James M Ranson | When To Write A Book

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Joel: hi, James and welcome to the show.

James: Hi, it’s so great to be here.

Joel: Yes. So I want to start with something topical. I was watching your Facebook live videos and you know, obviously one of the main discussions online these days is George floored and his murder.

I think it’s given all of us pause and made us think about what we can do better. And I really, I really enjoyed that, that specific video because I thought it was a very raw moment and very, very real, where you talked about, you know, how you can do things differently with writing publishing and helping your clients.

So can you talk a little bit about your thoughts about what authors can do that?

What they can do better around race relationships and just figuring out what they can do to help. You know, I guess minorities, blacks, and, and, and like in everyday life, basically, it doesn’t have to be writing, but you know, obviously being a writer yourself, you, you’re obviously very much in that world.

So yeah, if you can just tell us a little bit about your thoughts. I know this is a very long winded question, but I think’s an important one. Right?

James: Firstly, I’m really glad that you, that you caught that video or one of the videos in that series. So this, this past week, I don’t know, actually, when this, this interview is going to go live, but the week sort of following when George Floyd was killed and all of these things started to happen, It came to me really strongly.

That’s one thing I could do and needed to do was to, to take my usual weekly Facebook live, where I talk about some aspects of writing and publishing books and really bring to that, that platform and that practice some of my thoughts and lessons around the idea of white privilege, because. you know, I’m a white guy and you’re a white guy and a lot of people writing books these days are white guys.

Sometimes they’re white girls, which is fine. but there’s is a lot of white privilege in publishing these days. And you may have seen the hashtag of publishing paid me that came out. Oh, cool. I actually I’ve heard about this a couple of days ago. So, so a number of black and, and people of colour and minority authors have gone on Twitter with this #apublishingpaidme.

And sharing the advances that they got when their books were published by traditional publishing houses, by New York houses and highlighting the disparity in those advances between what, like what, what the advances white authors got and the advances that, that people of colour that, that BiPAP authors got.

That’s just one example. I mean, I know as I’m, as an author who worked, excuse me, a book coach who works with authors. Who want to self publish most of the time, most of the people that I’ve ever talked to or ever work with around that are white. And so I’ve been thinking a lot about, you know, what, you know, so why is that?

What can we do about that? And, and I made this series of videos sort of about being conscious of that level of privilege. And some, you know, there’s one side of it, which is if you have the the privilege, if that privilege allows you. To have the money, have the bandwidth, have the platform, have the reach to write a great book about your business and use that to change people’s lives, then you should absolutely do it.

And on the other side of that, there really needs to be some awareness around well, What do you know, what are people going to do if they don’t have that privilege? Does that mean that, that people like me and you are going to help people who have less privilege find better paths and easier paths to writing great books?

I think that’s certainly something. That that I’m looking into and you know, again, this is, this is still sort of a new, like I’m figuring this out as I go thing, but that’s something that I’m thinking about. I know, as a case in point, I know a couple of, of, of African American women who live here in Atlanta who are also business book coaches.

I have calls that I’m going to be setting up with them to just talk with them about their experience in this industry and be like, okay, What is your experience like, because I don’t know, and I need to know, I need to have more awareness around that. And then the last thing I would say is there’s an element that both writing a book and understanding race relations as someone with white privilege have in common.

And that is the ability and the willingness to accept feedback and receive feedback from people who have more experience and a stronger perspective than you. Because in all honesty, when you’re writing a book, it can be very easy to say, Oh, I’m writing this book about my experience and my expertise and my perspective.

And therefore I don’t need feedback from an editor or from my peers or from a proofreader or from a book coach. And then they end up writing a crappy book because they never actually got that perspective. And that parallels a lot of what happens with, you know, white privilege as it looks at race relations, basically saying, well, you know, I’m only living my own experience, so I don’t need to get feedback from somebody else’s experience.

And that’s completely inaccurate because if we’re going to live a, you know, in, in a constructive, healthy, humanitarian way in this world, we need to have feedback from people who know things that we don’t know. And I, and I saw that parallel very, very strongly.

Joel: Do you think self publishing levels, the playing field?

Cause I know like, you know, the top five publishers are very traditional, very old school. Does Amazon publishing help

James: with that? It absolutely can. It can. So I need to speak specifically to business publishing to people, right. You know, business owners, writing books about their businesses because that’s, that’s who I work with.

You know, if we’re talking about Amazon as a whole, like yeah, anybody can write and publish a book on Amazon. So whether you are, are white or, or people of colour or African American, less than X, you know, whatever, you know, LGBTQ, whatever you are, you can absolutely write a book and publish it on Amazon.

That, that is in that, in that very basic sense. That is absolutely a level playing field. Now the next thing that goes with that, though, is. What are you trying to do with that book? So if you are just writing the book to say, Hey, I’m an author. I published a book then. Yeah, absolutely. It’s a level playing field.

Anybody can do that. But if you are trying to write a book because you are a business owner, an entrepreneur, a thought leader, you know, coach, consultant, trainer, speaker, that kind of thing. Amazon is not necessarily a loving level playing field because just publishing on Amazon might not be enough to get you the kind of results you need with that book, because then you’re going to need, you’re going to look at, you know, what is your business strategy for having this book?

who is your audience? That’s going to buy this book and, you know, do, does that audience have the. The capability to really support your business, to become, you know, the, the level of clients that you want to do now, or that you want to have. So in the business side of things, there’s more to think about than just, Hey, I want to write a book.

So I’m going to write a book now to ask whether this is, is leveling the playing field. I would say anyone of any race or ethnicity or backgrounds provided, they can build a business that supports. The kind of book they want to write and can then can leverage for further business growth. Yeah. They can absolutely use Amazon to do that or use IngramSpark to do that, or whatever self publishing and book marketing they want to do.

However, they are going to encounter the same kind of systemic racism that they’re going to encounter anywhere else when they’re trying to build that business. So that’s part of where that is going to come in and that’s again, why I really want to. Go and talk to these, these, women of color book coaches that I know just to get a stronger sense of that.

Cause you know, I’m, I’m literally sitting here, like I know enough to know how much I don’t know about answering that question, but that’s my understanding of it thus far. And it’s definitely something I’m going to be looking into, getting more information on very soon. I

Joel: think that’s great that you’re doing that self-reflection and I’m going through that same process.

James: Yeah, totally.

Joel: and I think more people need to do that, so that’s great. Thank you for sharing that. So you’re a book coach, but you’re also an author. You obviously enjoy the writing process. What. Have you always wanted to write and help and mentor other writers.

James: So that’s a really fun question for me because I always wanted to read books.

Like actually, so one of my, one of my book, coaching colleagues, her name is Jenny Nash. Just wrote a book called read books all day and get paid for it about the coach. And that’s on my to read list. it came out, I think a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago. so that was like this to read books all day and get paid for it.

That was like kind of what I wanted to do growing up. but I, I, you know, I had a number of different paths that I followed. I also, I’ve been assigned me a professional singer for a number of years and I want it. I pursued that as a career for awhile. I worked in arts management for a while. I was a grant writer, things like that.

But over time I kept coming back to working with words and I sort of realized that I loved working with words, but I also love working with people. And, you know, as your year ago, straighter, you know, when you work with, with editors, a lot of the time you’re going to run into a lot of very introverted people.

Cool, you know, nothing wrong with that, but they don’t really want to get on a phone call. They don’t want to have a zoom call with a client. They just want to send documents back and forth. I am not that person. I am the person who is like, all right, let’s get on a call. Let’s talk this through. Let’s make sure we’re on the same page.

Let’s make sure you know what you’re needing to do, how I can support you. I love doing that. As I have been building up this business over the last, almost six years now, I’ve been moving gradually towards that space where I were, what I get to do and what my sweet spot is, is literally what we’re doing right now.

Only you’re an author, rather than someone interviewing me. We’re having, you know, we’re having this, this conversation about your book. And I’m helping you with your strategy. I’m helping you build your outline. I’m answering questions about your draft and I’m doing, you know, we’re talking about edits together and that kind of thing.

I love doing that. So have I always wanted to specifically do that? No, because I didn’t specifically know that was what I wanted to do back when I, when I got started, but I’ve always loved words. And when I discovered that I wanted to sort of marry that with working with people. That’s, that’s gotten me on the path where I am now, and I really enjoy that.

Joel: Yeah. I, I mean, I concur, I totally agree. Cause I, I also enjoy the writing process, but I do enjoy the interview process that goes along with the ghostwriting and being able to yeah. Communicate with people and help them out. I totally understand that, that need and that, that, that desire for sure.

When you sit down to write, what is your process look like? When do you write, what do you like to think about when you’re, when you’re sitting in and staring at that blank screen?

James: Well, there’s a couple ways I can answer that because, you know, I’ve written a couple of books myself. and when I, when I was writing those, I had a more.

Regimented writing routine than I typically do. Cause I don’t, you know, I, when I have a, a goal or a deadline for some writing that I’m doing for myself, I will set aside time and say, okay, you know, this Wednesday afternoon, that’s my going to be my main task for the day. I’m a really big fan of the deep work idea, accounting towards deep work idea where, when you’re working on something that you just have to focus on, like you turn off the internet and you close your door and you don’t, you know, you don’t let yourself get distracted.

Even when there’s a bunch of other things going on. And you know, sometimes I do that really well and sometimes I try and fail, but that’s, that’s what I, what I like to do when I’m writing. I actually, one of my, one of my Alliance partners, that I, that I collaborate with from time to time is a company called paper, Raven books, run by Morgan Morgan gets McDonald, a fellow book coach, and kindred spirit of mine.

We’ve been friends for a couple of years. They have actually recently launched a community of accountability writing, of, of hosted calls where people can come in and just write together for an hour. And, and I love that idea. Accountability is huge for me. So that’s another big part of whenever I’m going to be writing something, I want to have a level of accountability there.

So I actually, I come in and I host a couple of those calls. For paper, Raven books, a couple of days a week. I actually did one this morning. so, and, you know, we had like 23, 25 people coming in and just writing for like an hour together and zoom call.

James: Yeah. It’s through a zoom call and it’s super, super fun.

And people are writing like, you know, a thousand, 1500 words in that time, which is, which is really, really productive. so, so I’m, I’m finding that I enjoy and, you know, being part of that environment as well. In the day to day, like I don’t necessarily have my own writing assignments for my own writing tasks all the time.

So I don’t always have a writing process that I’m doing, but you know, if I have a client that I’m doing an editing pass for, I would approach that similarly, I would set aside deep work time, or I would do that while I’m on the kind of accountability call and, and I I’d approach it very much the same way.

Joel: Do you have a specific time you like to write or is it just kind of depending on your schedule?

James: it depends on the schedule, but I try to keep the afternoons open at least a couple days a week for, for that kind of deep focus work. Cause like I’ll have. I have a couple of days, usually like Tuesdays and Thursdays that I set aside just for calls.

And then I have a couple of days usually like Wednesdays and Fridays that I set aside for not calls when possible and, or as often as possible. And then I know from. The best time for me to focus and be most productive, tends to be in the afternoon between about like one at about six give or take. cause after about six, I start to get tired and I’ve gotten a second wind around like nine in the evening before, but I don’t like to work that late.

Cause you know, evenings are my fun time. I spend with my wife and our cat and then, and the mornings are my own time. I’ve tried to be super productive in the mornings and it’s one of those things like. If I can make it work, I get a lot done, but then I’m just lost the rest of the day. So I’m like, I found that spending time in the morning, like going for a walk and maybe journaling and maybe reading and just having that sort of be a little bit of an easier start for me enables the rest of the day to be a lot more productive.

Joel: So you’ve, you’ve mentioned already in this podcast about not writing a crappy book, and that’s the title of one of your books.

James: I actually have it right here. This is where you go. Second book, it’s called, don’t write a crappy book, 17 mistakes that will kill your business book and how savvy entrepreneurs avoid that.

Joel: I have a feeling that this is a very passionate subject for you.

James: Can you tell me

Joel: what the inspiration was behind writing this

James: book? So since I’ve been around the self publishing industry, which has been, as I said, about six years now, I got started around the same time that self publishing school got started and book in a box, which is now scribe media and author incubator, and like 2013, 2014, like that timeframe was when a lot of us.

You know, book coaches, editors, self-publishing coaches, book, marketing consultants like that. A lot of those people really were getting started around that. And one of the things that I really started to notice about many, many of those other people is that. They tend to focus a lot more on getting the book done quickly, getting the book done cheaply and making the process as easy as possible rather than actually making the book really, really good.

And. That bothered me. That bothered me a lot. That still bothers me a lot. And you know, to people, some of them have gotten better. Some of them have evolved and that’s fine, but it, it has, it has really just like, you know, Peter Griffin on family die, like, you know what grinds my gears kind of thing that really grinds my gears.

That, that if you’re going to write a book for your business, that you are staking your reputation on that you were staking the future of your business on that you are wanting to use to, to leverage for the next five, 10 years of business growth that why would you ever. Not try to make it the best book you possibly could.

And so you have people who are talking about trying to write and publish and market the entire thing in like a couple months. No. You have people who are talking about like working with an editor for, you know, a week or two at most. No, you have people who are talking about, you know, I’m trying to put, you know, investing, you know, a few hundred dollars in like everything, every kind of help that you’re going to get, including your editing and design and marketing, all this other stuff and that, and then expecting to get, you know, thousands, tens of thousands back as return when you only put a few hundred and on the front end.

No, you know, there’s, we were talking earlier about how, how, how self-publishing and Amazon, all of this is very much, you know, it levels the playing field in a lot of ways, but the flip side of that, or a flip side of that is just because you can write a book, you know, as fast, cheap, easy as possible, throw it up on Amazon, hack it to some level of bestseller ship.

And then say, Hey, I’m a bestselling author, just because you can do that. Doesn’t mean you should. And doesn’t mean that it’s actually going to help you. And I think there’s way, way, way too much, even to this day, language and messaging in this industry that encourages that approach rather than, than the approach of if you’re going to do something, do it right.

Do it well, make it the best that you can write something that deserves to be a bestseller, whether it ever becomes one or not.

Joel: So we know what not to do now.

James: What are some

Joel: things that authors can do correctly? So they don’t make, they don’t write a crappy book?

James: Absolutely. So, so the first one honestly, is just to make that decision and that commitment that you’re going to put the quality of your book first.

Even if that means it takes longer, even if that means it costs a little more money than you wanted to put in, even if it means you don’t start writing it just yet. Like there’s clearly you D you know, people have been sitting on books for months and years and whatever, and I get that. And, and I am never going to say that the right way to do this is to wait years and years and years until you’re ready.

That’s not going to help anyone, but there’s a big difference between doing that and then, and saying, no, I have to do it now. It has to be done in the next 30 days, the next 90 days, whatever, or it’s not worth doing. If you’re, I would say, you know, if you’re gonna, if you’re going to commit to writing a really great book, then you know, you’re going to put a year into doing that.

Maybe a little less, maybe a little more, but you know, if, if you, if you’re, if you’re going to make that commitment and that decision, I’d say put a year into it. so certainly making that decision, making that commitment is, is one thing, understanding that you don’t know everything about what it takes to go into a book and that that’s okay that you, you are, you are giving yourself an opportunity to learn how to do something like this, really, really well.

And, and, and to work with a mentor. like you, or like me, or like, like us who does have the experience and the perspective to be able to come in and say, okay, this is good. Here’s how we’re going to make it better. Or this isn’t that good yet, but here’s how we can make it good. And then here’s how we can make it.

Great. so, so having the. Not even just the humility, but the hunger to learn, like what it takes to write a great book, you know, is, is going to help you a lot more than coming in and thinking that, you know, everything. Now you do know a lot of things because you’re writing about your own business, but what you don’t know about your business, I’m sorry, what, what you know about your business and what I know about writing a great book, we’re going to put those two things together and we’re going to create something that is exponentially bigger than I, and better than either of us could have done by ourselves.

So that’s, that’s another, another really good, good part of that. let’s see. And then, I think the last thing that I would say that that would be really helpful for someone wanting to write a high quality book is to understand where their business needs to be in order to be ready for a book, because a lot of the messaging around this is that, you know, you, your business is in survival mode or is bootstrapping, or it’s still at a very low level.

Then you should write the book as cheaply as possible, and then use the book to try and skyrocket you from where you are to six figures or multiple six figures. And honestly, that’s really hard to do. Because aside from the fact that when you’re in survival mode, you don’t have money or bandwidth or audience or strategy to really write a great book.

So you’re probably gonna write a crappy book, but when you, when you, what you really need, you don’t need a book. You need another client, or you need a marketing plan or you need something that’s actually going to help make your business stable and established and sustainable because. Once your business is stable and established and sustainable, then writing a book is going to help you so much more because then you will have more of an audience who will want to read the book.

You will have a much stronger sense of what your strategy for the book is going to be. Other than save me. And, you will have, yeah, you will have some bandwidth to put into writing the book because you’re not going to be trying with every spare moment of every day to keep the business afloat. And frankly, you’ll have some profit that you can then invest in making the book really good, which none of those things you are real you have when you are in survival mode.

If you’re in survival mode, if your business is, is barely keeping its head above water, that is not a good time for you to write a book.

Joel: You mentioned self-publishing school and scribe media, I believe, which is a book in a box. So that’s Chandler Bolt owns The Self Publishing School. Tucker Max, I believe a scribe media.

Both of those are Titans in our industry. So you’ve worked with

James: them. Can you

Joel: tell me what that process was like?

James: Sure I can talk about that a little bit. So, I want to say full disclosure upfront. I have not personally worked with either Chandler or Tucker. I don’t know them personally. We have many mutual friends, but I have done work under their company umbrella slash for their companies.

With The Self-Publishing School, I was essentially a list editor, like for people who, who go through the program, they’ve got a list of potential editors that they can reach out to and they send an email and go for it. And we figure out if we’re going to work together or not. my experience with that was, was not particularly great, as, I to say this from, from what everyone who, who knows Chandler personally, that I’ve talked to has said, he’s a really nice guy.

Great. I’m fine. I’m fine with that. And you know, his company is helping a lot of people write books. You might not be able to write books. Otherwise that’s fine too. There is one particular aspect of his approach that I’m never going to agree with. And that is that when you’re working with an editor, you basically try to do it as quickly and cheaply as possible.

You, whether you go to a reference list or you go to Upwork or whatever, You know, he teaches to this day and he talks about this in his books that, you know, when you’re working with an editor, it should be two to four weeks at most. And it should be like half a cent to a cent and a half per word for all of the type of editing that you’re gonna need, including like developmental and copy and proof.

And that’s just, I really can’t agree with that because having worked as an editor for a number of years and knowing a lot of editors who do a lot of other editors, you know, The editors who work at that speed and that price range have to take on so many clients concurrently just to make a living, that they are not going to be able to give you the focus and the depth of attention that your book really needs.

And the editor is who can and will give your book the expertise that it really needs. Will our premium-level service providers, they will never work at that level and they will. They, you know, they’re never going to be on Upwork because that’s what people on Upwork charge. So, so when I, when I was working for self publishing school, you know, I was getting a lot of emails that were very template emails, by the way, they were not individual emails, which is a big red flag for editors, but they were, you know, there was a lot of, of this saying, Hey, I need this book edited in two weeks.

And, you know, this is what my budget is. This is what it is. And it’s just, it really wasn’t, it didn’t feel good. It felt very out of integrity for me. And it felt very, difficult for me. Now, that’s not to say that people haven’t and, or haven’t gotten value out of that, or we’ll never get value out of that, but it did not work well for me.

And I, and I would say if you’re going to work with an editor. You need to work with an editor at a higher level than that. If you actually want your book to be really good. so that, that’s sort of been my experience with self-publishing school, but again, you know, I’ve heard many people really like it.

I know many people really like Chandler. Like there are things I’m never going to agree with him on, but I can respect a lot of the good that he’s brought to the industry. And I would say the same thing about Tucker max, sort of on the other end with scribe media. Tucker and scribe are sort of on the very high end of this.

They’re going to be looking at CEOs and other C suite executives and celebrities and people who are wanting really high end ghostwriting done for them on a business level who don’t have, or don’t have the bandwidth to do it themselves or straight up. Don’t want to do it themselves. And, you know, I was a ghostwriter for them for a couple of years and that was fine.

Like, I, it was, again, it wasn’t an amazing experience. It was definitely a learning experience. I would say sort of in, in the collective defense of all parties involved, when I was working with them, it was very early on in their time and they were still working out a lot of kinks and I was still figuring out like, Who I was and what I wanted to do and realizing, you know, that was the very beginning of my learning that I didn’t really want to be a ghostwriter.

And so, like, I don’t think at the time, it wasn’t a great experience for either of us. In hindsight, it was like, okay, this wasn’t the fit we wanted it to be. And we really couldn’t see why it wasn’t at the time. And then, you know, and that happens and that’s totally fine. Again, you know, there’s, there are things that they do that I don’t particularly agree with.

I think if you’re going to write a book or work with someone who’s writing a book for you, you should work with one person, not a whole bunch of people in sequence. I don’t particularly like the. You know, Henry Ford building the Model T assembly line format of writing a book where you, you have a different person doing each thing, but you know, that’s their system and it seems to work decently well for them, they’ve helped, you know, over a thousand, I want to say maybe 1500 people like write books and I’m like, okay, great.

It is, it is clearly meeting a need that people have. And the same way self-publishing is, you know, helped self-publishing school has helped like 5,500 people or something like that. Clearly there is a need and they are feeling, they are meeting that need. They’re filling that, that space in the market.

And that’s fine. I am never going to try and fill the spaces that they fill. I don’t work the way they work. I don’t like to work the way they work. I’m much preferred to work with fewer clients so I can give them a lot more attention. And, you know, and, and, and how much more premium level so that I can make sure that the books are really awesome.

That’s that’s me.

Joel: I just want to second what you said about editors, because I’ve been on both sides of being an editor and have obviously worked with editors during the writing process and they make the books so much better, you know, I think it’s all, it’s just as important as the actual writing and to see the difference of a quality editor.

It’s just night and day it’s there’s no, no contest. So I think

James: there’s a quote. I, I don’t know if I can say. Where on this program, but there’s a quote that I don’t usually like very much the James Altucher has to say. He kind of rubs me the wrong way, but there’s one thing he did say when he was talking about the, getting his first book edited and he had like 16 editing passes on, choose yourself or something like that.

And he said the difference between the first, the first draft and the final draft after all the edits have taken place was different between chicken shit and chicken salad. And I was like, yes, that love that. Actually, one of the best quotes I’ve heard about what editing does for your, for your work

Joel: Chicken shit and chicken salad. I love that. That’s awesome. so I think this is a good place to ask if I’m somebody is listening to this podcast and they’re like, yes, I want to write my book. I’m ready. They want to hire you. What is the process like and how do you start with a client?

James: So the first thing that I do with any client is help them get really clear on their strategy and, and preparation for the writing process, which is so, you know, these are asking.

The big questions that you need to be really clear on before you ever start writing anything, which is like, okay, who is this book for? Who is your audience? And why do they need this book? And you know, if your audience does need this book, why do they need it from you? Why are you the right person to tell them, you know, to sit, to give them this message that’s going to change their lives?

What is your approach to this? That’s different than everybody else. Who’s writing books about it. And then we’re going to talk about, you know, where is your business now and where do you want it to be? And how is the book going to help you get from, from that point a to point B over the next one, three, five, 10 years.

you know, and what kind of timeframe do you have in mind for that? And we’re going to talk about your relationship with writing. We’re going to talk about you. Do you really like to write, do you like to sit down at the keyboard and type things into a Google doc? Or do you like to speak. Where you’re talking through what you say, and then you go back at the transcription and turn that into legible content, which by the way you must do, since you cannot just, just talk into a, a voice recorder and then turn that transcription.

Turn it into a transcription, then publish the transcription without rewriting it. That doesn’t work. Don’t do that. Don’t ever do that. Me shaking my finger at you don’t do that. But, you know, and, and, you know, as a ghostwriter, you know, that process as well, but like know, and, and we figure out, so what is going to be the optimal writing process for, for you, for the author?

You know, what is your schedule look like? When can you fit writing into your schedule? How much accountability do you need? are you super, super motivated and you don’t need, and you’re just like, you’re raring to go or you like, I’ve got a busy schedule. I need to figure out exactly where this is going to be.

And I need help staying accountable in that timeframe. What I love about the, about starting with all of these questions that enables me. To bring a very individualized form of my expertise and my experience to this project. So what we do together is not, you know, there are certain things that I’m going to do with every single client, but it’s never going to be one size fits all.

It’s never going to be like, alright, check each of these boxes. And then, you know, Go on your Merry way. I don’t like working like that. That’s also an issue that I have with companies like self publishing school and scribe, because they are very one size fits all. And their goal is to kind of put everyone who goes through them into their own box.

And I’m not a big box guy. I’m more, I’m much more of a partnership guy. I’m much more of a, you know, You are the hero on your hero’s journey and I’m your mentor showing you the way and we’re doing it together kind of thing. So I liked that a lot. So all of this is to say, we start out with, with a lot of this, this preparatory strategy and ideation work to figure out what you’re going to say, who you’re going to say it to, how it’s going to help them, how it’s going to help you all of that fun stuff.

From there, we spend a really good amount of time on your outline, because we’re going to take the outline. That is the skeleton of your book. And we’re going to flesh that thing out to, within an inch of its life. And that, that does something really, really important for you as the author. It enables you to know exactly what you’re going to say when you sit down to write.

And so you never have to spend time staring at this blank screen with, you know, the blinking cursor being like, well, what, what am I supposed to say here? Because you know, because we’ve already gone through everything that’s going to be in this book. Now, all you have to do is write it or talk about it.

and that gives you momentum that gives you motivation. And that gives you, you know, it relieves a lot of the stress of like, Oh crap, what do I say now? Kind of thing. and then from there we go into writing the first draft, we get feedback from your peers. And from me on the first draft, we have various editing happening both from myself.

And I bring in an external, like copy and proof editor, because by the time we’ve been working on a book for, you know, five, six months or however long, it ends up being, we’re both close enough to you that we’re going to miss typos. So, so I bring in another editor on that, and then I have Alliance partners.

Who will do the design for the book, the cover and the lamb, the interior layout, we’ll upload it to Amazon and IngramSpark who will help you with book marketing, who can help you do an audiobook, who can help you build an online course around your book. If you want to do that, I have partners that I can bring in to help with those things.

Joel: So I’m going to ask you one of the biggest questions in our industry and that’s whether you should self publish or do the traditional publishing routes.

James: Yeah. And it’s a huge question. So. Earlier, when I was talking about, you know, the, the Amazon thing, sort of that just because you can doesn’t mean you should, when looking at traditional versus self-publishing, it almost flips the question around just because maybe you should do one of those things.

Doesn’t always mean that you can. Yeah. And that’s, and that’s one of the really big issues around traditional publishing because their level of gatekeeping is ridiculous. So you may want to get a book deal. You may, that actually might be a really good option for you given your topic, given what you help people with, given how your business is, all these things, but.

Frankly, they’re the chances of you getting picked up by a top-five publisher, a big five publisher in New York, unless you have, unless you are a celebrity, unless you have a fortune 500 business or fortune thousand business maybe, or unless you have several million followers on whatever social media platform you’re active on the chances of you getting a book deal without one or more of those three things.

Happening or being in place for you are very, very small, very, very, very small. Obviously there are smaller publishers, there are hybrid houses, there are vanity houses. I mean, you, you can get a book deal if you want, you know, that you can look into that. but the really, really high levels are really, really unattainable for most people, which means.

You know, self-publishing, maybe your only option. Anyway. Now, to be fair, there are a few other houses who can help you know, that you don’t have to have that. I actually have an Alliance partnership with Morgan, James publishing. they work with a lot of business owners, a lot of entrepreneurs. so they would be a little more likely to pick up a business book.

and they actually, they, they treat their clients pretty well. They involve them with a lot of decisions. They give a, a larger royalty share, things like that. So, you know, you may have a traditional publishing option. I think the, the question here, firstly, is whether you can. Whether, whether there’s a, whether there’s a chance of you getting a book deal is going to really inform the question.

First of all. And then the second question is going to be, what would that do for you? Why would you want that? And honestly, the main reason that you would want a book deal from a major publisher, there’s honestly, there’s, there’s two reasons. I called them the two V’s visibility and vanity. And, and that, honestly, that goes with being any kind of bestseller to just visibility and vanity, because it’s true doing that will get your book a lot of visibility and it just getting it in front of a lot of people, no matter what else happens, if that’s a goal for you then, okay, fine visibility.

It’s not a bad goal. It’s not going to revolutionize your business, but it’s not a bad goal. Vanity, if that’s your goal in writing a book, I would probably question whether you actually need to write one, whether that’s actually a good use of your time, your money, your investment, but you know, some people just want to do it.

and same that, that, you know, again goes with, with being a bestseller as well. And I think we can talk about that in a minute, but like the, I personally believe that self-publishing is almost always going to be the better option. Unless you go with someone like Morgan James, because they just treat their authors so much better, regardless of who publishes you.

You’re going to be doing most of the marketing anyway, with any kind of traditional publisher, including Morgan James, you will be giving up at least some, if not most of your royalties, self publishing, you don’t have to do that. You do have to pay Amazon a percentage. And I have an issue with that as well, but like, you know, it’s, it’s not as big a percentage anyway, but,, with that, that’s the other thing.

And then here’s the, here’s the last thing. and this has been a little bit all over the place, sorry, but this is the last, the last piece, on, on, on traditional publishing, traditional publishers want to sell books. Your business may not need to sell a lot of books to have a successful book. Because Frank one, you can make a lot more money giving a book away than you can selling it.

And then whether you have a funnel on the backend or you have, you use it to get more speaking gigs, or you use it to attract clients, or however you’re going to do that, you can make a lot more money giving the book away and using that to get like, you know, if you have a, a $2,000 coaching package versus a $20 book sale, which one are you going to pay?

The the publishing companies and two, and I would say Amazon, I would include Amazon in this. They care way more about selling copies of your book, because that’s how they make money then about whether your publishing, the book actually grows your business. So that is the third question that I would really consider very carefully is what’s.

What is your business actually getting out of how the book is published and if your business is going to get something out of how the book is published, like if you actually can hit a really big bestseller list, like wall street, journal USA today, New York times. Okay, that’s fine. That’s great. You can get a lot of credibility out of that and, and, and you pretty much have to have a traditional publisher in order to do most of those.

But if what you’re really trying to do is. You know, grow your email list by an order of magnitude or add three clients a year to your business at $10,000 apiece or double your speaking rates in the next two years or something along those lines, whether your book is, is, sells a lot of copies via Amazon or via a traditional publisher.

It doesn’t matter to that nearly as much like it’s a nice to have, but it’s not the same goal. So, so yeah. So those are the things you think about, whether it’s even possible for you to think about what your goal and your strategy is with, you know, for your business doing that.

Joel: I think, yeah, that’s really important, and it’s not something, especially your last point, of what or your business schools.

I think that’s, that’s important then, and it may not include selling books. So I think that’s something people don’t think about. Very often.

James: Yeah. And that ties into the bestseller discussion too, because you know, the idea of, of a bestseller, that, what that term means is that it’s sold your book has sold a lot more, like more copies than anything else over a prescribed period of time, but, you know, what does that actually do for you?

So if it’s, you know, if it’s New York times wall street journal, that kind of thing, then it says, okay, then it legitimately says that your book has sold tens of thousands of copies within, you know, a couple of weeks to a month. That’s legit. but it also says that you might have had to just buy a lot of those books herself to make sure that happened.

And believe me, that happens, people do that, or they, you know, a, a particular marketing consultant, 50 grand to get them onto that, to do all the marketing things that are going to get them onto that list. And I know some of those consultants, cause there are people who do that. And then on the other end you have Amazon, which is, you know, Amazon is one store.

It’s not a bunch of other stores, the way New York times wall street journal, you have to get through a bunch of different, venues, Amazon, just one store. It refreshes every hour. and usually the way that you get a book to be a bestseller, Amazon is discounting it by its price. So a lot of people can get it for free or 99 cents, which means you’re not actually making money off of it.

So, I mean, again, it’s visibility and vanity. Like, if those things are valuable for you, if that’s what you really want, then great knock yourself out. But you know, those might not be your business goals. And if they’re not then trying to, to follow this other path of selling or giving away as many books as possible, just to get a little orange flag by the title of the book that’s probably not going to be the best path for you.

Joel: What can people do if they don’t have a platform, if they haven’t even thought about selling books, what can, what is kind of the first steps to marketing that

James: book? So that’s interesting because it, in a way it hearkens back to what I was saying earlier about, about the question of if your business is writing for the book, because.

The, there’s an author that I, I had a chance to help with a TEDx talk a few years ago. his name is Seth Adam Smith, and he, he, he used to work in the publishing industry, but he’s also a published author. And he talks about this idea in the TEDx talk that, you know, books don’t create movements, create books, and what I take that to me.

And, and that, that stuck with me for a while. What I take that to mean is that if you’re writing a book without an audience, you probably shouldn’t write the book yet. You can, you can do some other things. You can do a blog, you can do a podcast, you can do social media, whatever it is, whatever it is that you feel drawn to.

But if you don’t have an audience. Then one, you probably don’t have a reason to write a book. And two, you probably don’t know what to say in the book anyway, because you don’t have an audience to tell you what, you know, what they need to hear from you yet. so, and it goes back to, you know, if you’re in, if you’re in survival mode or if you’ve just gotten out of survival mode and thinking, okay, great.

Now I have a little bit of lay of breathing room. What do I do now? I would think very carefully about whether writing a book is exactly the night, the right next step for you. Now, that’s not to say that there are not book marketing, things that you can do when you maybe don’t have a gigantic book marketing budget.

but I think the most important thing that you can do, and honestly, this is something that I’m working on in my business, even though I’ve already written, a couple of books is to. Is to start building up your audience and to start building up your marketing to the point where you actually have engagement with the people outside of your business.

So it’s not just this echo chamber inside your head thinking, Oh, this is a good idea. I’m going to write a book about it because I think it’s a good idea. So I should write a book about it. And it’s very easy to do that. And that’s, that’s what I’m honestly a tell us what I’m trying to do right now. rather than writing my next book.

I am doing a bunch of Facebook lives and I want to do like a hundred Facebook lives this year and say, okay, what is this going to tell me about my audience, about who they are about what they actually need from me so that when I start researching to write my next book, I can do it in such a way that I know that they are going to really appreciate it and really get value out of it because, you know, if you’re writing a book that only gives yourself value and doesn’t give an audience value, then nobody is going to give any value back to you in terms of, of money or clients or, or speaking gigs or anything like that.

Because again, it’ll just be you talking about yourself to yourself and for yourself. And, you know, your book isn’t for you. Your book is for the people who need you. And if you don’t know who those people are, or you haven’t been able to connect or engage with those people yet, that’s your job.

Joel: Awesome.

Thank you. That’s yeah, I think that’s, that’s important to keep in mind. So I’m going to wrap it up with one last question. And this is a question I ask all my, I guess yeah, all my, audience or, or my guests rather. And that is what is the most influential book that you’ve ever read or something that has inspired you?

James: Do you ever get people who actually can pick one? Cause that’s like occasionally, occasionally? well, Lord, okay. let me, I’m going to have to narrow it down. I don’t know if I can do one, but I can narrow it down a little bit. So yeah, first. A book that always comes to mind is Treasure Island, because that was the book that I fell in love with as a kid.

And

Joel: I was like, my last guest just mentioned that same book. Nice.

James: Yeah. Oh, that’s so great. I love it. So yeah, treasure Island. I just, I, that was the book or one of the books that maybe just fall in love with reading. When I was a kid, I think I read that book like 27 times when I was a kid or something before I was eight years old, something like that.

so that that’s clearly the first one. I would say. so as I was starting to build this business, back in, in the early days of discovering location independence. So, between about 2011 and 2014, like right before I got started, I read, Chris Guillebeau. I’m pretty much anything by Chris Guillebeau, but I read the happiness of pursuit and born for this both came out sort of around that timeframe.

Those were fantastic. I recommend this about anything Chris writes. I have actually here on my desk, I was looking at this earlier. This is, on writing. Well, William fencer. It’s just, it’s, it’s not the only really great book on writing nonfiction, but it’s one of the best and it’s held up really, really strongly over the years.

I go back to it periodically. what else do I have? I’ve got, this is my to-read list, by the way, the stack of books right here is books that I’m going to read shortly. And then I’ll, I’ll give one more in, cause this is also over here. I was looking at it earlier. This is, this is the four tendencies by Gretchen Rubin.

Gretchen Rubin writes a lot about habits and, and self-understanding based on how we, how we form and, and, and deal with habits. And she basically wrote this book. There are four different people, different types of people, depending on how you respond to internal and external expectations. And. I learned so much about myself reading that book about, you know, I know my tendency, if you, if you’re familiar with is all I’m, I’m very, I’m very much an obliger, which means I do really well with external expectations, but not as well with internal ones.

So accountability is, I was talking about earlier is really important for me. so that that’s also been a really influential book for me. I would say. and then shameless plug. I gotta put my book back in here. Of course, most influential book. Just the one that I wrote.

Joel: Well,

James: it was influential. Yeah. well, and I mean, and it was for me because not only did I get to use it to solidify a lot of what I believed and a lot of what I wanted to teach, but I also.

You know, I got to understand on a deeper level, what my clients go through, which is really important. Like, I don’t think I’ve made, I’ve not made a ton of money off of this book. It’s not ever become any kind of bestseller. I don’t know if it’s ever specifically attracted a client to me. I don’t really care about everything.

I got all the value I got out of that book out of writing that book has made me a better coach and that’s really what I wanted to get out of it.

Joel: that’s a great place to end up. So thanks so much for being on the show. James people want to reach out to you, where can they find you?

James: Yeah, so my website is heroic business authors.com and that’s, I talked a little bit earlier about how the office.

Are you, the author are you’re the hero on your journey and I am your mentor. So I can help you get to the hero through the hero’s journey and find success and all of that. So that’s kind of where I got that. But if you are, if you’re wanting to take a heroic, a six-figure book journey, that’s what I’m here to help you with.

So Herobusinessauthors.com.

Joel: Thanks so much, James.

James: Appreciate your time. You happy to be here. This was super fun. Take care. Bye.