Once you’ve decided to dedicate yourself to the endeavor, you’ll need to create a balanced strategy where you dedicate enough time to the book — every week — to carry it forward until it’s published.

I say a “balanced strategy,” because working too much on your book may disrupt other important things like your work, family life or self care. While dedicating too little time will result in little to no progress.

This became apparent to me when I first started writing my book, A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing …

I was determined to complete the book quickly, and began writing for about 4-hours per day. I did this for 2-3 months, and got a large portion of the book done. But then I realized my work life was way out of balance. I hadn’t been blogging, working on my website, or procuring new clients, so although my business still had multiple projects occurring, not as much new business was coming in because my time dedicated to writing the book tilted things out of balance.

It was time for a time correction (pun intended), so I created a new schedule where I would dedicate one full day to the book each week. Since the book was almost done anyway, this turned out to be a great decision. I was able to move the book forward consistently, and tend to work, family and self in a more balanced way.

Of course, there were additional days that I did some work on the book — but that one day was a planned, dedicated day and I worked my schedule around it accordingly.

Honestly, this was still hard. Having only four days per week to handle work-related items was still a challenge. Luckily, I have a team of nine other people who handle quite a bit of the work, so it was doable.

That said, this may not be the best time schedule for you. You might want to write for an hour a day, or if you have the time and energy — write madly on Saturdays or Sundays. The important thing is to experiment and see what works for YOU, and then stick to it.

Writing a book isn’t only about getting your thoughts and ideas on the page. It’s also about giving yourself the time to do so. I hope this article helps you set a writing schedule that brings you success!

Want more tips and insights from Cuppa SEO?

Related posts:

• How to Write a Book, Part 1: Patience, Patience, Patience …
• How to Write a Book, Part 2: Start by Blogging
• How to Write a Book, Part 3: Organize Your Images
• How to Write a Book, Part 4: the Proof is in the Proof

The post How to Write a Book, Part 5: Balance Your Time appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

I don’t know about you, but I find proofing my own work dreadful. But that’s OK, because I decided early on that I was going to hire a professional to proof my book so it would be in tip-top shape.

Of course, before I handed the book over to the proofreader’s capable hands (her name is Kathy Watson, the Ruthless Editor), I proofed the book myself — which was proof #1.

Then Kathy spent hour-upon-hour pouring through chapter-after-chapter of A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing before delivering the book back to me (Proof #2).

But that wasn’t enough.

Turns out it takes many proofing sessions to catch every typo, grammar error, and occasional sentence that just doesn’t make sense, in a book — especially when it’s pushing 400 pages long.

So I had another person proof the book (thanks Eric), someone who is in marketing and much smarter than me (Proof #3). And I’m actually in the midst of the (hopefully) final proof myself before we go to press — which is Proof #4.

As you can see, the point of this article is that you’ve got to proof the heck out of your book before you launch it!

The flip side of this is that you do actually have to launch the book at some point. It’s true that you can’t go on proofing forever. And there will probably still be mistakes. But it’s a good idea to mitigate as many errors as possible by having your book proofed many times.

That’s why the proof is in the proof!

Want more tips and insights from Cuppa SEO?

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• How to Write a Book, Part 3: Organize Your Images

The post How to Write a Book, Part 4: The Proof is in the Proof appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

What I didn’t realize was that I would wind up with about 150 images, nor did I realize how difficult these images would be to keep organized because I failed to do a few (in hindsight) simple things.

To help you avoid this same mistake, I’m sharing my learnings here …

How to Keep Your Images Organized when Writing a Book

NUMBER THEM
This can be done in a variety of ways, from:

• Keeping it simple by naming images “Image 1,”  “Image 2,” etc., numbered from lowest to highest based on how they appear in the book
• A little more elaborate is naming by chapter. For instance, “1.1,” for chapter one, image one, and “2.1” for chapter two, image two, and so on
• If you like, you can place descriptive copy AFTER the number naming convention you choose
• In either case, you can further organize/segment your images by creating folders for each chapter, and then dragging appropriate images into the correct chapter folder

KEEP THINGS SIMPLE & FLEXIBLE
In the long run, keeping things so they feel as simple as possible TO YOU, while being crystal clear to others — especially your book formatter — can save you hours and dollars down the road.

If you wind up moving an image to a different place in the book, just change the number in the name so it remains accurate. If you add additional images to the book, you don’t have to redo your entire numerical naming system. Instead, you can simply create a subcategory of image names as follows.

Say, for instance, you add an additional 3 photos dispersed in-between your first 5 photos. It might look something like this:

• Image 1
• Image 2
• Image 2A 
• Image 2B 
• Image 3
• Image 4
• Image 4A 
• Image 5

Something as simple as adding A, B, C, etc. at the tail of the image name gives you incredible flexibility without losing clarity. This way, everything stays nice and tidy and you can insert as many images as you like!

Believe me, a bunch of untamed images that are galavanting in one big master file is absolutely no fun (unless you like headaches and good cries), so take my advice and organize those images!

Want more tips and insights from Cuppa SEO?

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• How to Write a Book, Part 2: Start by Blogging
• How to Write a book, Part 4: The Proof is in the Proof

The post How to Write a Book, Part 3: Organize Your Images appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

In other words, there is no silver bullet answer, no best way for everybody to write a book. What you will find, either by understanding your writing style, or simple trial and error, is a best way for YOU to writer a book.

That said, if the idea of staring at a white screen with a blinking cursor has you terrified, fear not. You don’t have to write a book to write a book. Yes, you read that right — it’s not a typo. You can simply begin writing blog posts about your book’s topic(s), and these can become part of your book.

Writing a book by writing a blog is a great way to make things manageable while fleshing out your topic, characters, point of view, or whatever else you want to get on the page.

When I decided to write my book, A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing (available soon!), I knew what my topics were but I didn’t want to write it chapter by chapter. I wanted to write it in bite-sized steps, so I blogged about each topic. This helped me get valuable, insightful pieces of content written quickly, and eventually I had a clear framework for the book.

This process felt very organic to me, and definitely made the book writing process less daunting. Once I had enough material, I organized it and moved it all into a Google Doc where I could flesh out each topic and fill in the blanks. For the most part, it was actually fun and easy to write the book.

One of the benefits of writing the book this way meant I was also writing fresh content for my blog — and fresh content is super important if you want to rank well on search engines.

Is this the best way for you to write a book? Maybe. Maybe not. Some people like to start by making notes in an actual notebook, some in Microsoft Word or Google Docs. I know some writers who dictate ideas to themselves and then write about them later on.

There IS one thing in common in ALL of these cases. You must begin. You must actually decide a course of action to write your book and start. When will you begin?

Want more tips and insights from Cuppa SEO?

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The post How to Write a Book, Part 2: Start by Blogging appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

It can help you help others, express yourself, enjoy a sense of accomplishment, and be perceived as a thought-leader in your industry — to name just a few of the perks.

But none of this is possible without patience.

Why?

Because writing a book is hard work, and can take years, before your work is ready for the public. And once the book is written, there’s a lot more that needs to be accomplished, including:

• Having your book edited
• Attaining reviews from people or professionals in your niche
• Formatting the book so it looks good and is easy to read/understand
• Book cover design
• Getting your ebook set up on Amazon, Ingram, and Apple
• If you’re publishing an actual printed book, getting it set up with Amazon and Ingram print-on-demand if you’re self publishing, or for general sale if you are working with a book publisher
• Website design and content for your author’s website
• Website art that is in alignment with your book cover
• Creating short, engaging videos to promote your book on your website and social media channels
• Setting up your author’s page on Facebook, and deciding how you want to handle your brand (which is essentially YOU first, your book second) on other social channels
• Deciding, other than book sales, if you want your book to help you professionally or personally
  • Do you want to do keynote speaking at conferences and businesses?
  • Do you want to be a consultant?
  • Do you want to appear on relevant podcasts and blogs, or do you want to facilitate your own?
• And don’t forget about the rest of your life! That’s going to need attention, too, and can slow the book publishing process down or grind it to a halt.

As many of you already know, I have a book coming out soon called, A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing. I’ve procured the help of professionals to help the process along — including an editor, formatter, graphic artist, and coach — and the process still seems to take FOREVER to get the book published.

The thing is, this is all normal — if you’re looking to publish a quality book. It simply takes time, and your patience will be tested over, and over, and over again.

At the end of the day, we can only control what we can control. Acceptance of what is (no matter what the delay) is always the path of least resistance (literally), and therefore the path to less stress.

So remember, if you’re writing a book, or planning to write a book, it’s important to keep reminding yourself to be patient!

In our next installment of our How to Write a Book Series, we’ll talk about how to get started writing your book (no matter what the genre or topic) in an easy, manageable way.

Until then, be well … and be patient!

Want more tips and insights from Cuppa SEO?

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• How to Write a Book, Part 2: Start by Blogging
• How to Write a Book, Part 3: Organize Your Images
• How to Write a book, Part 4: The Proof is in the Proof

The post How to Write a Book, Part 1: Patience, Patience, Patience … appeared first on Cuppa SEO.