Write Nonfiction in November

We’re half way through the month of November. That means we are also half way through the Write Nonfiction in November challenge. (You should be half way finished with your nonfiction project!) If for some reason you haven’t already chosen a nonfiction project to work on this month, or if you’re working on a book manuscript and want to consider a different format, think about producing an ebook. Ebooks are all the rage these days, and they represent a fast, affordable and profitable product for nonfiction writers in particular to write. You still have time to start and finish one before the WNFiN challenge ends.

While many traditional books can be read in on an ebook reader like the Kindle, ebooks are a special breed. They are shorter and often tend to highlight the author’s expertise—making them great for platform building, by the way! Additionally, they provide a great way to test market your longer books. You also can write a short “booklet,” which you can print and take with you when you speak (building platform each time you appear before an audience) and then turn it into an ebook, which you sell online and each time you lead a teleseminar (another great platform-building element). I’ve done this with several of the books I’m marketing to traditional publishing houses. (You can find the booklets and ebooks at www.purespiritcreations.com/store, if you’d like to see examples.)

I’ve asked Ellen Violette, The eBook Coach, and the creator of the Quick-Start 3-Day eBook Authoring Workshop, to participate in WNFiN again this year. She’s knows more than anyone else I know about writing and producing ebooks and successfully marketing them and using them to create a successful business.  Whether you only want to write ebooks, to use an ebook for platform building or test marketing or to use an ebook to garner the attention of an agent or publisher, she’s got the information you need to get started—and succeed in this niche.

The eBook Revolution is Here! Is it Passing You By?
By Ellen Violette

The ebook industry is exploding! Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble have all gotten into the act. And with the advent of the Kindle, Amazon’s e-reader, the whole landscape has changed. eBooks have arrived. They are no longer the poor cousin of traditional books.

But a lot of the conventional wisdom about ebooks hasn’t changed. You still hear people say books are more prestigious. And if you want to be an expert, they say write a traditional book; you need a book, because ebooks just aren’t the same.

Well, they are right about that. They are not the same, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t just as important in the digital age.  In fact, they are more important than books, because with publishing houses in trouble and book sales going down, ebooks have become THE growth industry in publishing. That’s where the action is, and that’s where the sales are.

Not only that, but the model has changed. Whereas before it was: Try to get a book deal, and, if that fails, get on the Internet and try to do it yourself with self publishing; then, if you can’t afford self publishing or as an afterthought, write an ebook. Now it’s: Write an ebook first, make a lot of money then decide if you even want to bother with a book—unless, of course, you are so successful that a publisher finds you and offers you an irresistible deal. Sound good?  I thought so!

In the past, authors were out of luck if they couldn’t get a traditional book deal, but now they have the ability to take control of their creativity and their finances with ebooks.  And, in fact, for people who really do want to be in the spotlight and get on the best-seller list ebooks are becoming a viable way of securing a book deal, as you can see from the example below.

Example: A few months ago I met body language expert, Janine Driver, and she told me that she got offered a $500,000 book deal because of her ebook.

By writing an ebook, Janine proved she could write, so Crown Publishing, a subsidiary of Random House, felt she would be a good bet. Without the ebook they would have been unwilling to take a chance on her. And she already was pretty famous, appearing regularly on television and having stories written about her because of her amazing work for the United States government catching world-class drug dealers and other undesirables.

But what if you’re not already famous? While it would cost you thousands, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars to launch a successful publicity campaign to get famous, you can build an amazing presence online for almost nothing!  And writing an ebook can help you do it by generating leads and giving you more credibility and visibility. The beauty of it is you can get paid while you’re doing it!

eBooks also open doors, as in Janine’s case. And they help you command a lot more money.  Plus, when you build your own fan base and the publishing companies see that you are already achieving success, they will come to you!

No more knocking on doors, cold calling or rejection letters!

And you can start making money right away. You don’t have to wait for someone to give you a deal, and if you are lucky enough to get one, you don’t have to wait up to two years for your ebook to come out!

The problem is 81 percent of people want to write a book or ebook but less than 1 percent ever will. They think it’s too hard, they don’t know where to start, they don’t think they have enough to say, they think they have too much to say and don’t know how to get it into one ebook, or they just don’t have the time to write one.

There are a million reasons that stop people from writing ebooks—reasons they tell themselves. And for those who do write the books, a lot of them are looking for shortcuts,  like being interviewed and having it transcribed, finding a book in the public domain and adding a new forward, r interviewing experts and turning it into an ebook, or stringing together a bunch of articles. Don’t get me wrong, these are all good for some extra cash.

But if you want to be considered an expert in your field and open the door to amazing opportunities, then you’ll want to learn to write your own ebooks. And the faster you can write them, the more you can stay at the forefront.  In the information age, you have to be able to move quickly. When you’re first, you’re the pioneer; you’re the one people think of and turn to for advice, which will ultimately translate into more sales! And you’re the one who will be offered the best opportunities—assuming that you have something worthwhile to say!

So, if you’re ready to join the ebook revolution and learn to write ebooks in 72 hours or less, even if you hate to write,  don’t know how to write or have never written, go to www.theebookcoach.com for 9 free secret ebook tips to making money online and a complimentary subscription to my highly-acclaimed eBook Profit Secrets Newsletter (Value $147). You can also get access to fresh content on a regular basis at www.theebookcoach.com/blog and my free report The 1-eBook Solution. So do it now!

About the Author

Ellen Violette, The eBook Coach, is the creator of the Quick-Start 3-Day eBook Authoring Workshop, a one-of-a-kind proven authoring program that turns people into successful authors in 72 hours or less. She also is the creator of eBook Profit Marketing Secrets: 10 Easy-to-Follow Lessons to Building a Successful Internet Business From the Ground Up. She coaches and mentors individual clients as well.

She’s co-written an ebook with Internet Guru Jim Edwards called Sell More eBooks: Low And No Cost Tactics To Explode Your Ebook Sales And Downloads.  She’s also the author of The eBook Journal For Authoring Success, “The Moving Cure, How To Organize Your Move To Save Time, Money & Your Sanity,” as well as being a co-contributor to the #1 best-selling book Wake Up Live the Life You Love, Finding Freedom.

Ellen’s mission is to give authors, entrepreneurs, speakers and coaching creative and financial control over their lives by giving them all the tools they need to create a 6-figure income online.

Ellen is also a Grammy-nominated songwriter and accomplished copywriter. She lives in Redondo Beach, California with her husband, and sometime collaborator, Christen Violette a trained Clinical hypnotherapist.

www.theebookcoach.com
www.theebookcoach.com/blog

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Please visit www.copywrightcommunications.com and sign up for the free newsletter to receive a gift at the end of the Write Nonfiction in November challenge!

Don’t forget to sign into the WNFiN social networking and chat room and tell us what you are writing about or start a discussion. http://writenonfictioninnovember.ning.com/

October is half over…That means it’s almost November. Time, once again, for Write Nonfiction in November! Whoo hoo!

I didn’t manage to post a blog last month. I was too busy setting up some really great guest bloggers for this year’s challenge. You’ll be so pleased with the line up!

And, to get things rolling, tomorrow you can listen to me talk about Write Nonfiction in November on The National Association of Memoir Writers (NAMW) teleseminar. If you recall, last year one of my guest bloggers was Linda Joy Meyers, founder of NAMW.  Meyers and I will be chatting about Write Nonfiction in November, my response to National Novel Writing Month (NANOWRIMO). For anyone new to this site, Write Nonfiction in November (WNFIN) is a contest that has fiction writers writing 50,000 words in 30 days during November. My blog challenges nonfiction writers to spend the month of November writing and completing a work of nonfiction. While they do so, the blog itself provides nonfiction writing, promotion and marketing information to help them sell themselves and their writing to publishing companies and readers. Additionally, via the blog comments, Write Nonfiction in November provides a forum for nonfiction writers to comment on their writing experiences during November each year.

During the NAWM teleseminar, I will discuss different types of nonfiction, including:

• journalistic articles
• personal essays
• inspirational essays
• booklets
• books

If time allows, I’ll also discuss:

• the difference between personal essay and memoir
• platform building on the Internet
• how to use your nonfiction skills to write articles to generate publicity for yourself as a writer
• how the business of writing can be a spiritual endeavor

NAWM  invites memoir writers from all over the world to connect, learn, and become inspired about writing their stories. The goal of our organization is to help memoir writers feel empowered with purpose and energy to begin and develop their life stories into a publishable memoir, whether in essay form, a book, a family legacy, or to create a blog.

Many memoir writers want to use writing as means for healing and transformation, so we assist in this goal by offering workshops, teleseminars, and interviews with writers and experts in the area of memoir, writing skills, therapeutic writing, spiritual autobiography, and healing through writing personal, authentic stories.

Myers, President of NAMW, has been a therapist for 30 years, and is the author of three books, a prize-winning memoir Don’t Call Me Mother, about three generations of mothers who abandoned their daughters, and two books on the ways that writing helps to heal emotionally and physically. Her new book The Power of Memoir—How to Write Your Healing Story will be released in January, 2010, through Jossey Bass publishers in San Francisco. She teaches writing workshops nationally, online, and in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Those who join NAMW receive a unique package of memoir writing resources including the NAMW welcome kit and a collection of online and hard copy resources to help memoir writers within all phases of the exciting journey of memoir writing.  Members also receive discounts on select NAMW teleseminars, workshops, retreats and other learning opportunities and materials.

To learn more about NAMW, contact info@namw.org or visit http://www.namw.org

Now…you do have to be a NAWM member to listen in on the teleseminar tomorrow. But if you are a memoir writer–or want to become one–this is a great time to go ahead a join this great group of writers.  So, hurry up and join and call in by 11 a.m. PST!

Here are the details:

Date: October 16, 2009
Guest Speaker: Nina Amir
Times: 11 am Pacific | 12 noon Mountain | 1 pm Central | 2 pm Eastern
Cost: Free for NAMW Members
Become A Member of NAMW Today to take part in this teleseminar!
To join: info@namw.org or http://www.namw.org

I’ve gotten quite infatuated with writing short booklets rather than books. I came upon this form of nonfiction writing when a friend of mine shared with me what she had learned in a class about speaking and promotion for writers. (Surprise, surprise. We’re back on that subject again, but only briefly.) The man who taught the class suggested that speakers should have something to sell at the back of the room (of course), and he suggested selling booklets. These short (often only 28-pages) little books can be printed at your local Office Depot or Kinko’s, since they are simply copied, stapled and folded. This man’s version didn’t involve a color cover, just cover stock.

I set out to produce one of these when I got frustrated by my inability to get one of my book projects sold to a publisher. I pulled one section of the book-to-be out of the manuscript and published it myself as a booklet, which I called From Empty Practice to Meaning-Full and Spirit-Full Prayers and Rituals…In 7 Simple Steps. Unwilling to wait for a publisher to pick up another book project about which I felt quite passionate, this past year I produced a second booklet, Abracadabra! The Kabbalah of Conscious Creation (10 Mystical Steps to Manifesting Your Dreams and Desires). My Write Nonfiction in November project involves writing a third booklet, again from a book project; while promoting this project I taught a four-part teleseminar based on several chapters in the book. I am now taking my class scripts and putting them into a booklet called The Priestess Practice.

I like this form of publication for several reasons. First, I can revise my booklets as often as I like. I don’t publish very many of them at a time, so if I want to make changes, it’s no problem. I make the changes on my computer and then run a disc down to Kinkos. The next day, I have new booklets. Abracadabra! has already grown by eight pages, and I’m about to revise it once again. When I’m done, it will have grown by at least another eight pages. One day it will be large enough for me to actually get self-published in another form, but in the meantime I can continue selling it when I speak and on my web site, which allows me to promote prior the book being complete.

Second, I really believe that people prefer to read short books. A booklet simply is a short book – a quick and easy read. With the busy lifestyle most of us read today, this published form appeals to many people. In fact, I recently saw a series of booklets on sale in Border’s, which looked just like the ones my friends teacher suggested producing. They were short and simple with no spine – just copied and stapled. (And they were self-published). The fact that Border’s had them featured at the check out convinced me that production and sales of booklets would soon be on the rise.

Third, booklets provide a quick and easy structure for producing a book. I can take an idea I have for a full-length book and write it in booklet form in just a week or two. I then have a product to sell. People get to read what I’ve written, and I get to sell my booklet. In the process, that booklet helps me promote the book I ultimately wan to sell to a publisher. That booklet also helps me show a publisher how I would deal with the subject I am proposing and that I am serious about helping promote and market my book project.

Fourth, should my book project never get published, I’ve not waited around so long that I’ve lost interest in ever writing about that subject. In the meantime, I’ve produced a piece of nonfiction writing that I have self-published, that people can read, and from which I can earn a bit of money.

And, when I go speak somewhere, I’ve got something to sell at the back of the room – like all good writers – I mean speakers – should have.

Blogger’s Note: Happy Thanksgiving! No Blog tommorrow. Sorry about missing yesterday. We were delayed in several airports and didn’t arrive at our destination until 2 a.m. We travel again on Friday. I’ll try to post, but no promises.