What’s Established vs. A Fresh Look

I’m still sorting the pages I printed out when I read through Phil’s monthly archives. As I was sorting, I thought someone must have this question.

Why not just use the categories Phil already has?

It’s a great question and it’s an idea with value. Staying with the categories that are already established offers these benefits.

It saves time.
The structure is visible.
The categories are familiar to Phil’s readers.

There are compelling reasons to ignore the categories and take a fresh look. [Read more…]

Pay No Attention to the Publisher at the Sidebar

I’ve completed the content rough cut by printing pages from Phil’s Archives. The next step is to sort those pages into meaningful chunks of related content. I’m doing that now. The process involves a couple of days to let things form and shake out properly.

In the meantime, we’ll speak of other things. I’ll be back to tell you exactly how this part of the process worked.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you’d like Liz to help you find or make a book from your archives, click on the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

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Bookcraft 2.0: Find a Book in Your Archives the Way a Publisher Would
Write a Book? Assemble the One in Your Archives!
How to Make Sure Real People Read Your Book
10 Ways to Make It Great!

Bookcraft 2.0

When I left you in Find a Book in Your Archives the Way a Publisher Would, Phil Gerbyshak and I had agreed on two “working” book titles that can be built from posts in his archives and one “working” title that we’re going to write from scratch.

Phil and I chose one of the two “working” titles that drew from his archives. We made our choice based on these criteria.

• the amount of content he felt sure was there
• the success of his current book
• what his readers would feel was a natural next step

With the working title in my head, I wrote a subtitle — the 25 words or less definition/premise of what the book would be about. That definition would be my tool for deciding what content to keep. Some folks call that statement the “elevator pitch.”

Armed with the premise as my tool, I could effectively mine Phil’s archives for relevant content.

Rough Cut Content Strategy

Rough cut mining for relevant content is what it sounds like, a systematic process of gathering the content that might be useful. Rough cut is the key term. I went to the archives to make a yes/no choice and move on. I used this criteria to gather the content to form the rough cut of the book-to-be.

1. The content is original.

2. The content ties to the premise of the book.

3. The content is of a size worth picking up.

4. The links are few and superficial (not integral to the point of the text.)

5. Quoted text is secondary to original content.

6. Link lists belong in an appendix, if anywhere. They are probably best left behind at this juncture.

The value of each point above changes depending on the type of book being built. The size of content chunk needed in Point 3 is larger, if the book will be running text and smaller, if the book will be a write-in work text. Point 4 changes completely, when my only goal is an ebook. Point 5 takes on new meaning, if the plan is to start each page with a meaningful quotation.

Rough Cut Content Tactics

I went right for the date archives and read them in order. I read to see whether each post meets the premise and the criteria set. Standard operating procedure for dealing with raw content is to get all content in pages of similar size and moveable form. So I also followed these procedures.

Print each post separately.

Make sure every print out carries the reference from where it came — in this case, the post date. If necessary, write it by hand. Captured keystrokes are valuable when the time comes to assemble the book.

The pile of pages on my desk is 140-150 pages deep. I’ll guess high and say that 30% won’t work. That would leave me with about 100 pages to play with. I can do plenty with that.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

If you’d like Liz to help you find or make a book from your archives, click on the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

Related articles
Write a Book? Assemble the One in Your Archives!
1: How to Make Sure Real People Read Your Book
Bookcraft 2.0: Find a Book in Your Archives the Way a Publisher Would
10 Ways to Make It Great!10 Ways to Make It Great!

Bookcraft 2.0

When his talk was over, the questions were answered, and so many copies of 10 Ways to Make It Great!were sold and signed, Phil Gerbyshak and I left the elegant Chase Tower, Chicago, for a restaurant. Through the course of the afternoon we dreamed up a service for bloggers and speakers, who wanted to put their hard-written content to work. It was a cool idea that fit my skill set. It got named Bookcraft 2.0 — a way to repurpose existing content into a book the way a publisher would.

Here is what you should know about this series/case study, Bookcraft 2.0, going in:

1. This series is crafted so that you can look over my shoulder as we repurpose content into a printed book. We’ll discuss every step in the evolution from pile of blog posts to finished book.

2. Phil’s Archives will be the content.

3. I’ll identify approrpiate content that Phil approves, and we’ll make a book.

4. I’ll write a series about each step so that everyone can watch what we do. This, of course, is the first entry in the series.

5. The series centers on making a print book from existing content. A print version easily can be offered as an ebook. The reverse can be significantly harder.

6. I might forget to name or detail some decisions. If you have questions, please ask. I’m happy to explain what I do or how I do something.

Now let’s check Phil’s archives for book ideas. Think we can find one? two? three?

Checking Phil’s Archives

Bookcraft 2.0 began this week, and I’m delighted to report it’s progressing as expected. Here’s what has happened so far.
[Read more…]