Planning Your Nonfiction Book

Introduction (Various voices) 00:03

Welcome to the Empowered Author podcast.

Discussion, tips, insights and advice from those who’ve been there, done that, helping you write, publish and market your nonfiction book. 

Being an author is something that you’ve got to take seriously.

I’m proud I’ve written a book.

What does the reader need, first? What does the reader need, second?

What happens if you start writing your book before you identify your “why”? What’s the problem with that?

If you’re an indie author, you take the risk, you reap the rewards; you are in charge of the decisions; you’re the head of that business.

Know that every emotion you’re feeling when you’re writing is felt by every other writer.

The Empowered Author podcast. Your podcast hosts are Boni and John Wagner-Stafford of Ingenium Books. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 00:53

Hello, hello, hello. It’s Wednesday morning and that means – well, if you’re watching live, it’s Wednesday morning. For us it’s Wednesday morning but you might be watching on replay, in which case, I don’t know what day it is. But hello and ...

John Wagner-Stafford 01:06

Happy Wednesday morning.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 01:07

Yeah. Happy Wednesday morning. So we’re Boni and John from Ingenium Books. And we had a little switcheroo: we had planned for today to be me talking with Marie Beswick-Arthur about passive voice versus active voice. We’ve had scheduling issues. So that topic will be coming up in the future. And we thought we would come to you and talk about something else that’s very important for independent authors – all authors, actually – which is planning your nonfiction book. So planning might not sound like very much fun for many people. They might be – I think there are a few people that like to wing it and in my life – in previous elements of my life, I used to tell myself that, “Oh yeah, I just like to wing it.” The truth is that really didn’t actually get me very far, that I am much better when I have some sort of a plan. So how do you go about planning your book: your nonfiction book? That’s one of the things that we take very seriously and we do it for every one of our book projects with the authors that we work with and it really helps to keep us on track and it really helps – maybe even more important than that – helps to guide our expectations. So what do I mean by that? Well – and the description of this session that I just updated just before we came live, you know, talks about a book project being a big, mushy, Jell-O-like project. It really is – you know, many people say, “Well, I can’t see my way through my book outline.” That’s only one part of it. Moving through to create the content and then create and publish the book and then beyond to marketing it, it’s – there are so many variables; so much is changing so rapidly in the independent publishing industry: all aspects of the publishing industry. Technology is changing. Everything is changing and there’s a lot to do; a lot of moving parts. And so having a plan can be helpful. So I don’t know anybody better than creating a book project plan than John. Thank goodness he’s on my team. So we’re going to talk to you about that. Now, before we go too far as well, love to hear you – hear where you’re from, where you’re joining us from and anything else you want to tell us about your author career, your journey, your books – book or books. But we also have something really exciting: as we were talking about, you know, this session today, John had this fantastic idea that why don’t we offer to give away a book project plan for somebody. So we will post a link. I’ll post a link here right now. That is a link to where you can enter for us to do a project plan for you for your book. Now, this is not just a, you know, “Here, we’ll fill out a template.” What we’re offering to do – and you’ll understand why as we talk through this and we’ll come back and revisit this again at the end – but is, we will get on a call with you. We’ll talk to you about your project. We’ll understand where you’re at, what your goals are with the project. We’ll go away. We, John will create the project plan for you and then we’ll get back on another call and walk you through the things that need to be done. So that is what we’re offering today. And, yeah, so just, you got to give us your name and email address and we’ll pick one. So over to you, John. Why, from your perspective, is a book project plan important?

John Wagner-Stafford 04:59

So thank you very much, Boni. Book project planning, in general, I think is important. Let me take a step back actually and talk to you a little bit about why I’m interested in planning and why I’m – I’ve gotten kind of good at it. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 05:16

Kind of good at it.

John Wagner-Stafford 05:17

Kind of good at it. Throughout my career, I’ve been working in music and audio production and film, television production and video game production. And at every step of the way, I was involved in somebody’s dream: I was involved in the dream of a musician making an album; I was involved in the dream of an ad agency building a successful ad campaign; I was involved in the dream of a video game designer bringing his idea to fruition from the idea of, “Oh, let’s do ‘Prince of Persia’” to delivering it out to the world and all of these things. And, and, you know, this equates to building a home; it equates to moving from, you know, one house to another. You need to kind of have an idea of where you want to be, what you want to do, where you want to be and how you’re going to get there. And it holds true with publishing a book. Your dream is your book: your book idea. And you need to know: what kind of a book is it? Why am I doing my book? Well, you know, what’s important to me about my book? I want to make money from it. Do I want to just have a legacy? It’s important for your plan. And then who is going to be involved in helping you create your book and publish your book? And really important is how much it’s going to cost. There’s people, there’s costs, there’s time, there’s effort that we need to be aware of. And by building a book project plan, you put all this on the table for the first time, you get to take a look at it and you get to analyze and/or just challenge yourself. Well, is that really what I want to do? Is that really how much money I want to spend? Is that really the person I want to have do my cover design? And, you know, you might not know the answers at all. So it’s really important – just as it is in anything in life – to make a plan.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 07:19

Let’s pause for a moment for a message from our sponsor.

Commercial 07: 22

Boni Wagner-Stafford 07:52

So you touched on some really important elements. And one of the things is – that we’ll talk a little bit about, a little bit more about – is the interdependency. So the plan for your book project – same as with many of those other projects that you spoke about earlier – is understanding what needs to be done before the next thing can be done. So, you know, it’s kind of common sense: oh, some things are sequential; some things can be done simultaneously; some things you want to start doing simultaneously so that you have – you are ready for the next step when it comes. And an example of this that often surprises the authors that we work with is we say, “Okay, you know, those wonderful reviews that you put on the back – endorsement reviews or blurbs, they’re called in the traditional publishing industry – but the review excerpts that you put on the back cover or your front cover of your book from, you know, XYZ famous person who resonates with your audience and you want to have those: well, what do you need to do? How far back do you need to make sure that you’re out there with a finished book, providing it to those reviewers, to get the reviews so that you can finalize the cover so that you can publish?” Well, that can be anywhere from six to 12 or 16 weeks. And that’s often as you know, authors are usually, “Yay! The book is done; the cover’s done and the interior’s done. Great. We can publish now.” Well, actually, can we? And yes, you can: you can publish. Many authors do publish without those reviews. But that’s just one area where, if you have a look at the whole plan and you say, “I want to publish in 12 months,” you get to look back, backstep it and say, “Okay, if I want to publish in 12 months, well, the writing has to be done in three,” and then, “How much – what do I have to say and how long do I need to assign myself to write?” And you kind of understand what your task is. Any questions at any point, feel free to post comments, whether you’re watching live or on the replay. And we’ll get to that.

John Wagner-Stafford 10:02

Yeah. And tell us – tell us where you’re from as well. It’s kind of interesting to where everyone’s from. So to speak to dependencies just a little bit more in detail: that’s super important to know that if your reviews are going to take six to eight weeks before you can publish and you want to publish on Christmas day – not really – then, you know, two months …

Boni Wagner-Stafford 10:22

That’s my birthday.

John Wagner-Stafford 10:23

I know. Two months before Christmas, you need to have your reviews out there in the hands of the list of reviewers. And you’ve got to build a list of reviewers. And of course, you know, that’s not an easy task necessarily. And that takes time in and of itself, to build that list. You need to get that out there so that by the time you’re ready to publish, you have the reviews; they’re integrated into the layout; they’re added to the electronic files and they’re uploaded to whatever platforms they need to be uploaded to so that you can get your presale language and whatnot. So really important. And then again, speaking to dependencies, the really simple concept of dependencies is you’re writing a manuscript. Well, you can do your edit before your manuscript is finished. You can’t really do your layout before the edit’s finished. If you start doing your layout and then you’ve got some editing changes or you change your mind or you wake up in the middle of the night and say, “That’s not what I really wanted to say. I want to change that whole chapter” – and that happens: you know, near the end of your manuscript, you might just have a change of heart and that’s okay – but you don’t want to start your layout and all that work before you make all those changes because you’re engaging third-party resources in the – often you’re paying somebody to do the layout. And if you’re doing it yourself, then you’re spending your own time doing the layout. And if you make a big change once you’ve started, then you’ve got to go back to the beginning and make changes again. So having things happen in sequential order, knowing what those dependencies are, is really important.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 12:07

Feeds decision making, too. 

John Wagner-Stafford 12:08

Yeah. And, you know, part of the process of doing a business planning project – book project plan – is identifying everything that you need to do. So, you know, talking about the task list. You’re also talking about the resources list: you will – who are you going to have help you do the book? It might be yourself only. It might be you and an editor. It might be you an editor and a book designer or a book cover designer. It might be a publisher. So, you know, you identify who’s going to be helping you with the lists – with the book, so resources list. And then you need to create a deliverables list. And this all kind of plays into all these different elements that go into a book project plan. Deliverables are not only the manuscript but the images that go into the manuscript, the layout files, the cover – the book cover files. And there are many of them for every book. There’s a, you know, an audiobook cover and a large-print cover and a paperback and an ebook cover. So there are many different covers and those are all different deliverables. So you want to identify all those deliverables so you know what has to be – or come to you and get in your hands before you go to the next step. And then, you know, the result of creating all those lists is what we call a project timeline. And the project timeline is essentially – and there are many forms of this can take – but it’s essentially, “I’m going to do this first. I’m going to do this second. And because it’s dependent upon something else, I’m going to do this third. And I’m going to deliver the book cover, you know, once I know what the book is. And I’m going to integrate that into the layout.” You know, these types of things. So you come up with a list – excuse me, a project timeline, which is pretty important. And it can take many different forms. So now you can see Boni just working hard at …

Boni Wagner-Stafford 14:13

I’m trying to find an example so we can share the screen. 

John Wagner-Stafford 14:17

Yeah. And while you’re doing that, you know, the timeline can take on many different forms. It can be an Excel spreadsheet. It can be a professional piece of software. It can be as simple as a calendar list where you see on the top of the list what you start with. And as you go down into – down the list, representing a timeline or movement in time, the things that happen first, second, and next. So the timeline is kind of the end result and something that you need to go back to and you refer to on an ongoing basis.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 14:55

That didn’t work for me very well. I’m going to try something else. Carry on.

John Wagner-Stafford 15:00

Yeah. And I’m going to just keep on talking. You know, and when you’re creating your book project plan and making the list of things, it actually brings up some things that you might not even know about, whether you’re asking for some help from someone else: things like marketing plan. Did you do a marketing plan? Did you even think that you need a marketing plan? And the marketing plan is one thing. And then there’s all the little things that go into creating a marketing plan. And that’s what you kind of call sub-tasks within a task. So your marketing plan might be a task that takes six weeks in itself to develop. But then you’ve got a whole bunch of other little things that go on within that. And you need to identify as much as you can so that you know where you are and you know where you’re going. Another thing a book project plan does for you is that because it’s in your face and you see it visually, it helps you to turn on a dime. And what I mean by that is you’ve just changed your mind. And you want to, you know, move around the chapters or you want to remove a chapter and add something new or you want to change a little bit, you know, who you’re targeting or you – or maybe you say, “You know what? The book cover’s not really targeting our reader.” All these little, these quick changes, when you have a book project plan, they’re made a lot more easily. They’re more easily done because all you do is you take what you’ve got and you reorder it. You don’t have to reinvent the task list. You don’t have to reinvent the concepts or your “why”: you’ve already got that in front of you to continue developing or changing your plan. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 16:50

I can’t find the thing to connect it.

John Wagner-Stafford 16:52

So … That’s OK. So, you know, and in fact, you know, we were just trying to share a timeline. Maybe what we’ll do is on Facebook, we can share a timeline on Facebook.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 17:03

Sure. Yeah. I’ll post both to Facebook and you can …

John Wagner-Stafford 17:06

Yeah. So here’s a sample of a timeline and here’s where you can sign up to enter the draw to win a free project plan that I’m happy to spend some time with you to create. So all really, really important stuff. It’s not necessarily easy but it’s important. And there is a methodology to creating project plans and there are varied types of project plans. We follow one type of project plan methodology and you can decide to follow, you know, another one. But we do this with all of our authors and it’s really important because there are so many moving parts. There are thousands of moving parts in a book project plan that you don’t really know about until you start asking the questions: “Oh, what do I got to do now? What do I have to do next? Oh, I see.”

Boni Wagner-Stafford 18:05

So something that you talked about: there being a number of ways or a number of different types of project plans for planning your nonfiction book. And I, you know, we’re talking about nonfiction. We work with nonfiction, not fiction. You could use the same methodology that we use for fiction. So not to differentiate there necessarily. But what I wanted to say is that knowing what kind of, what kind of person you are in terms of getting big projects done is really helpful. I don’t believe that it is ever helpful not to have a project plan but that doesn’t mean that you necessarily need to be intimate with it, especially if you’re working with a publishing partner like us. And what I mean by that is we have worked with authors who get totally overwhelmed. It’s like, we look at the project plan; we talk about the things that need to be done and what, you know, what the timeline is and they’re just like, they shut down because it’s like, “Oh my God, that’s too big.” And we need – we say to those types of authors that, “It’s okay, we’ve got it. We just want you to see this. This is why when we say you need to write three chapters by next Friday, that is why: because you told us …”

John Wagner-Stafford 19:29

We see the bigger picture.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 19:30

Right. “You told us that you want to have your book published by,” whenever it is, “and we know that – because we’ve built the project plan – that this is what has to happen.” And so everything is connected. On the other hand, there, you may be the type of author – and we’ve worked with many of these – that love that: the detail of looking at the plan and they, you know, once a month we pull up that project plan and we measure, you know, “Okay, where are we based on what we thought we were going to do four months ago? Are we on track? Do we need to shift the timeline a little bit?” So I don’t believe it’s ever helpful not to have a project plan. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to create it if you’re working with a publishing partner like us. And even when there is one, it doesn’t necessarily mean – if you are prone to overwhelm with the size of the project, that there are ways to make sure that it is working for you and not working against you.

John Wagner-Stafford 20:30

Yeah. And you know, the overwhelm issue is, it’s kind of really important. You’re already dealing with trying to write a manuscript or writing a manuscript.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 20:38

Yeah. The writing alone is a big …

John Wagner-Stafford 20:39

Exactly. I mean, often you get emotionally involved in this, whether it’s from a business perspective or a personal perspective – writing memoir versus writing a how-to book – you’re passionate about this and that passion occupies time and space in your mind. How much more time and space do you have to deal with the project plan? Probably not that much. So, the point I’m making here is project plan doesn’t have to be complicated but it gets complicated if you don’t have a project plan. So imagine the complications that are going to arise when you forget to do this or you thought that the book cover designer was booked and they’re not or that they, you forgot that they told you that they’re not available in August or November. And then who else is dependent on those? So not having a plan is often – I would say always – more chaotic than having a plan, depending, you know, no matter how large or small it may be.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 21:37

Yeah. So reiterating what I talked about at the beginning – in case you’ve just popped in or you are popping in and out or whatever – but that we are having a draw for a book project plan. And what we will do is we will randomly select from the entries and I’ve posted the link. I’m going to post it again. I don’t know if you … Oh, I can’t do that one. That’s not the link. If you randomly come into the video, I don’t know if you see the comments from earlier, so I’m just going to post them again, just in case. But anyway, what we will do is we will select from the entrants and we will get on a call, which is usually a Zoom call but it doesn’t have to be video. We just were speaking with a gentleman who says, “I don’t want to do that.” That’s fine. But so the issue is we want to have a call to talk to you about what your book is, what you hope to achieve, what your goals are in terms of your published timeline ...

John Wagner-Stafford 22:42

Where the book is at.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 22:43

Where the book is at.

John Wagner-Stafford 22:45

Is your (indiscernible) already done? Are you ready to publish, you think? 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 22:47

Yeah. So we’ll get the information we need. We’ll produce the project plan and then we’ll have another call with you and walk you through what the project plan is and what you need to do with that. So that’s, you know, anybody who’s trying to figure out how they’re going to get it done and you know, what are the elements and what do I do first and second and 17th and 27th?

John Wagner-Stafford 23:09

You’ll get a taste of our system, in fact, of what we take an author through when we work with an author: you’ll get a taste of all of the things that need to be done to publish your book.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 23:20

Yeah. So, you talked about different approaches or systems. So what kind of tools – if somebody wants to do their own book project plan, what kind of tools do they need?

John Wagner-Stafford 23:33

Yeah. So the two easiest tools – let’s start with low hanging fruit – the two easiest tools are something like a Excel spreadsheet or, you know, Google Sheets or whatever. And, you know, essentially, breaking the rows and columns into small little chunks and then coloring a line so that you have a representation of how time is passing, you know, week to week, month to month – whatever timeframe you choose to use. That’s one very simple, common way to do it. Another way is your Google calendar or your Outlook calendar. And simply, either through a list or through just looking at the calendar, “This is what I’m going to do on this week. This is what I’m going to do on this week. This is what I’m going to do this week,” and use that, which generates typically your list as well. Then there are special software pieces that are out there. You know, in the old days we used to use Microsoft Project, as a matter of fact, for many things. We have a particular business system that we use that offers project planning software. There’s a – we use Scrivener as well, a lot. And one of the pieces of software that is tied to Scrivener is called Aeon Timeline: a really great piece of software. It’s not an online thing. It’s a download-to-your-computer software but it’s a beautiful piece of software: integrates with Scrivener. And I highly recommend you taking a look at that if you need some project management help. And even planning your book: it helps you to plan your book. Geared mainly toward fiction but that’s fine. So that’s another great piece of software to use, that we have used in the past and still use, actually, sometimes.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 25:27

And we, we’ve used what? What’s that other one where you drag and drop the boxes, that was good for flow chart things? I can’t remember what the name of it is: not Skitch but …

John Wagner-Stafford 25:40

I don’t remember.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 25:42

Do I have it showing up here anyway? No, I can’t remember. Anyway, so we, you know, if you want us to give you a written list, certainly reach out. We’ll, we can give you some ideas. But the main thing is exploring the steps that need to be done, plotted on some sort of a timeline. In an ideal scenario, you would have the ability to create sub tasks or at least understand that within each large area, that there will be a number of sub tasks. What else? What are we missing?

John Wagner-Stafford 26:19

You know, something that I didn’t mention when I was going through the list of – lists that you need to generate is kind of some examples. And I’m just looking at my paper in front of me now. So, a resource list, for instance, could include things like cover designer, editor, proofreader, formatter, et cetera, et cetera. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 26:38

If you’re managing your own project. Exactly.

John Wagner-Stafford 26:40

Yeah, those are resources that you need to deal with, whether they’re a third party, yourself, or family and friends. A deliverables list might look something like the manuscript, the book cover, the layout files, any images that are going into your, into your book. That’s an example of some deliverables list. And an example of tasks within the list would be things like manuscript, edit. Did I have something here, a little …

Boni Wagner-Stafford 27:16

The tasks, you know, could be research that reviewers list. It could be …

John Wagner-Stafford 27:20

Project starts. So a marketing plan. Manuscript development, which would include your edit, your layout, your et cetera. Marketing implementation: your distribution, your prelaunch marketing plan, your launch plan, your post marketing plan. These are all important elements that have many little components to them that you need to identify of how are you going to get your book in the face of all of your targeted readers? 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 27:48

Yeah. So, that, I think, is a pretty good overview. We really rely on the book project plans for each of the book projects that we work with, with the authors at Ingenium Books. And we revisit them. We – depending on what kind of person the author is, if they are prone to overwhelm, we just keep them on track with the individual tasks and on request, we can come back and revisit the project plan. And we have other authors that say, “Hey, let’s have a look at the project plan this week or this month. And, you know, where are we?” Or send a report, that sort of thing. So we’ve eaten up our time. Hope that you found this helpful. The link that I’ve posted a couple of times is where you can give us your name and email address if you’d like to be entered into the draw for a free project plan that we will do. And again, that would include an exploratory call with you where we get to find out where your book project is at, what state it’s at, what you’re starting from, where you want to go with it. Then we’ll go away; build your project plan. Then we’ll have another call with you and talk through what that project plan is. So huge value in that. And if you want to give yourself the opportunity to be organized with the implementation of your own book – nonfiction book – project, that’s what we’ll do. So thank you very much for spending the time with us today. And we didn’t explain why the two of us are on a single screen and that’s because we’re in Mexico right now, looking out at the beautiful ocean. And it means that our internet is a little bit iffy: can’t support two of us being on a video call at the same time on the same internet connection.

John Wagner-Stafford 29:41

Not today, anyway.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 29:42

Not today. So that’s why you’re seeing us sitting beside one another. All right. Anything else from here? I don’t think so.

John Wagner-Stafford 29:51

Yeah. Thanks so much for listening and it doesn’t hurt to give us your name and, you know, put your name in for the draw. It’s a huge value and a great learning exercise for you if you want to have a book project plan done for you for free.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 30:09

We didn’t even talk about the – so writing a book is very creative. Many of the aspects of a book – getting a book done – are very creative and planning and putting it on a timeline, many people might think that that’s not actually very creative; we think that it is very creative but it, there – it’s, you know, can be kind of counterintuitive for people who are really looking for the charge from that creative endeavor. So that is all we’re going to say on that. Hope you have a fantastic day and we’ll sign off from Ingenium Books.

John Wagner-Stafford 30:41

Bye, everyone.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 30:45

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