How do you give birth to your book and get it out the door?

You are not a Blue Tit.

Birds give birth to their chicks and help them out the of the nest on autopilot.

But how do you give birth to your business book and get it out the door?

Assuming you’ve never done it before.

Well, here are the 12 key steps you need to follow to do just that. To give birth to your book and get it out the door.

Together with Jacqueline Moore, the former Financial Times columnist, I’ve coded the whole process for you as a 12-step checklist. And here it is.

If you want to watch the checklist in video form watch this. (The checklist starts after the Blue Tits at 1m20s.)

Let’s deal with Stage I first, giving birth to your book.

Stage I: Giving birth to your book

Step 1 of giving birth to your book is conception. (Of course.)

You need to spend a day or two just hammering out what is the main idea of the book and why you’re writing.

What do you want people to know do, be or feel as a result of reading your book?

But also ask yourself what you hope to achieve with this book?

Sales of the book itself? Sales of your products or services?

In detail spell out what’s the outcome you’re looking for.

This helps focus your mind while you’re working on the book. What will you include? What will you leave out?

So don’t skimp on this step. You’ll come back to this time and again.

Step 2 is your pre-natal plan.

In this step you figure out who you’re going to talk to for your primary research and where is the secondary research going to come from.

What does that mean exactly?

Well, what reports, or books or news articles are you going to read and where will you find them? Write everything down so you don’t miss anything.

Step 3, you actually do your primary research.

Here you set up the interviews you want to do and tackle them in order.

Importantly, you should record every single one –?mostly you want the audio.

Though if you can get video too – Zoom interviews, or footage from a face to face interview – then that’s going to be really helpful.

The audio because you can get it transcribed and the video because it can make some useful behind-the-scenes material for YouTube or Linked in, whatever your social media channel of choice happens to be.

Step 4, you gather your secondary research.

First, you’ll spot gaps in the record, what’s missing from what we already know about this topic?

You’ll also find what assumptions people have made? Ask yourself do those assumptions hold up?

And finally where do you think existing research might be just wrong?

Step 5, you start writing.

It’s up to you how you do this. You can try writing a little and often, in bursts of enthusiasm.

Or you can stockpile all the material until you’re ready one day to just GO! Write it all out in one burst.

And step 6, you finish the writing.

Set deadlines if you find it difficult to close this part of the project. Have someone hold you accountable for turning work in.

So how long will this phase take?

If you follow these 6 steps you will have given birth to your book. An hour a day will do it, if you can just sustain that for around 12 weeks.

It might take a little longer if the real world gets in the way.

Now you’re on to stage 2, getting your book out the door.

Stage II: Getting your book out the door

Step 7, then, is refining and editing your manuscript.

Now you may not be the best person to do this. You really need a professional editor.

Why?

Well, to make sure you’re getting your points in the right order and that your language is coherent and confident.

Not to mention to protect you from inadvertently infringing someone’s copyright or (worse) libelling someone.

Once the editing is done there’s step 8. You need to typeset the manuscript.

We use the Adobe InDesign package – you can get a 30 day free trial of that software if you don’t have a copy - to see whether it works for you.

Whatever you do please don’t use Microsoft Word. (No matter what anyone tells you.) That’s simply not a typesetting programme.

Step 9 is to proofread your typeset book.

Again you may not be the right person to do this.

Friends and colleagues might be able to share the load here, but they’re not invested in your book the same way you are. (And usually they’re not trained to spot the detail proofreaders really need to.)

In short, if you’re serious about getting your book delivered professionally you’ll hire a professional proof reader. Thank me later.

Now your book is almost out of the door.

So in step 10 you format the book for the Kindle platform.

You can use a program called Kindle Create, from Amazon, to do this. It’s clunky but getting better all the time.

You can also upload the typeset manuscript to Amazon as a paperback which will be printed on demand.

How does that work?

Someone orders your book, overnight Amazon prints it and ships it to them. Magic.

Don’t forget to design a good cover. You can use Photoshop or whatever graphics programme works for you.

Or you can hire a great designer. There are plenty of them around. Message me if you need help.

Now I almost forgot to mention hardbacks. Because if you want to publish a hardback, Amazon can now?publish your hardback for you.

It will have what’s called a printed paper case, like my brother Simon’s Textual Art books.

The only significant difference from what you might call a normal hardback is it won’t have a flap.

But if you DO want a flap you could use the Ingram Spark platform, which can handle jackets and flaps.

In Step 11 you’ll draft an initial marketing plan.

This will help your book to fledge and get out the door and that’s almost it.

Except for Step 12, the final countdown to the launch.

Don’t bother with press releases, they’re a waste of time in our view.

But you might consider getting PDF copies of your finished book to the people you interviewed, or to other interested people you know, and encourage them to write Amazon reviews. Some people swear by these.

And that’s it – the 12 steps to give birth your book and get it out the door.

Your book will need ongoing parenting

To be honest your book will require some ongoing parenting – to keep it in the public eye.

One way of doing that is to sequence the hardback first and then a few months later release the paperback. It gives you another opportunity to announce the book.

You can also release some or all of the interviews you did. Drip feed them out a week or so at a time – on LinkedIn or YouTube, again wherever is your social media network of choice.

And that is all there is to it.

So I look forward to seeing the birth of your book very soon.

Cigars and brandy optional.

By the way, let me know when your book’s out. I want to post the first Amazon review.

Download the 12-step checklist right here

Hold up.

I know these 12 steps are not embedded in your DNA.

(You’re not a Blue Tit.)

So Jacqueline and I have created a checklist – the Book Launch Blueprint – to act as a reminder for you.

It’s the full checklist that we use for our own and our client’s books, with a lot more detail tahn you’ve seen here.

And you can get it from the link in the comments below. With our compliments.