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From Idea to Published in One Week

Idea threads

TheDillon__

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Hey all!

This is a quick tale of the last week of my life which I used to take an idea from my head, create a book out of it, and publish it on the Kindle Store in one week. Before we dive into the fun stuff in this post, I just want to clarify that I didn't invent this process. Rather it's something I pieced together with the help of some quick googling, and a good few posts from the intelligent people of this forum. I achieved a big goal last night, and I have you all to thank for it.

On February 7th, I decided that I wanted to create something, predominantly, to help my girlfriend. There were a great number of ways that an improved, healthy, driven mindset could benefit her on the regular basis, and I needed some vehicle by which I could help her attain that. I have spent the last six years of my life dedicated to furthering myself into a strong headspace, and thanks to the likes of men like our own MJ, I made it happen for myself. Now - I wanted to replicate that success in her.

She's not one for my lecturing (it's gotten me in trouble before!) However, she loves to read so I thought - why not a book?

February 7th, I opened a new account and created my first document with MindMup, a freemium mind mapping software that can be integrated with Google Drive. I set a timer for two minutes, and I created the outline of what the contents of the book would be - just thinking off the top of my head. This was the first step of the process, and reminded me of a number of tools that I would actually later include in the book itself.

After I created the outline, I thought that my girlfriend may not be the only one to benefit from this book. After a bit of digging, I found this post from @alpha1987 which detailed the process of finding a niche on Amazon. I was very surprised to find that the phrase "Organize Yourself" headed less that 150 results on the Kindle Store! With this in mind I scribbled down the clunky working title of "Maestro: Organize Yourself Like A Champion" and gave myself a deadline. I knew of Parkinson's Law, and I knew that it would take me the exact amount of time I gave myself to complete this book. With that in mind, I set my deadline for the next week. I would be finished on Valentine's Day.

Thus began the writing process. Though very early on, I started to get concerned that I wasn't moving fast enough! My typing speed is so slow, and it's very easy for me to lose my train of thought whilst writing. Cue the thought process: there must be a better way! And sure enough, there is.

I pulled out my phone and opened up the Voice Memos app. I noticed that I had performed better at articulating my thoughts if I was speaking, rather than typing. So I simply spoke the book out into my phone, and deleted a few apps to hold the few hours of audio it would turn out to be. Armed with my outline, I went bubble by bubble by bubble simply giving my two cents on each little topic that I had planned out - every now and then adding another sub-chapter that I had forgotten about earlier!

Then, post-recording, I had to turn that audio into words. What I had was an audiobook with bad recording quality. What I wanted, was an ebook. Initially I thought of outsourcing the transcription somewhere else, or simply biting and paying for the transcription, then I remembered that's right - I'm a broke college student! If I could've paid for a VA to transcribe my book, I would've bought groceries instead. Then, when there's a will there's a way, someone had turned my attention to VoiceBase - an enterprise transcription software typically used to keep text records of sales calls. And most importantly - they let me host 50 hours of audio for free just for signing up! That's a LOT of book I can convert!

So I went and popped in my audio. The process was quicker than I had expected it to be, with the full transcription being available within the hour. Though what I was given, of course, was a big wall of dry and shapeless text. I spent the better part of the next two days editing. Picking the font I wanted, setting up a table of contents, a dedications page, all of that.

Then, finally, I was ready to publish! Luckily, I had had unexplored ambitions of writing an ebook last year, and began the process of having Amazon verify my tax information. If you're looking at day one - go ahead and set up your Kindle Direct Publishing (kdp) account first. I set my niches, uploaded my manuscript, gave some keywords and a brief description of the book, and - oh yeah, I need a cover!

I simply went to Google and started searching for cover designs of some of my favorite books. Quickly popping one into Photoshop, I did enough rudimentary editing to make it my own and display my title, and uploaded it into the Maestro section of my KDP account.

Then, Amazon took about 60 seconds to sync everything and display to me a preview of what my book would look like - (I forgot to mention - I did all of the editing in Google Drive. Upon completion, simply title your document appropriately and save it as a .docx file, Amazon will convert it to the appropriate filetype for you.) Then I was on to pricing!

Amazon has two tiers for pricing your ebook: If you wish to earn a 75% commission on sales for your book, it must be priced between $2.99 and $9.99

Any price outside of that range, and you will default back to a 35% commission standpoint.

I chose the 35% commission, and am currently selling my book on the Kindle Store for $0.99 This in hopes that it will lead more people to buy early on, and leave some good reviews. After a month or two, I'm going to raise the price up to $3.99 and take the 75% option.

Now - I'm off to make my book known! My friends are starting to pick it up - often without me having to coerce them to do so. It really is a great feeling that I hope you get to experience for yourself.

If you have any questions, comments, or hate mail, drop it here! :)
 
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TheDillon__

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Small edit - the 75% tier I had mentioned is actually a 70% option.
 

4Ring_

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Well done!

I also read that thread and was inspired to begin writing my book. It's hard to stay motivated and keep all your thoughts in play. I find that when I'm not writing, my sub-conscious thoughts flare up new topics to cover in my book and I quickly run to my mac to jot them down in bullet point format so that I can return to them later and elaborate.

Did you use any promotional tools? FB ads? Amazon Ads? Google Analytics to track landing page visits? etc?
 

TheDillon__

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Well done!

I also read that thread and was inspired to begin writing my book. It's hard to stay motivated and keep all your thoughts in play. I find that when I'm not writing, my sub-conscious thoughts flare up new topics to cover in my book and I quickly run to my mac to jot them down in bullet point format so that I can return to them later and elaborate.

Did you use any promotional tools? FB ads? Amazon Ads? Google Analytics to track landing page visits? etc?

Thanks for commenting - it's really smart of you to jot down notes that pop into your head during the day! Don't fall into the trap of "I'll remember it later."

As for motivation - you can't rely on motivation to achieve your goals for you. Rely on effort and determination. Take a minute to visualize the success that you could potentially have once you've written your ebook - or how good it will feel to see your name next to a work on Amazon, or how good it feels to see others reading your work! (It feels awesome.)

Then - set a goal for your book that makes you uncomfortable. (Maybe something like "I have written an ebook in one week?") Then match your determination and match your efforts to make that happen.

I expand on both of these more in my book - and I also recommend "Awaken the Giant Within" by Tony Robbins; "Be Obsessed or Be Average" by Grant Cardone.

I have not started using paid promotions for my book yet, and still only have a handful of sales. However, having just been available for sale this morning, a few of my friends have made their purchases and are encouraging others on social media to do the same. I wish you all the luck with your ebook!
 
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MitchM

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Nov 15, 2016
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Hey all!

This is a quick tale of the last week of my life which I used to take an idea from my head, create a book out of it, and publish it on the Kindle Store in one week. Before we dive into the fun stuff in this post, I just want to clarify that I didn't invent this process. Rather it's something I pieced together with the help of some quick googling, and a good few posts from the intelligent people of this forum. I achieved a big goal last night, and I have you all to thank for it.

On February 7th, I decided that I wanted to create something, predominantly, to help my girlfriend. There were a great number of ways that an improved, healthy, driven mindset could benefit her on the regular basis, and I needed some vehicle by which I could help her attain that. I have spent the last six years of my life dedicated to furthering myself into a strong headspace, and thanks to the likes of men like our own MJ, I made it happen for myself. Now - I wanted to replicate that success in her.

She's not one for my lecturing (it's gotten me in trouble before!) However, she loves to read so I thought - why not a book?

February 7th, I opened a new account and created my first document with MindMup, a freemium mind mapping software that can be integrated with Google Drive. I set a timer for two minutes, and I created the outline of what the contents of the book would be - just thinking off the top of my head. This was the first step of the process, and reminded me of a number of tools that I would actually later include in the book itself.

After I created the outline, I thought that my girlfriend may not be the only one to benefit from this book. After a bit of digging, I found this post from @alpha1987 which detailed the process of finding a niche on Amazon. I was very surprised to find that the phrase "Organize Yourself" headed less that 150 results on the Kindle Store! With this in mind I scribbled down the clunky working title of "Maestro: Organize Yourself Like A Champion" and gave myself a deadline. I knew of Parkinson's Law, and I knew that it would take me the exact amount of time I gave myself to complete this book. With that in mind, I set my deadline for the next week. I would be finished on Valentine's Day.

Thus began the writing process. Though very early on, I started to get concerned that I wasn't moving fast enough! My typing speed is so slow, and it's very easy for me to lose my train of thought whilst writing. Cue the thought process: there must be a better way! And sure enough, there is.

I pulled out my phone and opened up the Voice Memos app. I noticed that I had performed better at articulating my thoughts if I was speaking, rather than typing. So I simply spoke the book out into my phone, and deleted a few apps to hold the few hours of audio it would turn out to be. Armed with my outline, I went bubble by bubble by bubble simply giving my two cents on each little topic that I had planned out - every now and then adding another sub-chapter that I had forgotten about earlier!

Then, post-recording, I had to turn that audio into words. What I had was an audiobook with bad recording quality. What I wanted, was an ebook. Initially I thought of outsourcing the transcription somewhere else, or simply biting and paying for the transcription, then I remembered that's right - I'm a broke college student! If I could've paid for a VA to transcribe my book, I would've bought groceries instead. Then, when there's a will there's a way, someone had turned my attention to VoiceBase - an enterprise transcription software typically used to keep text records of sales calls. And most importantly - they let me host 50 hours of audio for free just for signing up! That's a LOT of book I can convert!

So I went and popped in my audio. The process was quicker than I had expected it to be, with the full transcription being available within the hour. Though what I was given, of course, was a big wall of dry and shapeless text. I spent the better part of the next two days editing. Picking the font I wanted, setting up a table of contents, a dedications page, all of that.

Then, finally, I was ready to publish! Luckily, I had had unexplored ambitions of writing an ebook last year, and began the process of having Amazon verify my tax information. If you're looking at day one - go ahead and set up your Kindle Direct Publishing (kdp) account first. I set my niches, uploaded my manuscript, gave some keywords and a brief description of the book, and - oh yeah, I need a cover!

I simply went to Google and started searching for cover designs of some of my favorite books. Quickly popping one into Photoshop, I did enough rudimentary editing to make it my own and display my title, and uploaded it into the Maestro section of my KDP account.

Then, Amazon took about 60 seconds to sync everything and display to me a preview of what my book would look like - (I forgot to mention - I did all of the editing in Google Drive. Upon completion, simply title your document appropriately and save it as a .docx file, Amazon will convert it to the appropriate filetype for you.) Then I was on to pricing!

Amazon has two tiers for pricing your ebook: If you wish to earn a 75% commission on sales for your book, it must be priced between $2.99 and $9.99

Any price outside of that range, and you will default back to a 35% commission standpoint.

I chose the 35% commission, and am currently selling my book on the Kindle Store for $0.99 This in hopes that it will lead more people to buy early on, and leave some good reviews. After a month or two, I'm going to raise the price up to $3.99 and take the 75% option.

Now - I'm off to make my book known! My friends are starting to pick it up - often without me having to coerce them to do so. It really is a great feeling that I hope you get to experience for yourself.

If you have any questions, comments, or hate mail, drop it here! :)

Great stuff man. I started a little over a week ago and I have written about 65 pages so far with revisions. It's going to be in the fantasy genre, so at first a lot of it didn't flow right from me as I was inventing new words and making a new world. Now the process has really gotten a lot quicker.

How many pages did your book end up being, if you don't mind me asking?
 

TheDillon__

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Apr 11, 2016
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Great stuff man. I started a little over a week ago and I have written about 65 pages so far with revisions. It's going to be in the fantasy genre, so at first a lot of it didn't flow right from me as I was inventing new words and making a new world. Now the process has really gotten a lot quicker.

How many pages did your book end up being, if you don't mind me asking?

Wow - good work man! I couldn't imagine how I could apply this process to fiction writing - I'd love to hear your method!

My book ended up being smaller than I wanted it to be - somewhere around 25,000 words and somewhere between 100-120 pages. I'd give specifics, but my Kindle app is only showing my the "location," not the exact page number.

I would've liked it to be longer - but I feel I went in enough detail to share the information I wanted to share, without crossing into "fluffy" territory - then again, I could be totally wrong and the whole thing could make no sense!

Essentially, I published my rough draft as an MVP, and I'm hoping my readers will get back to me with their comments and critiques so that I can improve on a further edition. :)
 

MitchM

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Wow - good work man! I couldn't imagine how I could apply this process to fiction writing - I'd love to hear your method!

My book ended up being smaller than I wanted it to be - somewhere around 25,000 words and somewhere between 100-120 pages. I'd give specifics, but my Kindle app is only showing my the "location," not the exact page number.

I would've liked it to be longer - but I feel I went in enough detail to share the information I wanted to share, without crossing into "fluffy" territory - then again, I could be totally wrong and the whole thing could make no sense!

Essentially, I published my rough draft as an MVP, and I'm hoping my readers will get back to me with their comments and critiques so that I can improve on a further edition. :)

Really great stuff man. That's an impressive volume to push out in such a short period. I average about 4k words a day right now taking 3.5 hours each morning to write - 1.5 hours spent on editing.

This is the post that I made if you are interested in a mindset that works for fiction, although I think that a hybrid of what we both did would work, as speaking into voicememo and getting it transcribed would be great once you get the ball rolling. How to write a book in three weeks! + My experience
 
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Michał Kóska

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Good job! Don't forget to run the book promotions on KDP, you can do one per enrollment period. I have my boom there, I'm writing 2 more at this moment. One is intended to be a pure screenplay. I want Universal to buy it one day!:)
 

TheDillon__

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Apr 11, 2016
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Good job! Don't forget to run the book promotions on KDP, you can do one per enrollment period. I have my boom there, I'm writing 2 more at this moment. One is intended to be a pure screenplay. I want Universal to buy it one day!:)

Thanks for the tip about KDP - I'll have to take a look!
 

TheDillon__

Silver Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
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Apr 11, 2016
421
634
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DFW
Really great stuff man. That's an impressive volume to push out in such a short period. I average about 4k words a day right now taking 3.5 hours each morning to write - 1.5 hours spent on editing.

This is the post that I made if you are interested in a mindset that works for fiction, although I think that a hybrid of what we both did would work, as speaking into voicememo and getting it transcribed would be great once you get the ball rolling. How to write a book in three weeks! + My experience

Thanks for the kind words - I'll definitely be checking that thread out!
 
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4Ring_

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Thanks for commenting - it's really smart of you to jot down notes that pop into your head during the day! Don't fall into the trap of "I'll remember it later."

As for motivation - you can't rely on motivation to achieve your goals for you. Rely on effort and determination. Take a minute to visualize the success that you could potentially have once you've written your ebook - or how good it will feel to see your name next to a work on Amazon, or how good it feels to see others reading your work! (It feels awesome.)

Then - set a goal for your book that makes you uncomfortable. (Maybe something like "I have written an ebook in one week?") Then match your determination and match your efforts to make that happen.

I expand on both of these more in my book - and I also recommend "Awaken the Giant Within" by Tony Robbins; "Be Obsessed or Be Average" by Grant Cardone.

I have not started using paid promotions for my book yet, and still only have a handful of sales. However, having just been available for sale this morning, a few of my friends have made their purchases and are encouraging others on social media to do the same. I wish you all the luck with your ebook!

Thank you for the advice Dillon.

My concern isn't that I don't see the end-product, I do. I just want to do everything in my power to push a quality book - in my opinion, it will take much longer than one week. If the book is short then probably not, but I'm writing about a very specific topic and there's no book like it, so I have to set a perfect example. That means doing a ton of research about the industry, how to format properly, disclaimers/copyrights, embedded links that lead back to me, ad campaigns, word of mouth, creating the social profiles on all the main channels etc. Considering this is my first book, it's gonna take me at least 1 month.
 

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