Sam Beddall
New Contributor
So I was reading through Gary Halbert' s Boron Letters again today and one of the chapters hit me in the face.
Throughout the book Gary talks about building and selling targeted reports to various audiences via direct mail, with very specific tips on every step of the process. Albeit outdated in some of its vocab and approaches, it suddenly hit me that the underlying process that Gary was talking about was priceless for self-publishing authors!
The ridiculously simple steps looked something like this:
- Find a category/genre you are enthusiastic about and/or think you have a chance of selling in.
- Buy and read the top 3 or 4 books in your chosen category/genre and take notes on the best bits of each.
- Create a blueprint for your own book, weaving all of the best bits of your competitors' work into a coherent pattern that makes sense and helps your prospective readers in a much more concentrated (read: effective) way than the other books.
- Get writing. Fill in the blanks.
Artistic? Perhaps, yet not in the conventional sense. Smart? Indefinitely.
Oh and if you're writing fiction this way I strongly recommend you check out Lester Dent' s Master Fiction Plot formula (just google it). I'm using it at the moment while I'm travelling around Australia, scaling up the word counts he recommends in order to write something slightly larger
Now, just to sell your work... Plenty of threads to help with that.
Best of luck. Keep it simple. Remember that complexity breeds fear. Anticipation is your enemy. A calm mind is all you need.
Do it now!
Sam
Throughout the book Gary talks about building and selling targeted reports to various audiences via direct mail, with very specific tips on every step of the process. Albeit outdated in some of its vocab and approaches, it suddenly hit me that the underlying process that Gary was talking about was priceless for self-publishing authors!
The ridiculously simple steps looked something like this:
- Find a category/genre you are enthusiastic about and/or think you have a chance of selling in.
- Buy and read the top 3 or 4 books in your chosen category/genre and take notes on the best bits of each.
- Create a blueprint for your own book, weaving all of the best bits of your competitors' work into a coherent pattern that makes sense and helps your prospective readers in a much more concentrated (read: effective) way than the other books.
- Get writing. Fill in the blanks.
Artistic? Perhaps, yet not in the conventional sense. Smart? Indefinitely.
Oh and if you're writing fiction this way I strongly recommend you check out Lester Dent' s Master Fiction Plot formula (just google it). I'm using it at the moment while I'm travelling around Australia, scaling up the word counts he recommends in order to write something slightly larger
Now, just to sell your work... Plenty of threads to help with that.
Best of luck. Keep it simple. Remember that complexity breeds fear. Anticipation is your enemy. A calm mind is all you need.
Do it now!
Sam
Dislike ads? Become a Fastlane member:
Subscribe today and surround yourself with winners and millionaire mentors, not those broke friends who only want to drink beer and play video games. :-)
Access Restricted: Unlock 1,000,000+ Posts
Stop Peeking Through the Keyhole.
Open the Door.
You hit a wall because the best advice isn't free—it's earned. Since 2007, MJ DeMarco has been active here daily (99.9% active rate), building a war room for entrepreneurs who refuse to settle for mediocrity.
- Active Daily: Life-changing content posted dozens of times every day. No dead threads.
- MJ's Inner Circle: Direct access to the author of The Millionaire Fastlane.
- Vetted Network: Connect with founders scaling to 7 and 8 figures.
- Proven Roadmaps: Strategy over motivation. Execution over "hustle porn."
"SCALED TO 6-FIGURE MONTHS"
"Tips and advice here saved me from huge mistakes, others allowed me to scale my business to 6-figure months."— User MitchC
"INSANE QUALITY OF PEOPLE"
"The number of high quality people I've met from this forum has been insane. All of it predicated on building real value."— User Richard Peck
"You are the average of the five people you surround yourself with."
Are you surrounding yourself with success?
