Top Seven Book Publishing Tips: How to Write a Book in Six Months
Are you looking for some book publishing tips as you proceed on your journey to becoming an author? If so, I’m happy that you’re here. In this post, I want to take a deep dive into the book publishing process. Specifically, I am going to share with you seven helpful tips on how to write a book in six months. By implementing these tips into your own writing process, you will be significantly closer to creating that book of your dreams.
Why Now Is An Exciting Time to Publish A Book
We are now living in a fantastic time to create all types of content. At Dubb, we frequently tout the power of creating and distributing video content. While video will always hold a place in our hearts, it has never been easier to create and release a book.
I can speak from experience. I’m so psyched to announce that I have just released my first book. It is called Just Dubb It and you can find it on Amazon. Writing Just Dubb It was a fantastic experience. It was awesome going back through my history and sharing my knowledge and experiences about social media, video marketing, and more.
I think that now is a great time to write and publish a book for so many reasons. To start, many of the barriers to creating books have fallen or disappeared. The most notable barrier is the publisher barrier. Simply put, you don’t need to work with a publisher to get your book out into the world. Using a tool like Amazon Self Publishing, you can upload your manuscript and start selling books right away. Because many of these gatekeepers have disappeared, you can publish and sell a good number of books—so long as you are offering real value in your book.
Along with this reduced role of gatekeepers is a robust community around publishing. Whether you are a first-time author or have written books before, there are plenty of individuals and groups on the Internet that can help you with the process. Rest assured that if you are facing a problem through the publishing process, someone else has encountered and addressed that problem. By tapping into the collective knowledge of the Internet, you can make your writing and publishing experience that much easier.
All of this is well and good. Ultimately, however, there is always more to learn about the writing and publishing process. Recently, I had a chance to speak with several people who have written great books and have reached bestselling status. They had some outstanding tips on not only writing and publishing as a whole but how to write a book in six months. I highly encourage you to implement these tips, as they will go a long way in helping you write and publish your book.
Seven Helpful Book Publishing Tips
To further explore this list, we are going to count down from number seven to number one. And before we start, one quick caveat. These tips work best for non-fiction books. While no one is necessarily stopping you from applying them to fiction books, I’ve found that they are much more effective for non-fiction works.
Number Seven: Get Inspired By Your Existing Content
Tip number seven on how to write a book in six months forces you to look at any type of content that you have already created. Simply put, writing a book can happen just as a result of creating content. And when I say content, it can really be anything. For example, Zoom conversations, phone conversations, podcast episodes, and videos you record can be excellent book ideas.
In other words, you don’t necessarily need to have some lifelong passion or decades-long plan before you think about writing a book. What you can do is look at the conversations that you’re currently having. You may be speaking with several key prospects and identify a key trend that is affecting their businesses. Looking closer to home, you may have had conversations with some of your employees that make you think about the future of work (like remote working). Whatever the case may be, there are plenty of ideas that you can take from your conversations for your future book.
The fact of the matter is that we have moved beyond the days where the written form needs to come from writing. Content can come from the awesome conversations that are already happening, whether they are online or in real life. All you need to do is pay close attention to them. I’m confident that you will find something interesting.
Number Six: Record Videos That You Know Can Be Transcribed Into A Book
This is another effective way to get started in your book writing journey. In fact, there is little stopping you from taking several videos that you have created and combining them into one complete book.
When you are having interesting conversations throughout your day, you will want to see if you can record them. Of course, you will need the consent of everyone in the video to do so. You’ll also want to notify those speaking in your video that their comments will appear in an upcoming book.
Once you get the consent of everyone, you will then want to convert your video content into text format. The good news is that there are plenty of tools that can make this extremely easy to do. Tools like Otter.AI can quickly give you transcripts of your videos. While you may need to clean up the provided transcript, it is a good start.
You can also use Dubb to get a great transcript of your videos. Specifically, Dubb has a feature where you can take video and then download that video as a pure text file. That will give you the raw text of your video, which you can then incorporate into your book.
Yes, you can choose to go another route. There’s nothing stopping you from taking out a notebook and physically writing down the major points from your conversation. That being said, the tools listed above can speed up the process and get you closer to publication. I encourage you to use them.
Number Five: Build a Community
This may not seem like the most obvious tip on writing a book in six months, yet building a community is an essential part of creating a successful book.
Ultimately, it’s important to start building a community at least one year before you publish your book. So while the writing process may take something like six months, you need to put in this legwork before the writing even begins.
Building a community is so critical because it will help you create and market your book. On the creation side, you can tap into your community to develop and vet some ideas for your book. Especially if your community is well-versed in the topic of your book, it can be a great resource as you go through the writing process. But beyond that, your community can be a leading force in purchasing and spreading the word about your book.
Whether you are self-publishing your book or are working with a publisher, you will absolutely want to take the time to build a community. If you are working with an agent, he or she will want to see those numbers. It’s as simple as that.
The good news? You may already have a community—even if you don’t recognize it. You may have a company newsletter that you send to a certain subset of customers. You may have a huge social media presence, whether it’s on Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok. You may have an extended friend group on Facebook or even write a monthly Forbes column. Whatever the case may be, you should not only identify this audience but use it as an asset throughout the book publishing process.
And if you don’t have any of these things? The best time to get started is today. A good way to get started is to begin building up your social media presence. Start liking posts and responding to other people’s posts. Make sure that you are posting valuable content for your own audience. It also helps to build a robust email list. While it may take some to get the traction that you want, it’s critical to put in the work right now. It takes time to show your prospects that you have a lot to offer and that they should follow you.
There is one more caveat here. Do not buy fake followers. Not only can it be expensive, but it will harm you when you are trying to run ads for your book. It can seem like a quick and easy fix, but the only real way to build a community is to do it the hard way.
Number Four: Use Interviews to Involve Multiple People in Your Book
As for tip number four on how to write a book in six months, you’ll want to include others when you are gathering and writing your book’s content. Simply put, you should get others invested in your book. There are many financial and non-financial reasons why you want to do this.
But let’s back up. I involved many people in my book Just Dubb It by interviewing many different people on Dubb’s podcast Connection Loop (check it out here). By interviewing dozens of people, I was able to cite their stories and insights when writing my own book. My interviewees are smart, driven, and amazingly talented people, and I was happy to include their stories in my book.
But beyond that, I brought them on my book writing journey. Because they were key contributors to the book, I viewed them as partners throughout the process. When releasing the book, there was a good chance that at least some of them were going to buy it. But even beyond that, I had a good feeling that they would promote the book to their social networks.
So when you are writing your own book, keep all of these benefits in mind. Not only will your book be more interesting, but you’ll have an easier time marketing and selling it. Better yet, it makes the entire process much more fun!
Number Three: Schedule Weeks in Advance
Scheduling is a huge part of writing and promoting any book. At the very least, you’ll want to block off time where you can get the writing process done. There are plenty of authors who have started the writing process, yet have never finished their books because they couldn’t find the time. By scheduling when you are actually going to write your book, you will dramatically increase your odds of actually finishing it.
But beyond scheduling your writing, you will want to plan your book launch weeks in advance. There are plenty of places where you can schedule your book launch. Product Hunt, Facebook events, and LinkedIn events are great tools, but feel free to use those that speak to you.
By getting people ready in advance, you get several chances to send them book reminders. You start priming them about your book’s progress and the value that they will get by reading it. In other words, you are getting many opportunities to make a sale—even though it may not feel like it.
Therefore, don’t avoid this scheduling work. Try not to release your book without having scheduled it in advance. You’ll see the results in terms of book sales and book revenue.
Number Two: Pick a Niche Category
This is one of the first things that you should consider before writing your book. While it may be tempting to pick a broad category, thinking that you will sell more books by appealing to more people, I encourage you to think twice.
There are plenty of books being released every day. For those appealing to broader categories, you’ll find that they may have a larger profile or more money to promote their book. This makes it much more difficult for you to stand out—even if you have valuable things to say in your book.
By picking a niche category, you’ll quickly discover that there is much less competition. Because you are competing with so many fewer books, you’ll have a much greater chance of ranking higher in the top charts. Ranking highly has its own benefits, including the fact that it offers social proof and that you can claim you are a best-selling author in your future marketing material. Speaking to a niche audience also helps you create passionate, raving fans, which you can then parlay into future book sales and other business sales.
Ultimately, there are so many more benefits to be targeted and niche rather than broad and expansive. Resist the temptation to take the number one spot on The New York Times bestseller list and target that niche that you’re passionate about.
Number One: Go All-In On the Day and Week That You Release Your Book
When answering how to write a book in six months, I couldn’t go without mentioning this tip. It is the number one tip for a reason. The reason why it is so important to go all-in when you are releasing your book is that it is how you can chart. By chart, I mean getting onto some sort of a list. It doesn’t have to be a list in The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. Instead, it can be a list on Amazon or even a list in your industry.
It may seem like it’s a pipe dream to become a “bestselling” author. The same is true of getting into the top-10 or top-100 of a subcategory. It is attainable, however. It is all about getting the engagement on that first day and week of your book’s release.
At that point, you should have already done your homework. In other words, you already have your supporters and followers. Some of them may even be people who have contributed to your book. For all of these people, try to get them to buy your book on the day of your launch or the first few days after your launch.
It’s simple: the more volume that you have in that short amount of time, the higher the chance of making a chart. And from there, making a chart can help you sell even more books. It can even be the difference between getting a publisher for your next book. Ultimately, it is a huge factor in not only selling your current book but in selling future books.
Write Your Book in Six Months
With the tips and advice above, I hope to have answered your question on how to write a book in six months. Writing, publishing, and marketing a book isn’t the easiest thing. It takes a lot of planning and work. Yet writing your book is possible—so long as you work hard at it. When you finish it, you’ll be satisfied not only with all of the benefits of writing a book but by the fact that you committed and finished something that most people don’t finish.
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About Ruben: Ruben is the founder of Dubb. When he’s not creating his next video, he’s probably playing drums, at a Taco Tuesday or with the fam. Follow Ruben on IG, FB, YT, TW, Medium, and his blog.
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