Have you ever thought of writing your own book? How about writing your book and becoming a best-selling author? Have you written a book or books and got no ROI? Today, Arlene shares a formula on how long it will take to write your book so you do write a business-building tool! You’ll be surprised to know it doesn’t take forever to write your unique book, and it doesn’t need to. Moreover, Arlene shares the secret on how to make your book a best-seller and how much money you can actually make through your masterpiece. However, before you start jotting down your first words, you have to set yourself up for success. Own your expertise and send your message out as the expert you are. That’s the only way your book can have value to readers because nobody wants to settle for second best. You can write a top quality book quickly if you have solid marketing direction!

 

“If you are in business, you are an expert. As an expert, you should be clear about what you do, who you do it for, how you do it, and how you’re better and different from the competition before you sit down to start writing your book.” -Arlene Gale

 

Highlights:

02:17 The 2 Biggest Questions in Book Writing 
03:52 Why Call Yourself An Expert
11:40 How Long Will It Take To Write Your Book?
15:05 You Should Know Your Stuff
18:12 Arlene’s Formula for How Long it Takes Write a Book
23:48 How to Finish Your Book
28:09 How To Be A Best-Selling Author
30:05 How Much Money Are You Going to Make From Your Book

 

How long will it take to write your book? Listen in as @arlene_gale shares her expert formula for successful book writing. #BookWritingBusiness #BusinessBuildingBooks #commitment #schedule #beaccountable #FormulaForSuccess #best-sellers… Click To Tweet

 

Quotes:

07:03 “Writing a book doesn’t take forever, and it shouldn’t take forever, if you have an action plan.” -Arlene Gale

08:08 “Writing a book that’s half baked, poor quality, and disorganized presents you to the world in a way that is less than.” -Arlene Gale

23:38 “Sit down and get started developing your specific success plan because you can’t finish writing your  book unless you start your book.” -Arlene Gale

23:59 “Don’t let life step up and shut you down.” -Arlene Gale

30:05 “Your money is not going to come from the sales of your book. Your income increase is going to be coming from how you use your book to leverage the growth of your business and your credibility as an expert.” -Arlene Gale

30:38 “If you are in business, you are an expert. As an expert, you should be clear about what you do, who you do it for, how you do it, how you’re better and different from the competition before you can even sit down to start writing your book.” -Arlene Gale

 

 

Meet Arlene:

 

Arlene Gale is an expert with a proven track record of success in helping people tell their stories to build a business. She combines decades of business marketing, communicating, and writing expertise to direct clients past damaging business mindsets, myths, and misconceptions and toward powerful and profitable business-building success. Arlene is a top-notch business strategist. She has helped hundreds of clients, in a variety of industries, earn millions of dollars in business as a result of writing & publishing credibility-building books. She helps clients duplicate these results from start to finish, including writing book proposals earning mainstream publishing contracts before the book is written. If it needs to be written, Arlene can do it, and do it in such a way that it generates income. She has written thousands of feature magazine articles, hundreds of business plans establishing short- and long-term goals, written and produced hundreds of television and radio advertisements, and more. 

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Transcription:

Arlene Gale: Welcome. Today I want to take a moment to extend a special welcome to my new listeners in Bosnia, Ukraine, and the Philippines. And to all of my listeners, I want to thank you for listening. Thank you for subscribing and commenting on the episodes you’re enjoying the most. I invite listeners to subscribe and comment on the podcast. I’d love to hear from you.

I would like to  invite you to join the “Mindset Meets Mastery” Facebook group. Request to join. Then let me know if you have a guest or a program idea, an introduction that you could make to someone who has an expertise in a myth, a mindset, a misunderstanding, or any kind of limiting beliefs that keeps us from mastering our professional and personal lives. I would love to get an introduction or an email from you for any future programs, because I do this program for you. I want the time that we spend together to be valuable time spent together. Please, send me any information you have about potential guests or future programs to arlene@arlenegale.com, that’s A-R-L-E-N-E, and then Gale, G-A-L-E.

With that said, I travel all over the world talking to a variety of business people, networking groups, conferences, and I talk about a variety of issues related to marketing, business development, branding, and book writing because the written word sometimes feels like a lost art.  There are a lot of topics based around writing a good, powerful, and profitable book that I speak about and teach to help you build your business, take your business to the next level. 

Today, I tackle the topic of the myths and mindsets around book writing, and answer two of the biggest questions I get whenever I go someplace to talk about writing a powerful and profitable book. Those questions that we’re going to talk about today, the two biggest questions I get, the two most often ASKED questions I get are: 1) How long will it take me to write my book? 2) How do you become an international award winning author, or a best selling author? T

The way I’m going to answer these Book Writing questions shows the second question really is part of the first question, but let’s step back just a little bit. Because part of writing a powerful and profitable book is understanding what your business is, and who you are. Think about this: If you are in business, you really should be clear about the services you provide, right? Because if you went into business, you probably thought you had a unique expertise, or you had a system, or a process, or a product that was different or better than somebody else in that same business space. That should have been part of the process of determining whether you were going into business or not, you must have an expertise. 

If you have an expertise, are in business, and you don’t call yourself an expert, let me give you this wisdom: Stop it. Stop it. If you’re in business for yourself, you are an expert. 

Nobody wants to go to the second best anything, or anyone to have something done, or to have help with anything, right? For example, you don’t want to go to the second or third best lawyer that may be, kind of think they can help you with your legal issues right now, you want the best. Whatever your legal niche marketplace is, whether it’s wills, or intellectual properties, or estate management, or whatever it is, whatever contract documents, whatever it is that you need legal advice on, you want to go to the best, and you want them to position themselves, and to explain to you why you should hire them, right? 

You don’t want to go to the second best heart surgeon, right? You’re not going to do your own heart surgery either. You want to find somebody who meets specific criteria who is going to be the best you can get to perform your heart surgery.

But for your specific scenario, if you’re a client, you want the best you could get to meet your needs. The same is true for whatever business you’re in. You want to position yourself as the best that someone can hire to fill their needs, to answer their questions in whatever it is, the service or product that you provide. That means, not only do you have to be an expert, but you have to really understand who your primary, secondary, third level target market are so you can speak to them appropriately, clearly.

On top of that, you need to know who your competition is. Because if you’re in business, you have competition. If you say you don’t, then I would say that you were just floating down the river of denial because there is. Everybody has competition. But what you need to know really is, how do you take your expertise and address your target market in a way that is different or better than your competition? How do you take a process or a system that much further down the road to help your specific clients? That’s what people are looking for. That’s what they want to know from you. If you’re writing a powerful and profitable book and you know all of these answers, it completely changes the content, layout, and design in your book. When you know the answers to these questions, because that’s the content that’s going to be in your book.

There is a myth, a misconception that writing a book is going to take forever! That is absolutely not true. Writing a book doesn’t take forever, it shouldn’t take forever, especially if you’re dealing with a topic that is technical or time-bound. The faster you can get the book written and on the marketplace for sales, the better it’s going to do in the marketplace. Now, don’t get me wrong, stepped back a minute. I did not at any point say that your book should be written and published quickly, and you should sacrifice quality. Absolutely not! That is not what I’m saying and I want you to hear that PLEASE. Quality matters, quality counts. If you are in a hurry and you sacrifice quality, that’s a bad thing. I want to give you a couple examples of why.

“Writing a book doesn't take forever, and it shouldn't take forever, if you have an action plan.” -Arlene Gale Click To Tweet

First of all, what’s the worst thing than not writing your book? What is the worst thing than having a great book idea and then not writing it, not getting your message in the world. Well, the worst thing is writing a book that’s half-baked, that is poor quality, that is disorganized and presents you to the world in a way that is less than, I equate this with first dates or dating in general. For example, have you ever been on a blind date or you’re early in the dating process, and your date shows up with messy hair, unkempt clothes or dirty clothes, and maybe they don’t smell so good either because you know they got caught working outside and got lost track of the time, and didn’t shower, or clean up, or change your clothes, or whatever their excuses or reasons are for showing up LESS THAN to your date. That should have an impact on you, and that is something that you should take notice because you can’t control how your date shows up for that date. You can, however remember the fact that when you’re dating and you’re especially a first date, you’re presenting your best foot forward. And if a date shows up, looking and smelling, or whatever else that way, now what you’re control of is, what you’re in control of is, do I want a second date? Do I want to keep seeing this person? Do I cut them slack? Or do I remember that this may be the best it gets? Which by converse thinking, is how much worse is it going to get? And do you want to spend your time, money and attention that way? Those are questions you have to ask yourself and answers that you can only come up for you, but you know how are you going to respond in that scenario?

“Writing a book that's half baked, poor quality, and disorganized presents you to the world in a way that is less than.” -Arlene Gale Click To Tweet

Now, let’s take that same scenario and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Move it to the book writing world, and addressing your target market in a BOOK, trying to build your business with a BOOK. If a customer picks up a book, a potential customer picks up a book, a reader picks up your book, you are now on that first date. So if you put together a rushed, poor quality, poorly written book, and this person is being exposed to you, and your idea, and your expertise, your process, your system, your product for the very first time, yeah, they can’t change the book, but what they can do is they can put it back on the shelf and go to somebody else who’s in the same competitive space and pick up their book, and if their book looks better, is written better, has less ramatical, or spelling errors, or typos than yours does, guess what? You don’t get a second date. You don’t get to continue to connect with that potential client because what you’ve told that client is, this is the best I got for me. Whether it’s true or not is irrelevant. The perception is, whatever you put out in your book, if it’s less than, if it’s poor quality, what you have told the person holding that book is, this is the best I have to offer you of me. This is our first date, and now I’m going to leave it in your hands to decide whether or not you want to continue to work with me, or start to work with me, or not. And most of the time when it’s a poorly crafted, poorly presented book, you’re not going to get business from it, so don’t do that. Don’t do that.

With that said, let’s get onto how long will it take me to write my book? Well, a book that I wrote that was my business brand book about a year and a half ago, I think it came out, it’s called Book Business Blueprint, that’s the main title Book Business Blueprint. The subtitle is Build Credibility, Stand Out from the Competition, and Skyrocket Sales By Writing Your Book. This is my business brand book. This book took me seven weeks to, from the time I sat down to start writing it to the time that I actually had the first copies in my hand. That’s right, seven weeks. So before anybody says, “But, but, but, but, but, but, let me go on with THIS part of that process. YES, I did have my book professionally edited during that seven weeks. YES, I did have a professional cover design during that seven weeks. YES, I did have someone professionally do the interior layout and design for me so that it would be easy to read and the format would be consistent. YES, I did have a professional publisher helped me with the elements needed to get that book onto the market, the Book Business Blueprint onto the market. So I did everything I could in my power to MAKE SURE that in seven weeks the reader, my potential client was going to get a good quality book in their hands that talks about me and my business, and the expertise I have to offer my potential client. That was really important to me. Quality is really, really important, and it should be important to you too. So in seven weeks, I was able to get this book, again, from the first written words to the book back in my hands.

I’m going to take a quick break, and when we come back, I’m going to address the question or the comment I get from most people when I say that, they say to me: “But, but, but Arlene you know your stuff.” Absolutely, I know my stuff, and that’s why I could write a book in seven weeks. Well, don’t you know your stuff too? So after this break, we’re going to pick up right there. Don’t go anywhere, we’ll be back in just a moment.

Hi everybody! Welcome back to Mindset Meets Mastery with Arlene Gale. And today, we are answering the two biggest questions I get when I do workshops or present at business conferences. And the first question is, how long is it going to take me to write my book? And the second question is, how do you write a bestseller, an international award winner? And by the end of this you’ll realize that question two really is part two of the first question, but we’re going to get into that in just a moment. I want to address the issue that I get from people when I tell them that I wrote this book in seven weeks, and had it from start to finish in my hand in seven weeks.

The comment I get most of the time is: “But Arlene, you know your stuff. That’s why you can write it so fast.” Like that’s a bad thing, right? NO, that’s not a bad thing. That is a great thing. And that is part of the reason why I was able to do this process this way. But you know your stuff too, really? Right? I mean, again, if you are in business, you are an expert at something, and you clearly have a target market of some people who are your potential clients. So that answers that question. If you’re in business, you know your stuff too. So the only difference is trying to figure out how do you organize your stuff, your expertise, your information in a way that flows well, and addresses the needs of your specific target market, and really features the kind of business that you’re trying to build. For example, if you’re wanting to use this book to build your speaking business versus being a one-on-one coach, your expertise is the same, but how you lay out the content in your book is what changes, and the answers to those questions may be this, when you begin, but morph into, and change, and fine tune into that as you go through the book writing process, and that’s okay. There is clarity that comes, and that’s the great thing about using a word processor. It becomes a cut and paste as you shuffle and fine tune your content.

Yes, you should know your stuff too, and that should allow you to be able to get a book out in a timely manner. But you know, that’s not really very satisfying answer is it? It really isn’t. So you know, I’m a writer, I’m a business development branding, marketing expert. I am not a mathematician, but I realized that the answer I was giving to people who say, how long it should take for me to write my book? And my little answer being: “Well, it depends. How long are you going to sit down and work on writing?” Yeah, that’s just not a satisfying answer. So I put paper to pencil and pulled out my calculator, and I came up with this formula. And what I want you to get from this formula is that, based on how many words you write, and how often, how many times a week you write this book, your book can be written in a matter of seven or eight weeks, or 20 weeks. It really is up to you. But if you could see a clear path to writing your book in a month, or two, or three, or four, I’m hoping that by going through this exercise, you’re going to be inspired and motivated to sit down and start the writing process.

Let’s start with getting everybody on the same page on how my formula plays out. Let’s start by talking about industry standards, for how many words go on a page. Industry standard for writing a page when you’re working in your word processing software is your text should be double spaced. Most people use Courier or Times Roman as a font, 12 point. When you do this double-spaced, 12 point Courier, Times Roman as a font, one inch margins all the way around, you’re going to average about 250 words per page. Now the number of words, the word count changes based on what you’re writing. Most fiction books will be 100 to 125,000 words, but that’s fiction. And so it’s a little different beast than what I’m talking about when I’m talking about writing your personal or professional story to build your business. So what we’re going to use is a 50,000 word manuscript. Now the sweet spot for writing a good best selling, business building, powerful, profitable book is about 70,000 words. But again, I’m not a mathematician, so I’m going to make this easy for all of us. We’re going to talk about 50,000 words, which will equal about 200 pages in your word processing file.

One of the variables that’s going to change as we go through this conversation is, are you writing three days a week? Four days a week? Or five days a week? 

Let’s start with this, again, our target is 50,000 words, which equals 200 pages. Let’s say you want to sit down and write three days a week, and you make a commitment to yourself to write 50,000 words, that’s six pages. 50,000 words, is six pages. If you were writing three days a week, you’re going to have your book finished in 34 days, which is 11 weeks. Assuming a four-week month, that’s four, 12 weeks is in three months. I you’re writing three days a week, 1,500 words a day, that means in three months you can have your book done. Let’s say you can’t make that big of a commitment of writing 1,500 words three days a week.

Let’s say you think you can only write 1,000 words, three days a week. Look at the math. If you’re writing a 1,000 words a day, that’s four pages. Instead of 1,500 words a day, which is six pages. And instead of being able to write your book in 34 days or 11 weeks, if you’re only writing 1,000 words a day, three times a week, you’ll have your book written in 50 days or 17 weeks. But 17 weeks, let’s see, again, assuming a four week month, that’s 4, 8, 12, 16, that’s four months. Does that make it sound more doable for you that you could sit down and start writing your book three days a week, and you can have it done in three to four months? 

To me, that’s really inspiring and motivational. Let’s say you’re really going to go after your book that you’ve got a clear vision, you’ve done the research, you’ve got everything you need. You got your quotes, you got your antidotes or cautionary tales, whatever it is that you’re including in your book. You have this in mind, and you want to write five days a week. If you want to work five days a week, again, we’re assuming 50,000 words, 200 pages. Five days a week, you want to write 1,500 words per day, that’s six pages per day. If you write 1,500 words per day, you still need 34 days to finish your book, whether you’re writing three days a week, four days a week, five days a week. If you’re writing 1,500 words per day, that’s going to take you 34 days to write this book. But if you’re writing five days a week, now you can get this book written in seven weeks. You can get this book written in seven weeks!

The difference between writing three days a week versus four days a week is 11 weeks finished time or a seven week finish time. What I want you to hear in that it is doable! You can write five days a week and finish your book in seven weeks. 

But again, let’s use the example of, okay, you can write five days a week, but you don’t think you can write that many words. Okay, let’s say you only write 1,000 words a day. That still means you can finish your book in 10 weeks, that’s two and a half months. I give you these numbers because I want to encourage you to sit down and get started, because you CAN’T finish a book unless you start your book. 

“Sit down and get started developing your specific success plan because you can't finish writing your book unless you start your book.” -Arlene Gale Click To Tweet

One of the things I think we’ve talked about before that I want to caution you about is, you do need to set a schedule so that you can hold yourself accountable, but also don’t let life step up and shut you down. If that happens, let’s say, right now we’re in flu season, you get sick and you miss a week of writing. Okay, so now you have a choice to make. You can be upset because you didn’t get your week of writing done and stop, which means your book never will get done. Or you can dust yourself off, and sit in front of the computer, and start again. You only lost a week. Don’t lose the whole book. Give yourself grace. Pick yourself up and get back to writing your book again. That is perfectly okay. The choice to get up and start again, or to pick up where you left off is about giving yourself grace, and about finishing the product, and not allowing yourself to use excuses to quit. So how long will it take you to write your book? Again, make yourself a commitment, a formula for success, because this is about setting yourself up for success.

“Don't let life step up and shut you down.” -Arlene Gale Click To Tweet

What do I mean by that? Let’s say you decide you’re going to start writing three days a week. Okay? And you do that. Say you do that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Thursday you feel like sitting down to write. Friday you sit down to write. Well, is that a good thing? Or a bad thing? Because you only said you were going to write three days a week. Oh, come on. Really? Seriously? You set yourself up for success and you went above and beyond that. You should do your writing, and then get up, and stretch ,and pat yourself on the back, that’s great. So let’s say that you’re really on fire now, and you’re motivated, and you upped your commitment, and you’re going to write five days this week. That’s great if you do five days this week, and next week, and the week after that. And the week after that, you only write four days a week. You know what? That’s great. You did not break your commitment, because your commitment originally was to three days a week, number one, and number two, any days that you can sit down to write our good days spent writing your book, right? So many excuses can get in our way. So many life events can get in our way. So many people can get in our way. And I have to say this with a sense of humor because I’m talking to people who are business people. So you know what? Those pesky clients, they can get in our way, but it’s okay because they’re our bread and butter, right? So you serve your clients to the best of your ability, and then you sit down to write.

The Book Business Blueprint, my business brand book I told you about, I wrote in seven weeks only working evenings and some weekends, because I had clients I wanted to keep them happy. I understand that. I resemble that remark, and that is perfectly okay. So when you’re looking at your schedule and your book, think about how you’re going to set yourself up for success. Because really the bottom line is that people who ask: “How long is it going to take me to write my book?” Are really asking the wrong question, in my opinion. My opinion is the question should be, how many days a week am I going to sit down to set myself up for success so that I can start and finish writing my powerful and profitable business building book? That’s the real question. What commitment are you going to make to yourself for what period of time? How many days a week for example, are you going to sit down and actually write your book? Because when you make that commitment, that book is going to get written.

The other part I promised you is I’m going to answer, the second most common question I get as an international and national award winning author, and international speaker based on topics from my book, and as the book writing business coach, I get the question all the time about, how do you become an international, or national bestselling author? Well, the answer to this question really is part of the first question: “Sit down and write.” 

Sit down and write, but it’s not just about writing your book, and I want you to hear this from me, as an expert book writing business coach. I combine decades of business marketing, business branding, business building expertise with my writing expertise, so you’re not just writing any book to say you’re a published author, you’re writing a powerful and profitable business building, tool. That’s the bottom line. That’s what you want to do. Sitting down to write the book is just part of the process. Coming up with a strong foundational marketing plan that will bear the weight of your book to build your business, to build the walls around your business, to build the next story, and the next story, and the next story onto your business building, that’s part of the process, too. And the clearer you are about those things, the clearer your book is going be, and the easier it is to write, which is what brings me to this question, and I’m going to throw in the answer to question three as a bonus for you. No extra charge.

Here’s a question I get a lot too, or a comment, I guess, it’s probably more of a comment, and it’s a MYTH. “I can’t wait to write my book so I can make all of this money.” Wrong. Your book is not where you make your money, and that’s why it’s so important to write a powerful and profitable business building book that focuses on your who, what, why, where, when of your expertise, because your money is not going to come from the sales of your book. Your income increase is going to come from how you use your book to leverage growth of your business. There you have it. In this episode we talked about myths and mindsets related to how long is it going to take me to write my book? How do you write a bestselling, international award winning book? And how much money will you make from those books? I just really want to leave you with knowing and understanding that if you are in business, you are an expert. And as an expert, you should be clear about what you do, who you do it for, how you do it, how you’re better and different than the competition before you can even sit down to start writing your book.

“Your money is not going to come from the sales of your book. Your income increase is going to be coming from how you use your book to leverage the growth of your business and your credibility as an expert.” -Arlene Gale Click To Tweet

With that said, I’m going to invite you to my website, bookwritingbusiness.com. I offer in-person classes, and I have a couple online classes, I have a self paced course, and I have a hands-on interactive book writing business course, it’s 12 weeks. It’s small group on the internet. You can do it from anywhere. So go to bookwritingbusiness.com online classes and look at the hands-on workshop, and find out when the next one is starting. Because you can write your book from anywhere with this course, and it’s a small group so everybody will get a turn to set goals, and ask questions, and work on their business building book. 

“If you are in business, you are an expert. As an expert, you should be clear about what you do, who you do it for, how you do it, how you're better and different from the competition before you can even sit down to start writing your book.”… Click To Tweet

If you are in a networking group or in any kind of business group where you know there are several people who want to write a book, send me an email arlene@bookwritingbusiness.com, and tell me you have at least five people who want to write a book. Get those five people together. I will walk you through the process of how I come to you to do a two-day book writing business workshop, to help you write your book. If you have any questions or you want to connect with me to write your book, please do so. Again, my email is: arlene@bookwritingbusiness.com. I look forward to helping you to write a powerful and profitable business-building book to help you grow your business to the next level. And it doesn’t matter if you started your book, or if you just have an idea for a book. It doesn’t matter if you’ve written one, or two, or three books, and whether they did well or didn’t do well. I know that my expertise will help you write a book to take your business to the next level. 

I look forward to seeing you next time on “Mindset Meets Mastery with Arlene Gale.” But first I want to leave you with this, “Don’t let the world dictate your story. Be mindful of the stories you tell yourself about WHAT IS or IS NOT possible because you get to choose to write your own story every day.”