Since publishing Double Double in April 2011, I’ve been getting quite a few questions from CEOs or business people who also want to write their own book. So, instead of answering them all one at a time going forward, I figured I’d blog about it.
Here is how I wrote mine – it may not be the ‘perfect’ process, but it worked for me, and it got my book into tons of Hudson’s Bookstores in Airports in the USA & Canada. So here goes. Hope it helps…
- I first decided on a theme for the book. I wanted it to be a practical, how to guide, for all businesses to teach their employees how to double revenue & profit in three years or less. I wanted it to be easy to implement systems, that didn’t require a bunch of MBAs to figure out how to use them. And I wanted it filled with real world experience, NOT theory.
- I created a rough Table Of Contents, for all the areas I wanted my book to cover.
- I then created a mini table of contents for each chapter. I carefully thought about all the key points I wanted each chapter to cover.
- Then, over the course of a few months, I walked around my house and office, wearing a wireless headset and I digitally recorded myself thinking out loud about all the ideas for each chapter.
- I sent those audio files, and the DVDs that I sell for companies to learn from, to a transcriber in Sweden who I found on eLance.com I had her send me all the notes typed up.
- I took all of her notes, and deleted, copied and pasted, and began making each of the chapters into a rough version of the final product today. This took me about a year. I should have in retrospect gone offsite to some retreat and bashed through them all in a couple weeks without distractions.
- Once I had the finalized 16 chapters, I sent them out to CEOs who volunteered to proof read & comment on them. I sent 3 chapters to roughly 5-7 different entrepreneurs. In all, I had about 50 CEOs proof reading all the chapters for me, and they gave me some really valuable insights. I thanked them all at the front of the book.
- Then, the 1st round of editing began to include some of their comments. Some ideas I tossed out. Some I used. Once I edited all the chapters, I sent them to a writer, who polished them all up for me and made them sound better than I could.
- Then it was how to get published. I could self publish, or use a traditional publisher, but luckily I stumbled on a hybrid of those two models in Greenleaf Books from Austin Texas. I was actually teaching their CEO at MIT’s Entrepreneurial Masters Program the very week I’d finished editing.
- The rest is history… multiple rounds of editing and design help from Greenleaf, and my book Double Double is now helping thousands of companies grow.
If y0u’ve read Double Double already – I’d love your comments here on Amazon… and I’d love it if you’d email me your comments on the book, and a photo of you with it.
If you haven’t read it… You can get it here in Audio, eBook or hardcover.
