the public within 2 to 9 months after completing your manuscript, significantly reducing the time from pen to print.

4. Retain All Legal Ownership Rights

If your work is published by a traditional publishing company, there is a great chance that the publisher will require the ownership of most, if not all, of the legal rights to it. These rights include electronic, serial, foreign, and copyrights. By self-publishing you retain all rights to your work unless, of course, you choose to sell them.

Suppose your novel can be converted to a screenplay for the next multi-billion dollar movie? When the production companies are ready to buy, if you own the film rights to your work, you get the money. If you don’t, your publishing company does.

5. Maintain the Ultimate Decision Determining Whether or Not Your Book is Published

Perhaps you are a humanitarian of sorts, desiring to disseminate your message to save the world and not necessarily to make a profit? However, the 35 publishing companies you’ve approached are uninterested in your work because they DO want to make a profit. Then, self-publishing may be the only avenue available to bring your work to the world. Also, many traditional publishers won’t work with writers not represented by a literary agent; and many agents won’t work with authors who haven’t been published before. It’s a catch-22.

So, where do you start? First, do your homework! Read as many books on the subject of self-publishing as you need to feel comfortable with the steps involved in starting such a major project. Several great books on self-publishing and related subjects are:

The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing by Tom and Marian Ross
A Simple Guide to Self-Publishing by Mark Ortman
1001 Ways to Market Your Books by John Kremer
Publishing Basics: A Guide for the Small Press and Independent Self-Publisher by Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr.
Book Printing and Self-Publishing by Gorham Printing

Two great web sites are:

http://publishing.about.com, part of the About.com web portal
http://www.bookmarket.com, maintained by John Kremer, author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books and considered to be one of the nation’s foremost authorities on book marketing.

Secondly, decide who will print your book early in the process. By determining who will print your books, you ensure that you will create files or a physical document that the printer can turn into a great looking book by meeting the printer’s technical specifications. Different printers use different software and hardware for printing. Suppose you type your manuscript in WordPerfect with 1” margins all around with a document size of 8-½ x 11”. Then, while shopping around for a printer, you find that most want ¾” margins all around, will only accept PDF or Postscript files, and that it’s much cheaper to print on 5-½ x 8-½” paper. You are then stuck with the task of reformatting your entire document.

Finally, decide what you can and will do, and what you can’t or won’t do. If you are able and willing to do your own typesetting, then by all means save the money and do it yourself. However, if you dislike computers and dread the thought of learning yet another complex software application, contract the task out for someone else to do it.

Self-publishing is not for everyone. It requires a significant investment in both time and money. Yet it brings a sense of great accomplishment and is highly rewarding. Best wishes on your self-publishing journey!

Copyright © 2002 by Wendy Y. Tucker. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to publish this article electronically or in print as long as this author's resource box is included in its entirety with the article.

Wendy Y. Tucker is the self-published author of 777 Cheap Eats in Las Vegas and owner of Triple Seven Press, a small company that helps people self-publish their books.