How to Write a Book A

Month in an Hour a Day

By
Terri Main
Education Director

Copyright 2022 Terri Main. All Rights Reserved

Dedicated to Everyone Who has something to share
with the world but just needed some help saying it.
 Introduction
I belong to a Facebook group of entrepreneurs in the knowledge industry. This includes
course creators, edupreneurs, coaches, and mentors. Many of them expressed an interest in
turning their knowledge into books. They didn’t seem to know where to start.
I’ve been writing for more than a half century and I’ve been involved in indie publishing for
almost 15 years. I have out more than 70 books. Most of them are short nonfiction eBooks. I
have written and published up to 20 a year. I now have other projects, but I can still put out a
book in a week.
I outlined how to write a book in a month in a series of lessons in that group. I received
many positive responses. Many people expressed relief that even they could do something like
this. So, I decided to edit those lessons and share them with others.
This book is for the absolute beginner. You don’t need any experience in publishing, writing,
or technology. You don’t need a degree in English or an MFA in writing. All you need is a basic
command of your native language, knowledge to share, a willingness to share it, and one hour a
day.

How to use this book.

Treat this book as a guide to writing your own book. I’m assuming this is your first book.
Don’t worry. Everyone has a first book. I remember mine. It wasn’t perfect, but I learned a lot
from it and made a few dollars while doing so.
In this book, we are going to teach you how to write and publish your first book in thirty
days. When we say a book, we are talking about a short, nonfiction, eBook. Figure somewhere
between eight and fifteen thousand words.
These books are written for people who want information to improve their lives without a
lot of fluff. Back in the day of only print books, you had to have 200-300 pages to make a book
profitable for a publisher. Digital publishing has changed that. You can create small books that
create large profits.
Short, nonfiction books attract the no-nonsense reader. They are willing to forego a pleasing
turn of phrase, in-depth analysis, historical references, and endless examples for information
they can use that day.
That’s the book you will learn to write. Short, lean, and information packed.
Read each lesson. Most are from 1000-1500 words. You should be able to read this book in a
couple of hours. However, I suggest you read this one chapter at a time. At the end of each
chapter, we have included an assignment. Each assignment is a task to perform as part of
writing your book.
 This is called discovery learning. You learn by doing. Don’t worry about making mistakes. The
nice part of writing is that no matter how many mistakes you make, nobody has to see them.
We have the gift of editing to save us.

Let’s get started with a “roadmap” to publishing your book.

Thirty Days to Publication

The following is a suggested calendar only. This is predicated on you spending sixty minutes
a day on the task. But it can help guide you if you want to take it as a challenge. Remember, it
doesn’t have to be a single one-hour block of time. It can also be two 30-minute blocks or four
15-minute ones.
Day 1 – Choose and Refine Your Topic
Day 2 – Create a Preliminary Chapter Outline
Day 3 – Create a Full Detailed Chapter Outline and determine your available time for this
project. Set up a preliminary schedule and a specific deadline. Arrange for accountability to help
you stick to this schedule. The last is essential. Most of us starting something we haven’t done
before or have not done much of before can easily skip a day or procrastinate without some
external accountability.
Day 4 – 16 – Write 1000 words a day. Keep this up. If you feel blocked, write anything, even
gibberish about being unable to write. Just get 1000 words written. It will work out by the end.
Day 16 – 22 – Edit your book.
Day 22 – Arrange for Beta readers and set a Deadline for Day 27
Day 22 – Create your Book Cover
Day 28 – Review Beta-reader suggestions and make changes.
Day 29 – Format and review the document upload to Kindle
Day 30 – Use a program like Calibre to create Epub and PDF files you can sell on your
website. Launch your book. Send out review copies.

This is your starting point. You can adapt this to fit your life and lifestyle. And don’t feel
locked in to thirty days. You can write a book in 60 days working just thirty minutes a day. Or
take fifteen minutes a day at lunch and finish that book in 90 days. You can’t tell me you don’t
have 15 minutes a day to work on a book.
That’s your overview. Now, let’s dig into writing the book, but first we need to discuss a
Writer’s discipline.
 The Writer’s Discipline
One of my favorite authors is Ray Bradbury. He wrote a wonderful essay for the December
1960 issue of The Writer Magazine. You can find it in most libraries, probably on microfilm or
digitized. The name of the essay was “How to Keep and Feed a Muse.”
One of the most significant quotes from that piece dealt with the writer’s discipline:
“The Muse must have shape. You will write a thousand words a day for ten or twenty
years in order to try to give it shape, to learn enough about grammar and story construction
so that these become part of the Subconscious, without restraining or distorting the Muse . .
.. You have given her, him, it, or whatever, room to turn around in. And through training, you
have relaxed yourself enough not to stare discourteously when inspiration comes into the
room.”
I wouldn’t set a specific number. Bradbury believed that by writing a thousand words a
day you would become a skilled writer in three to four years. Personally, I tend to write at
least that many words, but more important than the word count is consistency.
For a while, I was the coordinator of a writers’ accountability group. Everyone would set a
goal. We would keep track of the word count when they reported it. And we would give out
“badges” when people hit their goals. These were not “finished” words or “polished” words.
They were just words.
One of the things I noticed were the number of people who would report, “I didn’t have
time to write today…” and then go on for 200 words about the tough day they had which
kept them for writing. Did you catch that? They didn’t have time to work on their books, but
they had plenty of time to explain why they didn’t have time to write. It’s like the person who
says they go on a certain diet whenever they need to lose weight because it’s a great diet. If
it’s so great, why do you have to keep going back to it?
The same is true of time. If you have enough time to write for ten minutes explaining your
lack of word count to an accountability group, then you would have enough time to get in at
least the same number of words on your book.
So, I started the “Ten Minute a Day Club.” We pledged to write 10 minutes a day and
never write an email explaining why we didn’t get in any words.
Ten minutes doesn’t sound like much, but in 10 minutes I can write about 200 words. If I
do that every day for a month, That’s 6000 words or 72,000 words a year. That’s a novel, 20
short stories, 72 blog posts, three short nonfiction books or novellas. A short nonfiction book
can be 10,000 – 30,000 words. So, at 10 minutes a day you could get out the first draft of
your book in about two months. Can you find 10 minutes a day?
So, how do you develop a discipline?

Get Real
We all know the cliches.
“If you want it, you will find the time. If not, you will find an excuse.”
“You always find time for what you want.”
“You have the same amount of time as everyone else.”
 I know them by heart. I’ve used them often enough. But like most cliches they are overly
simplistic. Take the last one. While this is true, but you don’t have the same commitments as
everyone else. I can put in several hours a day writing because I don’t have a day job, children,
or many other commitments. That was not true ten years ago when I was teaching full-time,
working on the college accreditation team, and teaching two Bible studies at church.
Yes, I have the same time now as I did then, but I have fewer obligations. Instead of
following someone else’s pattern, create your own based on your own reality. I call this reality-
based planning.
The first thing you need to do is make an inventory of how you use your time. This is simple.
For one week record everything you do in 15-minute segments. Once you do that, highlight
everything that is locked in. For instance, your day job or business appointments. If you are in
school, then the time for classes and homework are non-negotiable. Other things are optional
but are high priority items. Highlight them in a different color.
What’s left? Those are the hours you have available to work on your book. Now, some of
those might hurt a bit to give up. Is watching the game live instead of on demand more
important than working on your book? I can’t tell you that. Since I don’t really follow any sport,
I know what my answer would be. But we aren’t talking about my answer. We are talking about
your answer. But often it isn’t about the choice between a bad use of your time and a good
one. It’s often about giving up one good thing to get something better. News Flash: There’s no
such thing as having it all. You have to make choices, and some will be painful.
Now, go through your calendar. Block off all those committed times. Also block off holidays,
vacation, birthdays, anniversaries, family reunions, weddings and graduations you know are
coming up.
At this point, you have some blank spaces. That’s your usable times. If you see a pattern, like
4-6 in the evening every day, you can designate that your writing time. Block it out as non-
negotiable time. If you live with others, confer with them about that time. Treat it like you are
taking a part-time job and will be away from home during those hours. Stick to it. If you don’t
treat your writing time as a priority, then why should they? But also, be considerate. If
sometimes, you need to pick up the kids from soccer practice because the other parent may
need to work, 4-6 might not work for you. Talk it over and negotiate some uninterrupted
writing time. I had a student who put on the door to her home office a sign that read, “Mommy
is at school. She cannot be reached until ___. At that time, you can talk to her.”
What made this work was that she did, in fact, come out at the time she set on the dot.
Usually, there were two kids and one husband standing at the door when she came out.
However, she got in her work time without disrespecting her family in the process.
You can even engage them in the process. A spouse or older children can be used as beta
readers to give you constructive feedback on your writing.
Reality-Based Planning
Now, you have a good sense of how many hours a month you will have available to work on
your writing. Reduce that number by 25%. The unexpected does arise. Some of it is not really
that unexpected. If you have kids, in winter you will have sick days with the kids. You will
probably also get sick.
I know for example an average of one day a week, I will not be feeling that well and my
performance will be reduced – sometimes to nothing.
Okay, so, this month, I have about 75 productive hours available for writing. Let’s call that 60
hour. About 30 of those hours are committed to ongoing projects. That leaves me 30 hours for
discretionary writing.
That’s my window of opportunity. The book I’m working on will have about 30,000 words. I
write about 1000 words an hour, so if I use all my discretionary time, I can complete my first
draft by the first week of August. If I pace myself and write in 15–20-minute sprints with half
hour breaks, I can increase my productivity to 1200 words an hour. So, it could be 20-25 hours.
But I’m sticking with 30 to give myself a buffer.
Now, I’m not going to tell you how many hours a day to work, what time to work, or the
frequency. Working every day at about the same time creates a habit of creative thought. It’s
easier to overcome that creative inertia. However, that’s not always possible for everyone.
You know your priorities, and it’s okay if your book is not your top priority. Just don’t expect
the same results as if it were your top priority.
With the knowledge you have after doing this type of analysis, you can create a realistic plan
for writing your book. I’d say figure an average of one to two thousand words per chapter.
That’s about four pages of copy. If you have 12 chapters, figure about 15-20,000 words. As you
begin to write you can readjust that estimate. There is no rule about how long a chapter needs
to be. So, Let’s say you are doing a 20,000-word book. You want to do it in a month, but your
weekends are packed. That means you must put in an average of about one hour a day each
weekday. That doesn’t have to be a single one-hour work session. It can be two half-hour
sessions, four quarter hour sessions, or six ten-minute writing sprints.
The important factor is not the specific time but the consistency. For instance, ten minutes a
day gets it done in 100 days. You could write three short books in a year at ten minutes a day.

Assignment: Create a tentative schedule allotting time each day to work on your book.
 Choosing a Marketable Topic
Yes, it is possible. I do it all the time. I’m just beginning a book for edupreneurs about how to
build an online class like an educational professional does it. You wouldn’t go to a plumber for
advice on growing roses. Why would you go to a marketing person for help creating an
educational vehicle? I have knowledge of both and 25 years of experience teaching online. So, I
thought I was perfectly positioned to write a different kind of book for edupreneurs one that
brought the best practices of education into the process and put student learning first.
And it makes marketing sense because if the student has a great experience and learns
something then they will take more classes and will tell others about you. So, it’s a win-win.
Now, what I just did was in about 100 words, I set forth three things.
1. The premise of the book
2. The need for the book
3. The audience for the book
That’s step one in this process

WHAT DO YOU DO WELL?

Obviously, you need to have a topic for your book. Choosing that topic will usually begin
with your own interests, skills, or hobbies. Do you have a great way to build cabinets? Do
people always ask you for your recipes? Do you have a great plan for investing in startups? Do
you have a way for people to relax? Well, then you have a topic for a book.
One good way to get started in choosing a topic is to take a sheet of paper and divide it into
five columns
In the first column, write down twenty things you do well. This is just brainstorming. List
everything you do well whether you think there’s a book in it or not. It might be climbing trees
or chasing rabbits out of your garden. Even if it sounds stupid write it down. Even something
weird can become a book or, if not, it may trigger something better.
In the second column, put a check mark next to each topic about which you have a lot of
information. This reduces the time you need to spend in research. For instance, I know a great
deal about creating online classes. I’ve been doing it for 25 years. I have training in it. I have
written about it. I did an entire sabbatical creating a guide for the teachers at our college on
creating their own online classes. So, that column would be checked. What do you know a lot
about?
In the third column, check off each topic about which magazines and books are published
and about which there are Facebook or Linked in Groups. This helps you understand the
market for the book. Not so much if there is a market. If you are interested, there are others
who are as well. You just want to know where they are.
 In the third column, check those topics that you have taught people or shown them how to
do. Also, do people ask you about these things. Are you the one your friends always come to
when they want help with their computers? Do they ask you for financial advice? Do they seek
you out with their relationship issues?
In the last column, make a check mark next to things you enjoy doing. Just because you are
good at something doesn’t mean you enjoy it. I’m good at sales, writing and designing ads, but I
really don’t enjoy it. And I don’t put this last because it is least. I put it last because I think it is
the most important thing you are doing. You are going to spend 30-50 hours on this project,
why choose something you don’t enjoy?

Take everything on your list that has at least three check marks and list them on a separate
page. Let this list sit for a few hours or overnight. Then come back to that list. For each topic
write down the pros and cons of working on that one.
Let’s take my book.

Pros – Educational Entrepreneurship is a boom industry

I know a lot about this. I could cannibalize other things I’ve written on the subject to reduce
writing time.
I am passionate about the subject.
Cons –
A big part of my potential market care more about the money than the education. They see
classes as a way to sell something else. I’d have to address this in the book.
I’d have to be very specific in my promotion of the book. That would take more time.
I’d be giving away some of my secrets to creating great classes.

Now I look at these and say, “Those cons are weak. I had to work hard to even come up with
them.” So, in my mind the pros outweigh the cons.
You should be able to eliminate or defer some. For instance, I know that I can practically
write this in my sleep. I know I have written some of it in my students’ sleep.
Finally, I look at what remains and ask myself, “As I look at this list, which one jumps out at
me as the one I would like to do right now?”
That’s the one I choose. I can work on the others at another time.
Now, let’s move on to zeroing in on your subtopic. Even with a book, you need to narrow
down the topic. For instance, if I chose to write a book about online education, I would need
hundreds if not thousands of pages to cover the field. I would need to discuss the research on
its effectiveness, its history, the various factors that affect online learning, theories related to
the effectiveness of different educational venues, as well as how to create a course and the
details of using each of the learning platforms. It would be a life project and not a simple short
eBook.
 So, I’m narrowing the topic. I start by finding my niche. To whom am I writing. Hint:
Everyone is not a good response. Even everyone in your field is not good. Who needs what you
have to say most?
For my book, it’s the beginning edupreneur developing his or her first class. My secondary
niche is the edupreneur who has found the Brag-Sell-Teach-Upsell organization of many
courses to be unsatisfying to them and their students. I’m not targeting people who have been
in the field a long time. Even if they are ineffective teachers, they are making money and they
are going to be loath to change a “winning” strategy.
Also, I’m not writing to professional institution-based educators creating their first classes.
Much of what I will be covering is “well, duh” to them because they learned that in college or in
the years of teaching in the classroom.
So, once I have identified my primary readership, I create a single sentence that
encompasses the basic purpose of the book. For this, it is this: “Beginning teachers in the
commercial self-improvement industry will learn how to create a course which emphasizes
student achievement based on the research and expertise of experts in online learning.”
Next, I write a sentence or two about how this differs from other books on the subject.
“Other books do one of two things. They show professional educators associated with
educational institutions how to create online courses which fulfill institutional academic
requirements, or they emphasize using courses as a vehicle to generate wealth. This book is
written for the freelance teacher, but still brings the best thinking and best practices for
education generated by research and experience of nonprofit based learning to the commercial
edupreneur.”
That is going to be the focus which will make this book stand out when we get to the
marketing stage.

Assignment: Choose and refine the topic you plan to use for your first book.
 Creating a Preliminary Chapter Outline
You have lots of information floating around in your head. The problem is that you don’t
know where to start in organizing it. You want to start with a preliminary chapter outline. One
way to do this is with an exercise I call “Card Stacking.” It is one of six different organizational
techniques I teach writing and oral communication students. However, this is the one I return
to over and over. Although recently, I’ve created a computer-based approach since my fingers
have gotten stiff with age and it’s hard for me to hold a pen or pencil.
It's quite simple. Start with a stack of file cards. Relax your body and mind. Write one major
topic you want to cover in your book. For instance, here is the list I have for my book:

Education Comes First

It’s All About the Students (student characteristics)
Creating a Learning Plan
Student Learning Objectives
Course Content
Course Materials
Learning Venues
Learning Strategies
Learning Modalities
Evaluation and Feedback
Getting Out the Word
Webinars, Challenges, and Zoom. Oh My!
Pricing and Other Boring Stuff
Final Words

These are in order because I have written on this subject often and after 70 books, you gain
a few organizational skills. But don’t try to think in order. Just jot down the ideas as they come.
And jot them all down even if they don’t seem to make sense or fit. Just write them down.
Once you have a bunch of cards with one topic on each card, we need to sort them. First,
make three piles one is for topics you want to include, one on topics you know you don’t want
to include, and third for topics you feel unsure about. Do this quickly. Don’t ponder over them,
just write them down.
Let them set for an hour or so, then go back and sort through your unsures. if you are still
unsure then you should remove that card. In fact, most of those cards will be eliminated. Now,
look at all the cards that you have. Make two piles. One pile or cards that represent main
topics. For instance, one of my main topics is learning strategies. A subtopic under that might
be video lessons. So, I would put learning strategies in one pile and video lessons into another
pile.
 Now, take the words that represent main topics. Leaf through them and find the topic that
to you logically comes first. Lay that card face down on the table in front of you. Now, ask this
question, “Which topic logically follows the topic I just laid down?” Find that card. Then ask the
same question. Find that card, lay it down, and do the same for the rest of the cards.
Take the cards in the subtopics pile and slip them in behind the main topics that they belong
with.
You now have your preliminary chapter outline. What I suggest you do now is open your
word processor, type each of those headings in order, style them as heading one, then under
each heading hit control-enter (command-enter on the Mac) creating a new page for each
topic.
Now, click the editing icon on the ribbon. Choose find and click on heading. You will see an
entire outline of your book. If you add your subtopics as heading two, they will show up as links
under the main heading.
By moving those headings up and down you can move an entire section or chapter of your
book from one place to another. By clicking on the heading, you can move from one chapter to
the other. Remember, you don't have to write this book in order. If you feel like working on
Chapter Seven and you haven't completed Chapter Three yet, go for it. This makes it easy for
you to jump around.
So, there you have it a quick way to create your preliminary outline. In our next lesson will
start filling in that outline.

Assignment: Create your preliminary chapter outline.

 Filling in Your Chapter Outline
If you have been following the previous posts, you now have a bare bones chapter outline. In
this lesson let’s put some meat on those bones.
I’m going to show you four ways to outline the individual chapters. Since we are all different
and think in different ways, I suggest you try each of these and see what works best for you.

Card Stacking 2.0

We used this technique to create the preliminary outline. You can do the same for each
chapter. In case, you missed that post search the group under my name
But the basics are to simply jot down any thought that comes to mind about something to go
into the chapter. Put only one idea/subtopic on each card. Wait a couple of hours or even
overnight. Then come back and eliminate anything that on reflection you don’t need. I suggest
you go back and look at the premise idea statement you wrote down when refining your topic.
If it does not advance that narrow topic description or does not relate directly to your chosen
niche readership, you need to cut it.
Then shuffle the cards around until you have a logical sequence of ideas to cover.

Topic Spoking.
For those who are visually oriented, this can be a great approach. You start by putting a
circle in the middle of a page. Draw lines out from the circle like spokes on a wheel. Then start
brainstorming, write a different subtopic on each spoke. If you think about something that
should go under that subtopic, draw out another line. Just keep adding things.
For instance, in the book I’m writing, I’m working on writing student learning outcomes. So, I
have these topics
What are SLOs?
Definition

Why are they Important?

Keeps the course student-centered
Focuses on observable behavior
Creates a basis for evaluating the effectiveness of student achievement and the value of
 the course.
Helps identify the scope of the course and identify specific lessons

Types of SLOs
Cognitive
Affective
Psychomotor
These would all be on lines emanating from the center of the “wheel.”

The Interview
This is a simple one. It starts with a series of questions. Imagine you are the student. What
questions would you like to have answered about this topic. And use that imagination. Visualize
that person who matches the profile of your perfect reader.
Pretend you are being interviewed by that person about the topic for that chapter.
For instance, I might have something like this:
What are student learning objectives?
Why are they important?
Why is it important they be behavioral?
Why are they better than some teaching objectives?
What types of SLOs are there?
What are cognitive objectives?
What are affective objectives?
What are Psychomotor Objectives?
What is Bloom’s Taxonomy and how does it help the online teacher?
Put these questions in order. Make some notes under each of them.

Freewriting
This is a concept that was taught by Peter Elbow. He worked with students who had trouble
with any form of outlining. It takes time to do but can be a good method for those who are not
linear thinkers.
You sit down with a blank piece of paper. You set a timer for 20 minutes. You just start
writing down in stream-of-consciousness fashion everything you can think of about the topic of
the chapter. Write fast. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, coherence, or even if it makes
sense. Just empty all your knowledge on the page. Don’t edit yourself. Don’t even worry if you
are on topic. Just keep writing. If you run into a block, write anything even if it is nonsense the
important thing is to keep writing until the timer goes off.
Now, put that page away and take a 20-minute break. Think about anything other than the
topic. Watch TV, read a book, listen to music, get a snack, talk to a friend. It doesn’t matter. You
are letting your mind work in the background.
 After that break, do the same thing again. You will notice a bit more coherence. However,
continue to just write whatever comes to mind. Don’t try to make sense. Just write what you
feel like writing.
Take another 20-minute break. Free write a third time for 20 minutes.
Take another break for 20-minutes. After that, look at what you wrote in the third
freewriting session. You might even want to make some notes about what seems to be working
or what is missing. If the timer went off and you needed more time to finish, make a note of
that.
Now, sit down and write in a more careful manner. Still do it quickly and don’t worry about
grammar, spelling, punctuation. If you can’t think of a word, just leave a blank or use whatever
word comes to mind even if it isn’t the right word. If you ran out of time during the last writing
session add extra time, but don’t go much over 30 minutes.
If you need more time to write, take a break of at least 15 minutes and pick up where you
left off. This allows for covert organization in which the mind organizes your writing without
you even noticing.
So, there you have it. Four ways to organize each chapter. Put it all together and you have a
chapter outline you can use to write your first draft.
Assignment: Using your favorite method, create a detailed chapter outline.
 The First Draft
The hard part is over. The hard part about writing any book is the planning. At this point in
my career, I do a lot of that planning in my head, but I’ve been doing this for a long time. I don’t
advise it until you have a score of books or so written. But the planning always takes place
whether on paper or behind the eyes.
Once you have narrowed your topic, isolated your niche, gathered the information, and
organized it, you have done most of the work. If you have reached that point, congratulations.
Now, it’s time to write the first draft.
The key words for the first draft are quick and dirty. The mistake too many people make
writing a first draft is they think they were back in high school writing pressure compositions.
The teacher puts a topic on the board and in 45 minutes you are supposed to write a well-
organized, thoughtful, article with clarity, style, and perfect spelling and punctuation.
I don’t know of any professional writer who writes like that. The first thing you need to do is
lock up your inner editor in a soundproof room. You need to keep it safe because you will need
those tools later but writing your first draft needs to be done with as little attention to the
niceties of the “neatness counts” school of writing. It does, but not yet.
Write quickly and don’t slow down. If you can’t think of the right word, just put in a blank
and keep going. You can cogitate on the right word during the editing stage. The same if you
run across some piece of information you need like a statistic or the proper spelling of a proper
noun.
Another misconception is that you must write the book in order. In other words, you can’t
write chapter two until you write chapter one. I say, sometimes my editing process resembles
assembling a piece of Ikea furniture with the chapters scattered all over the place.
Right now, (well tomorrow) I’m working on the chapter on Student Learning Outcomes in my
book on creating online courses. That’s chapter three or four. I don’t have the book open right
now. That’s tomorrow’s task. I’ve been doing research on it, and I just feel impelled to work on
it right now. I’m pumped for that chapter. I know, it sounds dull, but I guarantee you, when it’s
finished online teachers will be excited about SLOs.
Of course, part way through, I might get some ideas about course venues and write a few
paragraphs about, say, email-based courses.
Keep the creative juices flowing. If you find yourself blocked, try working on a different
chapter for a few hours and go back to where you left off. Often, that will shake loose the block.
Feel free to write stupid things, to write poorly, to not even make sense. Just keep writing.
Back when I worked in my office instead of my recliner chair, I had a sign up that read, “I Can
Always Rewrite.”
No one will see this draft except you. You are just trying to get the book written. Once you
have something written, you can edit it. You have reached the top of the mountain, and it’s all
downhill from there.
 So, get started writing.

Assignment: Take the next 10 days and write 1000 words a day or one hour a day if that
works best for you. Keep writing until you finish your book. Put off the editing until you have a
complete first draft.
 Edit Your Book
Now, we get to the least fun part about writing. At least, I consider it the least fun.
Remember, that inner editor you locked away, let it out of its cage.
At this point, you have the first draft. If you are starting as a writer, it will likely be terrible.
But like they say, “Every masterpiece began as a disaster piece.” Fortunately, nobody else must
see that version.
I see editing as a series of increasingly fine filters. I advise a three-stage process:
Stage One: Macro editing
Stage Two: Content Editing
Stage Three: Proofreading
Since I have written books about each of these stages, this will need to be a quick summary,
but it should be enough for your first book.

Macro-Editing
This refers to editing the big picture. You aren’t worried about sentence structure, spelling,
punctuation, or even the flow of the words on the page. What you pay attention to at this stage
are the following
Chapter Order
Should the chapters be in the order you created when organizing the chapter outline? Is
there any topic or subtopic that should be covered that wasn’t? Are any chapters superfluous
or don’t connect with your premise or your niche readership?
Sub-topics
Check the subtopics within each chapter. Is there something missing? Do they need
reordering?
Paragraph Order
Do you need to swap out paragraphs? Are there paragraphs you can delete? Do you require
each paragraph?

Content Editing
Content editing focuses on what happens in the paragraphs. Here are some content
concerns:
Sentence Structure
Try reading your book out loud. I could give you instruction on parallel structure, subject-
verb agreement, uncertain subject and object pronouns, and a bunch of other things. I have
taught entire courses on these. However, 90% of the time, you can feel that something doesn’t
work if you read your sentences aloud without knowing the terminology.
By the time you are ten or twelve years old, we instinctively understand our native tongue’s
syntax. You might not understand the concept of “deep structure” (Even after graduate
courses, I’m not sure I do), but the language centers in your brain do instinctively.
Fact-Checking
I mixed up Io and Europa in one of my science fiction stories. Can you guess what the main
discussion among my reviewers on Amazon was? Right. Not the storyline, not the characters,
not the realism of a futuristic culture, but why I didn’t understand the difference between the
two moon’s geological composition.
And they were right. I should have been more careful. Facts matter. Make sure that any
statistics you quote come from legitimate, reputable sources. Include the references of those
statistics. Check any quotes for accuracy and sources. Many things are attributed to Lincoln,
Einstein, the Bible, Ben Franklin, and others that those luminaries never said.
Don’t reduce your credibility by making a mistake that a simple Google search could prevent.

Proof Reading
Okay, I admit this is my least favorite part of writing. I have degrees in English and
Journalism. I have graduate studies in both. I have taught both. I had teachers with grading
scales that would reduce any grade to an automatic B for one error in a story, C for two, D for
three, and F for any more than three errors.
I must admit most of what I publish now would have trouble getting a passing grade. But
most of it is informal. However, I become much more thorough when it comes to a book.
First, I start with two grammar checking programs. I use the internal “editor” program in MS
Word. I follow that with a scan from the free Grammarly plug-in for Word. I don’t accept all
their suggestions. Sometimes they mess with style. Sometimes the demands of the sound and
sense of a sentence matter more than some arcane grammatical rule. But remember, you need
to know the rules to break them effectively. If Gene Roddenberry had used Grammarly, he
would have been flagged for “to boldly go where no one has gone before” because it is a split
infinitive.
Secondly, I read it myself. Reading it aloud or listening to it being read by the computer can
help to significantly spot errors. Word has a built-in text-to-speech function. This way, I can
catch things the computer missed.
Third, I run the automated grammar checkers a second time. Sometimes the changes I make
manually are as flawed as the original.
Finally, I do one more manual read-through.
Find a Beta Reader
After doing all you can, find one or two people whose judgment you trust to read and
critique what you wrote. You can give them a list of questions you feel are essential for the
reader to have answered.
For instance, with my book about creating online courses, I would want my readers to flag
anything they didn’t understand because I used too much insider jargon specific to either
education or entrepreneurship. I want this to be accessible. So, I’d include that question in my
instructions to the beta readers.
A good beta reader is someone like your niche reader, if possible. It should be someone
willing to give you honest, specific positive and negative critiques. Someone who loves
everything you do or someone who criticizes everything you do is not a good beta reader.

Okay, when you finish with all that, you are ready to publish. You will need to do two things:
Create a cover and upload it to Kindle. Stay Tuned!

Assignment: Take the next five to ten days to edit your book.
 Build a Simple Book Cover in Ten Minutes
This is admittedly a short cut, but it does allow to create a professional book cover without
having any graphics art experience in ten minutes or less. This is perfect for what I call “instant
books.” These are books you put out in a timely manner because of some urgency. For instance,
you might have been asked to speak at a conference and you want to provide the attendees the
text of your workshop in an eBook format.
This cover technique is simplicity itself. It can be done using any photo editing program. I’m
demonstrating using Pixlr. It’s a free program. I do pay for the premium features and mostly to
remove the ads, but I’ve created many book covers using the free version. I have Photoshop
and some other more expensive programs. Although, you can get Photoshop as a standalone
program for about $10 a month or as part of the Creative Cloud for $54 a month. If you plan to
do a lot of publishing, that’s a good deal.
However, there are many free online options. Pixlr is one I use.

When you open Pixlr, you are given the option of Pixlr X and Pixlr E. The latter is the
advanced version of the program. Don’t be afraid of that. You don’t need to know all the bells
and whistles of the program to do what we are doing. Open Pixlr E and you get this screen:

Under the “open image” button, choose the option “Create new.”

This takes you to another screen.

 The screen likely won’t look like this but will be shorter. You will need to hover your cursor
over the tiny three dots in the middle at the bottom and drag the window open. You won’t see
the colors until you turn on the background button and click on the big white oval.
Set the width at 1600 px and the height at 2500. Those are the recommended dimensions.
Set the background color you want for your book cover. I chose black. I use that color because it
is part of my branding for short books on writing and publishing. Then click “CREATE.”

The black square in the middle is what your book cover looks like now. But we will change
that. In the layers panel on the right you will see a plus sign. Click on it.
 Click on the image icon. Choose an image from your computer. To avoid any copyright
issues, I suggest you use a stock image service.

I chose one I had downloaded previously. This one has a calendar with a date circled. On the
calendar is written “Write Your Own Book.” I thought that was perfect. Choose photos that
communicate three things about the book: the theme or premise, the nature or genre of the
book, and the tone of the book.
This image communicates that the work is about writing a book by a deadline, that it is
informational in nature, and that the tone is that of a no-nonsense step-by-step guide.
The original image may be so large that it fills the whole cover. On Pixlr, use the Zoom slider
in the panel on the right, and shrink the image until you see the “handles” at the corners of a
large box. Grab one of the corners and drag the dot diagonally until the box looks small enough
to fit approximately in the center of the book cover like this:

You will probably want the space at the top to be a bit larger than at the bottom. The title
goes there and your name at the bottom.
Hover over the picture and you will see something that looks like a cross made out of
arrows. That shows that you can drag the picture with your mouse. Adjust it so that the top
section of the cover is about twice the size of the bottom section. That’s just an estimate. Use
your eyes. Trust your eyes. If it looks balanced to you, then it will to others.
Next, click the plus button in the layers panel and choose “Text.” You will see a box appear in
the middle of the screen. It can sometimes be small. So you really need to look for it. It has in
the middle of it the words lorem ipsom in the middle. That’s just place holder copy.
Drag the box to the top of the book cover. You need to set the fill color. You will see that in
the toolbar at the top of the screen for your text. Since I’m using a dark background, I’m going
to use a lighter color. If you have a lighter background color then use a darker color for your
typeface. You also have an option to choose the typeface you want. Some of the typefaces are
only available for those who have a premium subscription, but most of them are available to
you, and you generally want to stick to something simple. I have chosen to go with a simple
sans serif font. In general, you don't want something very fancy. Remember somebody is going
to see your book on kindle for about two to three seconds you want that title to jump out at
them. It needs to be easy to read. There are some simple script fonts that look a little bit fancier
if that communicates the mood of your book. But mostly you want to stick to something like
what I have in this example or something like times new Roman for something with a serif font
style.

Once you have the box placed where you want it to be, you need to type in your title.
Double click on the words “lorem ipsum” to highlight them. Now you can start typing in your
title. Mine is “How to Write a Book a Month.”
I can adjust the size by dragging down the blue bar in the middle of the box at the bottom. I
can also adjust it by clicking on “Size” in the toolbar at the top of the screen You can set the
alignment, by clicking on “Format” so you can choose to center, align left, or align right the text.
If you want a sub-title in smaller letters, just repeat the process and position the new text
box under the larger title. Do the same to add your name to the bottom.
Here’s what I came up with
 Now simply hit file and save, and you have your book cover ready to use.
This is simple and easy to do. If you want to be a bit more creative without having to go to
art school, Kindle has a built-in cover creator. We’ll look at that in the next lesson.

Homework: Create a book cover using this technique.

 Basics of Kindle Cover Creator
You don't have to be a tech-savvy graphic artist to create a compelling cover. I marvel at
what is available free of charge on the web that one can learn to use in a few minutes.
Sometimes I shake my head and wish I had these tools back in the day when I was working in
advertising. I would spend days doing what I can do in a few keystrokes today.
One great tool for the indie publisher is the Kindle Cover Creator. It's so simple to use.
When you upload to Kindle, you will include information about the title, subtitle, and author
of the book. The Kindle Cover Creator uses this information to get you started on creating a
cover for your book. Just click the button that reads "Use Cover Creator”, and you get this
screen:

Just click "Continue" and you will see this:

 First, you need to either get an image or choose not to use one. If you want to use an image,
you can choose from the image gallery or a folder on your computer.
I select my photo and get the following screen.

Now, I can choose one of these as the starting point for my design.

I decided to choose this one. However, I want to change the styling of the title. I just click on
the title, and I get this toolbar. It is just like a toolbar on your word processor. I can boldface,
italicize, change the color, style, and size of the font. Additionally, I can adjust the alignment for
center, right, left, or full justification.
 Now, I want to style the subtitle that the program automatically inserted, but it is covered by
the text bar in this picture.

That looks okay to me, so I don't do any adjustments. Now, we have our final copy.

That is all there is to it. Now, we used mostly the default settings on this. In our next lesson,
we will learn how to customize everything from layout to color scheme to make your cover
design truly yours.
Customizing Kindle Cover Creator

In the last chapter, we introduced you to the Kindle Cover Creator. You learned how to use a
set template to create a professional-looking cover in a few minutes. However, some of you
may be thinking as you look at this screen:

"That's only 10 basic designs. I can change the picture, but that's it. And four of them don't
even have a picture."
That's where you are wrong. You have many options for customizing each of these designs.
Today, as I am writing this, I am working on a new cover design for a book called The Ten
Commandments: Operating Instructions for the Soul. I only charge $3.95 per book. I get $2.10
per book. If I spend $200 for a professional book cover, or even $40 for a premade one, it's
going to take me a long time to pay for that book cover from my royalties, if I ever do. If I don't
show a profit, I'm out of business.
In this case, I bought a stock photo for $5.00. That's all I will spend on this book cover. I have
another book coming out this month.
To get started (and you can do this right now with a test book or a work in progress) go to
Kindle Direct Publishing register with Kindle, and enter a title and author's name. Scroll down
and click on the Kindle Cover Creator link.
 You'll get this screen:

Click on choose image "from my computer." When you do, the program pastes it into the
starting templates for the project. Don't worry, if they don't look exactly right you can resize the
photo and change the layout and Text design.
When you see a design that you want to modify, just click on it. I'm modifying the one with
the title in a dark square above the picture. I used this style in two previous books. It is the
same base, but I want the new book cover to look entirely different.
The first thing I need to do is play with the colors.

I want to go with earth tones to coordinate with the tans and browns in the image. You can
choose a standard color scheme or reset the background color, accent color, and text color
from one of close to 100 different colors. I tried several colors before I found the one that
looked the best.
Next, you can adjust your layout. Here's the original:
 That's okay, but I used it on a different Bible study, and I'm going for a different look this
time. Therefore, I can click on the icon at the bottom of the screen and choose a different
layout:

Each design on Cover Creator has a set of options based on the original design, and each set
of options is different. That's 80 different layouts if you include the non-image options.
I decided I wanted the tablets a bit more centered. Therefore, I took the sixth option.
 That produced this design:

This was before I changed the colors. This was about the design I wanted, but I didn't feel
the title stood out sufficiently. Next, I turned my attention to the text. I clicked on the text icon,
and I got this:
 On the left, you can choose from many good readable fonts. If you click the down arrow next
to "Auto Fit," you can adjust the size. Of course, you have boldface and italics. You can highlight
any of the text and format it individually for color, style, and size. The three-D-looking "A" is a
control that will add a slight drop shadow.
You can't move the text boxes around. You must work within them. You don't have the same
control you will have when we discuss using a more powerful image-editing program like GIMP,
Photoshop, or Pixlr Editor. However, this is a fast way to create a basic, attractive professional
looking book cover.
You can adjust the size of the photo in the photo box. I did a bit more adjusting and ended
up with this:

It's simple, clean lines. The title is readable even in the thumbnail. The tables of stone
provide a focal point for the cover. It took me about a half hour to create for $5.00. I will only
have to sell 15 units to pay for this cover.
 Publishing Your Book on Kindle
Now, we are winding up the journey of this book we have been writing. It’s been written and
edited. We have a cover. But we need to put it out into the world. That means creating a file we
can upload to Kindle.
At this point, most of my students have images in their minds of writing all sorts of code and
go running for Google to look up someone like me to do all that “technical” stuff. And they will
often pay hundreds of dollars for something that can be done by anyone right inside their word
processor.
There is a free program from Kindle that can prepare a file you can use for both eBook and
print. If you plan to create a print version, I advise using that program. However, for an eBook,
it takes less time to just as easy to just use a word document. This also has the advantage of
having a good, formatted source if you want to create EPUB and/or PDF files.

Before You Write

You can save a great deal of time by preparing the original document in a certain way before
you begin to even write the book. Here are a few pre-writing tips.
1. Add pages at the beginning for title, copyright, table of contents, dedication, and
acknowledgements if you will be having those pages as front matter.
2. Modify the look of Heading 1 in your style menu on Word. (Note: you can use any
number of word processors. I even did this in Google Docs. However, I’ll be using Word
as my example here because it is the industry standard. You can adapt the basics to your
word processor.

To do this, right-click on the tile with the heading. One of your options is to modify.

You will have many options for choosing the font family, weight, size, color, alignment,
and more.

My suggestion is to keep the fonts simple. Arial, Helvetica, Fira Sans, Verdana, Times
New Roman are popular choices. Remember, though, that people usually change the
default fonts on their devices, so a lot of fancy formatting is lost.

You should also click on the “format” button at the left bottom of the dialog box. Click
on “paragraph” and check the indentation. You want it set to zero for a heading. For the
“normal” style, set it at about .25 inches.
 You also want to decide if you want to add a space between paragraphs. For fiction, I
check the box to NOT add a space between paragraphs. Sometimes with nonfiction
how-to oriented books, I leave the space, but without the indentation. Just go with your
preference.

When you finish, if you want these to be your settings for all books, just click the button
“apply to new documents based on this style.”

You can also use this same approach to create special styles like sub-headings.
3. Use Heading 1 for every chapter heading, heading 2 for sub-headings, and so on.
4. Do NOT set any headers, footers, or page numbers. Page numbers are irrelevant in an
eBook. People change the size of the fonts, the margins, the line spacing, and the fonts.
They also may be reading your book on a Kindle eReader in several sizes, a smartphone,
a tablet, or on a laptop. Your text must be like water that can adapt to any vessel.

That header on page 5 in your word document may end up in the middle of the page on
page 35 on the smartphone someone is using. This happened frequently when eBooks
were first being created by larger publishers. They just tried to convert their PDFs for
the print book into a MOBI or EPUB format.
5. If your book requires tables, create those tables in a separate document and use the
Snipping tool in Windows or the equivalent screen capture program in the Mac, to
create an image of the table.

Tables don’t always convert well in an eReader or mobile app especially in smaller
screens. So, we will just treat them as an image.
6. Keep your finger away from “enter.” Only use the enter key at the end of a paragraph.
Do not hit the enter key at the end of individual lines. When you do, you end up with
the text looking weird in anything other than a screen that’s about 8.5 x 11 inches. Let
word wrap do its thing.

Handling Images
Don’t try to flow type around an image in your book. That doesn’t always show up well. Your
best bet is to hit enter twice. No more than that. Then add another two enters after the image.

Don’t get fancy

You might like those little fluons, those little design elements sometimes placed at the
bottom of a page. However, except for those included in the “wingdings” font on your
computer, anything else shows up in a white box. This is alright if the reader uses the default
white background, but many of us use a colored background or even white on black.
Keep it simple.

Creating a Hyperlink Table of Contents.

Go back to the page you set aside for the table of contents (TOC). Add a heading to that page
and place the cursor where you want to listings to appear.
Click on References, then on Table of Contents. Go to the bottom and click on custom.
Uncheck the box for page numbers. Be sure the box for “hyperlinks” is checked.
You can set the number of levels you want to have in your TOC. Each level is a heading style.
The top will be heading 1. You should use this for every Chapter. If you want the sub-heads to
be included, set the settings for two levels. If you have sub-sub-headings, then leave it at three,
if you want all levels.
I usually set it at one level. I have no desire to include the sub-sections. However, your book
may be different.
When you hit enter, Word does its magic and fills in the table of contents including links.
You need to tell Kindle that this is the table of contents to use. So, click on insert, and then
on bookmark. Click add new bookmark and give it the name “toc” (no quotation marks).

Set starting point

Where do you want people to start reading by default? People get annoyed if they must go
through a bunch of pages just to get to the start. So, I always set the starting point at the
introduction or the first chapter.
To do this, put the cursor on the page where you want to start, click on insert, then on
bookmark, and add a bookmark “start” (no quotation marks.)

Add back material.

You might have a bibliography, appendices, and other back materials. Add them. If you want
them to appear in the table of contents use heading 1 for the title of each page.
One important thing to include is a list of other books you might have along with a link to
their sales pages on Amazon. Now, we come to a sticking point. Some reading apps don’t make
the direct Amazon links live. The best workaround is to create short links at a place like bit ly.
You could also include links to your social media, email, podcasts, YouTube channel,
websites. You can also include excerpts from other books. However, don’t use any overt
advertising. Amazon frowns on that. Just direct them to your website or social media for the
sales pitches.
 Now, you have a book you can upload to Kindle. In fact, this document also works for Barnes
Nobel and Kobo.
You can create a PDF right inside of Word simply by adding a page to the front with your
cover image.
I won’t go into setting up your account on Kindle Direct Publishing, there is a simple tutorial
that takes you through that process. Follow the prompts. It isn’t that difficult.
If you want to create mobi, EPUB, and PDF files for your own website, I suggest using a free
open-source program called Calibre. It’s easy to use, but beyond the scope of this article to go
into details.

Assignment: Upload your book to Kindle.

 Your 30-Day Journal
It is important to stay on task. Keeping a journal of your activities helps. Each day, record the
following: Date, Time spent on Task, a short description of what you accomplished, record
anything you are particularly pleased with. Record anything you struggled with. What can you
do better tomorrow?
You can use a regular notebook, legal pad, blank book, or online journal. If you prefer, you
can download a pdf or docx file for this purpose.

Good luck in your efforts.