PK 034: Chandler Bolt on 3 Easy Steps For Publishing Your First eBook

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Publishing your first book is a lot easier than you might think

“It’s an amazing feeling knowing people all over the world are downloading and reading your books.”

~ Chandler Bolt

Ever thought about writing your first book, but keep putting it off? We’ve all been there. The dreaded self-doubt creeps in (‘I’ve never written a book before’, ‘I don’t have time’, ‘What if I’m no good at it?’ etc. ), and before you know it, you’ve put another great idea on the back-burner.

Here’s the thing: You may not know it, but there’s a publishing revolution taking place right under our noses. Thanks to the popularity of e-readers, smartphones, and tablets, the marketplace for new authors is wider, much wider, than it ever has been before!

Author and tutor Chandler Bolt now runs courses designed for people who want to publish their first book. Although, when he started, he’d never really thought much about doing this.

However, after sitting down and carefully planning how to do it, he began to see the possibilities.

“I decided to write a book on productivity, ” he says, “and I was amazed at how popular it was. In the first few days, I’d already had around 52,000 downloads on Amazon!”

So what’s his advice for artists who want to publish their first book?

“There are so many opportunities out there for artists who want to write and sell books,” he explains. “For example, it’s a great way for you as someone who creates stuff to really tap into your customer source and get your work out there.”

Three-step Process for Publishing Your First Book

Chandler Bolt helps thousands of aspiring writers through his online courses and tutoring sessions. To do this, he’s devised a three-step process which anyone can use.

1. Mindmapping. Take a sheet of paper and write the idea for your book in the middle. Then, branch off from this with all your different ideas. If you’re writing a children’s book, this might include your characters, the plot of your story, and how your book will develop.

2. Grouping Ideas. Start grouping your ideas into sections. Eventually, you should get an idea of how to divide your first book up into chapters.

3. Start Writing. Repeat steps 1 and 2 each time you write something. This will help you get your ideas in order and will help form the basis for your first book.

But how many words should you write? Chandler likes to keep things concise and to the point. It’s always worth looking at other writers in your category, too: How many words are they writing? Is there a gap in the market for your first book? Research is incredibly important here!

Once you’ve written your first book, you’ll then need to think about how to publish it for e-readers. Thankfully, this process is nowhere near as complicated as you might think. Chandler write his first book using Google Docs and then just handed this off to a designer he found online to put this into a suitable format.

If you’d prefer to do this yourself, Amazon has just released a resource specifically for people who want to publish children’s books electronically.

Alternatively, the latest version of Adobe InDesign has all the features you need to publish your first e-book, including a fixed layout feature so your book looks awesome on all devices.

Listen to this week’s show and learn:

  • How to start work on your first book
  • How to use mindmaps to plan your ideas out
  • How to research your market and start writing
  • How to get your book out there and start making sales!

People on this Episode:

Mitch
Chandler

Mentioned in the episode:

Chandler’s Website

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Thanks for listening to our show! We’ll be back next Wednesday morning 8AM EST.

Cheers,

Mitch

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