Melissa started Networlding Publishing, Inc., a boutique firm providing book creation, publishing, and marketing services for thought leaders. Networlding Inc. is based on her best-selling book Networking is Dead: Creating Connections that Matter (a top-ten Amazon book for a year).
Melissa has been book writing, publishing, and launching books for more than two decades and helped over 130 thought leaders write, publish, and launch their books successfully. Now she’s sharing her advice with us!
In this interview, Melissa and I talk about writing a book. We cover everything from how long it will take to write a book to how many chapters you should have. This is a great listen for any aspiring author. It’s full of tips that you can apply right away!
“It’s not just about getting your thoughts out on paper. It’s really about discovering more about you, your voice.“
– Melissa Wilson
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Transcript of Our Interview:
Jess:
So there’s a lot of different motivations and the people that I’ve talked to for why they want to write a book. Can you talk a little bit about some of those motivations and some that might be a little more successful than others?
Melissa:
Sure. I would say the top reasons people want to write books would be to grow their businesses and their careers and use the book. A lot of people use the term that the book is a new business card. I have yet to see, out of the 120 authors I’ve helped in the last 10 years, anyone not benefit from having the book which creates more credibility for them because even though you can be a blogger, you can have a YouTube channel, you can have a good LinkedIn profile and a lot of connections. Nothing can really separate you out from a book, which I’ve referred to as offering the highest form of content. Even more so than white papers because people look at white papers as transitory. They don’t look at it like they’ll forget about it six months after the white paper came out. So growing your career, growing your business, top two, but then it’s interesting because I was reading something that I thought was very interesting that now why don’t we do, (doorbell, dog-barking)…
Jess:
We can just pause it. Yeah. I think doorbells and dogs barking are just an essential part of every interview.
Melissa:
It is. I keep thinking I should have my dog, you know, in an interview with the video. I would appreciate that. Okay, so what I was saying is I read an article and I really liked it, that the journey of writing a book is actually a discovery journey, which cements the idea. A lot of people who work with me will say, where do we start? That the spot where they thought they’d end up is not the spot. And I believe that’s because it’s not just about getting your thoughts out on paper. It’s really about discovering also more about you, your voice. It’s like the experience people have when they have somebody helping them with a book I think gives them a lot more insight as to what really matters in what they say.
I was a public speaker for years, and a lot of people write because they want to get into speaking and get on the speaking circuit, and I was between 10 to 15,000 a speech for four an hour or less and did that for about 10 years. And you will have people give you, they’ll give you their view of what you gave to them. But nothing is as rich as that intimate journey that you take a reader on in a book. So what I hope a reader or a writer, or author would get from it, one of the reasons they want to go through the process is because it really does help you, I think, get that foothold on what differentiates you and how to stand out as a thought leader in the world today. And I think a lot of people benefit if you go through that journey with the book because so many people will read your book when they take a vacation or you know, they always call it the plane ride book. And so each time I write a book I like to challenge the author to create something that I think is very different than what’s already out there. And there’s still room for creativity. So I would say that the final reason for writing a book is to create something great, create something new.
Jess:
And maybe something different than you thought it was going to be.
Melissa:
Definitely great. It’s a great experience.
Jess:
I love that. I love the idea of writing a book being a journey and a transformation like that. And that’s kind of a segue into my next question was about when it’s a good idea to write a book and when it isn’t, maybe a particular stage of your business where this kind of journey and delving would be more efficient than others. Or if you feel like this is something that could apply to any business size or any point in your entrepreneurship.
Melissa:
And that’s a great question. You know, I’m so much about the book and I do believe, I used to run writer’s workshops or author workshops, and there was a woman who came in who had a bus service and we came up with the idea of writing a book. She was just really starting the business out and it was about trips that families could take on a weekend that would be low cost, but would be a getaway for the family, would of high value to the family. And that book, when you turn it from a sales approach into a storytelling experience, like five trips you can take from Chicago for example, because the people, I’m in Chicago, and the people who came to the workshops were here usually, sometimes they flew in from other places. But in that case, it was, here are five really great trips that you can take on a tight budget with a family. And it added a lot of value to the company when they turned it into an educational tool. So that was early on in the company, but it would have been relevant if the company was certainly at a midpoint or in a growth mode. So, I’d like to say that it really wouldn’t matter because what you’re doing, you’re getting the attention and the share of time with the individual reading it. They perceive it as a book that’s going to add value to their life. That’s so much better than any sales material.
Jess:
That makes sense. Yeah, I think that’s great. Okay. before we leave motives, I want to talk really quickly about the idea of making money with a book. It’s my understanding that there are some people that think I’m going to write a book to make money and it actually, instead of a direct income source, is more of a networking and opportunity building or other ways to make money. Does that sound correct to you?
Melissa:
Yes. Unless you, you create a series. If you create a series, I like to call myself a series printer. So if you imagine that you created a really good book but it had nine other books and let’s even say that now a lot of people are writing shorter books because our attention spans are shorter. So even a book that had 120 or 150 pages. A lot of people are putting design in books. I’m working with a top design firm that worked with a, did the American Girls experience and it’s so much fun to add the design element in it too. So that the book is more than just the text. But adding that piece to it and looking at it over 10 books, even if you only sold you only made, you know, 10,000 a year from a book, from book sales, from speaking engagements, which you could make a lot more than that. But if you did that and you had 10 books, that’s where you look at how to create something where you could focus on your niches.
So again, if you turn your cost center inside your company, which would be your marketing into a profit center, you would be creating books. Because the other thing about a book is you can update it yearly. You could have the second edition, the third edition, and also in each book, the books could cross-sell each other. So one of the things a lot of people don’t realize, which I’m going to mention now, is that because of the ebook opportunity with KDP, which I’m a fan of, that’s Kindle Direct Publishing that’s owned by Amazon. And it allows you to create or choose Kindle unlimited, which if you do that and someone’s a prime member, they’re able to get the book for free. You’re able to get up to 10 books and swap them up and swap them out at any time for free. And wherever somebody stops in the book, you get paid for.
So one of the recommendations that I always give is to create some kind of special gift at the end of the book. So you let your reader know that and you give them an assessment, a quiz, or whatever. And it’s just about creating something that will be a value to them. And also it’s interesting because I talk to Amazon all the time to KDP people and I said, I wish there was a Facebook group for just prime members for books. And they said to me, well, you should create it. So I’m really looking at that. I’m actually looking at a university that may take on this opportunity to create a series and they’re going to have their students work on it. And I mean, they would have the perfect scenario to create something with social media, with the publishing. There is no, there are no roadblocks now to that and they could create something with that offer and even sell the books through their own bookstore.
And I have a university now that really likes that idea. So I’m crossing my fingers because I like to really break out and do something different because I was part of Seth Godin, who is considered to be the top marketer in the world. He has about 3 million followers. And one year, I believe it was 2008, he created something called the Dominoes Street Team and he said he was going to partner with Amazon and reinvent publishing. Well, he chose 70 people. We got to apply and I got to be one of the 70 to help them reinvent publishing. And I believe the first two, three, whatever books sold a quarter of a million copies.
So I really got to learn, like getting an MBA in publishing, all the various things that you can do. And it’s not that you’re going to get rich quick, but we do know that combining books with training, and I have turned authors into, their books into, how-to books. That’s where I think you can grow a million-dollar platform. Where the book becomes the beginning part and then the training, that creates the next part. So whether you publish on a site where you have your training site on, Think Ethic is one, or another one is Teachable, there are just a lot of opportunities.
To your point Jess, to get from your circle of support, your inner circle I call that because the books I wrote about myself or the networking books. So you’ve got your inner circle, your primary circle, but to then advance outside of that to what would be called a secondary circle of support, people who know those people, the second degree, and then to the third degree.
Jess:
Yeah. Okay. That’s great. So a book is kind of a gateway into so many different options and a lot of ways to kind of grow your business that way. So that’s perfect. And one of the things that I’ve talked to people a lot about when they’re interested in writing a book is the actual process of writing the book and how long that takes and what goes into that. And I feel like that’s something that a lot of people underestimate. So I just wanted to see, you know, obviously, it will change person to person and the type of book it is, but off the cuff, if you have some suggestions about how long people should imagine this process taking of writing and publishing a book,
Melissa:
I like to give it four to seven months. And one of the things I always tell the authors is the best time to bring out a book. There are three times during the year. One is the beginning of the year. I would wait until about the 15th of January. The next time is anywhere from, I mean, you could bring out a book in February and March, but I would say March to the end of May, at the very latest. And then September through October.
Jess:
Missing this summer travel time and all of that.
Melissa (14:23):
Right, I mean if you’re going to write a novel, publishing a book right before summer might work, but those are the better times where you’re gonna get more attention when your book comes out. But Seth Godin would say, you wrote a great article that said something like the best marketing you can do for your book is at least three years ahead of time. What I recommend is taking the time now, even if you’re writing a book, to think of titles, and there are tools out there where you can analyze books that are selling. You should be looking at the categories. There’s a wonderful site called Kindlepreneur and the founder of that site has a tool that he sells to help you analyze what categories where you can be if you will, the big fish in the small pond. And most people don’t know this. Even your authors that you might’ve worked with, they still don’t know this.
You have 10 categories that you can put yourself in. Now you have to make a request with KDP, with Amazon, where 82 to 85% of all books are sold. That’s your target. You know, that’s where you wanna launch and sell. But you need to make a request from them for the other categories. You won’t see them show up on your sales page on Amazon, but you will see when people start searching, they’ll find you. And the goal, as I said, is to define those categories, which surprisingly, for example, spoiler alert here, up until at least a couple of months ago, even the management books, the motivational management books was a good category to be in, which means that you had the opportunity to get higher, you know, one of the top 10 books on the list. And it’s the categories that make a difference. Your title makes a difference, your cover makes a difference.
Jess:
Yeah. And I feel like those things, the title, the cover, the categories and the timing of the book are all things that there are elements that people fail to consider when they’re going to write a book. Can you speak to some other things that people may not be thinking about in this process?
Melissa:
Yes. The outline is so important and that’s what I did in my writer’s workshops. We would spend the day creating the outline and what I will say is if anybody wants them, I have a free outlining tool that I created, the people really liked. I had one person say that he wished he would have had the tool I created before he tore up his whole dining room and had, I don’t know why he did it, but he put it on the wall and then he had to pull it off. But that is something I’m happy to give to people if it will be a benefit to them. And the outlining. What I’ll say about outlining is you can ask any great ghostwriter, they’ll say if you create a wonderful outline, you will also have a wonderful book. And so what you want to look, most nonfiction books are eight to 10 chapters on average. By the way, if you look it up and you can type it in Google, how many chapters are in a fiction book, you’ll find out there are 10 to 12. Which is funny because there are a lot of books I’ve read that have 20 to 23 chapters. But in a nonfiction book, eight to 10, and I usually say that the beginning, you don’t want, one of the things really, I want to say it’s here to stay, is a lot of people don’t want to read the whole overview piece, they want to get right into it, which I find fascinating. But I think even if you just have a two-page overview or you tell a great story and then give the overview of the rest of the chapters, that’s fine too.
But I recommend in the outline, and I did this, I helped the American marketing association with their series, we brought out the first two books in the series called The Seven Problems of Marketing and I got them to become a publisher, which they did, which was exciting. But in that they agreed with me, instead of calling them case studies, they called them stories and they would have a story at the beginning of each chapter because the story pulls you in because it has what you know is termed the hero or heroine’s journey. So it’s, here’s my life right now, all of a sudden something happens. My life has changed. And it could be in business, it could be the business story. And then the journey that you take through to solving a problem. And then the success by solving the problem is that journey and each chapter if you sequence the book and you break it up that way you will have something that will keep people reading.
What you want to do in each chapter is to make sure that people want to keep reading. So you’re also going to pay attention to chapter titles. And then I like to say that you could have anywhere from 5 to 10 subheadings in a chapter. But also, what a lot of people are doing, like this design firm that I’m very excited about, I think we’re at the place where headings work very well. So we’re talking about call-outs in the margin where you might put something in a footnote, and the big trend now is put everything in endnotes. If you have footnotes with them at the end, Oh, there are endnotes, but have you know, like someone that you have a research paper from, you could put information about that expert in the side margin so people would read it and go, Oh, okay, now I see why this is relevant.
So all of these things are important in a book. We’re talking about more bullet points. You know, and since I have a little bit of attention here right now I have been finding that I would keep your paragraphs to no more than five sentences per paragraph. Keep your sentences shorter, but you can juxtapose them against longer sentences. But people are getting tired from reading a lot of long sentences and your point will get mired in there. Like I said, bullet points, headings, clever headings. I think you want to look at creating as much white space in your book as possible as you’re able to.
Jess:
Okay, that’s all really great! Great things to think about when you’re writing the book. I appreciate that a lot. And I wanted to kind of end with some, do you have any tips for entrepreneurs or business owners? You know, we’re all very, very busy. Your tips for how to fit in writing a book in our already busy lives.
Melissa:
Yes. In my world, the way I work with authors is that I use the scribe method. So if I were to make a recommendation if you had to go it alone, you were on a tight budget, see if you can get someone that can go through the outline with you, record it, and then transcribe it. There are a lot of very good transcription services. I think you do transcription too, don’t you? You could have it transcribed and then even developed a little bit so that it flows a little bit better with transitions and so forth. So you’re not getting a very raw copy back, but you’re getting enough that you can start building off of.
And then my recommendation would be to get that first draft out and you can call it whatever you want, your ugly first draft, your crappy draft, whatever, like get that done because you will have a book then that can be improved. And then if you wanted to, you can get the support of an editor yet I know you do editing. And there’s all kinds of, in my world I call it scrubbing, I like to have more than one editor. So I usually involve three editors in the process that I use. And then always a final editor, somebody who only has the responsibility, that’s their only job, is that they do final editing so that you know that it’s really clean and crisp when you go to publishing.
And then there’s the whole side of getting your book typeset, which is a nightmare. And you really want to be thoughtful about that. Get help from Jess and picking a good designer because it is tough. And making sure, I think it’s great to get the cover out as soon as possible so that you use it, start building a landing page and a mailing list and get a fan base growing because you’re an author as soon as you have your book cover. So you know your book might not come up for six months, but you are an author as soon as you get the book cover.
Jess:
So want me to get it out eventually, right?
Melissa:
Well as long as you are getting it out early because then you can use it, the landing page offers some kind of an assessment that you create, which I’m sure you could help with too. Now you’ve got people signing up and they really go from, you know, just as they say in sales, those seven touches or more that you’re sharing with them, with social media. You’re going to pull in all kinds of people in advance that way. So it’s one of the best tips I think I could get.
Jess:
That’s great. Very, very helpful. Thank you so much for all of your advice and hopefully, we can get some new books in the world through this. So thank you.
Melissa:
And if anybody wants that tool for outlining, just give them my email address.
Jess:
I can, yeah. And I can provide a link on this page for it. Thank you, Melissa