Using Building Blocks to Craft and Publish Your Book
A simple writing and publishing approach using a short works to build longer ones. How to get produce a quality paperback in simple steps.
I've been finding people who are starting out punishing their first book, as well as those who are wanting to streamline the process.
The old joke I tell is that it gets easier after the first hundred books.
And us old-timers can tell you the simple and fast ways to do this. I like the mug-bucket-barrel-truckload analogy.
Mug: you build your book by episodes, which make chapters, which make books. True for both fiction and non-fiction. Episodes are your mugs. There are so many mugs of craft beer or punch in any bucket.
Bucket: is your ebook. Ebooks are loss leaders for the main book, which should be a paperback (as they sell best) Ebooks are generally short. They only need to be 2500 pages for both Apple and Amazon. But stand alone to answer a particular question. They also have ad-space in their backmatter to pitch your larger work.
Barrel: This is the longer work - about 50K words (200 pages) to make a decent-sized paperback for your book. You can write it in ebook (short story) sections where the short stories are part of a serial-series and always have a cliffhanger onto the next.
I've done a few of these. It's all just outlining your work as you go - and keeping to the same theme you're exploring. Both non-fiction and fiction pay off this way. Writing short also keeps your prose lively and fresh. As they link to each other well, then they keep the reader reading.
As fiction uses cliffhangers, fiction chapters use question-answer-question format. The question at the end asks the next thing you need to look at - and leave this unanswered so the reader continues with your research journey.
Truckload: this is your back bench of published works. Series and standalone books which you've been producing straight along. Yes, this says that you want to be a bit prolific. Keep interviewing yourself to find what you're really interested in next. Or where that character wants you to go after their last adventure.
I use Calibre (free download, works on all computers) to track my book ideas. This then enables pulling one of theses up and cranking it out. And in that way, you always have another "next" waiting. Or several. Take the most interesting one - that idea which sometimes wakes you up with a nudge while you're sleeping.
The point is to write, revise, proof, publish. Then start writing your next. Writing in short pieces (episodes, chapters) helps keep everything fresh.
Again, write short - then compile and publish long. Profit from ebook sales which then (after you go back and revise the backmatter) offers your greater work which includes it.
And that paperback can be a casewrap or dustjacketed hardback. Even and additional Large Print edition - all Print on Demand so it never goes out of print.
It all begins with a mug, bucket, barrel, truckload approach. Each can be sold to earn income on it’s own. (Of course selling by the truckload is very welcome.)
Here's to your inevitable success....