Real Artists Ship

Real Artists Ship by John McLean
Real Artists Ship

Getting Your Butt Off The Couch And Your Book Out The Door
For Francis McLean: The most amazing son ever invented. Period.
Lets be friends FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/lowcarbrevolution TWITTER: @the_bookwright
Also by the Bookwright The Low Carb Revolution Women: The Instructions Dancing With The Hunger
Prologue: Thanks For Playing

Wow!
Just, wow! Thanks for taking time out of your busy

schedule to get here. Thank you for believing that you have an Idea worth sharing with the world. I've come to help you bring that Idea kicking and screaming into the worldexcept without the kicking and screaming part! We're going to have a lot of fun together on this journey. Your reward at the end will be something you may have dreamt about for much of your life: a completed book with your name on the cover, available for the public to buy, read and enjoy! I love you and I love your willingness to go down this road. Make no mistake, YOU are the Hero of this story! The adventure of going from someone with a dream to becoming a published author is much more than just about writing down a bunch of words. This journey we are taking together will change you. It will change you perhaps more than anything you've ever experienced before. And I'm going to spoil the end by telling you right up front...it's got a Happy Ending! It Takes Two to Tango Let's start with a secret. I mean, who doesn't love a secret?! It's a secret they kinda sorta forgot to mention in every other guide to the art and business of writing I've ever picked up before... 4
Real Artists Ship by John McLean It takes two completely different Parts of us to successfully write and publish one book. One side of us does the writing. The other side does the publishing and marketing. Let's refer to the part of us that will conceive and write our book as our Inner Writer. Meanwhile, let's call the part of us that will later learn how to navigate the tricky waters of publishing and promoting our book online as our Inner Accountant. Our Inner Writer is foot-loose and fancy-free. She loves spending all her time dreaming and creating and telling stories. She is as boundless and unpredictable as the oceanan infinite source of powerful feminine energy. Our Inner Accountant is all business. He revels in numbers and spreadsheets and crossing things off the to-do list. He's the captain of the ship, shirt open, hair flying in the winda man with a plan sailing with increasing confidence towards a specific destination on the other side of the ocean. Walt vs. Roy The jobs that each of these separate sides of us perform are as opposite as the roles played by the most famous set of brothers in the history of business: Walt and Roy Disney. Walt Disney embodied the Inner Writer. He was the idea guy, always dreaming big and imagining the impossible. Roy Disney personified the Inner Accountant. Although less heralded than his younger brother, Roy was arguably the more important of the two. He was the one who constantly bailed the water out of the ship during one storm after another, who again and again found the money to pay the crew 5
Real Artists Ship by John McLean and keep the sails patched. Without Roy Disney, we would never have even heard of Walt. And without Walt Disney, Roy would've just been another faceless businessman selling widgets. Each of these two distinct parts of you needs to discover how the writing and publishing world works and, even more importantly, how YOU work. Your Inner Writer In Part One of Real Artists Ship, we're going to awaken your Inner Writer, that creative part of you that may have lain dormant for a good long while nowperhaps dating all the way back to your Kindergarten days! Your Writer is the side of you that will conceive and write your book. Not to worry, your Writer loves thinking things up and writing things down she just needs to be given permission to play and a space to play in. As we rouse your Writer from her slumbers and she realizes that she's getting a rare opportunity to really come out and play, then your job will increasingly become simply getting out of her way long enough for her to write your book for you. A Word of Warning: As we dive into Part One and spend quality time focusing on bringing your own personal Walt Disney out to play, your more practical, business-y inner Roy Disney will be chomping at the bit. He may repeatedly urge you to skip ahead to the more practical chapters of Part Two, where he can be comforted by logistics, strategies and actions items. Should that happen, simply ask your Accountant to wait his turn while we work with another important part of you for a while. 6
Real Artists Ship by John McLean After all, until your writer successfully thinks up and writes down your first book, your Accountants not going to have anything to publish and market in the first place! What I'm fundamentally asking you to do is trust that I know exactly where were going and exactly how to lead you there! Your Inner Accountant In Part Two we'll hand over the completed manuscript to our version of Roy Disney. That side of us will learn exactly how to format and publish the book for both the Kindle and a real-life, deadtrees printed version, as well as to market it to the unique sub-culture that is Amazon.com. We're going to teach your Accountant what levers to pull and when to pull them, then we'll look on with awe as he delivers your finished product to market. This part of you will no doubt feel relieved once we get past all the woo-woo creative stuff in the opening chapters and finally get down to the real business of taking specific actions and crossing things off the to do list later on! Writing Isnt Something You Do... Weve already learned our first big secret, about how it takes two separate sides of us to succeed at first writing and then publishing a book. But that's just the first of many, many secrets I'll share with you throughout our adventureright up to the biggest secret of all, which wont be revealed until the Epilogue. In the meantime, I want you to feel like youre already getting your moneys worth here, so Id like to offer you another important secret that probably no one else ever thought to mention to you before... 7
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Writing a book isn't something you do...it's someone you become. The journey of a lifetime that were about to embark upon will quite literally change you...from the inside out. You will not be the same person by the time you finish reading this book and writing your own that you are now. I know that may sound a little scary. But what kind of life would we be living if we didnt allow ourselves to feel a little scared from time to time?! By the way, I don't know exactly how you found your way to this experience, but I'm really, really glad you made it! Lets dive right in, shall we?!
PART ONE: AWAKENING YOUR INNER WRITER
Art is not about thinking something up. It is the oppositeit's about getting something down. Julia Cameron
1: The Writer's Asylum

Good News...and Bad News
Weve
got the proverbial Good News and Bad News here. What do you say we get the bad news out of the way first?! If you seriously think you've got what it takes to write an entire book and publish it successfully so that other peoplestrangers whom you don't even knowwill hand over their hard-earned money to you for the privilege of buying and reading it, then you are most definitely Crazy! And now for the Good News... Since the dawn of civilization, Art has always been made by Crazy people. They are solely responsible for all the art you've ever seen, read or heard in your life. Period. Only a crazy person like Miguel Cervantes could have written about the incredible true adventures of an over-earnest, bookish fellow named Don Quixote who wakes up one day believing he's a reallife medieval knight and sets out to right all the wrongs in the world. Only an utter nutjob like Michelangelowho, by the way, considered himself to be a gifted sculptor and only an average painterwould spend fully five years of his life painting over 340 biblical figures on the legendary ceiling of the Sistene Chapel. And only a stark-raving mad person like Ludwig van Beethoven could have written what is arguably the greatest musical composition of all time, the 10
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Ninth Symphony, despite being stone-cold deaf by that stage of his life. So if you want to write and publish a book, you are crazy. But you're also in good company! Now it doesn't matter if the book you're passionate about writing is fiction, non-fiction or some new genre that you just made up, any time you create something where before there was nothing, you've made art! Of course, society can't just allow a bunch of crazy people called artists to run around freely and share their crazy ideas with others, because then their craziness might rub off on the normal people and then eventually everybody would become crazy and nobody would get any work done and then who would make the widgets?! Therefore the Powers That Be had to find a way to keep all the crazy writers and other artists contained so that just a trickle of art would continue to emerge, while discouraging the mass of humanity from pursuing a life as an artist. Keeping The Crazy Contained Writers are among the most dangerous of all artists because we have the ability to spread Ideas...and ideas are exactly what society don't want us to have too many of. So they had to come up with a solution to what became known as the Writer Problem. Many centuries ago, in the long shadow cast by some German dude named Gutenberg who invented printing or something, a bunch of otherwise unemployable layabouts banded together and called themselves Publishers. These Publishers were shiftless men and women who had neither the qualifications to teach nor the connections to land jobs as low-level government officials. 11
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Instead, these newly minted Publishers bought up all the paper and ink and printing presses so that erstwhile writers would have to approach them in order to spread their ideas to the rest of the world. These Publishers holed themselves up inside of what you might think of as a huge fortress, where they have remained to this day. Since that time, any man, woman or child crazy enough to dare believe they had what it takes to write a book had to make the long, lonely pilgrimage to this metaphorical fortressa forbidding, joyless place of damp stone and rusting iron barsin order to get their permission to become a published writer. Of course, permission to publish their book was very rarely granted, since the purpose of the fortress was to contain the writers and prevent them from publishing, not to make it easy for them to share their dangerous ideas with others. So did most of the prisoners of this literary loony bin spend their entire lives locked in their cells...waiting and waiting for a permission to publish that never came.
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Committed for Life Are you ready for another secret? It's a biggie, so make sure youre sitting down first... YOU are currently being held prisoner! If you've ever dreamed of writing and publishing your own book but havent yet done so, then you're being held prisoner against your will...and probably without even being aware of it. And the virtual fortress where you are imprisoned is a grim, joyless place that I call the Writer's Asylum. Think back to that bold moment in your life when you first imagined penning a book with your name on the cover. At that very instant wheels were already being set in motion to ultimately deliver you to the Writer's Asylumfrom whence no light emerges and the only sustenance is a thin gruel of Hope served cold by soulless captors called Publishers. Not only is this Kafka-esque nightmare all around you, it is within you as well. The Writer's Asylum penetrates down to the depths of your being and serves to keep your Inner Writer asleep. Let's be clearyou cannot successfully write and publish your first book while you're still confined in this dark prison of the creative soul that I refer to as the Writer's Asylum. Your incarceration in this fortress is holding you back. It's blocking you from following your dreams. And it's steadily sapping whatever's left of your strength and vitality right out of your existence. 13
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Just as no light can escape from a Black Hole, none of your creativity can emerge from the Writer's Asylum. If you genuinely desire to become a bonafide, published author, we've absolutely got to bust you out of there first, because only then can the bright light of your talent shine in the world. And youre in luckbecause Ive got a plan to help you escape!
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2: The Great Escape

The Beginning of the End
On
15 July, 1995 an obscure book written by the absolute smartest person in the world you've probably never heard of (a Pulitzer Prize-winning academic named Douglas Hofstadter) was sold over this still new-ish thing called the Internet. The jerry-rigged system that took the order for Professor Hofstadter's book consisted of three Sun microstations arranged on make-shift tables of used doors perched on sawhorses. A rat's nest of extension cords and cables from the interior of the house, a modest 2-bedroom rental in Seattle, snaked out to the cramped garage. For the record, Dr. Hoftstadter's book was called, Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought, and while it may be out of our depth, the book is basically Valley of the Dolls for computer scientists and MIT brainiacs! What's most interesting about this weighty tome, however, is that it became the very first book ever sold by a fledgling company known as Amazon.com. And, as you may have heard, since that summer day in 1995, Amazon has sold a few more books.
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The Siege of the Writers Asylum Fast-forward to November 2007. By now Amazon has gotten pretty big for their britches. So much so that theyve decided to launch an unprecedented attack on the long-entrenched publishing industry. I mean, were talking a frontal assault on the storied Writers Asylum itself! Wow, this was a daring move! In five centuries of stuffing their oversized pockets, Big Publishing has never been challenged by anything more fearsome than a single outraged writer at a time. Meanwhile, Amazon has come prepared. They have a secret weapon up their sleeve. They've conceived the bright idea of introducing a separate, specialized device built specifically for reading electronic books, or e-books, as some people were starting to call them. Their hand-held Siege Engine was some kind of digital book reading device was dubbed the Kindle, 16
Real Artists Ship by John McLean a name deliberately meant to call to mind a candle. On the day of the assault, the leering publishers stood shoulder to well-padded shoulder atop the towering walls of the asylum, rubbing their greasy palms together in undisguised glee at the spectacular failure this siege would surely turn out to be for Amazon. They asked one another: What was the point of this previously unneeded contraption called the Kindle anyway? Who would bother to buy a special machine to read a book that wasn't even there especially since Amazon had saddled it with the preposterous price of $399! The siege began on the morning of 19 November, 2007. A Monday. (That also makes the Kindle a Scorpio, like me!) By early afternoon, only five and a half hours after it had begun, the seige ended. Every single available Kindle in the entire world had been sold. Amazon has grossly miscalculated the demand for their new gizmo...and embarrassingly run out of ammo on the very first day of battle! Oh how Big Publishing chortled in delight at this unexpected turn of events! They laughed and launched Bronx cheers in the general direction of Seattlehometown of Amazon.comand then went out for a celebratory lunch on the company expense account. Ha-ha! Amazon had no more of their stupid little reading devices left to sell! The centuries-old publishing industry had once again prevailed...just as it always would! Christmas 2007 at Amazon headquarters was a bleak one. No one enjoyed their figgy pudding that holiday season, thats for sure. 17
Real Artists Ship by John McLean It wasnt until the Spring of 2008fully five months after the first glancing charge on the walls of the Writers Asylumthat reinforcements in the form of newly manufactured Kindles finally arrived. And when they came, they came not single spies, but as battalions, as Hamlet was wont to say. Within a few short years, millions and millions of several different generations of Kindle were soldand before long Kindle books were vastly outselling printed books on Amazon. As groundbreaking as the release of the Kindle ultimately turned out to be, something even more momentous happened during the first brief Siege on the Writers Asylumsomething with a more direct impact on your life and mine. The Inmates Take Over the Asylum Recall that until that fateful day in 2007, the pompous, overfed Publishers ran the Writer's Asylum with same self-satisfied authority as the Catholic Church during the depths of the Dark Agescontrolling every aspect of the printing and distribution of books with iron fists in chainmail gloves. Oh, sure, you could always grind out a few copies of your book at your own considerable expense and drive around the country selling the odd copy here and there out of the back of your station wagon to the few independent bookstores still clinging to life until youd exhausted your life savings. But you weren't going to get your book into a real chain bookstoremuch less on the book racks of the thousands of franchise grocery stores, airport book kiosks and Walmarts of the nation without the express written permission of Big Publishing. 18
Real Artists Ship by John McLean And they had no intention of giving it to you. Ever. Although the initial siege seemed to be an humiliating public failure for Amazon, it turned out to be a completeand yet almost unnoticed at the timevictory for the Writers trapped within. For on the morning of 19 November, 2007, a shift took place that was even bigger than the Kindle. Hell, it was bigger than the Beatles. At first, nobody paid much attention. But over the months that followed, in ones and twos and then dozens, the imprisoned writers began waking up and recognizing the truth... The ancient padlocks on the doors of the Writer's Asylum had crumbled and fallen off, leaving every door unlocked...permanently!
You Don't Need No Stinkin' Permission! The locks of the Writer's Asylum are now gone and the doors are wide open. Think about what this means. As a writer, you no longer need anybody else's permission to spread your ideas. You don't have to check in with a single person in the world before, during or after writing your book. 19
Real Artists Ship by John McLean You can write what you want, when you want and how you want. You don't need no stinkin' permission! From nobody! For nothing! This is truly an unparalleled time in the history of the publishing business! The high and mighty Publishers have fallen from power as precipitously as the Cold War brought iron curtains crashing down throughout Eastern Europe We now live in a new era where you and I can compete on a level playing field with anyone else. As I write these words, my first book, the Low Carb Revolution: Why The Secret to Losing Weight is to Fall Back in Love With Yourself! is ranked in the Top 10 on Amazon in the highly competitive Weight Loss categorytucked neatly between the storied Atkins and Dukan diets. At the same time, it's also currently ranked #11 on Amazon in the Self-Help/Motivational category, just ahead of a recent book by Dr. Wayne Dyer. That is to say, with no publicity, no marketing, no PBS specials and no permission whatsoever from Big Publishing, my book is competing toe-to-toe with the biggest names in the most competitive categories on Amazon and more than holding its own. Giving Yourself Permission We no longer need to ask permission (for anything!) ever again from Big Publishing. The King is dead, long live the King and all that rot! Yet, at the same time, you still need to give YOURSELF permission to write and publish your book! Although the doors of the Writer's Asylum have been wide open for five years and counting, a great 20
Real Artists Ship by John McLean number of the hopeful writers trapped inside still haven't gotten the message yet. They continue to believe that only a real Publisher can bring a book into the world. In the pages that follow you're going to discover how easy it can be to gather up your writing supplies and march boldly out of your cell in the bowels of this grim fortress and join the rest of us in the fresh air and freedom of the outside world! So let's keep going on this journey of a lifetime a voyage into your own mind and your own creativity! By the time we come out on the other side, you'll have all the tools you need to organize and write your first book in whatever genre and on whatever topic you desire. You'll know exactly how to publish your finished manuscript on Amazon. And you'll possess a deeper understanding of how to promote yourself and your book than 99% of the professional authors out there! For now, just give yourself permission to continue this adventure as we find out what your very near future might look like!
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3: A Glimpse of Things to Come

Thank God It's Monday!
Most
people who've been in the workforce for a while consider Monday to be the least enjoyable of days, in large part because it signals the mere beginning to the traditional workweek. Monday morning means we've still got the entire weekly Bataan Death March of attempting to please our corporate overlords ahead of us...while Friday seems but an impossible glimmer on the horizon. But now let's play a game and pretend that you can experience a completely different kind of Monday. Lets imagine a start to the week that goes a little something like this... You wake up...whenever you feel like it, and not because the alarm went off. Indeed, you no longer even keep an alarm in your bedroom because you have absolutely no need for one. You're no longer in any kind of hurry in your life. Even when you do awaken, there's no mad scramble for your feet to hit the floor. Since you're in no rush, you can take your sweet Texas time unfolding yourself from the covers. Or, if you have a partner, you can spend some...ummm, Quality Time together before finally quitting your bed. Even then, once you're up, there's no rush. Maybe you start the day with a leisurely bath while listening to your favorite Pandora station. Later that morning you 22
Real Artists Ship by John McLean pony up to a cup of your preferred morning beverage and you do something that no other animal in the world can do. You utilize an incredible human invention that allows you to share your hard-won knowledge and ideas with other people without actually needing to talk to them in person. This highly versatile innovation is known as writing. And this unique system of communication is, by its very nature, also leisurely. (Are you detecting a theme here to our imagined day?!) While you're performing this activity called writing, you have no boss or anybody else around to pressure you about what to say next. If you misspeak or write the wrong thing or change your mind about what you want to communicate, you can simply edit whatever you've written before you ever show it to another human being. Writing is like talking...only much easier because its done entirely at your own pace and you can always take back anything you want! Since you have no office and no boss, theres also no time clock to punch. You can write for as little as 30 minutes...and under no circumstances do you write longer than two hours. After all, if you wrote all day long it would start to seem like workand lifes far too short to waste it on working, right?! So far so good. You've made it through the first half of Monday without a single care in the world, without any stress, without any tension, without any tightness in your body or urgency in your step. After just a couple of hours of playing this game called writing, you decide to take off for lunch. If you're a bit of a foodie like me, then perhaps you enjoy taking the time to cook a fish and veggie stir fry for lunch, which you eat leisurely while reading the Kindle 23
Real Artists Ship by John McLean version of Harry Potter VIII: Revenge of the Zombie Wizards or somesuch. After lunch perhaps you go for a scenic walk and think about how good you feel and how much you enjoy your life. Perhaps your walk takes you by a beautiful open swimming area in the center of towna natural springs as wide as a football field and five times as long, hemmed in by chalk-white limestone on either side. You pay your admission to the natural springs and lounge about on an expansive grassy knoll, oggling the aging hippies, scantily clad college students and guitarstrumming foreign tourists mingling on the banks and swimming in the brisk waters. Exhausted by the fast-pace of your life, you walk home and return to your bed for a leisurely nap. Later you decide to do a modest amount of work again. You find a local coffeehouse and park yourself behind a cup of Joe while you advance the cause on your latest creation, playing this game of teaching people whom you don't know stuff they don't know by using this clever system of stringing together letters of the alphabet into words! Again, all at your own pace, with nobody rushing you or looking over your shoulder or ordering you around! After just a couple of hours of this, you knock off for the rest of the evening. You join some friends at a dance club, enjoy a few drinks and more than a few spins on the dance floor, and then pronounce yourself highly satisfied on the day. So, that's one possible Monday for you. 24
Real Artists Ship by John McLean In fact, that's exactly how I spent my most recent Monday! And, with only minor variations on the theme, it's also how I regularly spend my Tuesdays, my Sundays and every other day in between! The Monday I just described unfolded in the idyllic town of Austin, TX. But by the time you read this I might have rented a modest apartment in Buenos Aires, Argentina...and instead of swimming away the afternoon I might be taking Tango lessons. Or I could in Paris, spending the afternoons between my writing sessions traipsing about the Louvre and practicing my French. Indeed, I could be anywhere in the world, doing anything I want. The only constant in my day is a pair of writing sessions of a couple of hours each. Since I work so little each day, I make a point of writing every day of the week. Yet even that only amounts to a combined work-week of some 28 hours. Which is about aswhat's the word?! Oh, yeah, leisurely!as it gets! Smells Like Freedom Notice what I didn't mention in my recounting of my perfect work day above. Anything about money. Not a word about earning this much per month in royalties, or how you'll be sitting on a ginormous pile of cash before you know it. That was a quite deliberate omission. I don't want you to be distracted by the money. Oh there's money in this game of publishing your own books on Amazon...and plenty of it. We'll get to that in due course. But there's something perhaps more necessary for our personal happiness than money going on here and that's where I want you to focus your 25
Real Artists Ship by John McLean attention for now. I'm talking about freedom. When you finally master this gameand yes, it is a game!of writing and publishing your own books, everything in your life can and will change. For the first time in your working life you can enjoy complete and total freedom from morn til night. Youll be in rare company indeed. Nobody who runs a corporationup to and including Dell Computer founder and fellow Austinite Michael Dellenjoys any freedom. Despite being a billionaire many times over, Michael D. still dutifully drives to the office every day and puts in a full day's work because other employees at Dell expect him to and because his stockholders rather insist upon it. Entrepreneurs also don't have freedom. In fact, they have more pressure and more stress than just about anybody. I'm a big fan of serial entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, but dude is wound up to tight you could coil some copper wire around his arm and generate enough static electricity to power the New York Jets' practice facility! True freedom in the workplace only comes when you're no longer chained to an office or a boss or even your own employees. Freedom is a treasure worth more than money. Writing and publishing your own books can provide you a lifestyle of unfettered freedom. And again, you can pursue this lifestyle anywhere you desire... In your current hometown. Or in beautiful Montreal, Canadawhere you'll find the second-largest collection of French speakers 26
Real Artists Ship by John McLean in the world outside of Gay Paree itself. Or on a catamaran sailing through the Caribbean islands. Or in a centuries old castle in the Carpathian mountains of Romania, in the shadow of the former stomping grounds of the legendary Vlad the Impaler. Or...[you fill in the blanks]! There's No Going Back As recently as two decades ago, before this Internet thing really caught fire, virtually every printed word any human ever read came to us only from on High. It was either printed in a newspaper or magazine owned by a major media empire, or appeared in a book distributed by one of the so-called legacy publishers who formed the cabal that controlled printing and who, not coincidentally, owned and operated the Writer's Asylum. The lifestyle I described above was not available to you or to me as recently as five short years ago...unless Big Publishing deigned to choose us out of the haystack and give us permission to live it. And, even then, they would become our de facto bosses, requiring us to continue pleasing them by writing the books they wanted us to write, when they wanted us to write them, for the entirety of our career. But now the inmates have taken over the asylum! From now on we are the ones wholl decide who gets to be a writer. As well, we also get to decide what actually constitutes a bookwhich is where well turn our attention next. 27
4: What IS A Book?
The Past Does Not Equal the Future
Back in the era where our sole reading option was a

printed book sold exclusively at brick & mortar retail outlets, customers were conditioned to expect a minimum amount of bookness from their reading experience. Most bookswhether fiction and non-fictiongenerally aimed for a minimum length of around 200 pages. They could be longer, even much longer, but only rarely were shorter books allowed to go out the door. Which makes sense only if you think of a book as a product that people are buying rather than an experience they are gaining. Because as long as Big Publishing kept the lengths of books in the same niche more or less uniform, then they could also keep their prices uniform. After all, if you're going to go through all the trouble of cutting down a tree and doing everything necessary to turn it into a physical book, then a whole lot of people need to get a cut of the action, including: The Lumberjack The Paper Mill The Literary Agent The Publishing House Editor & Staff The Printing Press 28
Real Artists Ship by John McLean The Trucker who hauls the book to the stores The Retail Outlet where the book is sold The Clerk who puts the book on the shelf The Clerk who takes the book back off the shelf when the selling window ends a few weeks or months later The Driver who trucks the unsold books back to the Publisher to be destroyed The Incinerator dude who burns the unsold books at the end of the brief sales cycle And last, and most certainly least... The Writer Your Little Slice of the Pie During Big Publishings reign, the length of books was more or less fixed, as was their price...as was how big a slice you got of the pie. Just in case any part of you still wants to glamorize the old-fashioned legacy publishing model and your goal in life remains being sentenced to Life without parole in the Writer's Asylum, allow me to burst your bubble once and for all by touching briefly on Royalties! During the discussion that follows, never lose sight of the fact that you personally thought up and baked this particular pie in the first placeeverybody else is just helping themselves to a cut of your handiwork! The industry standard is to pay authors a royalty of 17% of the publishers cut of the action. Only true literary rockstars can ever improve upon this tepid number. I know that 17% doesnt sound like much, but wait, it gets worse! 29
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Since publishers only receive 50% of the cover price of your book (the bookstore that sold it keeps the other half of the cover price), that effectively means you receive only a trivial 8.5% of the money earned by your book. A book that, again, would not exist in the world if not for the fact that you took the time to think it up and write it down! Eight and a half percent?! I've got two words: Freakin' Ouch! The Bestseller That Wasnt Lets play another game, shall we?! Lets pretend that after completing your first book you decide to ignore every word of advice Ive given you and instead you sign over your soul to Big Publishing. Of course, instead of publishing your book the very day its completed (as well learn to do later), your publisher does what they always do, which is sit on your book for eighteen to twenty-four months before releasing it. So, perhaps two full years from now your book is finally released to the public in a trade paperback edition that sells for $9.95. And lets imagine it does pretty well in the market. (I mean, why in hell would we imagine otherwise?!) Suppose your publisher manages to sell upwards of 10,000 copies of your book. That would make it a modest hit by contemporary standards of publishing and perhaps even put it on some bestseller lists. That means your book will have generated just under one hundred thousand dollars in revenue. (Nice job, by the way!) So how much of that would you get? 30
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Let's see: $9.95 cover price x your effective royalty of 8.5% = 84 cents. (Again: Ouch!) 10,000 copies of the book sold x 84 cents = $8400 Over eight grand certainly sounds like a splendid amount of money to get all at once. But when you consider that it may have taken you up to half a year to write the book and then two years for the grindingly slow wheels of Big Publishing to bring it to the world, and then another six months to actually receive a checkwell you're not exactly gonna be able to quit your day job on a payout that averages only $2800 a year during the traditional three-year cycle of conception to completion. And that's for a book that makes a nice splash with the public...which is hardly the fate of the vast majority of books dumped into the marketplace by legacy publishers. Later on we'll come return in a big way to the kind money you can earn as an independent author, but first I just want to quickly grab your attention by showing you another set of numbers Rather than the anemic 8.5% you get from oldfashioned publishers, Amazon pays an incredibly generous 70% royalty. By personally selling your same book on Amazon at the same price, you would net you nearly $7 per copy. If you sold the same 10,000 units, your slice of the pie would now be $70,000. And now we ARE talking the kind of money where you could quit your day job and revel in the freedom of being your own boss. Plus it wouldn't take three years to release your book and finally receive your modest payday. 31
Real Artists Ship by John McLean You could be earning regular royalties from your first book just a couple of short months from now. The question you have to ask yourself is this: would you prefer to receive fully $70,000 as a reward for writing and publishing your first book? Or would you rather give the soulless keepers of the Writers Asylum $61,600 of your money in return for their Approval and keep a paltry $8400 for yourself?! You can easily live anywhere in the world for $100 a day, you know that, right?! Instead of giving Big Publishing that $61,600, you could travel the globe for a full year and a half while writing still more booksand thats only spending the money you were just gonna hand over to your publishers! This is just one of the reasons why even bestselling authors like Seth Godin are deserting Big Publishing in droves, opting instead for the freedom and terrific financial windfall that comes from selfpublishing directly on Amazon. Okay, so allow those numbers above to roll around in your mind as we return to our discussion about how the very nature and length of books have also changed in this new marketplace. (Plus weve got another Big Secret coming up soon!) The One-Third Rule I am an unapologetic bookworm. I devoted my teens, college years and beyond to reading world literature. There are very few literary classics whether novels, poetry or dramafrom the dawn of writing up until well into the 20th Century that I haven't read, in languages as diverse as Classical Greek, French, German and Spanish. 32
Real Artists Ship by John McLean But once I left my twenties, my reading became dominated by non-fiction books, in large part because I am passionately in love with learning new things. Sadly, however, non-fiction books have of late fallen into a routineyou might even say a rut which I'd like to point out to you in the hopes that you'll break it should you decide to write one yourself. Most non-fiction books put out by Big Publishing today fall squarely into the 200-300 page range, and adhere closely to what I refer to as the One-Third Rule, which states: Contemporary non-fiction books are really only onethird as long as their actual length...all the rest is padding. Let's break down the modern non-fiction book and discover how the One-Third Rule applies, shall we? FIRST 1/3 of BOOK: Pick up any bestselling non-fiction book today and you'll find that the author covers 95% of her entire theory or whatever idea she's sharing in the first third of the book often in the lengthy Introduction itself! This really is the entire book right there. But since you paid anywhere from $8 - $14 for the paperback or from $19 to $26 for the hardback, you feel compelled to keep reading in order to get your money's worth. MIDDLE 1/3 of BOOK: In the middle of the book, the current crop of non-fiction scribblers give case histories and examples of how the great idea presented in the introduction to their book has changed the lives and fortunes of individuals, 33
Real Artists Ship by John McLean companies or even whole nations. Here's where they also load up on testimonials and every scrap of Social Proof they can find. After all, if some widow lady in your same age range who lives in Kansas City can lose weight on the author's Twinkies Dipped in Mustard Diet, then maybe it will work for you, as well! FINAL 1/3 of BOOK: Here the author simply goes back and rewrites the first third of the book, saying the exact same thing he did in the opening chapters, but using slightly different words. Interestingly enough, the very act of restating the same material all over again can sometimes jar loose an extra nugget of information he forgot to mention earlier...which accounts for the missing 5% from the introduction and is the only reason why I give them credit for covering merely 95% of their story at the beginning of the book. Of course, that also means you must read an additional 132 pages (two thirds of the 200-ish total pages in the book) just to get to that 5% nugget of gold! Recently I shared my One-Third Rule with my friend Paula, whos also a non-fiction junkie. She told me shed recognized the same thing long ago, and developed her own unique strategy to deal with writers padding out their books to meet the mandatory minimum page quotas set by Big Publishing. She simply STARTS reading about two-thirds of the way through and only reads the final third of the bookreasoning that the author has probably gotten all the BS out of the way by now and is finally ready to get down to business! 34
Real Artists Ship by John McLean How Long Does A Book Need to Be? Non-fiction authors often complain these days that readers never finish reading their books. Well, maybe if these writers wouldn't just repeat, restate and retype the same narrow insights over and over again for 200-300 pages, when half or even a third as many pages would do, then perhaps the rest of us would actually read their work to the very end and enjoy ourselves every step of the way. With Big Publishing no longer making the rules, we are finally free to rewrite the rules any way we desire. Your book doesn't need to be any particular length whatsoever. It should be the length it wants to beand not one page more or less. Heres the Big Secret I promised you earlier... Your first book probably only needs to be one-third of the length you currently think it must be! If youve been contemplating penning a 300-page tome on time management, guess what? Your brisk, 99-page guide on that same topic is plenty long enough. Instead of that massive, 600-page historical romance set in Victorian England youve been outlining for the past eight months, consider writing a more modest book of about 200 pagesand make it the first volume of a trilogy! Your book absolutely doesnt have to reach 150 or 200 pagesor any other Big Publishing minimum page quota. Your book can (and should!) be as short as it needs to be to communicate the story you are telling. You know that book youve been thinking about writingthe one youve been quietly mulling over in your imagination, trying to figure out how youll possibly summon the endurance and stamina to 35
Real Artists Ship by John McLean finish it?! Heres what I want you to do with that book. Throw out two-thirds of it. And then find time to outline and write the remaining one-thirdand theres your book, right there! Let this secret sink in to the core of your being... Your first book only needs to be one-third of the length you currently think it must be! What does this mean?! It means you can let out a big, fat exhale of relief! You do not have nearly the massive workload ahead of you that you previously imagined. As Long As It Needs To Be... On the other hand, if you genuinely have a LOT to say, by all means keep going! My first book, the Low Carb Revolution is 464 pages longover 115,000 wordsand every single chapter in the book contains material unique from the others. No lie...I remember when I was writing the book and I had just started in on the penultimate chapter. And I thought, here I am 440 or however many pages into this thing and this is the very first time I've even mentioned this particular topic. I just hadn't found a place to share this pretty damn significant information earlier because I was so busy sharing other cool stuff first. Many of my Internet Marketing friends, who certainly know how to squeeze every possible dime out of online selling, pushed me hard to break up the Low Carb Revolution into 3 or even 4 smaller books that I could sell separately. And they werent wrong to suggest this. I certainly could have maximized my revenue 36
Real Artists Ship by John McLean stream by following their sage advice. But I felt strongly that the Low Carb Revolution had been conceived and written all of a piece, as they say, and readers would need every single page in order to arrive at the destination I was leading them to. So I kept it all together and still made the price so reasonable that cost wouldn't even factor into a potential reader's decision about whether or not to go on this particular journey of reconnecting with their beautiful body. Just as there's no minimum number of pages you absolutely must reach in order to tell your story, there's also nothing stopping you from writing a longer book if you have enough to say and are committed to keeping your prose lively and readable. Similarly, Women: The Instructionsmy wicked little book exclusively for menalso weighs in close to 500 pages. The cookbook you write can be 330 pages or it can be 33 pagesyou and only you get to decide! One of the most important books of the 20th century, a book that changed the destinies of nations and altered the lives of millions of people, was The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Perhaps one of the reasons it gained so much traction that it literally reshaped the fortunes of the entire world was its modest, highly readable length. The Communist Manifesto is just over 72 pages long. A frugal 18,000 words in total. Messers Marx and Engels put everything they had into the first one-third of their book...and then just stopped there! Feel free to do the same with yours! 37
How To Determine How Many Pages In Your Book By the way, here's how little the amount of pages in your book matter... Kindle books don't even HAVE page numbers! Next time you see a friend reading a Kindle book, ask how far along she is and she'll just give you a percentage. I'm at 15%, she'll say. Or, 28% Or, Leave me alone, I'm at 96%! Even so, you should let your prospective readers know the page count of your book somewhere in the description section of your Storefrontthe homepage of your book on Amazon. You naturally won't need to count all the words in your book by hand or anything. Every word processing program (including the one I will ultimately recommend that you use for writing your book) has a Word Count feature. Simply select the Word Count option (usually located in the Tools Menu at the top of the page) and the total number of words in your manuscript will be revealed to you. One of the small pleasures of writing a new book is regularly checking this statistic and watching the number of words grow as you move towards your goal of finishing it! The traditional number used to determine page count is 250 words per page. So just divide the total words in your document by 250 words to determine your final page count, then remember to mention it somewhere in your product description so readers will know what to expect. 38
Real Artists Ship by John McLean When In Doubt...Lower The Price If you still feel even slightly nervous that your first book will be shorter than it should be, remember that one of the beautiful features of Amazon is that you can easily change the price of your book anytime you likeagain, without asking anybody's permission! You have almost infinite flexibility in pricing your book and you should use it! You can return to the Price section on your Amazon account dashboard as often as you like, pick a new price point and click Submit. Your book will usually reflect its new price within a couple of hours. We'll discuss pricing your book in a separate chapter in Part Two, but for now I want you grasp that you have the ultimate safety net when writing your book: The shorter it is, the less you should charge all the way down to Amazon's current minimum price of 99 cents. Playing With Pricing Just to show you easy it is to balance the length of your book with a price point that continues to give your readers plenty of bang for their buck, lets explore a single example. Suppose I have the great idea of writing a book in the 150-page range called Easy Holiday Meals and ultimately plan to price it at $4.99. Once I begin writing, however, I realize that I don't have that much overall expertise in cooking holiday meals. Instead, what I do well is cooking Turkeys. So I reformulate my idea. I decide instead to write a book with a bunch of turkey recipes and price it at $2.99. 39
Real Artists Ship by John McLean But soon I hit another bump in the road. The very first recipe I write down is my famous Upside-Down Jalapeno-Stuffed Turkey. And I realize this is the ONLY recipe I really want to share with peoplein part because it actually is my own unique recipe and also because I truly believe this is the very best way to cook a turkey. (Seriously, since my Upside-Down turkey is cooked, well, upside down, all the yummy juices drip downward into the copious breast meat. When my turkey's done, all you have to do is pull it out and turn it right-side up again. You don't even need a knife to cut it...the meat literally falls off the bones into your fingers! Hmmmm, my mouth is watering just thinking about that turkey!) Okay, where we're we?! Oh yeah, after all that planning, in the end let's suppose I end up writing only a report in the 10-15 page range about how to cook my scrumptious turkey. Again, that's no problem. There's also an audience for that, too, just so long as I let potential readers know this one recipe is all they are getting in the report and that it's only a handful of pages long. Naturally I would price my Upside-Down Turkey guide at the rock bottom price of 99 cents. And if it turns out to be a hit, I could always raise the priceeven at one cent intervals!so long as the market bears it. Now that the old-school Publishers have been dethroned, the length of your book can no longer be dictated from on high. Just use the words it takes to write it, not one word more nor one word less. And if it is less, also charge less and everybody will be happy. Because a Happy Ending is what we're always going for around here! 40
5: Everything Is A Story
How We Understand The World
This is as good a time as any to admit that theres

not an actual fortress of stone called the Writer's Asylum where those desiring to become authors are literally imprisoned in dank cells. That was just a metaphor I cooked up in the overheated kitchens of my mind to describe the seeming confinement that would-be writers were subjected to for centuries. (Now the part about publishers being haunted, soulless creatures isn't a metaphorthat's the actual truth!) I'm very fond of using what I refer to as a Big Metaphor to make complicated systems easier to understand. For example, in my book the Low Carb Revolution, I developed an extended metaphor where I compared the actions of Hormones in our body to Medieval Troubadours. Now it may seem silly to compare the chemical messengers in our body to the wandering minstrels of days of yore, but I've had scores of people tell me, Thank you! I'd been exposed to almost the same information many times before, but only when you explained how Hormones acted like Troubadours did I finally understand it! Our brain understands the world around us almost entirely through story and metaphornot though bullet points or lists or any other collections of factoids. 41
Real Artists Ship by John McLean The way our mind processes words and images and sounds is put them into a context where they have meaning and structurein other words, a story. Now whether you're writing fiction (a made-up story) or non-fiction (describing some aspect of the real world), what you're really doing when you write a book is telling a story. Stories have always been, and always will be, the best way for us to learn anything. Indeed, as we'll discover throughout this book, one of the main skills you personally bring to this dance is your ability to tell a story to your readers. Sometimes the story you tell turns on the made-up worlds and characters and narratives of a novel. And other times your story is about a problem you figured out how to overcome in your life and now want to help others solve. Either way, crafting that body of information into a coherent story with a beginning, middle and end, is what writing a book is all about! Here's another secret for you. It might seem simple or even obvious, but lots and lots of writerseven popular writers whose names you'd knowregularly forget about this secret... The Story in your book can be anything at all...but it can't be nothing. The reason so many readers don't finish nonfiction books these days has nothing to do with the readers and everything to do with the authors. Most writers mistakenly believe that all thats required from them is to dump a bunch of research, facts and rational arguments into the reader's lap and then they will be magically healed of their problem. 42
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Well, it doesn't work that way. Without a context, without a story, our brains are unable to learn anything. And if we never learn it in the first place, we certainly wont be able to remember it later. Whether fiction or non-fiction, the purpose of your book is to tell a story. Because, again, everything has a story. Even something as seemingly random as getting hiccups has a story to it. In fact, getting the hiccups is pretty much ALL story! The Story of Hiccups So what's the deal with hiccups? I mean what are they, anyway? They make you take an extra gulp of air or something, right?! They don't hurt or anything, and they usually go away within a few minutesespecially if we try one or more outlandish methods of getting rid of them. So hiccups are really no big deal...but what happens when we get them?! Our first reaction is to Freak The Hell Out! OhmyGod! I have the hiccups! Nooooooo! I'm never gonna get rid of them! I'm gonna be like that girl in Florida who had hiccups for 4 years! Accccccckkkkkkkk! But just five minutes later we've drunk some water while standing on our head or someone scares us and they're gone. It wasn't the hiccups themselves that were freaking us out, but rather our story about the hiccups. You could call it our own personal Story of Hiccups. At the Beginning of the Story of Hiccups, we went from a state of just minding our own business to suddenly and dramatically coming down with a nasty case of the hiccups! 43
Real Artists Ship by John McLean In the Middle of the Story, we a) Freak Out; b) try one or more outlandish ways to get rid of our damn hiccups. Finally, at the End of the Story of Hiccups, we no longer have them and get back to our lives BH (Before Hiccups). Everything has a story arc. Now I personally prefer stories that have happy endings, but your mileage may vary. (If youre writing a tragedy, it better vary!) What Story Are You Telling? To write your first book, you simply need to figure out what story you want to tell, and then tell that story. If it sounds simple, it is. Whether your book is fiction or non-fiction, writing it is the act of telling the reader a story of some kind or another. A story is simply a framework, a context, that you put around whatever you're teaching them. The story can be elaborate, but it doesn't need to be. A starting point, a middle and an endpoint that resonates with your audience are enough. If youll keep the specific story you're telling firmly in mind, then everything else around outlining and writing your book should fall neatly into place. Beginning, Middle and End Let's consider the book youre currently reading, Real Artists Ship, as an example of how to tell a simple and yet compelling story. After all, if we can fabricate a story for something as seemingly pedestrian as learning how 44
Real Artists Ship by John McLean to successfully write and publish a book, then we can also create a story on just about any other topic under the sun, no?! In the BEGINNING of the storyline of Real Artists Ship, my assumption was that you had never written and published a book before. My goal was to show you that it's uniquely possible in this day and age for you to become a published and successful author. The first step on that journey was to discover that you no longer needed any approval or permission from Big Publishing to bring your book into the world. But there is still one person you need to get permission from in order to succeed at writing your book: yourself. And that's what we're working on right now. The hardest part of any journey is taking the first step. Whether you're heading off to travel the world, leaving your longtime partner or writing your first book, the most important decision youll make is the decision to give yourself permission to go on this journey. In the upcoming MIDDLE of the story of Real Artists Ship, you will learn specific creative strategies to help you get your ideas down on paperand ultimately into your computer. Once you've completed your manuscript, our journey together willlead you through the many and tricky steps necessary to publish it to the Amazon Kindle. As we near the triumphant END of the story of you completing your first book, you'll learn some really terrific, little-known secrets about how to successfully promote it within the unique world of Amazon so that strangers will find it and buy it on an ongoing basis. Then finally I'll send you off on 45
Real Artists Ship by John McLean your own into a beautiful future as a published author with a big hug and a sack lunch! I think the story of you becoming a published author is a pretty awesome story, wouldn't you agree?! Think and Grow Rich All successful books, fiction and non-fiction alike, are organized around a story. Take Napoleon Hill's famous motivational handbook, Think and Grow Rich. Upon its release in 1937, it quickly became not only THE classic self-help book, but also one of the most popular books in history. Why do you believe Think and Grow Rich became so popular? Why in the world have more than 70 million copies been sold? How come, after more than 75 years on the market, it still shows no signs of slowing down? After all, there isn't a single specific fact or nugget of information in the entire book that you can directly put to use to make money. And, despite its infamous title, Napoleon Hill never once suggests that in order to become rich all you have to do is think about it. No, its spectacular success is because Think And Grow Rich tells a story. A beautiful story with a Happy Ending. And that story goes like this... 95 out of ever 100 people who set out to make their fortunes in the world come up short. At the end of a lifetime of hard work and drudgery, almost everyone is either broke and broken. But you (YOU!) are special! Or at least you can be. You can become one of the 5 out of 100 who create real wealth in their life and enjoy the lifestyle the rest of us can only dream about. 46
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Napoleon Hill's book is a Story in which you are the heroa hero who overcomes every obstacle in your path, who finally figures out the secret to success, and who triumphs in the end. Well that's one hell of a story, isn't it?! Who wouldn't want to live that story? Even more masterfully, Mr. Hill litters his story about you becoming rich with dozens of smaller stories of other men and women who went through every imaginable hardship and setback, yet still triumphed and created a Happy Ending to their story. Put all those stories together you've got quite a winner! Humans are hard-wired to understand life and the world around them through stories. Period. Stories are how we explain the world to others, and how we explain the world to ourselves...so make sure the story you tell in your book is a pretty damn awesome one! At the same time, to succeed in your own unfolding story of become a published author, the story you tell in your first book cannot just be random. It must accomplish a very specific goal one that we're going to learn next!
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6: What's Your Story About?

Narrowing It Down
So weve learned that your book can be as short or

as long as you desire. The keepers of the Writer's Asylum can no longer make you deliver a manuscript of two hundred and fifty pages when forty are all that's required to share your idea with the world. And we have explored how the backbone of our bookwhether a comic novel, a Civil War history or a guide to planning a gay cruisesis a story. And that story usually (but not always) comes with a Happy Ending. Next let's discover exactly what story you're going to tell in your first book. And to help us do that I'm going to pull yet another Big Secret out of my magic hat. Once you know this secret, it will change the way you approach conceiving and writing books from this point forward. This secret will take all the guesswork out of the process, so that coming up with a compelling story for a book will begin to seem easy and obvious. Rather than just blurt out this secret, first I wanna set it up by taking you on a quick detour into the wonderful, mysterious world of hypnosis! Don't worry, I'm not gonna put you in a trance if anything I'm here to wake you up out of one!
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Real Artists Ship by John McLean Nobody Has a Hypnotist Problem Something you may not know about me is that I started my circuitous journey into the healing arts as a hypnotist. I studied with the legendary master hypnotist Gil Boyne in Los Angeles and later spent some years using hypnosis as my primary healing modality. (A modality is any complete system of healing. Acupuncture, EFT, hypnosis, chiropractic and Reiki are all separate modalities, and each of them work 100% of the time...on about 10% of the population!) Not long ago I ran into my friend Brenda, who is quite the bad-ass hypnotist in her own right. She was all excited to show me her new business cards. On the top line of her new card was her name. Beneath that came her title, which in this case was Hypnotist. And lastly came her contact info phone number, email, website. In other words, it looked exactly like every other business card we've all been handed in our lives...and was therefore just as useless. What is this? I asked. My business card, Brenda answered. No, I mean, what's the point of it? You know, to market myself and stuff, she said. To attract new clients. I sat Brenda down and took her by the hand. Sweetie, I love you, I said, but there's something you should know. People primarily care about one thingtheir own problems. When they meet someone new, they're usually thinking, 'Can this person solve one of my problems?' Okay. If youre single and looking for a husband, I continued, then youre constantly evaluating 49
Real Artists Ship by John McLean whether or not someone you meet might be a potential suitor...or else competition for one. If you walk into a hospital, youre expecting somebody there to solve whatever physical problem you are experiencing. If youre a wanna-be actor living in LA, then getting your Big Break is the problem youre trying to solve every minute of the day, right? Yes, yes, I get it. Now what problem does your business card solve? I asked. Uhhh, I dunno. It solves a person's Hypnotist Problem, doesnt it? There's just one drawback to helping people solve that particular problem. What? That's not a problem anybody has! I told her. Pretty much nobody in the world wakes up with a Hypnotist Problem. Nobody jumps out of bed and shouts, 'Dammit, TODAY is the day I'm finally gonna find a hypnotist I can go to!' For one thing, hypnotists are pretty much the bottom of the barrel as far as alternative healers go. For another, most people don't even know that your mad skillz as a hypnotist can actually help any particular problem of theirs. I get it, Brenda said. I think I get it. Listen, I'm not saying they don't have problems that a hypnotist like you or me can't solve. I'm just saying that the only problem your card offers to help them solve is YOUR problemand that problem is that you're a Hypnotist and you need clients. Does that make sense? Actually, yes, she said after a long pause. Nobody has a Hypnotist Problem, I went on, but lots of people have phobias and allergies and 50
Real Artists Ship by John McLean smoke cigarettes and other problems that we can easily eliminate with hypnosis. Thats true! she said. Think about going back to the drawing board and creating a new business card that offers to solve a single, specific problem and then youll start getting peoples attention. Okay! Or maybe I should make up several different cards, each one targeted at a specific problem? Love it! I exclaimed. I'll mention somewhere that I'm a hypnotist, but that's probably not even the main thing people care about. That's the last thing people care about. I get it, I really get it, Brenda said. As long as I can fix their problem, they don't give a rat's ass how I do it or what my credentials are. Whether I use hypnosis, Chakra clearing or dolphin energy healingif what I do works, they'll want some! There's such a thing as dolphin energy healing?! I asked. Oh, yes, she answered. Google it! Wowwhat'll they think of next?! Solving Problems By now you've surely divined the next Big Secret that Im wanting to share with you, but let's go ahead and say it out loud... The secret to writing a successful book is to make it about solving your readers problem You want me to just tell you the subject matter of your first book?! Okay, here goes...your book should be about helping somebody you haven't met solve a 51
Real Artists Ship by John McLean problem they otherwise don't know how to solve. If your reader's problem is that they wish they could stop wearing glasses and naturally restore their eyesight, and you happen to know a unique solution for that problem, then I suggest you get to work because Ill bet theres a sizable market for that book. (Don't think helping people restore their bad eyesight is a sizable problem? Well, fully 75% of adult Americans require vision correction, so I'd say we have a fairly large pool of potential readers there!) If your reader's problem is loneliness, then a romance novel would be a lovely (if temporary) fit for them. If your reader's problem is wanting to take a journey around the world but not knowing how to do it on a tight budget, then a book called The Frugal World Explorer would be just the ticket. And if their problem is that they deeply desire to write and publish a book of their own, but don't know how to get there, then taking them by the hand and guiding them down the path that leads to the triumphant publication of their first book would be an ideal solution to that problem! (Just don't call it Real Artists Ship, because I'm already using that title, lulz!) The Good News here is that people have a literally never-ending supply of problems, so you'll never run out of books to write! Flipping the Script The way you're going to solve a readers problem in your book is by sharing how you learned how to solve this same problem. And you're going to do that by telling a story. A story where the reader of your book is the hero. A hero who slays dragons and 52
Real Artists Ship by John McLean rescues princesses and arrives at a destination that was previously outside her reach. Maybe you've already been kicking around ideas for your first book. Perhaps you've even settled on an topic...or even launched whole-hog into outlining and writing the first few chapters. And that's all well and good, but I want you to mentally put all that away for the time being. I'm not saying throw it out, just set it aside for a hot second while we play a game. Before you go any further on your book, I want you to flip the script and come at your problem (what to write about in your first book) from the opposite direction. Instead of asking yourself what YOU want to explore in your book, instead ask what problem OTHERS have that you already know (or mostly know, same thing) how to solve. For example, a woman named Nicole Daedone noticed that she felt deeply ashamed, fearful and blocked about expressing her sexuality in the world, so she half-discovered/half-created a process called Orgasmic Meditation (OM) that ultimately allowed her to solve the problem of her frozen desires. Later she realized that many others were plagued by the same shame and guilt around their sexuality, and that she knew exactly how to help them heal those wounds. She went on to write a bestselling book called Slow Sex to help people reconnect with their desires. I highly recommend it as a model of how to solve a complex problem in a poetic way. Solving The Body Problem I didnt originally set out to write my first book, the Low Carb Revolution. I was actively developing ideas 53
Real Artists Ship by John McLean for books on various other problemsincluding the supposedly unsolvable problem of how to let go of wearing eyeglasses and naturally restore my eyesight, as I personally learned how to do. Then I quite literally woke up one morning and had a flash of insight. I knew many people who were deeply involved in various degrees of personal transformation and self-improvement, and yet who had completely ignored their body during this process. I realized that until they first handled their body, they were not likely to find lasting change in the other areas in which they sought growth and change. At that moment, I grasped that true healing cannot even begin until we first reconnect with our physical bodyrepairing that often broken relationship and falling back in love with ourselves. Once upon a nightmare I weighed a blubbery 270 pounds. Bit by bit and piece by piece I clawed my way out of it. I discovered how to make a series of easy, sustainable adjustments in my lifestyle that allowed me to get down to a sleek, trim 189 lbs. which happens to be exactly what I weighed as a seventeen year-old senior in high school. So I wrote my first book to help others solve what I consider to be a Gateway Problem...a problem so large that until they get that under control they wont progress far on their own personal journey of transformation. There Are No Small Problems Dropping a few tons and reconnecting with your body is a fairly weighty (ha-ha!) problem, but in truth there are no small problems. Indeed, oftentimes the smaller the problem, the harder it is for people to solvebecause it almost seems not 54
Real Artists Ship by John McLean worth talking about or putting any attention on. A Course In Miracles teaches us, There are no small upsets. Or as my friend Flynn says, Even paper cuts hurt. There truly is no problem that is too small for the people who are plagued by it. If you have figured out how to solve any problem at allno matter how grandiose or seemingly trivialthen you have a possible book. For example, I actually do know how to help people completely let go of an allergy in just a single healing session. Of course, your average person usually isn't even aware that their allergy is a problem that can be solved. At best they think all that can be done is to mask their symptoms with pills, powders or elixirs. Since I (naturally!) don't suffer from allergies, I think of this as a small problem. But I'd be willing to bet that many folks afflicted with allergies don't; they may consider their allergies to be very big deal indeed. (Guess I need to add this book to my To Write List, right?!) Enter The Conversation Already Going On In Your Readers Mind As you begin pulling your book together, Id like to invite you to also pay attention to the conversation already going on in your readers mind. People dont just have problems, they also have stories about their problemsand that story becomes a part of the problem. Stick with me here, baby, this little point alone is worth the price of admission! Lets say you want to write a book that helps 55
Real Artists Ship by John McLean men over 50 years of age to get more dates and take their love life to a whole new level. For starters, thats a fantastic problem to solveif you can bring the slightest measure of unique insight and fresh perspective to this topic, you may well have a bestseller on your hands! However, before you can persuade any men over fifty to actually purchase your book, much less read it and buy into your advice, youve got to enter the conversation already going on in their mind and show that you relate to them and their problem. Your potential readers are going to be skeptical. Theyve probably read other books on dating advice and found them wanting. Additionally, many men over fifty feel that their best dating days are behind them. Until you can convince them that, in truth, the best is yet to come they will not be particularly receptive to the rest of your message. In other words, the tone and tenor of your book should also respect the story that your readers are likely telling themselves about their problem. As you surely know, all humans talk to themselves constantly. And if they have a problem thats serious enough to warrant solving, they regularly talk to themselves about that problem. And more often than not that internal conversation is highly negative and discouraging. Not only do they not know how to solve their problem, they often also dont believe they ever can solve it. So what Im proposing is that you speak directly to that internal communication going on within your reader. If youre thinking about writing a book to help people solve the problem of not yet being a Millionaire, then you would be wise to keep in mind 56
Real Artists Ship by John McLean that your potential readers will initially be slightly (or, more likely, hugely) skeptical of any advice you have for them. Therefore the very first chapter of your book ought to include some variation of: You know, I also thought that I would never become a millionaire. I thought that Id made too many bad choices and was too deeply in debt to ever reach my financial dreams. But by using the very system that I will teach you in this book I DID succeed in achieving a net worth of over $1 million...and so can you! You get it? Only after youve entered the conversation thats already going on in your readers mind should you begin sharing the valuable advice that will lead them to the solution of their problem. Is this making sense for you? Another example... From the beginning to the end of Real Artists Ship I dont just show you how to awaken your creativity so you can write and publish your first book, Im also telling a second story...and that story is that YOU can do this, that YOU are the Hero here and that your journey can and will have a Happy Ending! And thats exactly what I mean when I invite you to enter the conversation already going on in your readers mind. Dont just teach them how to solve their problem, but also address any lingering fears and cynicism about letting go of that problem. Well return to this same concept when we later explore how to market your published book to the world.
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Real Artists Ship by John McLean Your Reader Doesnt Know What Success Looks Like I learned an important concept about helping others solve their problems from Internet Marketer extraordinaire Andy Jenkins. Until you show them the way, Andy likes to say, people dont really know what Success looks like. Before Roger Bannister accomplished the feat in the spring of 1954, nobody in history knew what running a sub 4minute mile looked like. Nowadays high school students often run sub 4-minute miles, in part because theyve already seen what it looks like so often before. One of your explicit goals should be to show your readers what success looks like in terms of overcoming the specific problem youre addressing in your book. How will their life be different once they no longer smoke cigarettes? How will waking up without chronic back pain impact their daily appreciation of the world? What does it really feel like to lose eighty pounds in body weight? (Answer: damn good!) The entire point of Chapter 3: A Glimpse of Things to Come! was to show you what success as a writer can look like. I accomplished that by sharing with you one vision of the quiet beauty and leisurely productivity thats possible from the Writers Life. As early as possible in your own book find an opportunity to paint a similar word picture for your reader of what their future might be like when they no longer suffer from their current problem. Make no direct promises. Everybodys mileage varies. Just show them whats possible. 58
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Once youve done that, they will be much more willing to sit through the story youre telling, because now they understand Whats In It For Them. Your goal should be to inspire in your reader a belief that its possible for them to actually arrive at a Happy Ending to their problem. In my third bookthe exceedingly naughty, Women: The Instructionsthe entire story arc is to teach men how to connect with both women and their own sexualityand show them what success can look like in their dating life. How To Decide Which Problem to Solve? Remarkably for a book that's all about writing, we're only going to do a single written exercise together...and it's coming up next. True Confession Time: I am personally not much of a fan of written exercises in the non-fiction books I read. I almost never, ever do themno matter how much the author begs, pleads and cajoles for me to do so. However, I'm still going to include the following written exercise here and strongly encourage you to do it. Since one of the primary goals of Part One is to awaken and draw out your Inner Writer so we can help her write the manuscript that she will eventually deliver to your Inner Accountant to publish, then actually doing the following written exercise would beoh, I don't knowmaybe a damn good idea!
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7: Deciding Which Problem to Solve

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?
Hi
again! Each time you come back for another chapter Im just so damn delighted! I love you and Im rooting for you to stay with me on our adventure all the way to the very endto that day when you click the Publish button on your Amazon account and your first book goes on sale for the rest of the world to buy and enjoy. Until then, I feel privileged to be your guide on this sensational journey...and Id like to continue our relationship even past the last page of this book. Thats why, in the Epilogue, I'll be giving you my personal e-mail address so you can contact me anytime with comments, questions and success stories. And like uber-entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk (from whom I directly stole this idea!) I personally read and respond to every single email I receive. I think of this book as just the beginning of our conversation together, not the end. That said, welcome to the sole written exercise you'll find in these pages! The goal of this process is for you to have a decidedly better grasp of exactly what problem you want to help readers solve in your first book should be. (Even if you currently think you already drop dead certain about what your book will be about, please do the following activity anywayyou might be a little surprised by the outcome.) It's a super simple exercise. I'm going to ask you 60
Real Artists Ship by John McLean to take an inventory of the hard-won knowledge you've accumulated in your life as you've overcome the many challenges and obstacles youve faced. And then Im going to show you a great strategy for picking one of these ideas to write about. Throughout this process, keep in mind that a book is merely a Story about how to Solve a Problem. If you've ever seen the delightful, classic Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, The Sound of Music, then you may recall that the entire plot unfolds from the second song in the show, where the nuns at the convent sing, How do we solve a problem like Maria? (As it turns out, the solution to their problem is to ship her off to work as a nanny for the von Trapp family...which, of course, then makes her Baron von Trapp's problemand much musical goodness ensues from there!) How To Play This Game We're going to break down your learnings about yourself, others and the world into a few unique categories, in order to keep things both manageable and interesting. Some of these categories of problems might seem completely obvious to you and others not so much. Once you start thinking in terms of problems to solve rather than just random book ideas, it can really assist you in narrowing your thinking. Here's how this game is played... First, get a paper and pen. Yes, Id like you to do this by hand, the old-fashioned way...leaving a trail of ink behind you in the world. Second, pick one of the categories below and write it down on the top of the page. Then think of the various trials and tribulations you've faced in 61
Real Artists Ship by John McLean your life within that single broad category. Believe me, you will have had dozens of challenges in each and every one of these, at least some of which you have (hopefully!) eventually overcome! Doing this exercise will get your blood flowing and get your Inner Writer excited about the possibilities of whats just ahead. In fact, it's quite likely that by the end of this little game you will know the story not just for your first book, but for three or four or more! (My current list of Books to Write stands at 14, each of which solves a completely different problem than the others.) So select a category, think of problems you've solved relating to it, scribble them down, then move on to the next. For example, take Healing. I mentioned earlier that one of the rather substantial problems I've solved in my life is discovering how to go from having rather horrendous eyesight (20/400 AND astigmatism, egads!) to restoring my vision where I no longer need to wear glasses at all anymore. The book I will eventually write on this topic will tell the story of how I solved that unique problem, so that others can do the same thing themselves when they're ready to let go of their glasses...and see themselves and the world as they were meant to. Okay, so with pen and paper in hand, let's wander through some of principal categories where our fellow humans universally face challenges and/or seek growth. SPIRITUALITY A Course in Miracles is a great example of an inspired piece of work by writer who perceived a spiritual 62
Real Artists Ship by John McLean problem in others and wrote a big, poetic book to help them solve it. We're not talking about religion here, we're talking about Spiritualityour connection to something larger and more meaningful in the universe. Many people don't even start thinking about their spiritual path until they reach mid-life or later. But once they do, they often find that the traditional organized religions don't answer the questions they have about the world and their place in it. Hence the runaway popularity of spiritual books such as Conversations With God, the Power of Now, The Four Agreements and the Celestine Prophecy. If you can help people connect with their spiritual side and point them in a direction they hadn't previously been aware of, then you may be sitting on a potential bestseller! HEALING We're all broken in some way, shape or form. If you can help us heal, please share! COMMUNICATION Learning how to communicate effectively is one of the most important life skills we can develop. Learning to communicate well with others is fundamental to achieving the success our lives that we desire and deserve. However, I would argue that learning to communicate effectively with ourselves is, if anything, more important for bringing greater awesomness-osity into our lives. The entirety of Part One of Real Artists Ship falls squarely into the category of sharing strategies and 63
Real Artists Ship by John McLean secrets on how to improve communication both with ourselves and with others. LOVE & RELATIONSHIPS This includes romance novels, dating guides and books on how to meet a rich man or nurture your Inner Child and on and on. The problems, upsets, wounds and lingering fears in this category are absolutely endless...as are the possibilities for us to recover from them and learn to love ourselves unconditionally. On the surface, the Low Carb Revolution seems to be about weight loss, but in truth the book is, from beginning to end, much more about repairing the broken relationship so many of us have between our Mind (who we think we are) and our Body (the part of us that carries our Mind from one place to another.) That's why the book has been referred to as Couples counseling for you and your body. MONEY Honestly, the majority of people are completely blocked about money and will never succeed at reaching their financial goalsor anything close to them. In Think and Grow Rich Napoleon Hill even put a number on it, stating that only 1 or 2 people out of 100 would become truly rich, while only another 2-3 out of that 100 might reach the ranks of independently wealthy. In the seventy-five years since the celebrated appearance of Think and Grow Rich and its seventy million and counting readers, as well as the literal mountain of self-help and motivational tomes that 64
Real Artists Ship by John McLean have been published since then, the percentage of people who figure out money and learn to attract it has changed...NOT AT ALL! 95 out of 100 people in the world today still either need to keep working until the day they die or else they depend on handouts and assistance from the government or other institutions to make ends meet during the golden years of their life. Thats a pretty sad statistic, no matter how you slice it! If you have personally figured out a way to help even one more person out of a hundred get unblocked about money and attract wealth into their life, then bring it on, sister, because we want and need to hear what you have to teach us! Incidentally, this category is also the stomping grounds of your Inner Accountant...whom we'll be hanging out with plenty during Part Two! (By the way, take a moment right now to thank your Accountant for his patience and let him know his turns coming soon!) CREATIVITY Heres a Secret you may already know about yourself...but just in case you forgot it, Im going to spell it out for you: You are FAR more creative than you give yourself credit for. All of us are innately creative, but most of us have forgotten it. Call to mind the least-creative, most stick-up-the-ass person you currently know...and then imagine what they were like back in Kindergarten. If you had put some construction paper and crayons in front of them, they would've 65
Real Artists Ship by John McLean drawn a colorful masterpiece, right? Well their Inner Artist is still there inside them, but shes locked up in her room, dancing around in a ballet tutu, listening to music at full blast on her iPod while getting angrier and angrier about never getting any attention! Our Inner Artist only wants one thing in the world: to come out and Play as much as possible! If you can help people give themselves permission to let their Artist out more often, then the result will be more art in the world...and what a wonderful outcome that would be! SEXUALITY While most people are blocked about money, every single last one of us without exception is to some degree or another cut off from the full potential of our sexuality. This is a challenging category to navigate because nothing lights people up and freaks them out more than a frank, penetrating discussion of their sexuality. As a result, people are often reluctant to address their sexual upsets. Their preferred response may be to completely shut down the sexual side of themselves, which I refer to as their Inner Lover. And once we completely shut down an entire part of ourselves, we like to think it no longer exists and therefore we no longer have a problem here. Except, of course, our Inner Lover DOES still exist and always will. We can't get rid of any of the principal parts of us. After all, they fundamentally make up who we are. Sure, we can always choose not to deal with a 66
Real Artists Ship by John McLean messy part of us for a week, a year or even a lifetime, but pretending a side of ourselves is not there doesn't make its problems actually go away! Suppose your car developed some mechanical issues and you couldn't afford to get it fixed right now. Youd have no choice but to leave the car in the driveway for a while and find another means to get around townon foot or bicycle or rickshaw, whatever they got where you live. And these modes of transportation will get you where youre going, so long as you don't need to travel very far. I mean, it'd be a bit tough to make a road trip to your high-school reunion two states away if you had to walk there and back. In the same manner, shutting down our sexuality can temporarily make our sexual wounds and fears seem to disappear. But our underlying sexual upsets dont actually go away...theyre still there, just under the surface, influencing everything we think and say and do. If you have the ability to help other people reconnect with their sexuality and begin the healing process, then for goodness sakes get to work as soon as possible and don't stop until your book is being read by the entire world! (Im serious!) EXTERNAL PROBLEMS So those are merely the broad-stroke categories of the personal, internal problems that all of humanity faces at some point or another during our two hour trot upon the stage of life. Plus we also have an almost infinite variety of problems in realms that fall outside of the experience of being human. As the final step of this exercise, I want you to brainstorm about what I refer 67
Real Artists Ship by John McLean to as External Problemswhich are troubles and obstacles that exist independently of who we are. Perhaps you know some cool techniques and strategies about indoor gardening or nude photography or how to travel the world on cargo ships. Those are all legitimate external problems that people want and need help solving. Or maybe you were on the verge of getting a divorce and figured out a highly original method of reconnecting with your partner and thus saving your marriage...well, I guarantee you a LOT of people would sign up to read that book. Do-ItYourself motorcycle repair, learning to fold paper into origami cranes, how to lose the proverbial Last 10 Pounds...the list of problems that people want to solve is truly inexhaustible. Pick A Card, Any Card At the end of the day, you're gonna have to choose ONE of your ideas to write about. I'm here to tell you that it almost doesn't matter which one you pick, because chances are good you'll initially pick the wrong one! If youre newly single and back on the market, it is of course possible that the very first date you go on will result in a life-long relationship...but its just not statistically likely that one date is all it will take. Same here! Before I finally picked the book youre now reading, I was writing a different book. Check that...I was actually writing several different books. I started with one problem that I had a burning desire to help people solve and worked on outlining that book for a week or so, then I got distracted by a 68
Real Artists Ship by John McLean second idea for a book and worked on that for a week or so, and then, no lie, I started in on a third book on what seemed to be a completely different topic. After another couple of weeks of work, I realized that books 1 and 3 were really two distantly related parts of the very same problem, so I started making preparations to integrate them into one big book of super yummy awesomeness. But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum! Before I could even begin writing this new book that I'd conceived, one night I went to an Internet Marketing mixer. A crowd of over one hundred of my online marketing friends had assembled to hear some dude from Portland or someplace talk about how to increase profits through some kind of Internet marketing technique or anotherall fascinating stuff if you're into that kind of thing, which my friends and I most certainly are. As soon as I arrived, I ran into a friend of mine from England whod recently downloaded and read the Low Carb Revolution. Hed enjoyed the book and learned a great deal, he said, but he had some questions for me. It turned out these questions weren't about eating strategies or how to lose weight or anything of that nature. Instead he asked me, How did you do it? Do what? How did you write your book? I've been trying to write a book for over four years and I just keep going round and round. I don't ever seem to get any closer to finishing it. At that moment, a woman we both knew stepped up and said, I sort of know how to write a book, but I don't know what to do after that. How do you 69
Real Artists Ship by John McLean get your book on Amazon? That's what I need to know. Before long a little crowd had gathered around me at this networking mixer and people were literally lining up to ask me questions about the writing or the publishing process or both. (Keep in mind I wasn't the featured speaker or anything at this event, just a regular guy attending it.) (Okay, I'm far from just a regular guy, but you know what I mean!) By the end of that evening, I knew two things that I didn't know at the beginning of the evening... 1) A lot of people have the problem of not knowing exactly how to Write a book or how to Publish a book...or both. 2) I knew EXACTLY how to solve both problems. And so after three false starts, I set all the other books I was writing aside in favor of this one...and here we are, playing this game together! So don't be afraid to go on a few different dates with one or more of your book ideas. And don't be afraid to no longer ask out any particular idea if there's no chemistry between the two of you. Simply ask out another one of your book concepts on a date and discover how that feels. Eventually the two of you will click, sparks will fly and before you know it you're in the midst of a relationship together that will one day lead to a finished book! You Gotta Do The Work I really, really, really, really, really (that's five really's!) want you to do the exercise described in this chapter. 70
Real Artists Ship by John McLean I want you to spend quality time thinking about some of the problems you know how to solve. Then pick one of those problems to write about. Unless you're writing a tragic novel like Moby Dick or something, your story should probably have a happy endingone where the Hero (your reader) gets the girl back, achieves their financial goals or writes a bestseller of their own! And then just start writing...and keep on writing until your first book is done!
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8: The Secret to Finishing Your Book

It's Not What You Put In...
Ive saved the absolutely most important-est Secret

in Real Artists Ship until this moment to reward you for getting this far on your beautiful journey of becoming a successfully published author. If you can just get this one concept right, completing your first book will fall into place easy peasy lemon squeezy! Like the other secrets I've been sharing, it's probable that nobody else ever bothered to mention this one to you before. (I honestly cannot tell you why these secrets have remained hidden from sightwhether it's because the authors of other writing/publishing guides are clinging possessively to their best information like squirrels hoarding nuts...or if they somehow are simply unaware of these advanced concepts and therefore aren't in a position to share them with you.) In either case, let's unwrap the #1 Top Secret you need to know in order to finish your book... Writing a book isn't about what you put in...it's about what you leave out. Listen, in this era of the Google-ization of the planet, anybody can find out anything they want any time they desire. 72
Real Artists Ship by John McLean But the solution to our problems isnt merely information. Never was, never will be. There's simply so much information on any given topic available at the click of a mouse that we can quickly become overwhelmed trying to process even a fraction of it. Thats why knowing what we don't need to know is one of the fundamental mileposts on the road to mastering a subject. Later, in Part Two, I'm going to drop a real bombshell on you about something you DON'T need to know in order to successfully promote your book on Amazon. In the span of one short chapter I'm going to liberate you from potentially wasting dozens of hours of your precious time every single week on marketing activities that won't lead to any substantive sales of your book. In exactly the same way, the most important contribution you can make to helping somebody else solve a complicated problem is to relieve them of worrying about the parts of the problem that you know from experience don't really matter when it comes to solving it. They're Paying You to Leave Let's consider an example from a slightly different world. Heidi Fleiss, the high-dollar escort turned Hollywood madam, recounts a pivotal story in her path to becoming one of the most notorious players in the high-end prostitution game. The madam who taught Heidi the business explained, These men aren't paying you for sex...they're paying you to leave. Once that concept sunk in, Heidi Fleiss' understanding of the business she was in changed 73
Real Artists Ship by John McLean completely. I want you to experience a similar gamechanging revelation. I'd like for a switch to go on in your mind as the implications of the secret I've just shared with you sink in. In the same way that the Hollywood Madam's customers weren't so much paying her for sex as they were paying her to go away afterwards so they could get back to their busy lives, so too your readers will pay you more for what you leave out of your book than what you put in. The world is an immensely complicated place and it's growing more so by the pico-second. The Internet has turned the waves of new information coming at us each day into a veritable tsunami. When people pick up your book to learn something about themselves or the world, it's just as importantif not more sofor them to discover what they don't need to learn in order to succeed at solving their problem. The Problem With Academia The inability to leave things out helps us understand the otherwise inexplicably poor showing by university professors on influencing the general public on their area of expertise. Its something I refer to as the Problem With Academia. Pick a subject, any subject, and there's some guy or gal with a PhD teaching that topic at the university level. They've probably spent most of their adult life focusing on one narrow aspect of that topic and are without a doubt the world's authority on it. And yet you and I will most likely never know their name nor hear of their work, much less benefit 74
Real Artists Ship by John McLean in any way from their lifetime of study. The formidable knowledge theyve built up in their specialty will almost certainly never be made available to a single member of general public. And that's due to the fact that Academics don't know how to leave anything out! University professors are trained to fall into the lazy rut of parceling out information in semesterlong blocks of 4-5 monthsladling out a stupendous body of information that theyd be hard-pressed to condense into a book of 1000 pages, not to mention the 200-300 pages demanded by old-school publishers or the tight 150 or so pages that lay readers would prefer. In all fairness, college professors do technically write books, but these arent books as you or I know them. Their textbooks are often monstrous in size and invariably unreadablewritten in ponderous, overly specific language intended more to intimidate rival professors at cross-state colleges than actually reveal anything meaningful about the subject at hand to the students unlucky enough to have these texts put on their Required Reading list. Sure, there exists a modest number of outliers, academics who have figured out for themselves that the secret to reaching a wider audience and helping them solve a problem turns more on what they leave out than on what they include. Prof. Bruce Lipton's The Biology of Belief and Prof. Robert Cialdini's Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion are both delightfully written and highly accessible exceptions that prove the rule. Meanwhile, most academics are doomed to lives of long-winded mediocrity because their hard-won knowledge is too precious to them and they cannot bring themselves to leave any of it out. 75
Real Artists Ship by John McLean So...What Do I Leave Out? Right about now you might be thinking, Okay, cowboy, I get it. It's not what I put in, it's what I leave you. But...how will I know what to leave out?! (Great question, by the way! You get a High Five!) The answer is simple... Leave out everything that isn't part of the Story you're telling. And that's really it! If a topic, a technique or an entire chapter serves the story you are telling, include it...if not, don't. Again, the story you're telling is meant to take the Hero (your lovely reader) from a state of having a problem and deliver them to a successful solution...the oft-mentioned Happy Ending! If the story you're offering us is called How to Get A Job as a Blackjack Dealer, then leaving OUT a longish chapter about the history of Blackjack is probably a safe choice. (On the other hand, the history of the game might be something supremely important to know in order to get a job as a Blackjack Dealer these days, I have no clue!) Or maybe casinos these days prefer to train dealers in their own style, in which case letting your readers know that they do NOT need to spend multiple hundreds of dollars by going to a Dealer School would be an invaluable thing to let them know they can leave out on their way to landing their first dealer job. The clearer you get about the journey you're taking the reader on, the more obvious it will become which pieces you can leave out. I recently watched a home-made YouTube video by some British ex-pat who moved to Thailand 76
Real Artists Ship by John McLean because he liked the people, the culture and the fact that everything was so damn cheap! (His two-story apartment, all bills paid, set him back in the neighborhood of $225 a month!) When it came to what to pack for your move to Thailand, the bloke said, Don't pack anything. You won't need anything. Just show up wearing a pair of shorts and a t-shirtyou can buy everything else you need when you get here for a fraction of what it'd cost you at home. And that, my friends, is a perfect example of someone who understands a subject well enough to share with us what we can leave out. Jot this down somewhere so you can continue to remind yourself of this magical truth... Writing a book isn't about what you put in...it's about what you leave out!
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9: Is It Crazy Enough?
The Birth of Quantum Physics
Way
back in the early 1930's there were still few enough physicists in the world that all the major names would gather in a single room each year and share their latest discoveries. (Well, everybody except Albert Einstein, of course, who rarely attended these things because he was off doing Thought Experiments and getting his hair styled or whatever the hell he did all day long!) Around this time an up-and-coming German physicist by the name of Werner Heisenberg and a couple of his colleagues were busy developing a whole new subset of rules and observations that would later become known as Quantum Theory. You may recall from your school days that Newtonian physics is the good-old fashioned physics popularized by Isaac Newton (the Rainman of 17th century England) and which lays out the scientific rules that govern things that are very big...like planet Earth and the universe as a whole. Meanwhile, Einstein's Theory of Relativity concerns itself with things that are going very fast...up to and including the speed of light. By contrast, this new physics called Quantum Theory being cooked up by Heisenberg and his brainy chums lifted the hood on things that are very, very small. 78
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Because it turns out that when you start looking at things that are very, very small, all the dependable rules described by Newton or Einstein no longer apply. In fact, when things get very, very small they also get very, very, very weird. So Heisenberg shows up at the physics convention one year with a speech in hand to describe his quirky findings. When it's his turn to speak he's all fidgety and double-checking his calculations one last time and about to throw up because of his nervousness. Somehow he manages to get through his talk about this very new and very strange theory of Quantum physics. Right there in the front row of the assembled physicists sits the eminence grise of the gathering and the most accomplished of all the assembled brainiacs, the distinguished Nobel-Prize winner, Neils Bohr. As the presentation ends, the room turns towards the Danish physicist, eager for his all-important reaction. Neils Bohr rises from his seat. Heisenberg steadies himself, prepared to hear the verdict that could or break his entire career. Bohr clears his throat and famously says, Your theory sounds crazy...but it's not crazy enough to be true. And then Prof. Bohr sat back down. The words he has just spoken will turn out to change history. Neils Bohr has effectively encouraged the young German to go crazy up his new theory, to completely throw out the old rules and laws of physics and create all new ones if that's what it takes. And so Werner Heisenberg does exactly that. He crazies up Quantum Theory, which leads to a Nobel Prize of his own a few years later and the creation of 79
Real Artists Ship by John McLean a subsection of physics where literally all the cool kids now want to hang out and play. Ask Yourself, Is It Crazy Enough? When I first heard the story of Neils Bohr telling young Mister Heisenberg that his early efforts at Quantum Theory weren't crazy enough to be true, it made a profound impact on me. Now you should know by now that I consider myself to be someone who colors outside the lines...indeed, well outside the lines. Even so, real innovation sometimes comes from ignoring the lines altogether. So I created a little technique based on Neils Bohrs storied pronouncement that I'd like to share with you now. Whenever I come up a clever or creative or unique idea, I no longer stop there. I don't think, Oh, here's this clever new concept I thought up let me bring that kicking and screaming into the world! Au contraire, Pierre! My next step before taking any action on my new project is to ask myself, Waitis it crazy enough? In other words, have I taken this new dream as far as it could or should go?! Because the odds are good that I have not. Any given concept can often be taken quite a bit further than we first believed possible. I encourage you to begin asking yourself, Is it crazy enough?! in various areas of your life and discover what lays on the other side. (Heisenberg didn't win the Nobel Prize for coming up with Quantum Theory, he won it for going off and really crazying it up first and then showing it to the world!) 80
Real Artists Ship by John McLean For example, suppose you have friends visiting from out of town and they want to go out and sing karaoke. Perhaps your initial response is, Oh, no, I don't sing, even in privateI would never do anything like that! In this case I would invite you to instead say to yourself, Whoa, ducky, it would be crazy for me to go out and sing Karaoke because I never do anything like that...and that's exactly why I'm going to go do it!! Now I'm not talking about getting Carrot-Top crazy here or running around like Animaniacs, bouncing off the walls, but rather taking actions that are crazy for YOU. If you're ordinarily a wild party girl, then spending a quiet evening playing chess with a friend would definitely qualify as a crazy way to pass the time...for you. If you're not at all religious, then accepting a friend's invitation to attend Sunday services at their church would be absolutely bonkers...for you. And if you seriously believe you have what it takes to successfully write and publish a book that other people will want to buy and read...then you may just be crazy enough! Asking yourself, Is it crazy enough is a bold way to give yourself permission to play an even bigger game than you set out to play! Get Crazy! Ask yourself Is it crazy enough?! before you ever start writing your book. Ask it when you complete your outline. Ask it after you finish the first draft. Or...ask it every damn day throughout the entire process, which is the way I do it. 81
Real Artists Ship by John McLean A Word of Caution: If you keep pushing the boundaries and coloring outside the lines, then somebody, somewhere is certain to become offended. And that means youre doing it right! Only when you've gone too far have you gone far enough! Here's another important Secret about writing a book (or making any kind of art) they somehow forgot to mention to you: If you're not pissing somebody off, you're doing something wrong! When I first conceived of writing Real Artists Ship, I honestly intended to go the easy route and simply dash off something about the left-brainy, technical part of publishing a book. Mind you, that's important information and it forms the heart and soul of Part Two, but I also instinctively grasped that if all I did was write about the busy work of becoming a writer then it wasn't going to help those many people who weren't entirely certain of which steps to take in order to bring their book into the world in the first place. So I put down my #2 pencil (not really, I write with multi-colored, ultra-fine Sharpies!) and asked, How can I make this crazier?! And the answer, for me, was to take a big risk and create this entire first part of this book where we've been exploring some rather woo-woo and almost secretive topics before getting to the expected nuts & bolts of the publishing process just down the road. For me, Crazy Enough meant going all-in from the start of our journey in the hopes that I would connect with you and inspire you to bring the best parts of yourself out to play as you move closer 82
Real Artists Ship by John McLean towards conceiving and writing your first book. Because, again, I really want you to succeed. I want you to succeed at writing your book. I want you to succeed at making it as amazing as you are. And I want you to succeed at marketing it to the rest of the world. And if that's not crazy, I don't know what is!
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10: How To Become More Creative

Rolling Up Our Sleeves
The
water's heating up here, can you feel it?! It's getting hotter and hotter, and pretty soon it's gonna be boiling over. And that's when the party really starts and we'll generate some serious steam! Hopefully by now you've done the Deciding Which Problems to Solve' exercise in Chapter 7 and you've now chosen a problem you know a solution to, and then you've outlined a storya simple narrative with a Beginning, Middle and End to provide a framework for helping your readers get unstuck. And finally you've run your book idea through your Is it crazy enough?! filter and crazied it up a a little...or a lot! By the way, good job doing all! You are freakin awesome! I seriously hope we get the opportunity to meet in person some day! Now it's time to roll up our sleeves and actually start doing the work of writing the book. This is where our journey becomes more exciting and memorable by the day. It's also the place where we are sure to run into some obstacles, barriers and steep climbs on our path. (Hey, it wouldn't be much of an adventure if we didn't have to slay a few monsters along the way, would it?!) To help you vanquish the fire-breathing dragons that are certain to appear I am going to arm you 84
Real Artists Ship by John McLean with three unique sets of tools. You can either use these powerful techniques or not use them, that's entirely up to you. I just want to share with you how others have made the creative process a little less scary, how they've overcome setbacks on their journey to bring a new idea into the worlda symphony, a theme park attraction, a how-to book, whatever. The final form that your art takes doesn't matter; as Penn Jillette says, It's all one show business! Heres the trio of weapons youll have at your disposal in the bold quest just ahead of you... 1) Walt Disney's 3 Hats Creativity Strategy 2) John McLean's 4 Hour Work Day Strategy 3) Dr. Seuss' 1000-Page Persistence Strategy (Hmmmm, that's some pretty august company I've inserted myself into there, huh?! Damn, let's hope my technique doesn't totally suck when we get there!) Without further ado... 1) WALT DISNEY'S 3 HATS CREATIVITY STRATEGY In 1934, Walt Disney began dreaming a highly unusual dream. He wanted to create the first animated feature film in history. When he announced his intention to make a feature-length cartoon based on the popular children's story, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, some of his animators thought he'd gone crazy. (And if a man ever LIVED the Is It Crazy Enough? philosophy it was Walt Disney!) His brother Roy, who held the pursestrings of the company, vehemently tried to dissuade Walt from his ambitions plan, which Hollywood wags were 85
Real Artists Ship by John McLean already dubbing Disney's Folly. Roy eventually gave in to Walt's burning desire for this project and he somehow managed to pull together the money to go into production. Over the course of the next 4 years the company flirted with bankruptcy as Walt and his creative team shaped, molded and coaxed to life the very first feature-length cartoon. Along the way, Walt Disney perfected a remarkable creative process. It involved breaking down the process of making art into three distinct phases, each run by a completely different type of person...or the same person wearing three completely different hats, if you prefer. The DreamerWhen you play the role of the Dreamer, ANYTHING is possible. There are no limits, no restrictions, no consideration about the reactions of others and no thought whatsoever about how you will accomplish your goal. The job of the dreamer is just that...to dream up any kind of idea whatsoever. The SpoilerOnly after the dreamer has conceived of a new project can the Spoiler come along to critique and edit it...to spoil the fun as much as possible. The spoiler's role is to improve and tweak and polish the idea until it verily glows. The RealistFinally, the Realist is the one who figures out how to get things done. For example, the animators responsible for Snow White realized they needed the world's most advanced multiplane movie camera to create the elaborate foreground and background elements for their picture. The only problem was that such a camera didn't exist anywhere on the planet, so it was the job of 86
Real Artists Ship by John McLean uber-realist Roy Disney to find someone who could design and build one for their use. The result was the legendary multiplane animation camera invented by William Garity which allowed for up to seven separate layers of handdrawn cels moving in as many different directions to pass in front of the camera at oncea piece of mechanical brilliance that remained in continuous use for decades in animated features until computer graphics finally took over the show for good with Toy Story and beyond. Now lets dig a little deeper with each persona in turn... THE DREAMER At the original Disney Studios in the then-sleepy Hollywood suburb of Silverlake, there was a meeting room where only Dreaming was allowed. While you were in there, you could only come up with new and positive creative ideas. Roy Disney, the accountant, banker and logistics man of the operation, was all but barred from entering. If you were to wear a hat that symbolized this persona, it would be the winner of the Crazy Hat Contestelaborate and shamelessly silly, like the kind of hats worn by my Internet Marketing pal, Tom The Furry Hat Guy. (Yup, that's the name on his business card...which is appropriate since I've never once ever seen him NOT wearing a furry hat!) While you are actively conceiving and writing your book, this is the only hat you should wear. That means you just dream and write, dream and write. There's no stepping back and make changes or edit what you've just writtenthose are activities 87
Real Artists Ship by John McLean done by a totally different persona, one we haven't gotten to yet. The absolute death of creativity is when we get these two personas confused and invite the Spoiler in when the Dreamer is still in the midst of, well, dreaming. If your fingers are dancing across the written page or on the keyboard of your computer, writing down words where before there was only a blank page, then you are in Dreamer mode. Stay there. Dream. Write. Don't go back. Don't revisit what you've already written. Don't edit, change or improve anything. Keep dreaming (i.e., writing) all the way to the very end of the first draft of your book. Only then will you be ready to invite in the next persona to advance your work to the next stage. THE SPOILER In my estimation, coming up with this unique step in the creative process was one of the keys to Walt Disney's genius and was directly responsible for his unparalleled creative success. The Spoiler (or Critic, if you prefer) was a persona where you had the opportunityeven the responsibilityto t0tally trash, correct and improve upon anything the dreamer came up with. In the early days of the Disney Studios, the designs, concept drawings and story ideas that emerged from the dreamer stage were pinned to a huge corkboard in a narrow corridor of the main building. Anybodyand I mean anybody, from the brandnew janitor just off the boat from Poland up to even straight-laced Roy Disneycould come along and 88
Real Artists Ship by John McLean make any kind of suggestions they wanted. They could scribble down new character names, make alterations to concept sketches of animals and locations, and just generally improve what had originally been conceived by spoiling it. If you were to wear a hat to symbolize this persona, you would want something highly practicallike a golf visor or a Sherlock Holmes detective hat. The Spoiler is the hat you wear when crafting a second (and third and more!) draft of your book. Please keep in mind that theres nothing to spoil, criticize or improve until your entire First Draft is complete. The Spoiler In Action People sometimes express surprise when I tell them that I wrote my 464-page book, the Low Carb Revolution, in just 47 days from start to finish, followed by the 238-page Real Artists Ship in 3 weeks and 5 days. What they don't know is that the ONLY reason I was able to accomplish this was because I have internalized Walt Disney's Creativity Strategy and I keep my Dreamer and my Spoiler totally separated at all times. Not once during the primary writing of either book did I ever once let my spoiler out to play. I kept him firmly locked up until I finished my initial two draftsthe first by hand on paper, the good old-fashioned way, and the second on my laptop. Only then did I throw open the doors and invite the Spoiler to edit, rewrite and polish the manuscript to his heart's content. The job of my spoiler is to cut out words, paragraphs and whole chapters...to move chapters 89
Real Artists Ship by John McLean up or down in the mix...or, if something vital was left out of the story Im telling, to call for the dreamer to come back and write a new sub-section or whole chapter. I allow the spoiler to make as many complete passes from start to finish on the manuscript as he desireswith a minimum of three additional drafts. (For a total of five or more complete drafts.) The dreamer and the spoiler are, of course, two different aspects of the same part of youwhich I refer to as your Inner Writer. THE REALIST Finally, there was yet one more location in the original Disney studios where team members could put on a different metaphorical cap. It was essentially a largish closet under some stairs that had been converted into a meeting room. This was the meeting room where Roy Disney was always invited, since his ability to bring the creative ideas of his brother into reality were critical to the operation. The hat that goes along with this part of the strategy would be a construction hat, since this is the hat you wear when you're building things and getting shit done. The original vision for William Garity's fabled multiplane animation camera emerged during a pow-wow in this space. This is the part of you that Ive playfully referred to as your Inner Accountant, which will get its turn behind the steering wheel during the whole of Part Two. This is the side of you that will soon learn how to publish your book directly on Amazon and promote it to potential readers. 90
Real Artists Ship by John McLean How It Works I have referred to Walt Disney's novel creativity strategy as using 3 hats for a reason. Now he had three physically separate spaces in his studiosa dreamy meeting room, a critical bulletin board in the hallway and a realistic meeting space under the stairs. So Walt and his team literally walked from space to space (and back again) as they built up each new project. However it's unlikely youll have an entire suite of offices at your disposal when you go to write your first book. Yet you can still replicate this same process by playing around with the three different styles of hats associated with each of these personas. These can be real hats you buy at a brick & mortar store. Seriously, a great way to start incorporating these three distinct phases of creativity into your writing life is to buy real hats at a real store and don the appropriate one during each phase. Or you can use pretend hats...I mean, we've got nothing if we don't have imagination, right?! You'll save yourself a tremendous amount of wasted time and frustration if youll simply learn how to wear each of these hats in turn rather than try to mix them all up together. I've been around friends who cycle through them rapidly, one right after the other without pausing. They will come up with a great idea (dreamer), shoot it down and criticize it (spoiler) and then describe how impractical it will be to bring to life (realist) all in a single sentence! Write with the dreamer. Only when you've plowed all the way to the end of your first draft can 91
Real Artists Ship by John McLean you let the spoiler out. (By the way, when you ask, Is it crazy enough?! it's your spoiler who's doing the asking!) And then, at the very end, trot out your left-brained realist in order to format, publish and promote your work to the world. By the way, when Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (AKA Disney's Folly) was finally released in 1938, it became the unexpected box office smash of the year. It earned Walt Disney his first Academy Awardfamously, one full-size Oscar and seven miniature onesand ushered in an era of increasingly sophisticated feature-length animated films that persists to this day. How's that for a Happy Ending?! 2) JOHN McLEAN'S 4 HOUR WORK DAY STRATEGY In a phrase, less is more. I write for only a total of 4 hours per day, divided into two sessions of about two hours each, and I encourage you to do the same. Grinding along for hour after repetitive hour is what factory workers and farmers do. No elite performers in any category can sustain endless hours of practice or performance. Tennis champion Serena Williams spends about 4 hours per day playing tennis whether she's practicing or competing. Classical pianist Van Cliburn, the American who famously won the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow during the height of the Cold War, practices no more than 4 hours per dayalthough none of those four hours technically take place during the day. (A notorious night owl, Van Cliburn regularly plays from midnight until 4 am!) 92
Real Artists Ship by John McLean And the most decorated Olympian in history, Michael Phelps, spends an identical four hours per day in the pool, also divided into two sessions of about two hours each. You'd be amazed at how much you can accomplish in a mere four hours per day. I've already mentioned the impressive productivity I'm able to summon up while working a maximum of 28 hours per week. One of the best aspects of this leisurely work strategy is that no single writing session ever seems daunting in advance. Since you already know that you'll be spending only two hours (or less...you can write for as little as thirty minutes per session, for a total of merely one hour per day) it never seems like a heavy duty to sit down and begin writing. If you still have a full-time day gig, then finding half an hour or so in the morning before work and another in the early evening afterwards can be very doable. And then on the weekends work up to the maximum of four hours, if the spirit moves you. So four hours is the upper limit I want you to work on your book each day, while one hour is the lower. More Is Less I fully recognize that advising you to work less rather than more is both counter-intuitive and goes against the great American Work Ethic of longer hours that's been drilled into us since birth, but I assure you that if you'll give yourself permission to work for fewer hours on your book each day then your output will go up! 93
Real Artists Ship by John McLean It's been well-documented in studies dating back to the 1950s that the more hours you assign office workers, the less productive they become. When required to work additional hours beyond the traditional 40-hour work week, employees instinctively begin pacing themselves by working with less intensity. By the time workers reach 60 hours per week or more, their collective productivity during drops to a dismal 50%. In other words, the workers are now producing merely 30 hours of work during the week despite being required by the company to spend twice that much hours at the office and being paid up to 50% more for their extra effort! On the other hand, writing for four hours (or less) each day allows you to bring your A Game to the dance each and every time you sit down to play. And a four-hour work day is highly sustainable. Because I work so little, I always write 7 days per week. (Except, of course, when I don't. If something comes up that I want to do, like a workshop or a hot date or an opportunity to dance, then I go do that activity and get back to my writing at the next scheduled session. At the same time, I could be utterly misguided in giving you this advice. The great Dr. Seuss (who lived in a converted observation tower in La Jolla) quite literally holed himself up in his Tower to work for at least eight hours per day...and often longer than that. Of course, the good Doctor also had his own unique creativity strategy that we're about to unwrap!
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Real Artists Ship by John McLean 3) DR. SEUSS' STRATEGY 1000-PAGE PERSISTENCE
The basic premise here is to keep going and going...and going...until you get it right, whatever right means to you. Surely you've read one or many of the wonderful children's books that Dr. Seuss wrote and illustrated, classics like Cat in the Hat, Oh, the Places You'll Go!, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and so many more. Well here's something you might not have known about how those gems were brought into the world. For each of those little books of forty-eiht pages or so, on average Dr. Seuss labored for an entire year and wrote over one THOUSAND pages to achieve the delicious simplicity of the finished product. Let that sink in for a moment. This amazing man was willing to write and discard 952 pages over a period of 12 months in order to arrive at 48-ish pages of a book that kids of all ages would want to read again and again. Can you imagine how much bravery that required? Can you picture yourself summoning the courage to discard hundreds and hundreds of pages that you've poured your heart and soul into because they still weren't exactly what you had in mind for the finished product?! Is it any wonder why virtually every one of Dr. Seusss books remains a timeless classic?! Let go of thinking that the words you write are overly precious. Sometimes youre going to have to just toss out pages that you've sweated over, because they dont work, and then re-invest even more time and energy into writing new ones. 95
Real Artists Ship by John McLean There will be times when you write for days or weeks on a new project and amass an impressive number pages, and then it slowly dawns on you that it's not working. The story you're trying to tell simply isn't coming out the way you intended. Now maybe you can still salvage those pages and rewrite them such that the story falls into place and you find yourself back on track. But also maybe not. At least be willing to do what Dr. Seuss would have donethrow out every scrap of it, if need be, and start over again from scratch. Down the road youll arrive at Chapter 21: The Island of Amazon, where I tell the story of researching and writing a long and masterful (if I do say so myself!) 17-page chapter on how to market your book on the Internet, and then waking up the next day to realize that everything Id suggested in the chapter was dead wrong and simply didnt apply to the unique marketing space that is Amazon. Without a second thought, I rolled up my sleeves and began the chapter anew...and I very much hope youll be delighted with the results when you get there! By the way, it shouldn't surprise you that Dr. Seuss amassed an enormous collection of crazy, silly and downright bizarre hatsand while he was writing he very often pulled out what he termed a thinking cap from his menagerie of headwear and would leave it on for hours (sometimes days!) on end to help him better access his Inner Dreamer. Speaking of writing for hours on end, if you're like most people you probably have a busy schedule these days. Perhaps even an insanely busy one. 96
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Finding four whole hours to write each day might seem like an inconceivable luxury...hell, even squeezing out a couple of thirty minute sessions might push you to the brink. Or...would it?!
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11: Who Has Time to Write A Book?!

Getting it Down
This is the moment in our journey when I remind

you of the obviousif you want to write a book, sooner or later you're gonna have to sit down and, well, write the damn thing! As Julia Cameron puts it, Art is not about thinking something up. It is the oppositeit's getting something down. Until the idea you want to share with the world emerges from within you and lands on the page, then it simply doesn't even exist for the rest of us. The adventure that you and I are on together has a Happy Endingone in which you successfully write and publish your first book. But until you start your book and work on it until it's done, nobody else will get to enjoy it. I want you to finish your book so that one day real live people can discover you and your ideas, rather than merely the other frustrated ghosts haunting the cemetery. The wealthiest place on the planet is the graveyard. Because in the graveyard we will find inventions that we were never exposed to, and ideas and dreams that were never acted upon. Because most people allow that inner conversation, for whatever reason, to keep them from ever pursuing their goals. Les Brown 98
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Not Enough Time One of the primary ways we allow our negative internal monologue to keep us from achieving our goals is by telling ourselves a story. In this case, the story is some form of, I don't have the time to write my book right now. So you've got no time to write your book? Seriously?! Okay, let's pretend that not having enough time is a genuine and credible objection rather than just another way to hide from the world and find excuses not to let our light shine. Let's break it down, shall we? To do that, we're going to do a little (very little!) Math. But stick with me here because there's something super-delicious just on the other side of our firstgrade level calculations! 168 Hours We all have the same, unchanging starting point of one hundred and sixty-eight hours per week. Each and every one of us gets allotted the same amount of timefrom the carefree vagabond roaming the country be hopping freight trains up to what is arguably the most time-intensive job on the planet, the President of the United States of America. Naturally, some of us do work more than others...or at least think we do! (In truth, the absolute number of hours that Americans work has declined fairly steadily since the late '80s, while the number of hours that Americans believe they are working has risen just as steadily!) But let's stick with the tried and true traditional forty hour work week for now. Here's our initial calculation: 99
Real Artists Ship by John McLean 168 hours (in a week) - 40 hours (working in the coal mines) = 128 hours remaining Next up, we'll factor in sleep. Although most people in the Western world sleep an average of six and a half hours per night, let's go ahead and be conservative by giving ourselves credit for the full eight hours per night. 8 hours of sleep per night x 7 days per week = 56 hours asleep So after subtracting our work hours from the total number of hours in the week we had 128 hours left. Now let's subtract the hours we spend sleeping from that sub-total. 128 hours (remaining after work) - 56 hours (sleeping) = 72 hours (left over) And, finally, let's generously allot ourselves a further three hours per day for doing Other Stuff. This might include taking a bath, buying a cup of coffee, driving to and from work, reading the newspaper, feeding the dog, petting the cat or disposing of the dead goldfish...you know, all those items that pop up on our daily To Do list. So three hours of doing Other Stuff per day times seven days in a week comes out to twenty-one hours. 72 hours (remaining after work and sleep) - 21 hours (doing Other Stuff) = 51 hours 100
Real Artists Ship by John McLean 51 Hours You still with me?! Because now we're getting somewhere. Now we have a number we can hang our hat on. After a full week of working and sleeping, plus three whole hours to take care of all the odds & ends that crop up each day for you, me and the President of the United States, that still leaves us with the rather impressive number of fifty-one hours of free time per week. Which brings us to the very last of our mathematics, as well as to the super-delicious outcome promised earlier. We're now going to divide our fifity-one hours of weekly free time by the number of days of the week: 51 hours (weekly free time) / 7 days (in a week) = 7. 25 hours Wow! That means we each have an average of seven hours and fifteen minutes every day of the week to do non-work, non-sleep and non-errand-y activities. (Like writing our book!) Of course, we don't get precisely that amount of free time every single day. During the work week we might get a little less, and on the weekends a lot more. Still, on average, per day, each of us gets an extra... 7 Hours 15 Minutes Which means...what?! A couple of things, actually. First, maybe we aren't actually quite as busy as we like to pretend we are. And we pretend to be so busy because we don't want anybody (least of all, ourselves) to know our deep, Dark Secret. 101
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Well, I'm going to out you about that Dark Secret right now, so you can no longer take refuge behind it. You are lazy! Sorry, dont shoot the messenger! But that's the deep, dark secret you've been hiding from the world and from yourself for a loooooooong time. You, good sir or madam, are lazy. Whenever you can get away with it, you will often do as little as you can get away with. You arent even close to playing at your full potential, are you?! I know this sounds like a rather harsh assessment, but guess what? I'm also a little bit lazy. And so is every human alive. And so is every other living creature...every last lifeform that walks, flies or swims on this planet seeks every possible opportunity NOT to expend energy whenever it can! Once you accept the fact that it's perfectly normal to be as lazy as you can get away with, then you no longer need to pretend that you are absolutely going flat out at 100% all the time. (And if you are going at 100% all the time, I think you should slow the hell down and enjoy being a little bit lazier, like the rest of us!) Second, your daily allowance of 7 hours and 15 minutes of free time means that you absolutely, positively have all the time you could possible need to write your first book. Even if you spent every one of my suggested four hours writing, you would still have an additional three hours and fifteen minutes per day to pursue other activitiessuch as updating your Facebook status on the hour or going out dancing or learning to juggle or cooking a meal for your family. 102
Real Artists Ship by John McLean And those four hours of writing are the absolute upper limit, mind you! If you only feel inspired to put in one or two hours on some days, then do that. But take solace in the fact that you can remain pretty darn lazy and still finish your book within a reasonable time frame. Which is the perfect segue into our next quick topic of discussion! The Empire State Building Rule Now that we're crystal clear on the amount of time we actually have available to devote to our writing each day, let's briefly explore the maximum number of days we should spend working on a single project. Even if you've never personally taken the elevator up to the windy observation deck on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building, you're surely aware that its one of the most popular landmarks on the planetequally beloved by big apes like King Kong and smooching couples in chick flicks. When it was completed in 1931, the Empire State Building became the tallest building in the worlda distinction it proudly held for over forty years! But here's something you might not know about this legendary structure: the Empire State Building was built in only 410 days. From groundbreaking to topping off, in an era of primitive, steam-driven construction equipment, the entire 102 stories of this massive skyscraper were built in just over thirteen months! (As if that staggering feat of efficient project management isn't impressive enough, you should also know that the Empire State Building's designer, William F. Land, did ALL of the building drawings 103
Real Artists Ship by John McLean in merely two weeks!) The obvious lesson I'd like you to take from this is that if what was once the world's tallest skyscraper could be constructed in just one year and forty-five days, then not only can you write your book in that amount of time or less, you absolutely must. Here's another Big Secret I want you to write down and mull over until it become part of the fabric of your character.... The longer you take to write your book, the longer it takes to write. Indeed, the closer you come to surpassing the 13month construction time of the Empire State Building, the farther away you will be from reaching your goal. When someone tells me they've been working on their first book for three or four years or longer, I know for an absolute certainty that they will never, ever finish that book. Period. Their only hope is to set aside the original version of the book and begin a new one...and then complete that within the hard deadline of 410 days, preferably much less! Recall that writing a book isn't something you do, it's someone you become. The person you are right now, the one who's sitting there reading this book, youre not the same person you were six months ago, are you?! And you're certainly not going to be the same person six months from now as you are at this moment. Dr. Seuss created such memorable works because he was willing to let go of what he'd already written in order to write something even better. Yet even he also imposed a hard upper-limit of twelve months for each book, and he never worked 104
Real Artists Ship by John McLean longer than that on any single one of them. Real Artists Ship You are here to let your light shine in the world. One very good way to do that is to create something new, like writing a book and then shipping it so that others can profit from the glow of your unique light. One of my favorite marketers and writers is Seth Godin. I especially adore Seth's biographical description of himself. It consists of merely two wordsbut those two words are the only ones that matter. The reason I wrote Real Artists Ship for you is because I passionately want Seth Godin's same twoword bio to apply to you. I want you to be able to substitute your name for his and have this delightful turn of phrase summing up his life still ring true... Seth ships!
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12: Your Tribe Doesn't Care If You Succeed

The Road Less Traveled
We've
reached the end of Part One of Real Artists Ship. We have successfully woken up your Inner Writer. We've given her permission to play and a space to play in. If you haven't already completed the manuscript of your first book, then the weeks ahead will provide your writer with all sorts of wonderful opportunities to be all sorts of amazing! By the way, in case I havent mentioned it lately, I just want you to know that I love you and Im so glad youre here! Before we plunge into an exploration of the technical aspects of getting your book onto Amazon and then promoting it to potential readers, I want to briefly fast forward to the very end of this process and share with you something that nobody ever warned me about in all the dozens and dozens of books I've ever read about creativity and writing. So I guess that means its yet another Secret, what else?! A secret that's been so thoroughly kept from you that you may not even believe me when I share it with you. Heck, I wouldnt blame you a bit if you remain completely dubious while reading this chapter and say to yourself, None of this is gonna apply to me and skim through it to get to the good stuff coming up straight ahead in Part Two. 106
Real Artists Ship by John McLean I genuinely wish I wasn't the one who had to reveal this secret to you, but nobody else seems willing to speak it aloud...so here goes: Your Tribe doesn't really care if you succeed in your dream of writing and publishing your first book. Punch and Pie You may have a vision of your own future that goes a little like this... You successfully write and publish your book to great acclaim from within your Tribethat is to say, your family and closest friends. They have a book launching party for you, with punch and pie, even! Your partner now beams at you with pride whenever youre in public. Your dog is more than ever convinced that you are the best owner in history. Your hometown throws a parade for you. The principal of your old high school rings up, asking for permission to erect a statue in your honor outside the school library. Your dottering old grandmother suddenly recovers her sensibilities long enough to lucidly inform you that you've single-handedly saved the family's reputation. And your children suddenly start laughing at your jokes and doing what they're told. And that's a delightful vision to have, to be sure. But I have the unenviable duty of making you aware that the actual reality of your post-publication life may be rather different. The truth is, regardless of how much YOU want to succeed, your Tribe very much prefers that you didn't. The Facade 107
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Make no mistake, your Tribe is mostly gonna act all positive and support-y. When you're around, they will initially slap you on the back and boast about how you're going to become a bestselling author and how proud they are that you're moving on to bigger and better things. But when you're not around, not so much. How did Shakespeare put it in Hamlet? One may smile and smile, and yet be a villain. Don't blame your Tribe. It's not your their fault and it's certainly nothing personal. Know this: the purpose of any Tribe is to protect its members and keep them IN the Tribe, not help them get out. Your family and friends genuinely want to support you and encourage you, but they're afraid. Afraid that youll escape the Tribe and leave them behind. Afraid that one of their strongest members (you) will go away and never return, while they remain behind to fend for themselves. We evolved over the course of two million years to stick together in groups and watch each other's backs. You know, Us versus Them, with us being a tight-knit group with a maximum size of 150-250 others (a number so constant and universal across cultures that it even bears a formal name, the Dunbar Number, after the researcher who discovered it) and them being everyone else, a number which exceeds 7 billion as of this writing. It's My Party, I'll Cry If I Want To The only way we can ever be disappointed in our lives is if what happens in our future spectacularly underperforms our expectations. The reason I'm taking you aside now to whisper 108
Real Artists Ship by John McLean this warning about how your Tribe probably won't be as gung-ho about your success as you'd like them to be is so you can adjust your expectations in advance and avoid an otherwise certain disappointment . Then if your Tribe unexpectedly embraces you and your book, you can savor feeling genuinely and pleasantly surprised. If your experience is anything like mine (and that of literally every other writer whom I've discussed this with), then here's what you can actually expect once your labor of love is finally complete and available for public consumption. Your close friends and family will make a Big Fuss over your book...for approximately 30 seconds. After that, they will want the spotlight of attention to swing back their way. Your Tribe will buy your book...but only begrudgingly. (Don't be surprised when every last man Jack of them tries to finagle a free copy out of you.) Once they do secure a copy of your book, theyll make a big show of starting it...but don't be shocked when, three years later, they still haven't read more than the first fifteen or so pages. Hey, I'm finally about to start reading your book, will replace Hello from a goodly percentage of your friends and family. Only a few members of your Tribe will ever finish reading your book...and odds are good that not a single one of them will ever say a single word about it, whether positively or negatively. Indeed, the most common response among your close friends and your family to the book you brought kicking and screaming into the world will be a big ol' bowl of Apathyserved cold and with no sugar on top. 109
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Make no mistake, they DO love you. And they ARE happy for you. Yet your family and close friends are just not going to be able to express those sentiments to you as much as you'd likeor, frankly, deserve. Of course, your success only brings your Tribe's deepest fears and insecurities about not letting their own light shine in the world into too sharp of focus. So be gentle with them. Accept applause, as Seth Godin says, just don't expect it.
Turning The Corner Thank you for still being here! Thanks for believing in yourself enough to take this incredible voyagea voyage that so very many of us dream and wish for...and yet so very few ever dare undertake. We've now awakened your Writer, given her permission to play and laid out a road map for the creative work she has directly ahead of. And next its time for your Inner Accountants wake-up call. It just keeps getting better and better as we go along, and then were gonna go out with a bang. In the Epilogue I will present to you a unique theory about why we write books at allwhat writing a book tells us about who we are and why we are here. I've deliberately put that at the very end, when we'll be in a place where we can look back on the quest we just experienced together. That'll be our time for reflection and patting ourselves on the back for a job well done of successfully writing and publishing our first book. You now know everything you need to know to 110
Real Artists Ship by John McLean undertake the first part of this adventure and write your book. Next let's bring it home and discover how to present it to the rest of the world!
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PART TWO: UNLEASHING YOUR INNER ACCOUNTANT
112
13: Preparing Your Manuscript

Congratulations!
Welcome
to Part Two of Real Artists Ship. Congratulations for getting herewe've been waiting for you excitedly! If you are reading this chapter it means you've either already finished your manuscript...or you're close enough to the end that it's time to start turning your attention to the next phase of our delicious voyage. A substantial percentage of your friends have probably dreamed about writing and publishing a book of their own, but they somehow never quite got around to it. Meanwhile, you're on the verge of becoming one of the few who pull off this admirable feat. You seriously deserve a big hug for all the work you've put into this project so far, along with some heartfelt applause to encourage you to keep on going until your story has a happy ending of its own! It's time to say hello to your Inner Accountant. Hes the part of you who'll be doing the heavy lifting from here on. This is the side of you that appreciates money, knows his way around a computer and can follow directions. If your Writer is still hanging around, she might be daunted by some of the technical details and logistics directly ahead. Not to worry, just let her know she doesn't have to learn or remember any of what follows, that's what your Accountant is for. Your Writer's only job is to dream...and you'll let her know when it's time to put those dreams into words again. 113
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Meanwhile, your Accountant doesn't like bullshit and he doesn't like wasting time, so let's get right down to business. We'll begin with a short exploration of the formats used by contemporary eReadersthe actual electronic devices that future readers will use to read and enjoy your book. eReader Formats There are a few proprietary ebook formats that directly compete with one another. (Think VHS vs BetaMax, or more recently, HD DVD vs. BlueRay.) The Kindle uses a different ebook format than Barnes & Noble's NOOK, and both of those differ from the iTunes reader, etc. However YOU personally do not need to worry about any of these formats or really learn anything about them other than the names of the Top 3, which we'll come to in a moment. Each of these different schemes to present text on an eReader are based on XHTML. As you probably know, HTML (which stands for Hyper-Text Markup Language) is the language that all web pages are written in. And XHTML is simply the latest, fanciest version of HTML. As with the competing eReader formats, in order to successfully write and publish your ebook you personally do not need to learn anything whatsoever about XHTML! I'm going to show you how to reformat your book into XHTML without learning a lick of it, and also how to export it to any of the popular eReaders with no other knowledge than the name of the format you're converting your document into. In short, there's a bunch of confusing stuff going 114
Real Artists Ship by John McLean on in the background with ebook formats, but I've come along to tell you that you don't need to bother with any of it...in exactly the same way that you don't need to understand the physics of how redspectrum lasers work in order to use your DVD Player. All you need to know where to find the Play, Pause and Rewind buttons. Style Formats We'll return to the primary output formats before long, but first there's another type of formatting we need to play around with. Every single word and paragraph in your manuscript also needs to be formatted. Now individual words in your manuscript can be given additional emphasis using bold or italic. Or you could just as easily write an entire book without using either of these stylistic flourishes; the choice is entirely yours. However, each and every paragraph in your document must be formatted with what's referred to as a STYLE. The Paragraph Style lets the eReader know how and where to display the text. If you want it to display your text as centered on the page, you don't center the text yourself. Instead you apply a Center style and that style will center the paragraph for you. Normally, every paragraph in your book will use one of two styles. It will either be Indented from the left hand margin or Not Indented from itand you have to apply the appropriate style that tells the eReader which one you want. 115
Real Artists Ship by John McLean You will also create Headers by applying Styles. This could mean the biggish header at the beginning 0f each chapter or the medium-size headers that break your text into subsections, if you use that convention. Before we even start applying any of these styles to our document, we first want to make sure all the old (non-XHTML) formatting goes away. Only once we have a tabula rasa can we truly begin. A Clean Slate Initially we want to deliver your manuscript to a state where it has no formatting. That means either writing your book with no formatting whatsoever...or else stripping out the existing formatting of a document you've already written. No formatting means just what it sounds like no formatting. That means not a single use of Bold, Italic or Underline Fonts. That means no Indents. And that means no Centered, Right or Justified Margins using the handydandy settings of your word-processing program. In other words, a completely clean, unembellished copy of your document. The reason we're doing this is because the fanciness that comes with Microsoft Word or similar word processing programs does NOT translate to XHTML, the language of modern ebook readers. If haven't written your book yet (or even if you have) you will want to get a copy of OpenOffice. OpenOffice is a free, open-source (meaning lots of good-hearted people used some of their 7 hours and 15 minutes of daily free time to make it for us without any remuneration, just like the folks behind 116
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Wikipedia) piece of software where you can physically WRITE your book. Although I also have a copy of the full-featured Word on my computer, good old OpenOffice is what I now use for the early drafts of my books these days. I recommend that you also use it as your wordprocessing software of choice for projects that you expect to end up as ebooks. OpenOffice operates just like a regular wordprocessing program, so you'll be able to figure it out in no time. Should you have any questions as you go along, they also provide an extensive Help feature. Visit OpenOffice.org for your totally FREE copy of their word processing program. Cleaning Up An Existing Manuscript If you have already written and formatted the hell out of your manuscript in Word or the like, here are your action steps to clean it up... 1) Select your entire document and Copy it 2) Go to OpenOffice and create a new document 3) Paste your original document into OpenOffice 4) Strip out the existing formatting by selecting the entire document within OpenOffice and then clicking on the "Body Text" option in the Style Menu at the top. This will effectively Zero Out your manuscript so that it's ready for the next step in the process which involves putting all the styles and formatting back in! Now that we have a clean state, we can add back in a little formatting. And I do mean a little. Kindle and other eReaders thrive on clean, 117
Real Artists Ship by John McLean simple text without much flashiness or stylistic overkill. Also bear in mind the Kindle device itself is a gray-scale reader, so making your font any color other than black would be difficult (at best) to read. And while early versions of the Kindle do accommodate pictures and graphics, they will only be displayed in shades of gray and should be used sparingly, if possible. Modern ebook readers are not miniature computers and they're not smaller, cheaper iPads. They are gray-scale tablets meant for reading booksspecifically books made up mostly of words without a lot of fancy styling or graphics. Since we're Keeping it Simple, youll be pleased to know there are only three types of formatting we will ultimately put back into your document: One: Formatting that applies to the Body Text (i.e., each of the paragraphs in your book) Two: Formatting that applies to the Headers in your manuscript (i.e., chapter and sub-section headings) Three: Formatting that applies to Single Words (or connected groups of words) for emphasis (i.e., bold or italics) Body Text From now on I'm assuming you either wrote your book directly in OpenOffice or imported it into there and stripped away all previous formatting per the instructions above. By default, your document will be saved in OpenOffice as an .odt file, which is what well use to make the final conversion to the appropriate eReader format at the end of this process. 118
Real Artists Ship by John McLean First you're going to go through your entire manuscript and add a STYLE to every single paragraph of body text (i.e., non-headers). There are only two style options used in current eReaders for you to apply to the body text of your book: TEXT BODYwhich is just standard text with No Indent or TEXT BODY INDENTwhich is just what it sounds like, the text with the first line indented. This is what Text Body looks like This is Text Body Indent The current style in Fiction (both in print and in the ebook-verse) is to INDENT every single new paragraph in the book. To format the paragraphs in your work of fiction, simply select the entire manuscript and choose Text Body Indent. (We'll come back and reformat the Chapter Headers of your fiction book separately.) This automatically applies an indention to every paragraph in your book. And that's all the body text formatting you need to do for your novel or short story collection. Meanwhile, the prevailing style in Non-Fiction (again, real and digital) is to have 0 indents at all. To format the paragraphs in your non-fiction work, select the entire manuscript and choose Text Body. (Again, we'll come back and mess with the Headers a little later.) Now there is a third body text option, and it's the one I prefer to use in my writing. It entails giving a 0 119
Real Artists Ship by John McLean indent to the first paragraph in a sub-section, and then adding an indent to every remaining paragraph in each sub-section. The way I achieve this is to highlight the first paragraph of a sub-section and then select Text Body. Then I highlight all the remaining paragraphs in that sub-section and select Text Body Indent. I feel like this makes for an aesthetically pleasing and easy to read layout on the page. If you still have any questions about the formatting I use, simply direct your attention to how this chapter is laid outespecially where the subsections are and how the text is formatted around each one. Of course, if you like you can switch this up and do exactly the opposite of what I'm doing. You can indent the first paragraph of each section and then apply a 0 indent for the remaining ones. Again, these are choices for non-fiction only. The current standard in fiction is to use Text Body Indent for every single paragraph in your book. (Although, you can add a flourish of 0 indent for the very first paragraph in each chapter.) That said, it's your book and nobody can tell you how to present it to the world. The dark Publishing Empire that once lorded it over would-be writers by clasping them in irons in the dungeons of the Writer's Asylum have been put out of our misery, so if you want to create some completely different method of indenting or not indenting your work, by all means go for it! Headers Good things come in three...and there are three types of Headers we will concern ourselves with 120
Real Artists Ship by John McLean here: One: Book Header (AKA the title of your masterpiece) Two: Chapter Headers (fiction and non-fiction) Three: Sub-Headers (non-fiction only...but again, feel free to add them to your novel if you believe it contributes in some way to the story you're telling!) Take a glance at the graphic below, which shows the drop-down Style box in OpenOffice. You'll see that there are three types of Headers listed in the primary box. However, if you click More... the box will open to reveal nine or more Header choices.
I'm going to show you how to format all the possible headers in your book using only the first three available headers, but you can use any combination of headers you think looks best. I used the identical formatting scheme I'm describing here in both the Low Carb Revolution and in Real Artists Ship. Your goal should always be for your reader to be able to flow through your writing without ever bumping into a single obstacle or ever become confused by the formatting. 121
Real Artists Ship by John McLean HEADING 1: I apply this header only once, to the Main Title on page one. HEADING 2: I apply this to the title of each Chapter. (It's of fundamental importance that you use a consistent and unique style just for your Chapter Headings, because they will be used later to automatically generate the hyper-linked Table of Contents which are a standard feature of ebooks.) HEADING 3: I apply this header style to each of the sub-chapter headings within a chapter. It's common practice to break up chapters in non-fiction books into sub-sections like this. The sub-section title should normally suggest something about the contents of the section that follows. Fiction generally does not use sub-headers...but, again, feel free to color outside the lines if you desire! One way to apply a style to a header in your document is to select the header and then find the Format section in the topmost row of options in OpenOffice. Then you'll see a Styles/Formatting option. Clicking on that reveals a drop-down menu with just a smattering of Styles...but remember, a smattering of styles is all you need! You can also click on the style sub-menu in the upper left-hand corner of your document page in OpenOffice to generate both Body Text Header styles. I only use five total styles for my booksthe two Body Text styles and the three Header styles described above. And, quite frankly, that's all you'll need, too! 122
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Go With The Flow Here's what you DON'T get to decide when you format your manuscript for ebook readers... FONT STYLE: (Arial, Times New Roman, etc.) FONT SIZE: (12 points, 16 points, etc.) Not to get overly technical, but modern ebook readers use a specific font set that adheres to something called UTF-8, which only true Internet Geeks with their fast cars and their blonde trophy wives truly understand! All you need to know is that the Font AND the Size of the Font of your ebook is determined by your reader's ebook device and not by you. All those hours we used to waste with slick word processing programs in picking out fancy fonts and cool-looking sizes are absolutely not needed in the digital publishing world. In any case, Kindles and similar devices allow their owners to change the font size and font type of their display, which would totally overrule your font preferences. When you write a Word document or generate a PDF, each page is "locked" and looks the same to everyone who reads your book. But the ebook world functions just like a Web page, where there is a FLOW to the presentation of the text. When you have a smaller or larger window open on your computer while surfing the Internet, for example, the text reformats itself to accommodate the size of that window. Should you increase or decrease the size of the font on the screen, the text 123
Real Artists Ship by John McLean automatically flows to fit the space and size provided. Well, ebook readers do exactly the same. That means you don't need to worry about (nor can you ultimately control) the Font Style or the Font Size in your manuscript. So don't even mess with it. Just use the defaults as presented in OpenSource and move on! Single Words This is the final and easiest style to apply, although our choices are limited to just two: Bold or Italics. You can also use Underline, but I do not recommend it. Since most ebook readers still display your book in grey scale, whenever you underline a word or phrase your reader might confuse it with a clickable Hyperlinkwhich don't even work on standard Kindles. So the best choice here is to NOT use Underline as a stylistic option. Still, that leaves you with Bold and Italic to add some flair to your words. As you may have noticed, I used both of these a lotperhaps even to excess, but that's just the way I roll! Alignment Alignment refers to where a paragraph sits in relation to the page itself. You will only use two alignment options in your book: Left-Aligned Center Aligned Note: Right-aligned and Justified are NOT used 124
Real Artists Ship by John McLean in digital books because there's no predicting how any individual eReader will handle it...so please don't muck up your beautiful book by trying to use either of these. All of your text should be leftaligned. I prefer to center-align my chapter headings, but it's perfectly acceptable to leave those left-aligned as well. On rare occasions I will center-align a phrase or short paragraph or a quote in order to give it additional emphasis within the text of a chapter. Feel free to play around with center-alignment as a much as you desire...it's a nice little stylistic option to have in your tool belt! Okay, once you've completed all this, it's time to save your manuscript and lets move on to the next stage. Hey, I think we're making real progress here, don't you?!
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14: Converting Your Manuscript

Jutoh-ize It!
Let's recap how we got here...

First you completed the manuscript of your bookand hopefully took time out of your busy schedule to celebrate! (Seriously, way to go!!!) Next, you stripped away all the formatting in the document if it still had any. Then you imported it into the free wordprocessing program OpenOffice, where you added back in formatting using commonly accepted styles such as Text Body, Header 3 or Italics. Finally you saved the whole thing as a .odt document. (You didn't have to do anything special to create the .odt file, that's the default format of OpenOfficeall you gotta do is hit Save!) And it's that completed, nicely formatted .odt (pronounced, dot, o, d, t) file that we're now going to use for the penultimate stage of our march towards publication. By the way, I know some of what follows seems at first blush to be quite technical, but I promise to continue guiding you through one simple, discrete step at a time so you never get overwhelmed. Then after you go through this whole process once, you'll know what to do and itll become that much easier for you the next time around. Oh, and just in case I haven't mentioned it within the last thirty seconds or so, I just wanna say again that I'm seriously proud of you for doing whatever it 126
Real Artists Ship by John McLean takes to get your book in front of others. I love you for being willing to take this risk and I cannot wait to read your amazing book once its all done and for sale on Amazon! Enter Jutoh Stage Left The next step in prepping your manuscript for contemporary ebook readers is to use a program with the unusual name of JUTOH. It will cost you about $40, but I strongly suggest you spring for it. (Besides, this is literally the one and only expense in this entire process!) (Well, other than buying Real Artists Ship, of course!) (And, hey, thanks for buying my bookI hope youre enjoying it!) Visit Jutoh.com to pick up your copy of this important piece of software. Just-In-Time Knowledge I'm a big believer in Just-In-Time Knowledge, which means not worrying about learning something until you absolutely need to know it. For example, I didn't teach you how to format your manuscript for the Kindle in Chapter 1 or 2 or even 3 because you weren't there yetyou presumably didn't yet have a book completed for you to run through this process. Similarly, it's not yet time for you to learn about marketing your ebook because the first step is to publish it, and only later will we focus on promotional activities. In that same spirit of only knowing things when it's time to know them, in the sections that follow I'm going to reveal merely the broad strokes of converting your manuscript to its final, digital 127
Real Artists Ship by John McLean version and leave out all the obsessive details. That's not to say those obsessive details aren't important, just that you don't need to learn them right at this moment. You only need to learn them when you need to learn them. Does that make sense?! Fortunately for us, Jutoh comes with two free, detailed Kindle manualseach of which covers the minute, technical details of preparing your manuscript for conversion, as well as troubleshooting tips for any conceivable problem that might crop up. These free guides will take you neatly through the most precise, technical steps of preparing your book for its future home on Amazon and beyond, including such things as creating the Meta-Data page for your book...along with teaching you what the Meta-Data page even IS! Final Preparations Once you have Jutoh up and running, it's time to import the saved .odt file and begin your final preparations. Next go over your entire manuscript once more from within Jutoh to ensure everything looks fantastic. You want a book with a clean, welledited look to itwithout any grammar, spelling or punctuation errors if you can help it. (And you must help it! If there's one thing that Amazon reviewers will mercilessly hammer you for its easily avoidable errors in your grammar, spelling and punctuation!) This final pass in Jutoh will also be your opportunity to add both Links to sites on the Internet where readers can learn more about the problem you're helping them solve, as well as to insert Pictures that will flesh out their reading 128
Real Artists Ship by John McLean experience. The manuals that come with Jutoh provide very specific instructions on how to add these elements, but I want to touch briefly on each. Links If you've written a book of fiction, probably the only links you will want to include is a mention of your personal website, if you have one, as well as a link back to your Amazon storefront and a polite request for your reader to write a favorable review of your book. Both links should come at the end of your book, after the story proper has concluded. However, if you pen a non-fiction book, then you can add links to other resources on the web wherever appropriate. One of the great attributes of a digital book is that you can open up and extend the conversation beyond the boundaries of what you personally have the space or expertise to say. I'm a big fan of adding relevant links to additional sources of information, just as I always appreciate it when the writers of books I'm reading take the time to point me in the direction of other cool stuff they've uncovered on the topic at hand. Here and in the Low Carb Revolution Ive included tons of hyperlinks to various external sites including related articles in magazines, videos on YouTube that flesh out and explain a particular topic in more depth, relevant books and various pieces of software (Free Kindle App, OpenOffice, Jutoh, etc.) that will make my readers life easier. Unlike the latest, hottest Kindles which come with WiFi, traditional Kindles do not allow their users to click on or open up these links, so you want 129
Real Artists Ship by John McLean to make sure you give them the entire, original link so they can follow it on a different device if they like. (That means never use one of those URL-hiding TinyLinks in your Kindle book.) (If you don't know what a TinyLink is, that's perfectly fine, since I don't want you to use one anyway!) (Im getting kinda carried away with the parenthetical remarks in this chapter, huh?!) (I must be some kind of Rebel or something!) Pictures If pictures or graphics will enhance the story you're telling in your book, then by all means use them. If not, don't. Since traditional Kindles are gray-scale devices, your elaborate, colorful pictures might not translate the way you want them to. This is as good a place as any to mention that there is such a thing called a Kindle Previewer which you can use to preview how your book and links and pictures are going to look on a traditional, greyscale Kindle. The Jutoh manuals explain precisely how to download and use the Kindle Previewer. I personally like to add full-color pictures and graphics in my books. Even though regular Kindles don't display all the colors, they do come through for readers using other electronic devices such as laptops or iPads, as well as the latest generation Kindle Fire. The Kindle Previewer will allow you to see how your graphics will look on a plain, old Kindle so you can make adjustments to them if necessary.
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Real Artists Ship by John McLean Converting Your Doc The final step in Jutoh is to convert your finished document into one of the popular eReader formats. This is where we are finally gonna talk about the three proprietary eReader formats I mentioned a million years ago. The best part is...all you gotta do is simply remember the names of these three formats and nothing else! Jutoh takes care of translating your document into each one of them at the push of a button. 1) MOBISOFT: This is exclusively by Amazon Kindle the format used
2) EPUB: This is the format used exclusively by Barnes & Noble NOOK 3) .ODT: This is the open-source format you are already familiar with (since it's the document type created by OpenOffice) and it's used for "everything else"...most notably iTunes Once more, the two manuals that come with Jutoh thoroughly cover every step of the End Game here, so I'm not going to load you down with any unnecessary details. I just wanted to point you in the right direction and give you a nice push-start! One you have a nice, clean manuscript in Jutoh with the appropriate styles applied and any pictures and hyperlinks in place, you are ready to output your book. To start with (and you'll learn the reason for this in the very next chapter) we're initially only going to output your document as a .mobi file for the Amazon Kindle. But just know that eventually you can use Jutoh to automatically generate versions of your book as an 131
Real Artists Ship by John McLean .epub or .odt and then offer it for sale for the Barnes & Noble NOOK or for other sites via Smashwords. Smashwords.com is an ebook aggregator. That is to say, you upload the manuscript of your book to them just once and they aggregate it out to a variety of other platforms. Smashwords will give you access to a number of smallish sites that sell ebooks, along with the one Big Fish in their pond, which Apple's iTunes store. Since I recommend that you join Amazon's KDP Programwhich means you'll give Amazon exclusive rights to your book for at least the first 90 daysI won't waste our mutual time right now by talking about converting and uploading your book in other formats. Which means there's only one small step left in this leg of our adventure. We are about to publish your first book! Can you feel the excitement growing?!
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15: Publication Day!

Were Heeeeeeeere! to Amazon you and I can now become published authors on the same day we complete our book! We no longer have to submit a double-spaced, typewritten version of our manuscript to the deathwalkers in the Writer's Asylum and then pace our cells for six months or long until the inevitable arrival of a Xeroxed form rejection letter. Best of all, it doesn't cost you a dimeor whatever passes for a dime in your part of the world! Amazon doesn't have any type of sign up costs or monthly fees. You simply create an account, upload the finished file and your book will be available for perfect (and not so perfect!) strangers to purchase. KDP Amazon has a special program for writers called Kindle Direct Publishing, or KDP for short. I strongly encourage you to join this program. By joining this KDP you agree to give Amazon a 90-day head start in selling your book online before you offer it to any of their competitors (most especially their arch-enemy, Apples iTunes store). In return, Amazon agrees to give you a largerthan-usual percentage of the royaltiesup to 70%, which is ridiculously generous by the standards of the publishing world! 133
Thanks
Real Artists Ship by John McLean In the fast-crumbling world of Big Publishing, writers average a miserly $1 per copy sold. If you wrote a $9.95 trade paperback, for example, your share of the take from a so-called legacy publisher would be 84 cents per copy. Meanwhile, if you sold the book yourself at the same price on the Kindle, you would pocket over $7 for every copy sold! Thanks to Amazon KDP you have complete control over publishing your book online AND you get the lion's share of the money...up to 70%! Once you've created your free KDP account and uploaded your book, it will go into Review. Your book will usually go live (become available for readers to buy) within one business dayoften within just a couple of hours. You can obsessively monitor your KDP dashboard every fifteen seconds until your book is available, the way I like to do it, or you can wait until Amazon sends you a courtesy email letting you know the process is complete, the way more sensible people probably do! Either way, congratu-freaking-lations! You are now officially a published author! Wow! I cannot wait to meet you and get your autograph, for realz! Next you'll want to splash the publication of your new book all over Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and wherever else you play. Eventuallyhopefully within just a few hoursone of your friends, or one of their friends, or somebody somewhere in the world, will purchase the first copy of your book. Once you sell the first copy of your book you will receive an Amazon ranking. (Books without rankings have not sold even a single copy!) Your book may start in the 2 million or so range, 134
Real Artists Ship by John McLean meaning virtually every other book on Amazon is outselling you. But those books better be looking in their rearview mirror, 'cause you're coming to get them! And now you are not just a published author, but a Professionalsomeone who gets PAID for their work. Apropos which, let's explore what price point you should set for your masterwork. Pricing During the first 90 days of joining Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing program you are not allowed to sell your book through any other ebook distributors, although you can always sell it yourself on your own proprietary website. (To distribute your book through your own site youll need to re-format your manuscript as a .PDF file, which I explain how to do in Chapter 22: Marketing to Islanders.) After the initial three-month timespan, you can then publish it to Barnes & Noble, iTunes, etc. You can sell your book at any price you desire on these sites, but if Amazon's bots (automated explorers that scour the Internet and report back to a mainframe computer somewhere) discover that you are selling your book for a lower price on a competing service, they will automatically go in and lower the price of your book on Amazon to match. Other than that one exception, you and you alone set your book's price. You can also change it any time you desiredaily or even hourly if you wish! Amazon no longer allows you to sell your bookor anything else, for that matterfor less than 99 cents. (There is one huge exception, but we'll cover that separately in Chapter 20: How to Create and Run a Free Promotion.) 135
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Although you are technically permitted to sell your book at any price point from 99 cents all the way up to however many millions of dollars you'd care to try to get away with, in actuality Amazon wants to force your hand to sell it within the very specific price range of $2.99 to $9.99. To encourage you to fall into lock-step with their pricing suggestions, Amazon penalizes you severely for going under or over these guidelines. Putting your Kindle book on sale at any price from $2.98 down to 99 cents, or else at $10 or above, causes your royalty to drop from 70% to the far more frugal 30%! (Of course, that 30% is STILL about four TIMES the meager table scraps that Big Publishing tosses to its starving writers, but it's less than half of what we otherwise get!) Can you say, WTF?! If you sell your book for $9.99, you'll pocket almost $7. But if you raise the price by one penny, to ten bucks even, your proceeds instantly drop to $3! It just makes sense to stay within Amazon's preferred price range of $2.99 to $9.99. At the same time, one of the primary messages I come bearing is that you make your own publishing rules from now on. YOU get to pick the story you tell, the number of pages you write, the cover, the price and everything in between. John Locke (not the super famous philosopher of the same name, but the famous-ish mystery writer) became the 8th person to have one million books downloaded on Amazon and the first independent author who wasn't associated with a legacy publisher to do so. As of this writing, more than 1.2 million copies of Locke's books have been downloaded and he's making pretty serious money. 136
Real Artists Ship by John McLean But he completely violates my recommendations of staying within Amazon's suggested pricing. Most of John Locke's books sell in the narrow, rockbottom price range of 99 cents to $1.99. That's what works for him, and it might be what works for you, as well. So feel free to play around with pricing and the other marketing elements we're about to cover to your heart's desire. When In Doubt, Lower The Price Many new authors come to Amazon imagining they'll sell their book in same price range as the Big Boys and Girls in their nichein the $8-$11 range for the Kindle version. Unfortunately, that's not likely to be the winning ticket. (As they say here in Texas...that dog don't hunt.) The sooner you get it out of your head that you'll be able to compete with the Rockstars in your niche right out of the gate, the sooner you can leave disappointment at the door like a pair of muddy shoes. Truth is, if you are currently an unpublished author, chances are good that nobody out there on Amazon knows who the hell you are. So don't compare yourself to the already established names in your niche and most especially don't look to them for pricing guidelines. Big Publishing is fast following in the footsteps of Big Music, working absolutely as hard as they can to drive themselves all the way out of business with one idiotic decision after another. Just like Big Music moronically put all their eggs into backing physical CDs for distribution of music and fought one losing battle after another to prevent 137
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Apple and others from offering digital downloads of popular tunes, so too have legacy publishers dug in to make a Last Stand behind physical books. To that end, their current policy is to attempt to punish readers who opt for ebooks over physical ones by charging as much (and sometimes more) for the Kindle version of a book as for the paperback. These days the Kindle versions of popular books are often ridiculously overpricedin large part because the books publishers dont want you to actually buy that version. In their last ditch effort to remain ensconced in the Middle Ages, the panicked publishing industry believes that if you buy a digital book, Amazon wins...whereas if you buy a physical book, they win. (In either case, the big loser here is the actual writer of the book, since overpriced Kindle books means significantly lower sales and therefore significantly reduced royalties to the person who went through all the trouble of writing it in the first place!) I could provide you with dozens and dozens of examples of how Big Publishing deliberately overprices Kindle books to punish ebook readers, but one will suffice. To my mind, Steven Pinker is one of the most important thinkers and writers alive today. He should be a household name and his books much more widely read than they are. If youre not familiar with his work, Id like to place the blame entirely on his publishing house, which literally embodies the asinine philosophy of cutting off your nose to spite your face by pricing the Kindle editions of Mr. Pinkers books at $2.50$3.00 HIGHER than the print edition! (This despite the rather obvious fact that the digital versions of his books cost the publisher effectively nothing!) 138
His misguided publishers have priced the Kindle version of The Blank Slate at $15, while the paperback costs just over $12. And you can own a paperback of The Stuff of Thought for about $11.50or else pay $14 for the cost-free Kindle edition! Who are these people?! They cant ALL be Community College dropouts, can they?! Again, the big losers here are Steven Pinker and his potential readers. This mans message should be reaching dozen or even hundreds of new people each day, but his publisher has sabotaged his ability to get his message out and grow his Tribe by laughably overpricing the digital versions. Based on the Amazon Sales Rankings, only about one (1) reader in the entire world is buying the Kindle version of each of these important books per day. Stupid, stupid publishersthey shall not be missed!
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Real Artists Ship by John McLean Solving The Wrong Problem All teasing aside regarding publishers, the reason they are going out of business faster than Travel Agents in the early years of the Internet is because they are trying to solve exactly the wrong problem. The problem that publishers think they are solving is our book problem. Of course, nobody actually has a book problemother than Big Publishing, since making books is all they know how to do. And heres the little (but not trivial) Secret they dont remotely get Human beings dont buy booksthey buy stories. Whether the story comes in a real book or in an ebook or is one day holographically projected into our minds via frickin lasers makes no difference to us. In exactly the same fashion, a decade earlier Big Music collapsed unto itself like a stick of butter in the microwave because they were focused on the wrong problem. They were certain their business model depended on helping us solve our CD problem. Naturally, nobody had a CD problem, we had (and always will have) a music problem. Any one of the music publishers could have created iTunes and dominated the world music market, but they were too busy selling physical CDs, and so now Apple stock trades at an all-time high while all the former music executives are scrambling to start bands of their own! I urge you to stay focused on helping solve our insatiable story problem and just let Big Publishing go all-in solving our book problemand well compare notes about a decade from now and discover how this story turned out! 140
Real Artists Ship by John McLean How Much To Charge? Although the story you tell in your book is certainly worth $8.85 or $9.99 or higher, most people won't be willing to pay that price. How much will they pay? Good question! Here's the answer: nobody knows. You're gonna have to figure this one out on your own, but my general advice right up front is...when in doubt, lower the price. After the initial flurry of sales when you come out of the gate and have done your big Free Promotion (more on this in Chapter 20), things will settle down and you'll eventually find yourself reaching a steady number of sales each day. And that's when you want to really start playing around with the price. In the beginning I'm going to suggest you keep your book's price between $2.99 and $4.99 Absolutely nobody is going to pay much more than that for a book by an unknown on Amazon! (And few enough people pay much more even for otherwise popular writers there.) And if you go below my suggested price range down to $1.99 or even 99 cents, the lowest allowable pricethen the worth of your book may be lessened in the minds of your potential audience. If you stay within the suggested $2.99 to $4.99 range, you should be able to continually build a following. I want you to think in terms of creating a Tribe of like-minded readers for the futurea presold audience already looking forward to your next projectrather than simply trying to squeeze the maximize profit from the sales of this lone book.
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Real Artists Ship by John McLean Getting Specific In fact, I'm going to narrow the price range even further and recommend you ONLY sell your book at $2.99 to start. As you build sales and build up a base of people who will recommend it to others, then you can slowly start raising your prices. You're not there yet...but you will be! If you keep doing this, if you keep letting your light shine brighter and brighter in the world by writing a second book and then a third and more, you absolutely have the potential to become a Literary Rockstar on your own merits! Meanwhile let's go with a price of $2.99 and discover what happens. Of course, until people find your work on Amazon, nobody's going to buy it at any price...so let's explore some fun ways we can begin monetizing your amazing accomplishment of writing and publishing your first book, shall we?!
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16: The Front of Your Book

In the Beginning
The
very first exposure that potential readers will have to your book is, of course, its front. The front of your book consists of two separate and equally important elements: the TITLE and the COVER. Now technically you will already have both of these items in place before uploading your book to Amazon, but I deliberately waited until now to discuss the front because were moving into the marketing portion of our programand the front of your book falls squarely into that category. With your prospects earliest glimpses of your front cover they will begin a chain of decisions about whether to invest their money and (just as importantly) their time into purchasing and reading your book. If you've ever read Blink by Canadian journalist and professional cardshark (why not?!) Malcolm Gladwell, then you learned that everything we were ever taught about the importance of First Impressions is absolutely true! THE TITLE I'd like to invite you to think of your title not as something potentially sexy and clever (such as Great Expectations for a book about pregnancy) but instead as something utterly utilitariansomething your practical-minded Accountant would come up 143
Real Artists Ship by John McLean with rather than your crazy-cakes Writer! If the book you've written is a novel, most of the ensuing conversation about crafting titles won't apply to you, but the rules of engagement regarding the front of your book remain the same, so stay with us here! Now what do I mean when I urge you not to make your title sexy, but instead craft something practical? Let's suppose you learned how to play chess as a young girl and you became quite good at it, eventually qualifying as a Grand Master. And now you'd like to write a beginner's guide that will help other chess-playing girls learn to navigate the stormy waters of this Game of Kings. Calling your book, Castling Myself or Queen of the Board or even Nf3 (a chess move) might feel very clever to you, but they tell potential readers almost nothing about what to expect from your tome. (If they already understood how to use the algebraic chess notation used in the final title, Nf3, then they presumably wouldn't even be in the market for a beginner-ish guide to playing chess!) On the other hand, calling your work, The Girl's Guide to Becoming a Chess Champion or Play Like a Girl: How to Become A Chess Champion in 90 Days are hardly sexy titles, but they tell readers a whole lot more about what problem you are solving than the the others. If their problem is that they are a girl and want to become really good at chess, these latter titles sound like stories they'd definitely want to read. Even more to the point, these titles are searchengine friendly, and that's exactly what we're going for. 144
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Heres another Big Secret that should influence every decision you make about how to market and promote your book... Before we can actually help another person solve their problem, we first have to give them a way to find us and our solution! The Amazon Search Engine You've probably heard of this little company called Google where every seven seconds a couple of trillion people search for stuff they want to find on the Internet. Fewer people know that the #2 online search engine is YouTube. And almost nobody knows that third in line is our new best friend in the world, Amazon.com! Once more, here's how the world works... People have problems. They seem to prefer ignoring their problems for as long as possibleideally for their whole life. (Why? Because like you and like me and like every other living creature, they are lazy. If they can get away with not changing, they usually will!) When they absolutely, positively have to deal with a problem, then they go looking for a solution. Every single book on Amazon, fiction and nonfiction alike, solves somebody's problem. If your problem is that you feel like you were reincarnated straight from Ancient Greece and you have an insatiable appetite for historical fiction set in the Golden Age of Athens (roughly 550-350 BC), then a good way to feed that hunger is to search on Amazon for books set in that colorful era. Similarly, if you're a girl getting into chess, chances are good that you will eventually end up on Amazon doing a search for something like, women 145
Real Artists Ship by John McLean and chess or female chess grandmasters or Can a girl learn to play chess better than boys? If it so happens that you are the author of the Girl's Guide to Excelling at Chess (which, by the way, is a delightfully search-friendly title!) then you'll want the title of your book to show up in the search resultspreferably in the top 5. Unless they already have a specific title in mind, most readers go on Amazon and type a query into the search box. If they want to learn more about Vitamin D deficiency or Learn French quickly or How to cheat on your spouse without getting caught, then they search for that information directly within Amazon's search engine. And heres the Secret to titling your book(s) on Amazon... If you want to sell more copies of your book, then you absolutely want to make sure your title and subtitle contain the specific key words that people with the problem you are solving are likely to search for. THE COVER If the purpose of the TITLE is to attract potential readers to your doorstep, the goal of the COVER is to encourage them to turn the knob, open the door and step inside. To do that, you first need them to pick up your book. Now in an old-fashioned brick & mortar bookstore (if you can still find one in your town) you literally want people to pick up your book from the shelf and begin poking aroundreading the back cover, checking out your author's bio, maybe even reading the first few pages. If they like what they see, then hopefully they 146
Real Artists Ship by John McLean will buy your book, take it home and live happily ever after. We want to duplicate this process as much as possible in the virtual world. If your cover is sufficiently sticky, then potential buyers will turn the knob and come inside to learn more. You want them reading your book's description, clicking on your Amazon author's page to learn more about you and looking at some of your reviews for Social Proof. (We'll explore each of these important aspects of promoting your book in the next chapter, by the way!) If you've done your work right, your potential new reader should find herself just tumbling headlong into a cascade of Yes, Yes, Yes that culminates with her clicking on the infamous orange Buy Now button! Front Cover Examples Below you'll find the cover of the Low Carb Revolution. I want to mention a couple of the elements that have contributed to the book's success.
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Something I learned from legendary DirectResponse Marketer Dan Kennedy is that if you want to play in the diet/weight loss space, then you gotta show the food. As soon as the words diet or weight loss cross your lips, your potential audience quietly begins to freak-out, fearing you're about to tell them they can no longer eat their favorite foods...or perhaps eat any food at all! So you'll notice copious amounts of food on the front cover of my book, letting them know they're in for a feast, not a famine. Which is appropriate, since in my book I encourage my readers to eat as much as they desire without any thoughts of those silly caloric restrictions we were once taught. At the same time, I was careful only to include images of foods that I would actually recommend so there's no glory shots of pies or cakes or wheat products on the cover. The adjacent Text version of the title on Amazon lists the full title, The Low Carb Revolution: Why The 148
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Secret to Losing Weight is to Fall Back in Love With Yourself! Note that the full title includes a variety of Google and Amazon Search terms that my audience would likely hunt for, including lose weight and low carb. Additionally, I put a word in the title that always lights people up, Secret. I mean, we all want to know secrets, right?! And we're all just a little bit scared that other people have secrets they're keeping from us. This book's title screams: I know some secrets about losing weight that you don't know, but if you get this book I'll be delighted to share those secrets with you! Which is, indeed, the case...and it's no different from the secrets about writing and publishing that I've been sharing with you in this work, which have also been kept from you for reasons I cannot begin to fathom. Finally, I give away the whole game when I announce to my potential readers that the secret to losing weight is to fall back in love with yourselfwhich is not only true, but also lets them know my book will be nothing like the traditional diet books they may have read before. (This point is serendipitously reinforced again and again in the book's Reviews on Amazon, where one of the most frequent comments is how different my book is from anything else they've ever read on the subject of losing weight.) Since the Low Carb Revolution is ultimately a love story in which I encourage people to fall back in love with their bodies, you'll also notice the word Love highlighted backwards in my book's title, along with the heart on the upper left hand side, itself made up of a collection of roses. 149
Real Artists Ship by John McLean I went out of my way to make the feel of the cover to be akin to a romance...a personal romance with yourself. Finally, if you want to play in the fitness/weight loss space, you won't have any credibility unless you can show positive results in your own life, so there's a picture of me on the cover showing off my fit, trim body. And because I am a bright, colorful person, my clothing exactly reflects that. ADD WOMEN COVER DESCRIPTION + LINK Front Cover Logistics Changing your front cover on Amazon is every bit as easy as making changes to the body of your book or the price. To get started, just log into your KDP account and navigate to the Bookshelf. HERE + BRIEF
Once there, double-click on the current Name of your book and you'll be taken to the two-page section where you actually make all the changes you desire in pricing, product description and the like, as well as upload a new or revised cover. Amazon wants your cover to be 2500 pixels high 150
Real Artists Ship by John McLean and 1875 pixels wide for the best resolution. I'll repeat that and bold it so you can come back and find it again when you're actually playing with your cover... Cover size for your book = 2500 pixels high by 1875 pixels wide Besides uploading the artwork for your cover, there's also space to enter (or change) the current name of your book. If you change the title of your book on the artwork for your front cover, make sure to also change the text version of it on Amazon, so they both match. (And, again, always update the book's title on the Meta-Data page within Jutoh, since it would look quite awkward and unprofessional if your title isn't consistent within your actual book itself!) I personally create every aspect of the covers of my books, from design to layout to finished product, both because I enjoy the process and because I like doing things myself. But if that's not your bag, baby, don't hesitate to go online and search around for a cover designer. This is no place to nickel & dime around, so don't go looking for a cover designer on the low-budget, $5-per-job site Fiverr.com! Seek out a professional cover designer. There are hundreds, if not thousands of them, and they can be quite competitive in price. You can get a great cover for a great price if you shop around just a bit. Okay, we've now taken the first big step in your books promotional campaign. It might seem like a baby step, but trust me it was a huge step in exactly the right direction. And, as it turns out, the second step in marketing 151
Real Artists Ship by John McLean your book to the world also won't take us too far from home!
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17: Building Your Book's Storefront

Putting on a Show
Let's explore the remaining elements of your book's

homepage on Amazon, which I'm referring to as your Storefront. This is the virtual store where potential readers come to learn more about you and your book before deciding if they want to jump into the story you're telling. As you did when outlining and writing your book itself, put your attention outside yourself and focus on your customers when building your storefront. They have a problem. You have a possible solution. Ultimately, nothing else matters. Your goal should be to give every prospect who comes along permission to say Yes to owning, reading and enjoying your book. To accomplish that, you have four discrete opportunities on your Storefront to connect with them. If you can get a Yes in each of these categoriesAND if you have a c0mpellingly low Pricethen chances are good that you'll also elicit the final, important Yes that comes when someone clicks on the beautiful Buy button! 1) Free Sample 2) Product Description 3) Author's Page 153
Real Artists Ship by John McLean 4) Reviews (Social Proof)
Free Sample Amazon automatically generates a Free Sample of every digital book, which can either be read immediately on the storefront or sent directly to their Kindle library to take a peek at later. Offering a free sample to your prospects isn't optional, so there's no avoiding it. Your only possible action when it comes to the free sample is to make double-sure you write a fantastic opening to your book...which, of course, you should do anyway! I was a little taken aback when I first saw the free sample that Amazon generated for the Low Carb Revolution, since it ran to a seemingly over-generous 46 pages. Only later did I discover that Amazon automatically allows people to preview the first 10% of your book, and that alone was the reason for the longish sample they were sending out. Incidentally, the free sample is a sneaky way to determine the length of a book youre thinking about buying. I always like to know how much book I'm getting for my investment of $9.99 or even 99 cents. If the number of pages isn't mentioned anywhere in the product description, just open up the free sample. Since the sample consists of the first ten percent of the book, simply multiply the number of pages in 154
Real Artists Ship by John McLean the sample by ten to determine the final page count. Offering a free sample gives readers almost the same experience as when they pick up your book in a real-world bookstore and skim through the first chapter or so to get a feel for your writing. If you've written a strong book, then giving readers the chance to sample your style and discover a little about the story ahead will reassure them that they're about to make a good decision by investing their time and money in it. Bonus Big Secret! Hey kids, its time for another Big Secret... We all want to make Good Decisions...or at least THINK were making Good Decisions! When you ask your reader to do something and they do it, praise them for it. Make a fuss. Reassure them that theyve made the best possible decision here! One of the most important things you can do is to let your readers know that YOU know theyve made a good decision. For example, after readers click the Buy button, whats the very next thing that happens? Well, they get your book and they start reading it, dont they?! So what you want to do right up front is let them know they made a great choice by buying your book. Think back to the very start of Real Artists Ship. Before we ever began our explorations of creativity and the publishing process, I let you know what a great decision youd just made in getting my book and I let you know that we had lots of fun times ahead, right?! 155
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Heres a cut & paste of our first two paragraphs together... Just wow! Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to get here. Thank you for believing that you have an Idea worth sharing with the world. I've come to help you bring that Idea kicking and screaming into the worldexcept without the kicking and screaming part! We're going to have a lot of fun together on this journey. Your reward at the end will be something you may have dreamt about for much of your life: a completed book with your name on the cover, available for the public to buy, read and enjoy! I love you and I love your willingness to go down this road. And so on! Youd be amazed how many authors never once bother to praise or thank their readers for making good decisions like buying their book in the first place or for doing the various action steps towards solving their problem that the book proposes. Product Description The second important component of your storefront is the Product Description. There's no Pulitzer Prize for writing descriptions, so don't worry that you have to spend days and weeks toiling over your book's description. Keep it short and sweet and to the point. This is your opportunity to introduce your book and introduce yourself. The overall message of your product description should be something like, I used to have [X] problem, but I figured out how to solve it. We should become friends and I'll show you how you can solve that same problem in your life. 156
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Don't sugarcoat your own personal story here or on your Author's Page. This isn't meant to be some glowing profile of yourself on a dating site! If you were a raging drunk for fifteen years and you discovered a unique way to get off the sauce and turn your life around, then let us know that! The more genuine you are in revealing yourself, the more your reader will trust you and want to know more. Use your product description to reveal to potential readers that there really are new and different possibilities in their life, then anchor that by showing them you know what the hell you're talking about. Add a line or two about yourself at the tail end of this section. You'll also write a longer, more detailed autobiography of yourself for your Amazon Author's Page, but your potential readers will only be directed to this page if they are savvy enough to know how to get there. By the way, you get to your Author's Page by double-clicking on your Hyperlinked name beneath your book's title on the top of the page. It's a bit nonobvious, right?! This means lots of people won't ever click on your Author's Page (or simply don't know there is one), therefore you also want to say a word or two about yourself within the product description. Pay special attention to mentioning any credentials regarding the problem you are helping them solve. If you've written a book about how to make money as a juggler and you're a graduate of the storied Ringling Brothers' Clown College, by all means let us know! Again, avoid Dating Profile Syndrome here and on your Author's Page. 157
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Don't list all your many accomplishments, marriages, degrees, travels and skills unless they are directly relevant to building trust and showing authority on the specific problem you are currently offering to help solve. I actually happen to be an accomplished juggler, but I never mention this in my author's description because it has no relevance to any book I've written...so far, at least! Finally, as you begin receiving 5-star reviews for your book (and, hey, nice job getting those positive reviewsyou totally deserve them!) then you will want to cherry-pick a sentence or so from a few of them to add into your product description. Do this judiciously...three or four quick quotes from glowing reviews is all you want. This is another place where legacy publishers totally screw things up. Ive seen book descriptions with over 100 (yikes!) separate review quotessuch that I had to scroll down for page after page just to get to the end. When faced with such an overwhelming number of reviews, what does any sane person do? NOT READ ANY OF THEMthats what! Author's Page Your Amazon Author's Page is another oft overlooked possibility for you to shine. Set aside your modesty and talk yourself up here. Give your prospects every reason to buy into you and the story you're telling. Even though this is a page all about you, it's really not. It's a page about your Readers. They need to see something of themselves in you, they need to believe you've gone through what they've gone 158
Real Artists Ship by John McLean through and come out triumphant on the other side. You can write more about yourself on your Author's Page than just the one to two sentence biography at the end of your product description, but don't get carried away or, again, nobody will bother to read any of it. (If your Authors Page begins to rival the length of your finished book, you've probably gotten a little too far!) To set up your Authors Page, just navigate to the dedicated site AuthorCentral.Amazon.com and follow the instructions there. (Remember to return to this site in the future to update your bio when you release your next book or if anything worth sharing with your readers happens in your life!) Amazon now gives you the ability to upload a video to your pageand this is a feature you should certainly take advantage of. Giving your readers the chance to see you in motion and hear your voice can help them really connect with you and want to know more. My recommendation is that for your first book you should create a short video in which you describe why you wrote it, your passion for the topic and/or how you stumbled upon the solution you reveal in your book. In other words, get your prospect all hot and bothered about the possibility that someone can finally help them solve this particular problem. Later, when you get to the point where you have two or more books for sale on Amazon, then swap out your original book-specific video for a more general one where you discuss the general types of topics (i.e. problems) you are passionate about helping people solve. In either case, these videos don't need to be fancy or professionally produced. 159
Real Artists Ship by John McLean The standard-issue video camera that comes on any modern day smart phones, iPad or the like is absolutely all you'll need to create your own personal video to say a few words to your prospects. Now there is one unusual quirk about your Author's Page that I want to make you aware of... Amazon automatically makes your storefront available to all of their specialized country sites. In the graphic below you'll see the storefront for the Low Carb Revolution on the Amazon France site. However, Amazon does not also share your Author's Page with its overseas sites. That means you'll need to copy your biography and manually navigate to each Author's Page on Amazon's UK site, German site, Italian site, etc., and paste it into the appropriate area.
Foreign Translations Now it goes without sayingbut I'm gonna say it anyway, and then afterward tell you why I'm saying itbut Amazon does NOT automatically translate your Author's Page or your book's description into German or Italian or any other language. And they most especially do not translate your book itself into the target language of that country's site for you! 160
Real Artists Ship by John McLean A nameless friend of mine, a fellow author and otherwise brilliant woman whose only apparent failing is being a natural blonde (HaHa!) genuinely believed that her English-language memoir would magically be translated into various other languages by Amazon to sell in other parts of the world. Well it don't work that way, baby! Nobody has yet perfected computer software to automatically translate a document from one language to anther with perfect vocabulary, usage and nuanceand its doubtful they ever will. Translations worth actually reading still need to be done by a person or group of persons. And Amazon isn't about to to spring for the several thousand dollars or more it would cost to have a reputable translator turn your manuscript into even one other language, much less all four foreign language sites (German, French, Spanish and Italian) they currently support. Now because your book will only be available in English at the beginning, your sales in foreign territories (other than the United Kingdom, natch) will be modest at best. As your success grows, you might look into hiring a translation service to create foreign-language versions of your book, but I wouldn't suggest doing that right out of the gate. Finally, you should also know that your Reviews are neither translated nor transferred from their site of origin. That is to say, all of your wonderful reviews on the North American site can only be seen by customers who log into that site. Nobody who uses the German site will see the wonderful reviews left by your North American readers. (Indeed, until one of your German fans takes the trouble to review your book, prospects on the German site wont see any reviews of your work 161
Real Artists Ship by John McLean whatsover.) Oddly enough, this is also true of Amazon's UK site, which does not share English-language reviews with its North American cousin. In my case I find this especially unfortunate because perhaps the most passionately positive review I ever received for the Low Carb Revolution came from Ian Rowland, a celebrated English traveler, magician and author of the bestselling book Cold Reading. But the only way to see his wondrous review is to log onto the UK site, alas. Reviews: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly How much importance do you personally put on reviews when making a book purchasing decision on Amazon? If you're anything like me, the answer is a lot! Of course, if I'm already a big fan of an author, I don't care anything about someone else's reviews. I will purchase and read virtually any book put out by the likes of Seth Godin or Malcolm Gladwell or David Deida or Steven Pinker or any of the dozens of writers whose careers and work I follow. My mind is already made up on these authors and it wouldn't even occur to me to consult the opinions of strangers on the merits of a new book of theirs. On the other hand, if the author is totally unknown to me, I read the reviews 100% of the time. In fact, the very first place I go is to the worst reviews, because I want to know the Bad News right up front. I used to think I was the absolute only person who went straight to the horrid, 1-star reviews until I came upon the following review for a space-age cookbook by former Microsoft Chief Technology 162
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Officer, Nathan Myrvhold...
The reviewer deliberately only gave the book 1 star because he wanted us to actually find and read his review. He goes on to praises this multi-volume book so highly that he claims the first half of the first book alone is well worth the uber-expensive $454 price tag! Whereas positive 4- and 5-star reviews may encourage some people to read your book, negative 1- and 2-star reviews will have an absolutely devastating negative impact on your sales. Studies have shown that readers on Amazon are much more strongly influenced away from buying your book by negative reviews than they are influenced towards buying it by positive ones. (Yet another reason for you to write a super awesome book in the first place!) Gaming Reviews Gaming refers to bending the rules of a system to make it do things you want it to do. It is possible to game your reviews on Amazon to a certain extent. To date, I've been fortunate enough to have only 100% positive, 5-star reviews for the Low Carb Revolution. This means I haven't had occasion to delete any negative reviews for the good reason that 163
Real Artists Ship by John McLean there aren't any, but I do know it's possible...because its happened to me. I once wrote a highly favorable, 5-star review for a bestseller in the weight loss category. I was the very first person to review the book and my favorable review would be the first that potential readers would see. For reasons that make sense only in the minds of the simpletons who still haunt the halls of the Writer's Asylum, his publisher deleted my review. As a result, the second review in line now assumed the top position. The only problem? The #2 review was an utterly scathing, exceptionally negative 1-star review! Yet the dimwits at the authors publishing house thought this horrific review should what potential readers saw first. (The only thing that surprises me is that I continue to be surprised by the consistently dumb choices that Big Publishing makes with such feverish abandon these days!) Gaming Reviews Alienates Readers Although I strongly encourage you not to game the system by buying 5-star reviews and deleting negative ones, I know for a fact that legacy publishers constantly try to game the hell out the Amazon. A certain bestselling book (which I actually bought, read and rather enjoyed) debuted on Amazon with dozens and dozens 5-star reviews on Day One. The odds of even a bestselling book getting 40+ reviews on the first day of its publication are approximately ZERO. Even rabid fans are reluctant to take pen in hand and write reviews...not to mention the fact that time 164
Real Artists Ship by John McLean would have had to stop completely to give them the chance to finish a book of nearly 400 pages and then write a long, cogent review within a couple of hours of the books debut! The automatons at the publishing house continued posting clearly paid-for positive reviews at a faster pace than ordinary humans could even read the book, while at the same time they also worked furiously behind the scenes to delete every single negative review. This continued for some weeks, until the minions at the publishing house were commanded to march off in lock-step to perform this same magic for another member of the publisher's literary stable. Over time, however, the readers whose negative reviews had been deleted returned in droves and exacted their vengeance by overloading this authors work with many times the number of horrifically bad reviews than he probably would have received if his publishing house had just let things play out organically. Again, the book he wrote was pretty darn good and deserved its bestseller status. But now, thanks to his publishers obvious and deliberate gaming of the system, it will forever be plagued with far more negative review on Amazon than positive ones. In the real world that you and I inhabit, we're going to get some good reviews, some bad reviews and some downright ugly ones. Amazon recognizes there are always going to be kooks, krazies and haters on the Internet, so they have a little button you can click after a review to report Abuse. But that's a last resort to weed out the genuine nut-jobs who crop up from time to time spewing invective about your mother or whatnot. It's not meant for performing wholesale deletions 165
Real Artists Ship by John McLean of reviews in which your readers (perhaps quite reasonably) suggest you could have put a little more research into your book or paid more attention to grammar, spelling and punctuation! It is definitely nerve-wracking to publish your book and wait for the first reviewers to weigh in. You desperately hope they genuinely enjoyed it, got something out of it and are now willing to tell the rest of the class. But being reviewed and judged comes with the territory if you're going to put yourself out there as a writeror artist of any kind. Who to Ask for Reviews Before we consider who (whom, technically!) to ask for reviews, first let's cover whom NOT to ask. There are two specific groups of people that you'll be tempted to turn to for reviews...and I'm going to urge you in the strongest possible language to resist that temptation. The first group is, of course, your TRIBE. Absolutely no good can come from asking (or receiving) reviews from either your FAMILY or your FRIENDS! As we discussed earlier, your close friends and family totally support you and want you to succeed...except not really! Please don't put the members of your Tribe on the spot by asking them to write up a pretty review of your book on Amazon. Even if they actually did read a few pages of your book and even genuinely (more or less) liked it, they would probably find it awkward at best if you were to ask them to write a public review for you, and a tremendous imposition at worst. 166
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Again, when it comes to your Tribe, keep them in the loop about your success, accept any kind words they direct your way, but do not expect or ask for any praise and encouragement. The second group NOT to ask for reviews from is FIVERRS. Fiverr is a website where people from all over the world bid to perform small, bizarre, embarrassing and sometimes moderately useful little jobs for you for as little as $5 eachactually $4, since Fiverr gets one of the dollars you pay them. Through Fiverr (and a host of competing sites) you can find people who will jump through ridonculous hoops in their quest to earn your four bucks, including writing your name in Sharpie on their beer belly, making a video of themselves singing happy birthday in Klingon to the person of your choice or getting 200 Likes for your new Facebook fan page. One of the services that Fiverrs will gladly do for you is write a positive, 5-star review of your book. Here's all you need to know about Fiverr book reviews: They are completely useless. Actually, they are worse than useless. Whenever I chance upon a Fiverr review of a book Im thinking about buying, I immediately delete it from my Cart and move on. Fiverr reviews are painfully obvious to spot. They're always written in quite vague language out of necessity. Since your paid reviewer had to give back 99 cents of his $4 net fee in order buy your book, they're not going to actually waste their time reading the damn thing for the measly three bucks they'll ultimately pocket. Instead they'll glance at the Table of Contents, read a few paragraphs of your introduction and then guess the rest. 167
Real Artists Ship by John McLean One dead giveaway to a Fiverr review is the commonly used phrase, a great value at 99 cents, which can be quite awkward when you later raise your price to a more reasonable level. Fiverr reviewers regularly include obvious stock phrases cut and pasted from other reviews they wrote for other books. In addition, Amazon has recently started cracking down on Bought Reviews from Fiverr and similar low-budget jobbing sites. If Amazon thinks you are trying to game them or their customers by buying good reviews, then they might get pissed off...and if they get pissed off, then they could Kindle Slap you. If you don't know what Kindle Slap mean, just research the term, Google Slap and imagine Amazon doing that to you and your book. (Trust me, you don't want itsince not only can you and your book be permanently banned from Amazon, they might also decide to keep all of your unpaid royalties.) So your Tribe and people doing it for the $ are the two groups I want you NOT to ask for reviews. Other than that, you should ask absolutely EVERYBODY in the world to give you a nice review. You should ask them during your book and again at the end. I don't mean harass them to death about it, but don't be shy, either. I'll even show you exactly how to ask people for a review so you'll have a template to follow if you so choose. How To Ask For Reviews Here's what I say when asking for a review...and feel free to steal this verbatim, if you like: If you enjoyed my book, please leave a nice, 5-star review because that will help me out in Amazon's 168
Real Artists Ship by John McLean rankings...but if you didn't like it, for the love of God please don't tell anybody! Notice how I cover my bases here? Im saying that if you did like it, here's the specific step I'd like you to take: Go to Amazon and write a positive, 5-Star review. And I'm also saying, that if you didnt like it, here's your specific action step: Do nothing and tell no one!!! (Clever, huh?!) If your book is fiction, you should make your request for a helpful review from your reader just once, at the end of your book. If non-fiction, then you can sprinkle the request in a couple of different times as your book is winding down. (Not at the beginning; you obviously want your reader to have read allor very nearly allof your book before you start asking them for a review!) You should always include a live link to your storefront as part of your request so that your potential reviewer can simply click on it, rather than have to go through the trouble of returning to Amazon, typing in the title of your book and navigating to there. For realz, if you've enjoyed my book and learned something about yourself, the creative process and/or how to promote your book to the world, navigate to the storefront for Real Artists Ship on Amazon.com and please leave a shiny, 5-Star review because that will help persuade others to take this same beautiful journey with me! Well, we only have a couple of chapters left together and Im starting to get a little sad about the upcoming end of our adventure. Ive loved spending this time with you! But the exciting news is that the pages just ahead seriously contain some of the most amazing material in this entire book. 169
Real Artists Ship by John McLean So freshen your coffee and let's meet again in the next chapter, where I'm going to make a strong case that... Everything you've been taught about how to market your book (and yourself) is dead wrong!
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18: A New Take on Marketing

Old-Fashioned Brand Advertising
When most people think of advertising, what they're

actually thinking of is just one specific type of advertising known as Brand Advertisingwhich is the scatter-shot attempt to sell a product based solely on its name, logo or perceived benefits. Numerous products that are otherwise indistinguishable, such as carbonated beverages, political candidates and real estate agents, are promoted to us largely through brand advertising...although it has become increasingly ineffective as the world has become more complex. Every single political season the streets are lined with political onesheets that often offer little more than the candidates name, desired political office and party affiliation. As far as I'm aware, not a single human alive has ever been swayed pro or con in their voting choice as they walked up to the voting booth because they glanced at one or a dozen posters reading, Abe Finklestein for Chief Dog Catcher, but would-be politicians keep putting these posters up...because, well, that's what everybody else does and because they don't know how to do anything different. Brand advertising is also the realm of global ad agencies, whose primary source of income is convincing big corporate clients to spend their millions of marketing dollars each year to get the word out about their Brand through TV 171
Real Artists Ship by John McLean commercials, radio, print and, of course, online. Essentially brand advertising says: Hey, we're a shoe company. If you're ever in the market for a $150 pair of shoes, you should buy them from us because they will make you look sexier, feel smarter and/or jump higher. Oh, we also make other stuff, just in case you don't need any new shoes right now. Brand advertising isn't remotely as effective at influencing us to actually buy the good or service being advertised as the sharp-dressed folks at the ad agencies would have us believe. But, like the Western medical model, it's all around us so we assume it must be working. Traditional brand advertising never was particularly effective at its intended purpose of selling more products, and it becomes even less so with each passing year, yet you can still get an actual college degree in brand advertising and enjoy an entire, highly paid career doing it. Old-school advertising continues to exist not because it sells products, but because it's the laziest game in town...and one thing we know is that you, me and every marketer ever invented is as lazy as we can get away with. Brand advertising exists so that marketing directors of major corporations can have jobs. It exists so that fancy, boutique ad agencies can take meetings around fish-shaped wooden conference tables imported from Norway. It exists so that stars of American sitcoms can earn $1 million or more, per episode. But that doesnt mean it works. John Wanamaker, the founder of Wanamaker'sthe very first department store in the United Statesused to say, I've always been convinced that half of my 172
Real Artists Ship by John McLean advertising budget is wasted. The problem is, I don't know which half. And that was way back in the early 1900s. In today's world, both halves of the advertising budget is wasted. But don't take it from me. Kevin Roberts is the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, the largest advertising agencies in the world, with more than 140 offices in 80 countries. In the world of brand advertising, Saatchi & Saatchi is literally the Top of the Food Chain. And yet here's Kevin Roberts publicly admitting that the millions of advertising dollars his clients give him each year is completely and utterly wasted because the traditional brand strategy doesn't work anymore. Copy the link below into your Internet browser to read his pronouncement that old-fashioned Marketing is Dead... http://www.thedrum.co.uk/news/2012/04/25/ marketing-dead-says-saatchi-saatchi-ceo By now, the next Secret that I want to share with you probably wont seem all that secret-y, but here goes... Traditional brand advertising as you and I know it wont help you sell a single copy of your book. Id like to encourage you to put your notions about traditional advertising out of your head for a moment and instead open yourself up to a completely different style of marketing that you can apply not only to your career as a published author, but to every single one of your wealth-building endeavors from now on. Of course we don't have the space to explore everything there is to know about this alternate style 173
Real Artists Ship by John McLean of marketing, so my goal here is to provide you with a solid introduction. Then at the end Ill point you to a single, in-depth FREE resource where you can round our your knowledge of this marketing approach to a depth that would surpass any Brand Advertising PhD in the world! Out With The Old... Let's play another game. Just for grins imagine that you're a single guy. (And for some of my female readers, you would probably be downright dangerous if you were transmogrified into a single guy!) And let's assume you want to enjoy all the benefits that come with being a single guy, so you get all dolled up and head out to a crowded nightclub to seek some female companionship. Just to make this interesting, let's also pretend you're not very good with the ladies. You get all tongue-tied around them and don't know what to say. So you say as little as possible. Instead you wander through the club, smiling and waving at literally any woman who happens to glance your way. The message you're passively sending out is, Hi, I'm here and I'm available. But if you want to get to know me, YOU must make the effort to come talk to me. Now if you happen to be Brad Pitt's better looking cousin, this lazy strategy might actually lead to one or more women summoning the nerve to approach you and initiate a conversation. But if you have anything short of model handsome, rockstar famous or millionaire rich, you're gonna be in for a long, lonely night. 174
Real Artists Ship by John McLean You don't have to be one of those Internet Dating Guru to realize that the plan of attack I just described is probably the worst possible approach to take if your goal is to connect with women and get dates. Yet this is precisely how brand advertising works. They spend millions upon millions of dollars to deliver the same message: Here I am. I'm available. But if you want me you're going to have to make the First Move. Well, we're all a little bit shy, aren't we?! And we're all just a whole lot lazy. So asking prospects to make the first move is every bit as ignorant of human psychology as the lonely, single guy hanging out in the shadows of a nightclub and hoping a pretty woman will just saunter up and offer to go home with him. I'm about to share with you a completely different approach to marketing than you've probably ever been exposed to before. Hopefully you'll think about giving it a try for the next, I dunno, thirty days or so in order to find out how well it can work for you. Incidentally, this is not by any means a new model of persuasion, but it's only just now finally coming into its own as the superior marketing strategy for the digital age. In With The New... Let's head back to our nightclub, shall we?! After all, we already paid the cover and got our hand stampedmight as well get our money's worth, right?! This time, however, we're not going to use the lazy, fraid-y cat approach dictated by Hope 175
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Marketing of merely walking around with a nervous smile while hoping that some lady likes our brandour looks, the cut of our clothes, the flash of ones in our bill stackenough to come after us. We're also not going to wait for the women in the club to make the first move and thus risk rejection, because WE are going to take the bold step of making the first move ourselves...along with the second and third and so on! In this model of marketing, instead of hoping others will approach us, we are going to approach them...one person at a time. To do this, we'll make a single direct request to our prospect, in this case, a woman at our nightclub. And the only thing we expect of this woman is to directly respond to our direct request. There are usually only two possible responses to our request: Yes or No. (If they answer with any variation of maybe or I don't know, then we probably made the wrong request to start with.) You've heard these direct questions a million times before in a nightclub setting, yet they remain as dependable as they are simple... Would you like to dance? Can I buy you a drink? Are you here with anyone? Would you like to step outside for some fresh air? Asking a direct question that elicits a direct response is a persuasion model known as DirectResponse Marketing. Which means...what?! It means that, unlike branding, we might get rejected. In fact, not only might we get rejected, we are absolutely certain to be rejected more often than not. But, as we'll soon discover, we're also gonna 176
Real Artists Ship by John McLean receive a hell of a lot more Yes responses with this strategy than with the old branding method of not asking at all...but instead simply standing around with our hands in our pockets, desperately hoping a prospect will chose us and our product! Once you fully wrap your mind around the direct-response model, it will change the way you think about marketing yourself and your book from now on. At the very least, if you begin using the principles of direct-response marketing, it will save you untold time and money. It can save you, quite literally, both halves of your advertising budget! Dean Jackson, a former realtor turned directresponse marketer extraordinaire, tells a simple story that neatly reveals the distinction between the old hope marketing model and the new technique of direct-response. Keeping in mind that we learn best through story and metaphor, I'm going to borrow a story from Mr. Jackson to let you in on the secret world of direct-response marketing rather than overwhelm you with bullet points and buzz words about it! By the end of Dean Jackson's Take A Cookie story you'll understand everything you need to know about the difference between these two diametrically opposed marketing approaches...and then you'll get to decide which one seems like the best strategy to promote yourself and your new book to the wonderful readers out there who are just waiting for you to come along and make the first move! How does that sound?! Now I'm going to tell this in my own words, but make no mistake, this is Dean Jackson's story!
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Real Artists Ship by John McLean Take A Cookie! Suppose you were traveling on business and you ended up with a one-night layover in my current stomping ground of Austin, TX. And since were friends and all, I naturally offered to put you up for the night at my house. The first thing I would normally do is show you around my place and point out your bedroom and such. Next, if I were a good host, I would say something like, And feel free to help yourself to anything you'd like to eat from the refrigerator or pantry. Okay, let's briefly stop our story right there. If you're like MOST people in polite society, how are you going to react to my generous offer? Probably with not much of a reaction at all. It's not likely my offer would make you leap to your feet and shout, Hell, yeah! as you made a beeline for the kitchen to start fixing yourself a huge plate of sandwiches, now is it?! Because doing that would almost seem like you're imposing on me. I mean, I'm already putting you up for the night, should I also be expected to feed you, as well? What are the rules here? Even if my offer was entirely genuine (and I assure you it was!), at the very least you would probably be reluctant to take me up on it. You may even deliberately avoid visiting my kitchen for as long as possible because you don't want to seem like you're taking advantage of me. Indeed, you may even have to reach the point where you feel like you're starving practically to death before you finally break down, creep into the kitchen under cover of darkness and try to sneak some food out for yourself! 178
Real Artists Ship by John McLean The offer I made to you, while genuine, still required that you DO something in order to receive the desired reward (in this case, food). You would have to overcome whatever rules of politeness informed your upbringing that might make you feel shy or guilty about accepting my offer, and then youd still have to head to the kitchen and go through the trouble of making yourself something to eat. When you break it down like this it almost seems like I'm asking more from you than I'm giving in return. I merely said a few words, while you're the one who has to do all the work! And that, my friends, is exactly what traditional brand advertising does...it seems to make a nice offer to us while it actually requires that we do all the work to get the reward. A billboard featuring Jane Real Estate Agent with her standard-issue trademarked Realtor Smile usually lists her website, phone number AND email. Not only is the realtor expecting us to initiate the conversation, she's also requiring us to make a decision about how to communicate with her in the first place. Should we call her? Send an email? Just go visit her website? All three? In the end we do what 99.99% of all people do when faced with brand advertising: nothing. Meanwhile our Realtor is sitting nervously in her office wondering why in the hell her $4500 a month billboard isn't bringing a flood of new clients into her office. Seriously, Take A Damn Cookie! Now let's change gears and explore our alternate approach to the ineffective brand marketing we're 179
Real Artists Ship by John McLean still surrounded with these days. Go back to your overnight stopover at my house. This time around, rather than me making a vague offer for you to help yourself (i.e., you take the initiative and you do all the work) to a snack in the kitchen, let's suppose I head into the kitchen myself and return with a plate of freshly-baked cookies. I extend the plate towards you and I say, I made cookiestake one! Okay, freeze! What's going on here? How is this new scenario different from the first? Well, for starters I made the First Move...and then some. First, I baked cookies in anticipation of your visit. Second, I personally went to the kitchen and brought them out to you. Finally, I gave you the simple, polite instruction to, Take one! Not only is it now totally easy for you to take a cookie (you simply have to reach out your hand), but by the laws of polite society you really have no choice but to take one! Declining to take at least a sample of any food put in front of you is considered the height of rudeness by virtually every culture around the globe. In other words, it's not only easy for you to take a cookie, it's almost imperative that you do so. And this model of persuasionwhich is the exact opposite of brand advertisingis known as DirectResponse Marketing. Direct-Response Living I seriously believe that if you will allow the lessons of direct-response marketing to sink all the way inside you that it can change the way you interact with the entire world from now on! (Howz that for 180
Real Artists Ship by John McLean some unchecked hyperbole, huh?!) So much so that I don't think of this as a system of marketing so much as almost a philosophy of life. In fact, we could even call it Direct-Response Living! Listen, I get that it's easy, peasy, lemon squeezy to go through life simply printing up business cards stating what you do and pinning them up on Starbucks' bulletin boards, and then hoping other people will do all the hard work of getting in contact with you and offering to pay you for whatever it is you do. But keep in mind that its even more easy, peasy, lemon squeezy for the hundreds of daily passers-by to completely ignore your business card...or, if they do notice it, to take no action. In a phrase... Direct-response makes a specific offer directly to the prospect...and then directly asks them to accept it. Uhhhh, if you want, you can always go into the kitchen and make yourself something to eat, is one way to go through life. It's easy and it's lazywhich is naturally why most people still do it that way. Look, I made a plate of cookies...go ahead and take one! is an entirely different way of interacting with the world and with marketing yourself to it. Don't get me wrong, people can still say No to our offer. (Well, maybe not to cookies, but they can say no to buying our book, etc.) But they're also going to be much, much more likely to say Yes using our strategy than in the obsolete hope marketing model that still dominates the world today. The more you start absorbing the principles of direct-response into your approach to life, the sooner you'll make money as a writer and the more 181
Real Artists Ship by John McLean success you'll discover across the board. If you stop and think about it, even the advice I gave you about how to conceive and frame your book in the first place is built upon the directresponse model. Rather than simply write a book because you feel like writing it and then hope somebody eventually buys it (which is how most writers still do it), instead you are directly offering people a solution to a specific problem. Then their only choice becomes, Do I want to solve this problem now or not? How To Ask For The Sale This may come as a shocker, but in the direct response approach we ask for the sale...directly! And we do that by bringing our prospect a plate of cookies and holding it in front of them while inviting them to take one. Then they either take a cookie, and enjoy it...or they don't take a cookie because they are rude bastards, lulz! On a related note, I've found that one of the primary reasons so many of us don't achieve overwhelming success in our creative and wealthbuilding endeavors is because we are out of touch with our bodies. Often we simply cant summon the necessary energy and vitality it takes to turn our life into a resounding triumph. I want you to visit www.Amazon.com and go to the storefront for the Low Carb Revolution. When you get there, I'd like you to get my book and make time in your busy schedule to read it and incorporate its unique principles into your life...because it can quite literally help you rediscover the horsepower inside you that you'll require to successfully write and publish your book. 182
Real Artists Ship by John McLean And that, my friend, is how you directly ask for the sale. That is direct-response marketing in a nutshell. That's a whole mess of cookies waved right in front of your face. Notice there were only two possible responses: you either clicked on my link and bought my book...or you didn't. I made the first move. I took the chance that you might reject me and say No. I took all the riskbut that also meant that you didn't have to take any. And this is how I'd like YOU to Ask For the Sale with your book once it's available for the world to buy. Ask politely and directly. Provide a direct link so prospects can simply click on it to reach your storefront. Use the word because...and then mention some kind of benefit for your prospect. (We'll explore this oh-so-crucial word in your marketing efforts in the very next chapter!) By the way, if youre a manand youre singleand you arent offended by absolutely overthe-top naughty language, then while youre visiting Amazon.com, go ahead and check out my new book for men, Women: The Instructionsbecause youll find its absolutely unlike anything youve ever experienced before.
I Love Marketing I haven't even begun to teach you how to really put direct-response marketing to use in order to burn it up in promoting yourself and your products. My goal was just to introduce the two of you and offer you an opportunity to get acquainted. Yet I believe it would be an invaluable use of 183
Real Artists Ship by John McLean your time to make more of a study of the principles of direct response, so I'm going to point you to one additional resource where you can discover everything you need to know ab0ut this alternate model of promoting yourself and your work. I'm only going to give you one additional resource here, because one is all you need. This one site I'm going to send you to is a one-stop destination for all things related to direct-response...a type of marketing where YOU always make the First Move and give your prospect the luxury (yes, luxury!) of having only to respond to your request rather than make any other decisions about what to do next. ILoveMarketing.com is a 100% free website run by two of the most brilliant minds in directresponse: Joe Polish, a former carpet cleaner from Arizona, and Dean Jackson, a former realtor from Toronto. Each week they upload a new (and, again, totally FREE!) podcast or video discussing a slightly different aspect of the direct-response model as opposed to the old-fashioned, withering-on-the-vine branding model. As of this writing they have already uploaded more than 70 episodesmany of them an hour or more in length. Seriously, you can get a graduate education in a style of marketing that actually works in the real world from this one website alone. As I alluded to earlier, direct-response is hardly new...the concepts have been around for decades, and made millionaires out of many direct-mail. Dean Jackson and Joe Polish regularly interview their old-time, direct-response mentors, a crazy bunch of guys and gals who went toe-to-toe via direct mail campaigns back before anybody 184
Real Artists Ship by John McLean dreamed up the Internet or infomercials or even cable TV . Point your browser to ILoveMarketing.com when youre ready to discover even more about direct response. Meanwhile, lets take a quick detour to discover the single most important word in your marketing vocabulary!
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19: The Single Most Important Word In Marketing

Everything Is A Story
Although not technically part of the direct response

model, there's one additional note I'd like you to add to this song we've been learning that'll make it sound all that much sweeter to other people's ears...and that is the word Because. This simple word has the potential to become the single most important term in your entire vocabulary when it comes to marketing yourself and your book, because it does something very profound...it builds a story around your request. As we've already discussed, everythingand I mean EVERYthing!is a Story. Humans don't respond at a deep, internal level to facts, data, bullet points or fancy graphics. Rather we respond to metaphors and stories. The word because can turn any statement into a story. And once a statement becomes a story, the person we're communicating with can process and respond to it...often without even knowing why they are responding positively to your request. Because, Because, Because In 1989, a fascinating study was designed and carried out by social psychologist Ellen Langer to test the potential of the homely little word because. 186
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Dr. Langer located a busy copy machine in one of storied libraries on the campus of Harvard University. Starting at the back of the line, Dr. Langer asked each person in front of her if she could go before them, saying, Excuse me, I've got five pages, may I use the Xerox machine ahead of you? Somewhat remarkably, nearly half of them said Yes. But, of course, the other half said No. Now she had a baseline: If you directly (and politely) state a request, perhaps 50% of people will go along...itself an elegant proof of the directresponse model! Next, the Professor sought to improve upon that success by introducing the word because. She ran the same drill, save with the critical addition of a because phrase. Excuse me, I've got five pages, may I use the Xerox machine... she said, adding, ...because I'm in a rush! Well now the people in line in front of her had a reason to comply with her request. Because now there was a story attached to the requesta story that all of us can relate to, a story about being in a rush. By simply adding because and introducing her story, Dr. Langer discovered that an almost unbelievable 94% of students let her cut in front of them! Only later did she stop and reflect that her story was, to a certain extent, ridiculous. She was in a crowded library during finals week. Of course she was in a rushwho wasn't in a rush?! Every student there was in just as much of a full-blown, panicky dash to write their papers, make copies and cram for tests as everyone else. 187
Real Artists Ship by John McLean This realization made Prof. Langer suspect that it was the word because that made the difference rather than the content of the reason she gave for wanting to move ahead in line. She theorized that the students in line ahead of her simply needed to know she had a story...and so perhaps it didn't even matter what the story was about. In other words, the story could be that she was in a rush...or it could anything else. So she returned to the crowded library for one more social experiment line-jumping. In this go-round, her idea was to make the story about absolutely nothing. So now she used the line, Excuse me, I've got five pages, may I use the Xerox machine ahead of you...because I have to make some copies? The mind-blowing result?! Almost the exact same number of people reacted favorably to this new because request as before93% versus 94% despite the fact that she offered them merely the Seinfeld of reasons, a reason about nothing! Of course she was there to make copies, that's what you do with a Xerox machine! This was like asking people ahead of you in line at the local McTacoHut, May I go ahead of you, because I'm hungry? Well, naturally you're hungry. We're all hungry. Who the hell would walk in the door of a fast food joint if they weren't hungry. Even so, Dr. Langer's experiments showed that this same strategy of using because should work even there. By the way, the professor's successes in linejumping weren't attributable to her great beauty or personal charisma, although I'm sure she is plentifully blessed in both departments. 188
Real Artists Ship by John McLean She later reproduced her experiments using males and females, some pretty, some not so pretty, some younger, some olderand found no significant difference in the 0utcomes. Use Because...Because It Works From now on, whenever you make a direct request of someone to buy your book or a request of your daughter to clean her room or a request of the nice officer to let you go with a warning, always include the pivotal word because in your petition. Even though the story that comes after the because really doesn't seem to matter, I personally like to make the story about the person you're communicating with rather than about yourself, if at all possible. Cultivating the habit of putting your attention on others makes for better communication and for more successful marketing. Its doubtful that you ever noticed, but throughout this entire book every single time I made a direct request of you (to do an exercise or click on a link or try something new in your life), I invariably followed that request up with the word because and then added a potential benefit for you should you actually do whatever I asked. In the preceding chapter, for example, I requested that you click on the adjacent link to grab a copy of the Low Carb Revolution (which is as directresponse as it gets!) and then I followed that immediately with a Because Phrasewhich is the word because and a story of some kind. In that particular case, I made the story about your dreams of becoming a successful author by saying: because it can quite literally help you rediscover 189
Real Artists Ship by John McLean the horsepower within you that you'll require to successfully write and publish your book. Use Because on Everyone When I first learned about the power of because, I immediately began using it on my own children. (I mean, duh!) To my great delight, it worked just as advertised and their compliance with my requests went through the roof. I'll offer you a single representative example. As it happens, I quite enjoy washing dishessomething about having my hands in warm, soapy water is comforting to me and reminds of the womb or who knows whatbut I absolutely abhor putting the dishes away, even though that task only requires like 1/30th of the amount of time it takes to wash them in the first place. In the past, it was a constant battle to get one of the kids to put away the dishes. My earnest pleas to empty the dish rack consistently fell on deaf ears. Until I discovered the power of the word because. Then I started saying, Can you please put away dishes...because then I can wash more? The story I told in my because phrase was about me, but it was about me washing more dishesand that necessarily meant that they wouldn't have to wash them and so they were delighted to comply. Putting away dishes at my pad rose from roughly 0% of the time to 60 or 70% of the time after the first askingwhich is nothing short of a stratospheric success ratio for any parent-child request! When my children grew old enough to understand languaging and semantics, I taught them how and why to use the word because in 190
Real Artists Ship by John McLean their own requests. They started laughing: Holy cow, you've been using that on us for years! Now that we know what youre doing it won't work anymore. Yes it will, I responded, because as long as you keep putting away the dishes, Ill keep doing all the washing and you won't have to! Plus you'll probably forget I even told you all this and you'll just keep processing the word because without even thinking about it! Both of which predictions, by the way, turned out to be completely true! The Secret to Asking For Anything You Want Do you want to know the secret to asking anyone for anything and getting them to say Yes? Well, not always, of coursebut a helluva lot more often than they might have said Yes in the past! I'm going to teach this secret to you, but I should warn you right up front that it comes with some responsibilities. Knowing how to ask for what you want and getting it assumes that you've taken the time to explore what you really want in the world. Only use this amazing secret I'm about to share with you when you are genuinely expressing a burning desire of yours. Only use this knowledge responsibly. And only use it to make requests of others that are in the best interests of both of you. If you youll Pinky-Swear to these three caveats, then read on and learn a secret that can majorly transform the number of Yes's in your life; if not, simply skip ahead to the last sub-section of this chapter, fair enough?! Now this is a method of asking for what you want in PERSON. 191
Real Artists Ship by John McLean While it won't particularly help you sell more books on Amazon, it can help you get more of what you want from lifeand I count that as a very thing indeed! It's a just little extra Bonus Secret I'm including here to thank you for taking the time out of your 51 hours of free-time per week to read and apply the lessons contained in Real Artists Ship. I'm going to present this secret to you as a formula, because that's really what it isa formula for making a request in a single sentence with a high likelihood of a positive response. THE SECRET to ASKING FOR ANYTHING YOU WANT: Head Tilt + Request + Name + Because Phrase Let's quickly break this formula down, then put it back together again and be on our way. HEAD TILT As you begin asking someone for what you want, tilt your head to one side. Nobody really knows the reason why tilting your head to either side improves your chances of a positive response, but it's welldocumented that it does work. The best guess is that tilting your head serves to make you more attractive to the other person (because it hides any asymmetries in your features), and also makes you appear more trustable and curious about their answer. The first time you tilt your head to one side as you ask someone a question it may feel awkward. But you know what else feels awkward?! Every other thing in your whole life when you did it for the first time! 192
Real Artists Ship by John McLean The head tilt is an essential part of the Secret to Asking for Anything you Want, so always include it. REQUEST This is whatever you're asking for. Once more, because you will dramatically increase your odds of receiving a Yes by using this formula, please only ask for things you genuinely desire. NAME Insert their name in the sentence directly after the Request and before the Because Phrase. Why? Because it works! BECAUSE PHRASE You're already well-familiar with this by now. The Because Phrase can be anything at all, but I personally feel it's good form to make it about the person you are asking (i.e., a benefit for them) whenever possible. Pulling It All Together Here are some examples. Remember, all of these start with a Head Tilt to one side or the other. Would you like to make an offer on this house today, Lindsay...because you're going to enjoy living here? Eat your vegetables, Johnny...because your tummy will be happier when you do! Will you marry me, Meredith...because I don't ever want us to be apart?! 193
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Can you put away the dishes, Annie...because then I can wash some more? Do you want to join our strange cult, George...because then we can drain your bank account?! (Use this one sparingly!) Once more... Head Tilt + Request + Name + Because Phrase
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20: How To Create and Run a Free Promotion

This Has Been A Treat!
Wow, here we arejust a couple of chapters from

the end of the book. I've really appreciated sharing this material with you...and I'm already feeling a touch of the sads about the fast-approaching end of our time together. I still have a couple more major marketing bombshells to drop in your lap and then we'll wrap things up with my unique theory of why we even write books in the first placewhat purpose they hold for us as human beings. Additionally, in the Epilogue I will give you my personal email address so we can stay in touch and continue this conversation into the future...and with my email addy comes my vow that I will personally respond to your communications. We're Gonna Just Give It Away So I'm going to ask you to do something that at first blush may seem detrimental to the success as a published that you desire and deserve... I want you to give your book away. For free. As much as a part of you really wants to skip this step and not give your book away for free, I want you to do it anyway. Just for a limited time, mind you! Trust me, the magic starts here, with what's referred to as a Free Promotion. Running a Free Promotion is only an option if 195
Real Artists Ship by John McLean you've enrolled in KDP Selectthe program that gives Amazon exclusive rights to your book for 90 days. Exclusive means that you cannot at the same time also sell your book on Barnes & Noble's site or, most especially, through Amazon's arch-enemy, Apple and their iTunes store. (You can, however, always sell your book in any form you like on your own proprietary website.) Amazon permits you five free days to give away your book during each KDP 90 day enrollment period. Other than during these five days, the minimum you are allowed to charge on Amazon is always 99 cents and if you try to set the price at any number between 98 cents and 0 cents it won't allow you to do so. Why Give Your Book Away? To help you grasp why you really, really, really, really, really (that's five reallys, for those of you counting at home!) want to take the seemingly counter-intuitive step of just giving your damn book away for free to a bunch of strangers, I want to share with you a story. Because, again, EVERYTHING is a story! In the 1820's, at the height of the Romantic era, an young Belgian poet made his way to then-center of the literary universethe hustling, bustling town of Pariswith the intention of making his fame and fortune. On the very afternoon of his arrival, the young man chanced upon a popular cafe where many of the deliciously decadent artists of the time whiled away their days in drinking absinthe, courting prostitutes and dodging their creditors. When the unknown Belgian poet arrived in the cafe, he 196
Real Artists Ship by John McLean marched straight up to a nattily clad man (who just happened to be one of France's leading theatre critics) and delivered a blow to the side of the man's head, sending him sprawling. A cluster of well-known poets and novelists at a nearby table immediately pounced on the young man. He fought back gamely and all hell broke loosealong with several chairs, numerous glasses and the fancy mirror over the bar where the English poet Lord Byron had once stood admiring his own handsome visage for a full hour. In the end, the Belgian got his ass beat good and was then hauled off to jail by gendarmes. When the dust settle in the cafe, everybody turned and asked the same question, Who the hell was that?! But no one had an answer. Apparently he was just a nobody. It turned out that the theatre critic who'd been the original object of the young man's attack was there with his teenage mistress, so he wisely declined to press charges. As a result, the authorities had no choice but to release the would-be poet the next morning. As he stepped into the light, the Belgian smiled broadly. Outside the door of the jailhouse several dozen reporters, fellow poets and curiosity seekers jostled for a view of the young man, eager to know the story behind this crazed poet and his brawl at the cafe. The Belgian poet hadn't even been in Paris for 24 hours and everybody who mattered...critics, artists and fellow writers...knew who he was. His audacious plan had worked to perfectionhe was no longer a nobody! And your Free Promotion is going to do the exact 197
Real Artists Ship by John McLean same thing for you as the poet's dustupit will announce your arrival on the island of Amazon, only with less fighting and, if all goes to plan, no jail time whatsoever! Postscript: You Gotta Do The Work Perhaps you noticed that I never once mentioned this poet's name. And there's a good reason for that. Although he stormed into town with a bang, he exited with a whimper. There's lazy...and then there's Lazy. This promising youth dissipated away his life and talent to such a degree that he never even had a single poem published before his early death and lonely burial in a unmarked plot in a minor Parisian cemetery. He serves as a reminder to us all that there's no value in gaining attention unless we're also willing to do the work of deserving and maintaining it. None of the book marketing strategies we'll explore from here on will matter much at all unless we first dig deep in order to finish writing and publishing our bookand complete that process in less time than it took to build the Empire State Building from the ground up! I mean, right?! Building a Tribe & Getting Your First Reviews Your first Free Promotion should last for at least three of the five free days you have at your disposal through KDP Select. During these three days, hundreds or even thousands of people will be able to buy your book on Amazon at a listed price of $0.00. In the summer of 2012 I ran a free promotion for 198
Real Artists Ship by John McLean the Low Carb Revolution and more than 20,000 people downloaded during the four days it was available! These early adopters will form the foundation of the Tribe you're building on Amazon and the numerous copies downloaded will provide the initial momentum for your book on the site. If you've Done The Work, if you've written a mighty fine book, then your hundreds or more readers will tell hundreds or more of their friends. And that's how it all begins! Another highly desirable outcome from this Free Promotion is getting your first positive reviews from readers. Reviews are the online equivalent of a line outside a popular nightclub. Reviews provide the Social Proof that helps inform and guide other's buying decisions. If a bunch of readers are taking the time to write reviews that let the world know how wonderful your book is, then new prospects will be more likely to conclude that it's probably worth their time as well. Reviews on Amazon tend to be longer and, on the whole, more positive than reviews on other ebook sites such as Barnes & Noble's site. At the same time, the percentage of people who will actually sit down and compose a review is disconcertingly small. On average only about 1 out of every 2000 readers of a book will take the time to write and post an unsolicited review on Amazon. How To Give Your Book Away To create a Free Promotion, open up your KDP dashboard and navigate to the Bookshelf, which lists the books you currently have for sale on Amazon. Presumably there's just one for now, but go ahead 199
Real Artists Ship by John McLean and select it so Amazon will know where to apply the actions that follow. Next direct your attention to the button on the lower left labeled, Actions. Click that button, and then in the drop-down box select Manage Promotions. This opens up the Promotions Manager where you'll define and refine your giveaway. The first step is to click on the New button to create a new promotion. Next up, you'll be asked for a name. This is simply the name of your promotion, not your name or the name of your book, and it's for internal use only, so just call it something utilitarian like, My 3Day Promotion for [name of your book] or perhaps Fred. After that you can select the dates you want your promotion to start and end. I recommend using only about three of the five available days for this first promotion. That will allow you to hang onto the remaining two days for a second, extra-credit promotion if you desire...or you can use all five days right now if the spirit moves you. In either case, now you're done! After that, Amazon takes care of the rest. The promotion will start and stop automatically without any further input or actions from you other than getting the word out. Promotions typically start at 12:01 am on the appointed day and end at 11:59 pm on the final dayin both cases using West Coast time. (In other words, they run midnight-to-midnight on AST (Amazon Standard Time)! Finally, the evening before your promotion begins, go into your KDP Dashboard and set the 200
Real Artists Ship by John McLean price of your book artificially highall the way up to $9.99 if you like. Then when Amazon starts your Free Promotion, it will strike through the most recently listed price and offer your book at the new sale price of $0.00while informing readers that they're saving $9.99 (or whatever the previous list price was). This, of course, serves to give your prospects the perception that theyre really getting a hella deal here! Where To Give It Away Naturally youll want to post a direct link to your Amazon storefront on Facebook, Twitter and similar sites. Youll probably only get a handful of additional downloads from doing this, but it can be worth it if other members of your Tribe spread the word further still. Ask your social media site chums to please repost your free promotionthat way you can get as many eyeballs on it as possible. Of course, the Big, Big Numbers of downloads will come from complete strangerswhom youll reach through the half-dozen or so sites that specialize in promoting free Kindle books to devoted book readers. Im about to direct you to a single site where you can conveniently find links to the submission pages for all of the major free promotion sites. Follow the URL below and then just click on the image for each of the promotional sites. Youll be redirected to a submission page where you can fill in all the deets about the name of your book, the dates of your free promotion and the like. 201
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Free slots fill up fast, so you want to schedule your giveaway at least a week in advance. (I suppose paid slots are always available, but I highly doubt if its worth spending the money on them.) Type this link into your browser when youre ready to set up your first Free Promotion:
http://authormarketingclub.com/members /submit-your-book/
They Like Me, They Really Like Me! By the end of your first Free Promotion, you will literally be a different person than when you started. You will know, right down to a cellular level in your body, that peopleand by people I mean totally strangers whom you've never met before and possibly never willwant to read your book. They want a solution to their problem and they are willing to spend their valuable time to read your words to find out if you're the one who can finally help them solve it! It becomes quite the confidence booster (almost addictively so!) to check in on the Reports page of your KDP dashboard and watch the number of downloads grow and grow during the run of your first giveaway. In addition, a natural result of sharing your book to hundreds or even thousands of people and directly requesting feedback from them the way we learned is that you should start getting some sweet reviews coming in. Congratulations in advance for those first reviews, by the wayyou earned them!
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Real Artists Ship by John McLean How Amazon Ranks Reviews The full text of your Top 3 reviews are located directly beneath your book's description. This ranking is entirely dependent on how many other readers liked the review and found it helpful, and has nothing to do with the number of stars given or when it was originally posted. Naturally, the earliest reviews will likely attract the most Likes and therefore stay at or near the top of the storefront forever. In addition, Amazon puts up brief excerpts (approximately the first thirty words) of new reviews in the right margin, based entirely on chronology. In other words, the abbreviated reviews in the side bar appear like they would on a blog, where the most recent review is at the top and remains so until someone else comes along and posts a newer review. If you were to write a review of something superfamous like one of the Harry Potter books, an excerpt of your review might be featured on the homepage of that particular book for a few days or weeks until six or eight other people write even newer reviews. By the way, if you DO write a review for one of the Harry Potter books, you'll find that there are only 5000-ish reviews of each book. I say only because thats a small number when you consider that Amazon alone has sold upwards of 10 MILLION copies of each book in the series. These 5000 total reviews correspond exactly with the percentage of unsolicited reviews on Amazon we discussed earlier of about 1 per every 2000 readers. Never fear, you're going to have a substantially higher percentage of readers reviewing your book 203
Real Artists Ship by John McLean because (there's that all-important word again because!) you are going to specifically and politely ask your readers to write a review AND youll provide them a direct link to your storefront...the way any good direct-response marketer would do! How To Bury A Negative Review Sooner or later, some Buzz Killington may come along and drop a stinking turd of a review about your book. First off, breathe. It's not the end of the world. No matter how wonderful you book and how much you care about your subject matter and your readers, sooner or later somebody isn't going to like your book and they'll write an ugly review. But it's not just you. Take a glance at any popular book on Amazonincluding the bestsellers in whatever category you're writing in. I've seen well-known books that I personally bought and enjoyed with dozens and dozens of negative, one- and two-star reviews! As we noted earlier, negative, 1-star reviews are a powerful deterrent to buyersand have a stronger effect on undermining a potential sale than a positive, 5-start review does on pushing someone over the line to purchasing your book. In case you are unsuccessful in deleting your less-than-stellar review, I want to teach you how to bury the damn thing so it doesn't pop up at the front of the review queue when prospects visit your storefront. Again, the first three reviews listed beneath your book are there based entirely on their rankings. You can easily push a negative review off the main page, but you're going to need a little help from your 204
Real Artists Ship by John McLean friends. First, identify 3 positive reviews that are closest in ranking (determined solely by number of likes) to your negative review. In other words, three reviews where just a few additional likes can push them ahead of the nasty one. Second, go to your storefront and locate the hyperlink just beneath the last review on your storefrontthe one that says See all [# of] customer reviews. Clicking on that link will take you to a page that includes the full text of the top ten or so rated reviews. Now Copy the URL of this page from your browser. Third, send a note to some of your chums through Facebook or regular email asking for their help. Paste the direct link of the main review page from step two, so all your friends have to do is click on it to be taken to the appropriate page. (Never forget that the direct-response model is all about waving the plate of cookies directly in front of them rather than asking them to go through all the trouble of finding the kitchen and making their own make snack! Don't make them do all the discrete steps it just took you to get to the reviews in question...always do the heavy lifting for them!) Fourth, in the same note to your pals, list by name the three positive reviews that you identified in Step One and which you are trying to boost high enough to sink the negative review to the fourth slot or lower, so it will no longer be on your storefront. Ask your friends to simply click the like button on these good reviews. This entire exercise will literally take them five seconds total. They click on the direct link in your note, then click Like, Like, Like on the 3 reviews you requested, and they're 205
Real Artists Ship by John McLean done! Once these positive reviews get enough Likes, they will rise to the top of your page. Before long, the undesired review will be (a little more) out of sight, out of mind and you can get back to the business at hand...which is concluding your first free giveaway! Wrapping Up Your Free Promotion Once your free promotion is over, I recommend that you reset the price of your book from its inflated perch of $9 or wherever down to the lowest amount you feel comfortable withpreferably 99 cents, but under no circumstances more than $2.99. For days and days after your promotion ends a ton of slow-pokes will finally make their way to your storefront, expecting your book to be Free. Even though they missed the boat and can no longer get your book for $0.00, many of these prospects will take the time to read your book's description and reviews and may well buy itso long as the price is low enough. Hence the 99 cent price point that Im suggesting. You can pick up a good number of sales in the days immediately following a free promotion...and as your book trends upwards, other prospects will start noticing it and they'll hopefully buy it and it will continue to trend upward even more! When this happens, word will spread and your book should slowly begin to take off! Next up I'm rolling out another of my patented Big Metaphors, lulz!
But this one is super-special...because it might radically alter the way you think about Amazon.com from now on!
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21: The Island of Amazon

The Discarded Chapter
Once
upon a time the chapter youre presently reading was a 17-page mini-masterpiece on how to market your first book on the Internet. It included page after tightly written page about how to promote your work through social media sites like Squidoo, Pinterest and Facebook...along with mentions of LinkedIn, Twitter and so on. And the chapter revealed little-known tactics about how to send traffic to your Amazon storefront via blogging, podcasting, posting videos and more. Then one day I woke up and realized that everything I thought I knew about promoting a book on Amazon was wrong. (This happens to me with fair frequency, I should addwaking up to discover that my previous understanding of a concept or even an entire system has completely changed and now I get it in a way that somehow eluded me before...I mean, thats where all those Secrets that Ive been sharing with you come from!) In my aforementioned moment of clarity, I grasped that every single aspect of traditional online marketingfrom SEO to squeeze pages to split tests to sales funnels to upsells and beyondthat I had painstakingly learned over the years simply did not apply to Amazon. Just as Quantum Theory was required to explain the very weird world of very, very small objects, so too will the Big Metaphor I'm about to roll out will 207
Real Artists Ship by John McLean allow you to finally understand and succeed in the unique world called Amazon. So in one instant I saw Amazon through new eyes...and in the next instant I realized that also meant I was gonna have to channel my Inner Dr. Seuss and completely threw out the old chapter Id written with all its fancy bullet points, Internet marketing strategies and clever prose, and start this chapter over from scratch. And so I did. Because thats what we do as writers. We write until we get it right. Before we go any further let's quickly trot out some numbers so we can put the Big Metaphor to come in context. What's Your Conversion, Baby? In business terms, the Conversion Rate is the percentage of customers who visit your store whether real or virtualand who end up actually buying something. Just about every customer who stumbles into a Starbucks for their morning caffeine fix ends up purchasing something, so you could say Starbucks has a conversion ratio of 100% or close to it. On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you've ever stumbled upon one of those long form sales letters online that are always pitching courses on dating advice or DVDs to improve your golf swing, then it will come as little surprise to you that they carry conversion rates of less than 1%and that's on a good day! In other words, out of a hundred people who find their way to one of these sites, on average just one of them will ultimately decide to purchase the good or service being sold. 208
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Which means that literally 99% of the (often Herculean) efforts that Internet marketers put into building their online business is wasted. I once spent months and months (and months!) designing, writing, recording and editing an entire online training program for would-be Internet Marketers that consisted of over ten hours of audio training, as well as another two full hours of highly original, tightly edited video content that I created from scratch. In my not-so-humble opinion it was stellar materialsome of my best work up until then. However, six months after launching my audacious product, I pulled the plug and shut down the site where I'd been hosting it. My grand total conversion rate for the six months since I went live was 0%. Thats right, boys and girls, I failed to sell a single copy of my product to anyone in the world! (Hey, you win some and you lose some! Following that humbling failure I went on to write the Low Carb Revolution, which has been nothing short of a spectacular success, so it all worked out in the end!) I Feel So...Abandoned Perhaps even more painful than the certainty of a low conversion ratio for your online product is the near-miss known in the industry as abandonment. On even the most popular sites at the top of the Internet food chain, far more people end up NOT buying anything than those who DO. Potential customers regularly go through all the trouble of deciding on a particular size, color and delivery date for a product, and put it in their virtual shopping cart and then...never, ever pull the trigger. 209
Real Artists Ship by John McLean In industry parlance, they abandon their shopping cart and disappear into the night. (Damn youz!!!) For reasons that nobodyand I mean nobody can figure out, shopping cart abandons have actually been increasing in recent years rather than decreasing, as one might expect in a world of increasingly experienced online shoppers. The shopping cart abandon rate has risen from 75% just a few short years ago to its current all-time high of 88%! So, out of a hundred people visiting an online retailer and navigating around the site and picking out their desired purchase, only about a dozen of them actually click the Buy Now button at the end of the process. Hell, it's a bloody wonder that anything at all ever gets sold on the Internet, right?! You and I, however, are in luck since we've decided to throw in our fortunes with Amazon. (At least, I have decided to do so and I very much hope you'll join me!) Youll be delighted to know that Amazon does lots and lots and lots of things right. As a result, they have, by a very wide measure, the lowest shopping cart abandon rate on the Internet at only 65%. Which is a phenomenal number. But still...it means that sixty-five out of every one hundred potential readers of a book end up changing their minds and go buy something elseor even nothing elseinstead. Much Ado About Nothing By now it should be dawning on you that all of the marketing efforts I described in the original version of this chapter (and which continue to be proscribed 210
Real Artists Ship by John McLean by almost every other book purporting to guide you to the Kindle Promised Land) are, in a word: useless. Relying on traditional online marketing efforts to sell your book will yield a failure rate somewhere between sixty-five and ninety-nine percent. Listen, I get that Tweeting and Facebooking and Pinning things to virtual boards is an easy and even fun way to while away the day and still feel productive. But it's not a particularly effective use of your time if your goal is to actually sell enough books each month to make a living as a writer. Think of it like this: suppose you spend two hours per day doing all the usual Internet marketing endeavors to send traffic to check out your book on Amazon. If you work five days per week, that's forty hours you'll put in each month just to scare up potential customers. And let's say your prodigious efforts result in sending one hundred unique visitors to your storefront. Now some of these people won't have Amazon accounts, so they'll just glance at your book and immediately bail. Many others won't have Kindles or won't know they don't even need one, since Amazon will gladly give them a free Kindle app for their favorite electronic device. Still others won't have the problem you solve in your book. Or, perhaps even more commonly, they DO have the problem you solve, but theyre not ready to let go of it and so most especially are not interested in buying your book right on. And on and on, until we reach the 99-65% range of people who dont convert or simply abandon your book unbought in their shopping cart. So, if you're luckysuper luckythen thirty-five out of the hundred people you sent to your 211
Real Artists Ship by John McLean storefront will buy your book at, say, $2.99. You'll make a $2 commission per sale, bringing your monthly earnings to a whopping $70. Or, if you're not lucky at all, then you'll only sell one copy of your book...but Amazon won't even send you the $2 you made, since the minimum amount they pay out at a time is ten bucks! Either way, once you divide your royalty by the 40 hours of Internet Marketing busywork it took you to earn it, you are quite literally working for peanuts! Here's another Secret that nobody else was willing to tell you: Amazon has absolutely nothing to do with the Internet as you and I know it. Granted, Amazon is a bona fide online retailer. At the end of the day, some kind of wires or waves or electronic magic connects the Amazons computers and a flesh & blood human together in order to make a transaction. But apart from that, Amazon and the rest of the Internet have virtually nothing in common. On Amazon completely different rules apply. No Man Is An Island...But Amazon Is Think of the Internet as a continent. It could be any continent, but let's go ahead and pretend it's North America. This continent is made up of many smaller communities. Some of these communities are as tiny as one or two people, perhaps working out of the garage in their house, the way Hewlett-Packard, Apple Computer and Amazon itself were launched. Other communities within the continent of the Internet are largerthe size of cities, states or even 212
Real Artists Ship by John McLean whole countries. All of them are connected and easily accessible to one another. You can drive from side-to-side and top-to-bottom on the continent of North America or you can do it on foot, horseback, bicycle or even pogo stick. Everything's connected to everything else. But then there's Hawaii. While its still a flag-waving part of the United States, Hawaii isn't physically connected to anything else in North America. If you want to understand how Amazon works, then you need to realize that it's not part of the continent of the Internet, but rather it's an entirely separate world. More to the point...Amazon is an Island. The Island of Amazon Amazon is truly an island unto itself. Like all islands, it has its own rules, its own gravity and even its own time. If you've ever spent significant time on an islandwhether one of the stunning Hawaiian islands or a less scenic one like pancakeflat South Padre Island in the Gulf of Mexicothen you're aware that every island has its own distinct blend of magic that makes it unique from all other islands and, most especially, from the mainland. The only way to succeed on an island is to let go of your mainland attitudes, customs and expectations. You'll experience much frustration until you finally buy into the culture and uniqueness of the island you're visiting. The writers who achieve spectacular success on Amazon are the ones who recognize that it's not just another destination in the North America of the 213
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Internet, but rather a special island of its own where different laws of promotion and success apply. If you try to play on the Island of Amazon with the same rules of marketing that apply to the mainland, you will be in for much hand-wringing and disappointment. Of course, being an island doesn't make it small. Amazon has its own substantial populationwith over 250 MILLION credit card numbers on file and growing. Amazon is so large that it generates its own weather. Books trend up and books trend down entirely because of activity that takes place on Amazon, with no relationship to anything happening in the real bookstores scattered throughout North America. Going Native There's a pronounced Us versus Them mentality that pervades all aspects of island life. No sooner do you arrive on an island, kick off your shoes and don a flowery shirt then you find yourself having to choose sides between islanders and everybody else. If you know what's good for you, youll buy into the Island Mentality while you're on the island. And if you want to succeed on Amazon, you'll want to do the same. Here's the choice ahead of you... You can spend a lot of your valuable time doing busy work like building your list, Tweeting, blogging and other internet marketing activities that appeal to mainlanders. or... You can take action on the island-focused marketing activities I'll share with you in the next chapter and sell 214
Real Artists Ship by John McLean lots and lots of books to other islanders. If you choose the later, that also means youre gonna chose to go native, as the colonializing British used to say. And here's your first big step towards doing that: Imagine that the only site on the entire Internet you can log onto is Amazon. Seriously, pretend your computer is physically unable to connect with any other website in the world. So there you are on Amazon. Now go. Seriously, that's all there is to it. I want you to think of Amazon as this incredible island you're going to spend some time onand the only way to succeed on this island is to learn how to blend in and become one of the natives. Next I'll share with you three unique island-y marketing techniques to get you going, to provide you with specific examples of what we're talking about here. But I also want you to get out there and walk the beaches of Amazon on your own. I want you to spend time talking to the natives and coming up with additional promotional strategies that nobody else ever thought of that will make your stay on the Island of Amazon an even more spectacular success, okay?!
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22: Marketing to Islanders

Three Plates of Cookies The three marketing strategies we'll explore in this chapter have one thing in commonthey each take place entirely on the Island of Amazon. That necessarily means than none of them involve traditional mainland marketing busywork such as blogging, emailing, article-writing, tweeting or pinning things to boards. We're going to focus our efforts exclusively on activities that will give other islanders the opportunity to directly respond to our offer...they can either choose the option we give them, or not choose it. In direct response parlance, we're going to wave three heaping plates of cookies in front of each and every islander we come across. So grab a bottle of milk and let's start baking some cookies, baby! 1: Make A Printed Version of Your Book CreateSpace.com is the Amazon-owned subsidiary charged with assisting you in creating a dead-trees, real-life version of your book. As with Amazon, it is absolutely FREE to set up an account and create the paperback edition. Under the wasteful model used by legacy publishers, thousands of copies of your book would be printed all at once, then shipped all over the 216
Real Artists Ship by John McLean country to be distributed to bookstores. After a narrow selling window of just a few months (sometimes merely weeks), your book would be cleared out to make way for new arrivals. However many thousands of copies of your book that remained unsold would have their front covers torn off (to prevent their resale by wholesalers) and then shipped back across the country to your publisher, where they would be summarily destroyed. If you're a fan of trees, you'll be happy to know that CreateSpace only prints one copy of your book at a timeentirely on demand! Offering a printed option is important for the many people who still harbor the impression that a Kindle book isn't as real or valuable as a printed one. Rather than argue the point with them, youre simply going to give them the option of ordering a printed versionjust so long as theyre willing to pay for it. CreateSpace is a completely automatic, turn-key operation. Once a prospect orders the paperback edition of your book through your Amazon storefront, CreateSpace prints, packages and ships it out for you. They also take care of billing, tracking and everything else associated with the order. There's nothing for you to do other than visit your separate CreateSpace dashboard from time to time to check your sales and incoming royalties. Seriously, does it get any sweeter than that?! Reverse-Engineering Your Book CreateSpace includes plenty of tutorials and FAQs that will guide you through the process of creating a printed version of your book. I just want to briefly 217
Real Artists Ship by John McLean touch on a couple of relevant topics, starting with showing you to generate the document file that CreateSpace will use to generate On-Demand printings of your book. Recall that I'm recommending you write your book using OpenOffice, and then cut and paste the ensuing .odt file into Jutoh for the final polishing and adding flourishes like bold and italics, as well as inserting pictures and URL links. (Even after I import my completed book manuscript into Jutoh, I still do an entire final polishcutting, tightening and brightening every word from start to finish.) This Jutoh document now becomes the final, working copy of my manuscript. If I later go back and add in a new outside Link to an article or make any changes whatsoever to my manuscript, I naturally do it to the Jutoh version. That way all I have to do is press the Compile button and then re-upload the updated edition of my book to Amazon. Therefore the latest and greatest version of my book always resides on Jutoh, and when it's time to generate the file for my CreateSpace template that's where I return. Whereas Amazon needs a mobisoft file for the Kindle, CreateSpace simply wants a good, oldfashioned pdf. To create a pdf, first export your entire manuscript from Jutoh as a .odt file. To do this, click on the File Menu at the top, select the Export sub-header and chose OpenDocument. Next, return to OpenOffice and open up the .odt file of the latest version of your book that you just saved. From within OpenOffice you can then Save your document in a format supported by virtually any popular word processing program. 218
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Then open the document in your preferred word processor and make any final adjustments to the formatting. If you use a Mac like I do, the Export as PDF option can be found on the Print drop-down menu in Microsoft Word. And if you still use a PC, you should be ashamed, lulz! (Seriously, if you are genuinely still stuck in the PC world, visit Adobe.com and theyll show you how to turn your document into a pdf.) Now before you hit the Save one last time on the pdf version of your book, do yourself and your readers a huge favor by making a quick, final pass on the document, paying special attention to the page breaks. Unlike a .mobi file, which flows on the screen just like web pages, once a pdf is laid out on the page, it never changes. So you especially want to avoid awkwardlooking pages with just a single word or half of a sentence on them! Finally, upload the pdf of your book from within your dashboard on CreateSpace. They have a fantastic, step-by-step guide that will walk you through every step of laying out a cover, writing the verbiage for it and pricing your book. A Tale of Two Drafts From this point forward you will now need to carefully maintain TWO separate versions of your book. Any time you return to your manuscript to correct a typo that a reader helpfully pointed out or to add a new link or to make any edits whatsoever, youll need to make the changes to BOTH versions of your bookthe Kindle version in Jutoh and the print version in Word or a similar program that 219
Real Artists Ship by John McLean you can use to generate a .pdf for CreateSpace. This is important because you want both your digital and your print readers to enjoy the same high-quality experience. Now with the Kindle, you simply upload the mobisoft version of your latest and greatest draft, and then Amazon will automatically take care of the rest. With CreateSpace, on the other hand, each and every time you make the slightest change to your book it has to be reviewed all over again. Once its approved, you still have to personally revisit your dashboard, examine the newly updated files and then approve the Proof. Only THEN will the new version of your printed book become available for purchase through your Amazon storefront. Pricing Your Printed Book To be honest, you wont have much latitude when it comes to pricing the paperback version of your book. Print-on-Demand is a wonderfully efficient means of production, but the attendant Cost of Goods (COG) is also substantially more than when you print larger numbers of copies on a traditional press, which means youll be required to charge more for your book just to offset the higher COG. CreateSpace lets you estimate the production costs of your book as you go through the process of assembling its various elements. This includes the chance to play with variables such as trim (the size of your book) and color (both inside and outside your book) in order to control your final costs. At the end of the entire process, when the cover and the interior of your book have been separately approved by CreateSpace, youll will finally have the opportunity to play around with the pricing. 220
Real Artists Ship by John McLean On the Price page, you will be alerted about the Minimum Price you can sell your book for. (Technically you CAN sell your book for as little as you like, but they will rather expect YOU to make up the difference in the cost for each copy if you sell it below their minimum price!) Since the Low Carb Revolution is a fairly hefty book at 464 pages, the minimum price I was allowed to set for it was $10.60. Now thats already a much higher price point than I would have liked to sell if for, and I most certainly didnt want to raise it too much higher because then it would seem like I was trying to gouge my readers. However, that minimum price of $10.60 also meant that my net profit on the entire book would be exactly ZERO! The money collected above the Minimum Suggested Price of your book alone determines your royalties. (In this sense, its no different from the car business. Your commission as a new car salesman depends entirely on how much ABOVE the dealers cost of the car you are able to wring out of your prospect.) One of my primary goals in writing the Low Carb Revolution was to spread my message as far and wide as possible. So I made the command decision that I was going to effectively just give away the print edition of my book in order to spread the love, while not worrying about profiting from it particularly. Now if you have the good sense to write a shorter book, then your cost of goods will be substantially less than in this example and youll have much more flexibility with pricing. 221
Real Artists Ship by John McLean But even then, the purpose of the printed version is less about selling real versions of your book than it is about increase the overall value prospects instinctively give to you and your work. Implied Value Retailers have known for decades that they can raise the implied value of a product in the minds of customers simply by the associating that product with higher priced ones. Suppose you sell a bread-making machine in a catalogue for $199. A great way to boost sales is to also offer a souped-up, super-fancy, upgraded bread-making machine on the same page for a ridiculous price, say, $549. You won't sell many of the higher priced machines, but sales of the lower price bread machine will usually soar because now it seems like such a good deal in comparison! In the same way, offering a trade paperback edition of your book in the $6.49-$9.99 range makes your $2.99 Kindle version seem like quite the bargain indeed...and as a result you should sell more digital versions of your book than you otherwise would. Once you complete all the requisite steps and hit Publish, CreateSpace will create an entirely new storefront page on Amazon with all the particulars of the print edition. Within a day or two, all on its own, this separate print edition storefront will find the existing Kindle version storefront...and then Amazon will seamlessly and automatically marry them together so that prospects will have the option of buying either a real or pretend version of your book! 222
Real Artists Ship by John McLean 2: Write Another Book Writing another book is hands-down the best way to promote and market your first book. Hearken back to our conversation in Chapter 4: What Is A Book? as you realize that you dont have to immediately write another a full-length (whatever that means!) book. A short guide or report on a smaller problem is an equally valid way to increase your exposure on Amazon. On the other hand, feel free to apply your time and energy to a follow-up book of whatever length you desire. If youve got a 333-page tome on Dating Secrets For Men Over 40 in you, by all means write itjust be sure to let me know when publish it so I can buy a copy for myself! Writing a second book opens you up to an entirely new subset of islanders, since you will necessarily be helping them solve an entirely new and different problem than in your first book. It also gives you even greater credibility, because now you're not just the writer of such and such a book, but an author with a backlistwhich is to say, already published books that people can buy. Once people have already bought and enjoyed one book that you've written, they are far more likely to take a chance on another one of your books. And of course you will let them know about your other book(s) by the direct-response method of waving a plate of cookies in front of them. A few times in your book (or only once at the very end, in the case of fiction), find a way to mention one of the other books you've written and (always!) provide a direct link to the storefront for that book so they can get there with a single click. 223
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Apropos which, if you've enjoyed the content and the writing style of Real Artists Ship, I'd like to extend a final invitation for you to order a copy of Women: The Instructions for yourself or the men in your life. Additionally, pick up a copy of the Low Carb Revolution. It is not a diet book...or at least it's not like any diet book you've ever experienced before. But don't take my word for it, simply read any of the beautiful reviews that readers have been leaving about it...because then you many discover that this book really can change your life! I think you know where to find both books, but Ill give you a little hint anyway:
www.Amazon.com
Back-Linking Once your second book is live on Amazon, then you want to grab the URL link for its storefront and then go back to do the same thing with your first book. That means returning to the latest version of the manuscript of your first book in Jutoh and finding appropriate places to suggest to your readers that they visit the storefront of your second book to get a copy for themselves. Once you've inserted the direct links to the storefront for book #2, compile and re-upload the amended version of book #1 to Amazon. Now you have two different books that are out there attracting readers, as well as cross-promoting one another! And this is where the magic on the Island of Amazon really starts to happens! The more books you write and then link together to promote one another, the more copies you will sell of each of your 224
Real Artists Ship by John McLean books on Amazon and CreateSpace. And the more copies you sell, the more youll sell. The rich do truly get richeron the Island of Amazon no less than on the mainland! 3: Write Positive Reviews of Related Books Earlier we learned the importance of entering the conversation already going on in your prospect's minds. One fantastic way to enter the conversation that's already taking place on the Island of Amazon is to read and write reviews of books that are similar to yours. No matter how well you've covered a topic and helped people solve their problem, there's always another angle, another take, another road that leads to Rome. Even if you consider yourself to be an expert in your field, believe me you've got more to learn. Whenever you discover a book in the same or similar niche that resonates with you, take the time to write a thoughtful, positive review to share with others. The denizens of Amazon Island read reviews and they write reviewsand they do both with a passion. Most of the islanders on Amazon will never read your book. (A runaway bestseller might reach some 500,000 readersbut that still leaves 249,500,000 and growing readers on Amazon who haven't yet picked up a copy of your masterwork!) However, a great many of them will eventually read one or more of the reviews you've written. For many islanders, your review will be their first exposure to your writing...so take the time and effort to write a solid, readable, error-free review. And this is also your opportunity to subtly market yourself by mentioning the title of your book 225
Real Artists Ship by John McLean somewhere within the review. Find an appropriate way to bring your book into the conversation, but do it entirely without trying to poach readers from the book you're reviewing. Absolutely never write something like, This silly little book tries hard, but if you really want to solve your problem then come read my book instead! That's a huge No-No! Find only nice, positive things to say about the book you're reviewing, and then mention your book almost in passing. The fact that you've also written a book on a similar (or even identical) topic gives your review even more credibility...and it can send lots of prospects to your storefront who may eventually become readers and fans of your work. Island Blogging Other people will tell you to blog in order to promote your book. Well, who reads blogs on the Internet? Mainlanders, thats who. But you and I are not gonna waste even one minute of our time marketing to Mainlanders. So what do Islanders read? They read books. And they read reviews about books. Were going to do a little of both. When youre not actively working on a book, spend your time writing reviews of other books while casually mentioning yours in the body of the review. I want you to start thinking about reviews as your version of blogging. Except youll be Blogging for Islanders! Sample Reviews Here's the opening of a review I wrote for a slim book called, Benefits of Garlic: 226
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Garlic is like the coolest kid in school! While writing the Low Carb Revolution, I considered including a chapter on garlic, but the book had already passed 460 pages and I left it out...so imagine my delight when I found that someone had taken the time to write an entire book about this wonderful little plant/herb. Here's the opening for another review I wrote, this time for a book about how to get motivated about losing weight, bearing the clever title, Get In Touch With Your Thinner Self: A refreshing new angle on an old problem! In my book, the Low Carb Revolution, I delve into how we form and how we change our deeply ingrained habits...and Peter Bull does a nice job here of making the case that no amount of diet or exercise will work until we change the habits behind them. Notice that I mention the title of my book right at the start of my review, just in case people only end up reading the first sentence or two. Now don't fake it in your reviews. Only recommend a book that you think people would truly profit from reading. As a published author and expert in your field, readers are going to trust your opinion and be more likely to take action on itso use your clout wisely! Negative Reviews: DON'T WRITE ANY! Never, ever, ever write a negative review of another authors book on Amazon. I mean, EVER! If you come across a book you feel is hugely objectionable or poorly written or dead wrong in its advice, here's what you do: complain about it to your friends or on your Facebook status. That way all your little chums back on the 227
Real Artists Ship by John McLean mainland can stand with you in horror about the sorry-ass book some chucklehead wrote. Absolutely no good can come from writing a negative review of someone else's work on Amazon. At the very least you've made an enemy of the author and her Tribe, and at worst she'll hunt down your present and future books to return the favor with vengeful, 1-star reviews of her own. Back on the mainland people are perfectly horrible to one another all the time. If you've ever posted a single little video on YouTube, then you know that somebody, somewhere in the world will take the time to leave an anonymous comment about what an asswipe you are and how much they hated the stupid video you just posted and how your mother must be embarrassed for ever having you in the first place. Well, things (mostly) don't work that way on the island of Amazon. I mean, sure, there are plenty of negative reviews...but they almost always seem to be wellmerited by the book being reviewed, and they are very rarely personal in nature. In any case, leave the writing of negative book reviews to others. As a published author, you will have a higher visibility on Amazon than the other islanders and you definitely want to always play nice with your fellow authors. And hopefully that will inspire them to return the favor and also play nicely with you!
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Epilogue
Not The End...Just The Beginning
Wow, this is it, the last chapter in the book. I am so,

so proud of you for getting here. Yet at the same time Ive got a case of the sads because I've enjoyed spending this time together, sharing Secrets and Big Metaphors that can help you become a published author. The truth is, I've grown to love you...and now Im going to miss you! Here we are the culmination of our beautiful adventure of busting you out of the grim, soulless Writer's Asylum and delivering you to the magical Island of Amazon. But in truth this isn't the end at all, it's merely the beginning of your journey...a journey during which you will transform yourself from just another person with a dream about someday completing a book to someone who has stepped up to the plate and fearlessly written and successfully published their first book. Think back to one of the first secrets I shared with you... Writing a book isn't something you do...it's someone you become. And who you are becoming continues to change and evolve day by day. It takes tremendous courage to open up and share a part of yourself with the world by writing a book. 229
Real Artists Ship by John McLean I admire you for being willing to keep going even though this quest has probably been scary for you from time to time. As Lao Tzu says, Being fearless doesnt mean your knees arent shaking. Continuing The Conversation We may be at the end of this book, but I genuinely want this to be just the start of our relationship. I would love to hear from you. I want you to tell me about your success stories. I want to let me know the obstacles you've overcome and the dragons you've slain. I want to be there for your should you have any questions, comments or suggestions of any kind. Friend me up and lets keep in touch FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/lowcarbrevolution TWITTER: @the_bookwright Also be sure to let me know if you enjoyed Real Artists Ship enough to write a positive, 5-star review to share with the other islanders on Amazon, because then I can have the pleasure of visiting my storefront to read your lovely review. (Oh, and thanks in advance for writing ityou rock!) Finally (and most importantly!) drop me a note when your book is live on Amazon...because I cannot wait to read it!
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Real Artists Ship by John McLean Welcome to the Writer's Club And here's some more good news: once you successfully write and publish your first book, you immediately become a card-carrying member of the Writer's Club! You now have something in common with all the other published authors in history. You've been through what Seth Godin refers to as The Dip and emerged on the other side. You've dug down deep within yourself, figured out how to solve a major challenge in your life, and then crafted a story to share with others so they could overcome that same problem. From now on whenever you cross paths with other published authors, you will often become fast friends because of your shared experience of knowing how to bring a new book into the world. Writers are truly a breed apart and your life will be enriched by getting to know more of them...so keep writing books and keep connecting with other authors when you cross paths! Why Write a Book? Remember earlier when I mentioned that I had a rather novel (heh-heh!) theory about the entire creative processabout why we write or make any art at all. And I said I would share my ideas with you at the very end of the book. Well, we made it! Before we dive into our final Big Metaphor, lets put it into the context of the huge, magical Island of Amazon where weve taken up residence... On another beautiful islandcollection of islands, reallycalled Hawaii their indigenous healing system is known as Huna. Their shaman, or chief healer, is called the 231
Real Artists Ship by John McLean Kahuna. And the Kahuna believes we are all born knowing we are one of the gods and able to communicate with the gods. But then something goes wrong. Around the age of five or six, perhaps because of starting school or emotional trauma or too many carbohydrates or for whatever reason, we all fall asleep. And most of us stay asleep for our entire lives and never wake up again. Even the Kahuna falls asleep when hes young. But at some point in his life he wakes up and remember Who He Is. He is someone who has Woken Up. From now on his mission in life is to go around to the other members of the Tribe and help them wake up. When they're ready for it. So the Kahuna would ask Ariel, Are you ready to wake up? And Ariel might say, No. And the Kahuna would ask Hank, Are you ready to wake up? If Hank says, Yes, then the Kahuna helps Hank wake up. And as he wakes up, Hank heals and grows and changes. A few years pass and the Kahuna returns to Ariel, saying, I see a new light in your eyes, you seem like you're on the verge of something different in your life. Are you ready to wake up now? Then Ariel can say, Yes, now I'm ready. And so the Kahuna moves through the Tribe, doing what he does...which is wake people up and help them really begin the journey they were meant to take on this planet.
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Real Artists Ship by John McLean Waking Up In exactly the same way, you have been asleep for much of your life. For many years you were merely sleep-walking through the entire experience of being you. You know what I'm talking about, dont you?! But back then you were so sound asleep you probably didn't even know you were asleep, right?! Only once you started waking up and you saw the world through different eyes and felt the world through your body did you say, Damn, I was asleep! And so you conceive and write your first book to help you wake upat least in that one area of your life. When its done, youll look back and realize that you told the story YOU needed to hear...and by telling that story it helped you wake up further still. And here you are now, perhaps more awake than you've ever been in your life. The true beauty of the books you will ultimately write is that they can help other people begin to wake up themselves! One Problem, One Solution All along I've been reminding you that the key to writing a book is to find a problem, figure out how to solve it and then tell a story to help others do the same. And now I'm coming back in the Epilogue to say that, in the final analysis, there's really only ONE problem... And that problem is that we are Asleep And if there's only one problem, that means there's also only ONE solution... That solution is to Wake Up 233
Real Artists Ship by John McLean With my background as a shaman and a healer, people regularly approach me with all sorts of different problems and ask me if I can heal them. Absolutely not, I answer. I can't heal anybody. But I do know how to help you heal yourself. And, of course, the way I do that is to help them Wake Up...especially in that one area of their life thats keeping them asleep. Believe it or not, someone who chainsmokes 4-5 packs of cigarettes per day the way I once did does not have a cigarette problem, what they have is a Being Asleep problem...and the cigarettes are just his way of keeping himself from waking up. The same is true when we lose excess weight, when we stop over-consuming alcohol or drugs, with every challenge that we successfully overcome. Only once we are ready to be open to Who We Are and take responsibility for our life can we truly begin Waking Up. And the only way to completely Wake Up is to do it one step at a time, in first one area, and then another and then another. It's a lifelong process of unfolding and evolving and growing. Even though it's all one Problem...it still manifests itself as numerous smaller problems that we are meant to solve on the never-ending journey of realizing our full, amazing potential. Each new book you write is an opportunity for you to wake up in a different area of your life...and to turn around help others wake up in that same area by sharing it with them.
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Real Artists Ship by John McLean You might also enjoy... The Low Carb Revolution Dancing With The Hunger Available now on Amazon.com And, seriously, friend me up! FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/lowcarbrevolution TWITTER: @the_bookwright
Let Your Light Shine You are a beautiful being. I love you. I love who you are now and I love who youre becoming. If you've reached this point in the book, it means you are one of the relative few who has already started to Wake Up! And that means you now have the responsibilitythe duty, evento help others do the same. Reread Part One if necessary and discover how to access and release the Book that's inside you...and then revisit Part Two to reacquaint yourself with the necessary logistics to get your book in front of the other residents of the Island of Amazon. Once you've done that, then you will be awake in that one area of your life. Then the game becomes returning to the scene of 235
Real Artists Ship by John McLean the crime, and feeling deep within yourself to discover the next area in which you want to wake up. And when you find that area, go research and write that new book so you can wake up a little more...and help others do the same. And what more important work could there be than that?! THE END
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Real Artists Ship by John McLean