How to Write Your Book in Under 30 Days. Writing Schedule: Day 1

How to Write Your Book in 30 Days

This is the first article in a series to help you write and publish book in under 30 days. Every day in July, I'll be sharing my experience and recommendations. But before July even gets here, I wanted to get your mind rolling.

And I wanted to give you a head start by sharing the schedule for the first day of our book writing experience together, so you can hit the ground running on 1 July.

A lot of what I'm going to share in articles over the past month comes from my experiences of having written 25 books, especially my most recent international bestseller, The Future After COVID.

The Big Goal of Writing a Book

The goal of writing a book is to get it done.

And I’m going to help you get there!

The action items you will need to implement as you go through the process of writing a book will be broken out into four categories:

Administration, Team, Format, and Content.

With that caveat, let's look at what you actually need to do on day 1!

Day 1: Administration

Your first priority is to make an account to get your book done and get the software you need.

In order to make sure this happens, you need to work back from when the book will be released. And Amazon will be the most important — and easiest — platform to use. Don’t get me wrong — you may want to use another platform — and you may even be forced to use another platform, as I was with one of the books I wrote during the COVID-19 pandemic. But try not to.

To make your life as easy as possible, you should use Amazon’s publishing platform, known as Kindle Direct Publishing — or KDP for short.

There are a couple key tips here.

First, if you actually want your book to come out in under 30 days, you will need to submit your files in about 25 days to make sure they come out on time. Or you may want to submit them earlier if there are disruption risks.

Second, don’t even bother with pre-orders. Some people will use the Amazon platform and set up pre-orders for your book.

But that can be an issue.

If you miss your publication deadline — as was once the case for me — you could be banned from publishing books with a pre-order capability. You will lose your orders, and you risk disappointing the targets you want to impress.

So, that’s not great.

To get yourself started, you’ll need to create an account with KDP.

It’s super easy. And you just need a few items:

· Tax ID for your publishing company — or your own Social Security number.

· Bank account to receive payment.

· ISBN numbers bought from Bowker at myidentifiers.com (which is largely optional, but I still recommend it).

Some people in the publishing business will tell you that this takes a lot of effort. It does not.

It’s fast and easy, and takes about as much effort as setting up a PayPal Account.

As for actually doing the writing, I would recommend you download and familiarize yourself with Microsoft Publisher.

It’s like a cross between Microsoft Word and PowerPoint.

You can write pure blocks of text, but you can also move images around and change margins and alignments the way you can in PowerPoint.

Day 1: Team

Go on Upwork and look for the highest performing book cover designers, copy editors, Kindle conversion experts, and project managers.

Write to a few people in each category and tell them what you want to do.

The cover design person will be most critical, given the importance of the book cover — and the fact that the artistic and revision process might take a couple weeks.

You need your finished cover file in PDF form for your paperback as well as a front cover hi-res image for the Kindle file by day 23.

You will need to line up your copy editor for day 20 with a two-day turn to get you back your book on day 22.

You’ll also want to block off day 23 on your calendar to make edits and send your finished book file for Kindle conversion on day 23 to convert your book file from a paperback formatted file to a Kindle e-book file, known as a mobi file. Ask for a two-day turnaround, so your Kindle file is back on day 25. 

Day 1: Format

Download and familiarize yourself with Microsoft Publisher.

See if you can find some training videos online. Set your book parameters to 6 x 9 format. Set up footers and pick page number placements.

Some people like small paperbacks.

But don’t waste your time with that nonsense.

Executives and leaders aren’t 22, so don’t make the font and page sizes so small that people in the age demographic you are targeting can’t read the text.

That’s ridiculous.

Use 12-point font and a font with serifs. Serifs are the little squiggles on some letters like the bottom of a “q” or the curls of an “f.” Fonts without serifs are more difficult to read than those with serifs. And you want your book as easy to read as possible.

And be sure to make the color of your text black — not gray!

Day 1: Content

Shockingly, everything you’ve done so far is to set your book up for success and to make it as easy as possible to just crank out ideas on topics that you should ideally be very familiar with — or could easily research.

The more that your book is a vision of the future, the less historical data you will need.

But you will need some.

On day one, you should think about your audience and title.

In addition to thinking about your title, you may want to work on a tentative outline of a few big points you want to make. And you may think about what data, research, reports, images, or graphics you will want to include.

It’s okay that you aren’t even writing yet.

You are still just laying the groundwork and setting the parameters to write the book. This is a permutation of the notion that you should measure twice but cut once.

If you have the right idea, framework, structure, and materials to put in your book, it should flow pretty easily.

So, that's Day 1! But with that, you're on your way.

Write the Future

This article draws on content from Jason Schenker's book Write the Future, which was released on 24 June 2020.

Write the Future is online here: www.WriteTheFutureBook.com

Jason Schenker is one of the world's leading futurists. He is the Chairman of The Futurist Institute and the President of Prestige Economics. He is also an instructor for LinkedIn Learning.

Other Write the Future Articles

• Writing Schedule on Day 1 — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/how-write-your-book-under-30-days-writing-schedule-day-jason-schenker/
• Publication Schedule on Days 2 to 5 — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-publication-schedule-2-5-jason-schenker/
• Identifying Your Audience — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-identifying-audience-jason-schenker/
• The Audience of One — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-audience-one-jason-schenker/
• The Secret Formula — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/how-write-your-book-under-30-days-secret-formula-jason-schenker/
• Picking a Book Cover and Title — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-picking-cover-title-jason-schenker/
• How Can a 30 Day Book Not be Junk? — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-how-can-day-junk-jason-schenker/
• Building a Team with a Hype Man — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-building-team-hype-man-jason-schenker/
• Outlining Your Book — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-outlining-jason-schenker/
• A Sample Book Outline — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-sample-outline-jason-schenker/
• Publication Schedule on Days 6 to 10 — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-publication-schedule-6-10-schenker/
• You Will be Wrong — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-you-wrong-jason-schenker/
• Fonts, Font Size, and White Space — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-fonts-font-size-white-space-schenker
• Perspectives and Priorities — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-perspectives-priorities-jason-schenker/
• The First Rule of Writing a Book — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-first-rule-writing-jason-schenker/
• The Secret of Second Editions — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-secret-second-editions-jason-schenker/
• Publication Schedule on Days 11 to 19 — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-publication-schedule-11-jason-schenker/
• Footnotes, Endnotes, and Citations — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-footnotes-endnotes-jason-schenker/
• Set Reasonable Goals — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-set-reasonable-goals-jason-schenker/
• Mental Real Estate — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-mental-real-estate-jason-schenker/
• Writing as a Futurist — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-writing-futurist-jason-schenker/
• Value From Your Book by Speaking on the Lecture Circuit— https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-value-from-speaking-lecture-schenker/
• Using Your Book as a Business Card — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-using-business-card-jason-schenker/
• Self-Publishing vs. Formal Publishing — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-self-publishing-vs-formal-schenker/
• Publication Schedule on Day 20 — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-publication-schedule-day-jason-schenker/
• Publication Schedule on Days 22 to 30 — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-publication-schedule-22-jason-schenker/
• Value for Friends and Family — https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-value-friends-family-jason-schenker/

Tags: #Disruption, #Technology, #Innovation, #Business, #Finance, #Strategy, #Career, #Economy, #Economics, #LinkedInLearning, #Coronavirus, #COVID19, #Leadership, #Future, #Futurist, #BecomeAFuturist, #ContentMarketing