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Bookcraft 2.0: Even the Best Shoes Don’t Belong in a Bookstore

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Look for Books Like Yours

books

If you recall, Phil, an editor, and I have been through his pages. We sorted them into four parts. I’ve read the parts through again and begun the process of fine tuning the order. This will get us to the final book map. We also checked the market at Amazon to see what books like Phil’s new book were doing. . . .

I promised to tell you more about that.

When I started in publishing I was a freelancer. I read everything I could about writing and one bit of advice always confused me:

Go after the publishers who already sell the kind of book you want to write.

To me, that advice seem counter-intuitive. Why would a publisher want another book about writing if they already had a list full of them? Shouldn’t I go to where a publisher didn’t have any?

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“What’s Your Most Successful Post, Liz?”

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Did You Really Think I’d Pick Just One?

The answer to the What’s yours? question that you’ve asked me is that I have two most successful posts here and one at my writing blog.

If it has to be one, my choice is a favorite child that think of as the most outstanding piece — it’s human, heartfelt, and hopeful. It still moves me when I read it.

Walking on Water

It’s the essay I offered as a prize. And, Starbucker, there is a car in it.

Liz's Signature

27 Outstanding Bloggers’ Most Successful Posts: The Morning Links

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The Party Post Was Up at 5:33 a.m.

Everyone who attended the blog birthhday party October 24, 2006 was invited to bring a link to their most successful post and to explain how they made that choice. Each blogger made a choice based on his or her own criteria. During the party, people left to read posts and came back to talk about them.

To celebrate DWB’s one year b-day Cat created a shared banner page. Take a look it is incredible — like the blog it comes from.

Timothy Johnson offered these words his sales for charity.

And since you made a semi-obscure reference to “Race Through The Forest,” check out the charitable promotion I’m running right now. I’m basically donating my book-sales margins, so I want to sell as many books as possible to benefit three very deserving child serving organizations. . . . Let’s hope those Amazon reviews help raise a whole lot of money for some really great charities: A Time to Give.

Outstanding Bloggers’ Most Successful Posts: Morning

Outstanding bloggers identified these posts as their most successful in the first 250 comments of the party.

  1. Motley F….. Crue by Martin (warning: some words my offend).
  2. You’ve only Got 30 Seconds or 20 Words… by Char and The Queen of Multitasking or ADD? by Char
  3. Your Life, Your Greatest Work of Art by Rick
  4. Biphasic Sleep : 30 Day Summary by Scott
  5. The Ingenious Thomas Heatherwick by Mark McGuinness
  6. My Three Most Influential Teachers by Kent Blumberg
  7. Negative Thinking Power by Chris Cree
  8. The Power of 48 Minutes by John Richardson
  9. 3 Valuable Lessons from 1st Grade Career Day by Tony D. Clark
  10. You’d Have to be Brain Dead to Listen Up! by Ellen Weber
  11. What Adoption Usually Looks Like by Kate and No More Gratuitous Celebrity Mother Mentions
  12. New to Blogging? So was I at one time… by TechZ and My # 1 Digg I heart geek boys
  13. What Do You See in This Drawing? by Robyn McMaster

    14. Acomment 80 that we started tallking about the importance of breathing and what it meant when we were breathing through one notril more than the other.

    In the middle of that discussion — at comment 96 — Tony decided that he would see whether co.comments could keep with the number of comments this post would be getting. . . . more on that later.

  14. Ignore the Sun by Roger von Oech and Do You Recognize This Symbol?
  15. 21 Ways to Be More Creative by Christine Kane
  16. Amusing PowerPoint Slideshows in Hart’s email by HART
  17. Writing like Dead Grass by Michael Stelzner
  18. Net Neutrality Threatens Grandparents/Vets by Joe

    19. At comment 180, Tim asked Is there a World Record for most comments received on a single blog post? Who/where/how would track?

    I found this link — Most Comments Ever.

  19. We Can Still Pass The Combating Autism Act by Big Roy
  20. Who Do You Think You Are? by Steve
  21. The Purpose of A Hearty Life by Hsien Lei
  22. Pisa & Florence With Kids
  23. media strategic myopia by Mike Dunn
  24. Keep moving toward your goals by Kirsten Harrell, Psy.D.
  25. Breaking: Bach Joins Keller Williams Realty by Benjamin
  26. Home At Last by Debbie Call
  27. The Shoes by Candice

Candice did elaborate.

There are actually many other posts about shoes, like “the shoes the laptop wears” and my red shoes. (The laptop wears a pair of pointy-toed black leather high heels that were the talk of my cousin’s wedding. Heh.)

The coolest people were coming to this party, and It was only 1:40 in the afternoon.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

PS If I missed your most successful post link from the morning of the party, please let me know and I’ll update the list.

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20 More Successful Bloggers’ Most Successful Posts: Afternoon and Evening Links
The Mic Is On: Happy Birthday to SOBs Everywhere!

Bookcraft 2.0: Book Research at Amazon, the Data Giant

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Hitting the Market

books

Whether your plan is to sell your book or give it as a value-added premium, it’s a shame to invest the time to build a resource that no one is going to read. Book ideas aren’t different from other product ideas. They need market research to validate their worth.

No idea is a great just because someone had it.
It becomes a great idea when we prove it solves problem or meets a need in a new and remarkable way.

If you start from scratch or work from your own blog, a trip over to Amazon for research is the first place you should go once your idea begins to take form. Because I was new to Phil’s blog, it took time to get to that single — Hey this might be it! — idea. So we’re on our way over that right now.

Come along.
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Bookcraft 2.0: The 90% Rule of Repurposing Content

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Content Always Wins

books

When I left you on Friday, an editor friend and I were on our way to Milwaukee to meet with Phil to make a bookmap from the rough cut of his book. The rough cut had been built on a set of criteria that made choosing content from his archives an easy decision-making process. I outlined those criteria in Archive Mining: How to Get From Working Book Title to Rough Cut Content. Now, it was time for a finer cut. Armed with 5 categories of pages, I was sure that we’d sort them into 7 or 8 chapters and make a bookmap. That was the plan.

Because our topic is timeless, we can be flexible about schedule. That gives us even more room to focus on what’s best for the book. Here’s what happened.

We didn’t make a bookmap.

I was wrong about 7 or 8 chapters.

The plan went out the door early on

because

To make a great book, the content must win. Always.

Making the Finer Cut

In order to make that finer cut, we needed a finer set of criteria. Again, we turned to black and white rules — that crucial tool for sorting intellectual gray questions efficiently.

We made two black and white “gating rules.”

A simple definition of what the book would do — Every entry, story, or example would offer a practical application for the reader.

Every written bit of content had to meet the 90% Rule of Repurposing Content.

We read aloud each piece, if it failed on either point, without question it was out.

What is the 90% Rule of Repurposing Content? It’s a rule that I made up.
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Bookcraft 2.0: Why No Bound Book Has 666 Pages and Get Your Free Blank Bookmap

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Done with the Rough Cut, Time To Map the Book

books

After I found the 140+ pages, I discovered that Phil actually had 6 more months of archives. What a bonus!

So I now sit with close to 170 pages — sorted into 5 categories. Those 5 categories will soon become 7 or 8 book chapters. That will happen when we’ve reviewed the larger ones to break them into more readable chunks.

The next step is to plan how the pages map out.

We’re actually going to make a bookmap.

No Bound Book Has 666 Pages

You may never have thought about it, but it’s a fact:

You can’t have a page 1 without a page 2.
Every sheet of paper has a front and a back.

That’s the first reason that page counts matter. Paper is tangible.
There are some things that paper won’t do.

It’s also a fact that:

No bound book has 666 pages.

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