Have you ever wondered what it takes to bring a book to life, especially one centered around the dynamic world of entrepreneurship? This episode of The Angel Next Door podcast is a special edition of Minutes with Marcia, Part 2. In this episode, Marcia shares a detailed behind-the-scenes look into her journey of publishing the upcoming book, "Do Good While Doing Well," slated for release in September 2024. Marcia isn't just talking about writing; she navigates the labyrinthine world of book publishing and gives a glimpse behind the scenes at how it all works. In this enriching episode, Marcia breaks down the complexities of the publishing industry, discussing the nuances of traditional, hybrid, and self-publishing. She shares her own experiences working with Amplify, a hybrid publisher, highlighting the advantages it offered in terms of support and expertise. With anecdotes about the editing process and the significance of marketing, Marcia also underscores the importance of the author's role in promoting their book. This is a must-listen for anyone interested in writing, publishing, or simply understanding the entrepreneurial mindset, as Marcia provides a clear roadmap for making your literary dreams a reality.
Have you ever wondered what it takes to bring a book to life, especially one centered around the dynamic world of entrepreneurship?
This episode of The Angel Next Door podcast is a special edition of Minutes with Marcia, Part 2. In this episode, Marcia shares a detailed behind-the-scenes look into her journey of publishing the upcoming book, "Do Good While Doing Well," slated for release in September 2024. Pre-order at marciadawood.com/dogood
Marcia isn't just talking about writing; she navigates the labyrinthine world of book publishing and gives a glimpse behind the scenes at how it all works.
In this enriching episode, Marcia breaks down the complexities of the publishing industry, discussing the nuances of traditional, hybrid, and self-publishing. She shares her own experiences working with Amplify, a hybrid publisher, highlighting the advantages it offered in terms of support and expertise. With anecdotes about the editing process and the significance of marketing, Marcia also underscores the importance of the author's role in promoting their book. This is a must-listen for anyone interested in writing, publishing, or simply understanding the entrepreneurial mindset, as Marcia provides a clear roadmap for making your literary dreams a reality.
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Marcia Dawood
Hi, everyone. Marcia here for a quick episode of minutes with Marsha. This is going to be part two of my journey from TEDx to writing a book and publishing a book. And this episode is going to focus more on the publishing side. In part one, I talked a little bit about why I wrote the book and how I did it. I was in a workshop with AJ Harper. She has a book called write a must read, and I would highly recommend it to anybody who is thinking about writing a book or in the process of writing a book. So let's talk about publishing.
Marcia Dawood
I just had no idea how complex the whole publishing world really was. So to give you a couple of statistics, in the US, the book publishing industry, that would include traditional publishing, hybrid publishing and self publishing. And I'll talk about each of those in a minute. But the whole book industry in the US is about $27 billion. That's a big market. And self publishing in the US is about $9 billion. So also a very big market. So of the three types of publishing, there's traditional publishing, where the author might get an advance from the publisher, a payment, so that they would then either write the book, or maybe it's once the book is written, before it's published, and the publisher will pay most of the costs to get the book out into the world.
Marcia Dawood
The author loses a lot of the rights. Maybe they can't pick the cover maybe they actually change part of the book, so the author loses some of that control. But also the publisher would then take the majority of the royalties, and while the author will get some, the publisher would get the majority. Self publishing is where somebody could write a book and they could put it up on Amazon as an ebook. And sometimes people do that as quickly as a weekend, where the traditional publishing timeline can be years, many months, if not several years to get the book out into the world. So lots of differences on the speed. So there's something in the middle called a hybrid publisher, and hybrid publisher is where an author would pay someone to help them go through all of the steps, a little bit like a contractor when you're building a house. So you've got to think about the things like the cover art and how the book is going to be laid out and the editing process, how it's going to be distributed.
Marcia Dawood
That's what a hybrid publisher does. Now, I used a hybrid publisher called Amplify, and I've had an incredible, wonderful experience with them so far. I'm still in the process of publishing the book because it doesn't come out until September but they have been great with every aspect along the way. So just to talk a little bit more about the timeline, I started writing my book do good while doing in February of 2023, pretty much done writing the book by August of 2023, which I've been told is pretty fast to be writing a book. But I was in a workshop and I explained that in part one. So that kind of helped guide me along the way. In July of 2023 is when I went researching for a publisher, and I really didn't know anything about this entire industry. I learned a lot from AJ Harper in the workshop, and she was incredible about explaining everything to us, so that we had a really good idea about what we needed to do in order to try to get our books published.
Marcia Dawood
So when I started to do research, I felt that a hybrid publisher was probably the best thing for me. I really didn't want to have to do everything myself. In the self publishing world, it can cost less to self publish, of course, but I knew that I didn't have the expertise to be able to do all of the things, and I knew a hybrid publisher would be very helpful. So I went looking for somebody like that, and that's when I found to amplify. Narren. Ariel is the founder and CEO, and he has been doing this for over 20 years. He publishes books, primarily business books, by thought leaders, and I thought, this is a very good fit. Narren also had a very good understanding of venture capital, so I was interested in working with him because I felt like he really understood what I was writing about and the type of message that I wanted to get out to the world.
Marcia Dawood
So once I had decided on a publisher, then we could get started on the editing process. I had already done some of the editing process because I learned how to do that in AJ's workshop and from her book, of course. But now I was going to work with editors from amplify who would help me with mainly copy editing. There's developmental editing, which is what we worked on in AJ's workshop, which is. Where do you put this? Where does this go? Maybe this isn't in the right place. Maybe this doesn't belong here. Maybe you need a different story that's developmental editing. But copy editing is more like, you have a comma in the wrong place.
Marcia Dawood
This wording isn't right. There's a lot of rules. So there's this whole Chicago manual of style. And I learned a lot about things like, you don't use numbers under 100, you write them out. So if you were going to say six bags of popcorn, you would actually write out six for six instead of writing the number six. But if it's over 100, then you can use numerical numbers. Who knew? Another thing I worked hard on was getting endorsements for the book, and I was lucky to be able to get Mel Robbins to endorse the book. And that endorsement is on the cover Marshall Goldsmith is on the back.
Marcia Dawood
Dorie Clark, Nicola Corzine from the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center, Pat Goohan from the Angel Capital Association. I really wanted to show that this book is meant for pretty much everybody in the entrepreneurial ecosystem and everybody who might like to be a part of it. One thing that I learned is that marketing, the book really does come down to the author, and that's in any type of publishing. Sometimes people think if a traditional publisher is publishing the book, then they'll help with the marketing, and they do, but it really does come down to the author. People want to hear from the author. They want to know why you wrote the book. They want to be at book signings. They want to hear about all the things in the book.
Marcia Dawood
So marketing is critical, especially a couple of months prior to the book launching. So right now you're hearing this episode. It's airing on July 4, and the book comes out September 10 of 2024. So we're about two months out, and we're going to really start to ramp up people getting to know about it, putting posts out, letting people know that the book is coming. It's going to be an ebook form. It'll also be an audiobook form, which I recorded myself. That was an interesting process. Also, we could do a whole podcast episode just on that.
Marcia Dawood
So I also wrote an official workbook that will come out at the same time as the book. And this has exercises in it related to finance and how you feel about money, people's relationship to money, people's relationship to risk, and their level in the workbook. There will also be some pitch decks, sample pitch decks, so people can see what it looks like to actually evaluate an early stage company or a startup. And then there'll be some exercises about how to get started. One of them is building a mock portfolio. So lots of fun ways that you can try this. You can get started. This really is for anybody.
Marcia Dawood
The whole reason I wrote this book was to help to demystify the space. I tell some stories, talk about my journey, and I hope that it will inspire others. Thanks for listening.