I was just having a conversation with a client this morning about some design ideas for her new book. I have been designing book covers for the last decade now and I have identified a few topics for discussion for today’s show as it relates.

My client is a therapist and she was telling me about the kind of therapy she does for her patients. She was telling me it is not uncommon to be called at strange hours of the night to pull someone off a bridge or to remove a gun from their hand and in the process of clearing their trauma… and some traumas of her own… she realized that she wanted a book that would showcase peace. 

Today we had a discussion about that and some of the attractive features geared toward someone who might buy her book. I told her that there are a few ways that we could approach this… 

We can approach it by having an image on the cover that would pull in the reader that is dealing with traumas and issues of their own…...

Happy New Year! Today is the first blank page in your 365 page book. Are you off to writing a good one? Literally! Are you?

So, you want to write a book and you have no idea where to start. I want to talk about how to get started. I know you’ve been thinking about it for awhile and you want to step into this decade as an author. 

If you’ve been listening to my shows you know that I’m a huge proponent of a few things as it relates to your book: 

1. Aligning with your values, goals, and objectives outside the book (your platform)
2. Using your book as a tool to leverage the material in other communication or training, and 
3. Using the book to set you apart and position you as an expert on your subject

If you’ve been listening for awhile you’ve heard some of this already so I won’t repeat myself, but now you’re ready to get started with some brainstorming but your not exactly sure where to start. 

In my podcast yesterday...

Happy New Years Eve! Things just got a little crazy here for me and I popped open a root beer kombucha and made a salad! I’m not much on traditional celebration for New Years, as I’m more about defining new goals and reflecting on past achievements. I always look back where I have been and forward to where I hope to go. I appreciate the quiet of this evening to set my goals. How about you?

Talking about celebrations…what would it feel like to celebrate becoming an author in 2020? I know you’re thinking about it! So lets talk about the obstacles that might be in your way and see if we can’t un-block a few of them and get you going toward the completion of your book in 2020…

So, the statistics are pretty low for those that want to write a book and those who actually do. Did you know that the last stats I read said that near 80% of the population wants to write a book and only 2% do?

So…are you willing to jump in with the 2%? What...

Perhaps you have an idea for a book but you’re at a loss for a title. Perhaps you have a strong title but no clue if your material is strong enough to support it. Either way, you likely have some ideas around a title. Sometimes choosing the subtitle and tagline get lost until you’re far into the book or done with the entire manuscript. You may need your editors help to flush these elements out, but let’s take a stab at it here and see what we can come up with.

As I state in my book (Let’s Get Your Book Published), Research at Thomas Nelson indicates that consumers first look at the book’s:

• Title
• Cover
• Back cover
• Flaps on the jacket
• Table of contents
• First few paragraphs of the book’s content
• Price

So it’s easy to see why strong titling (and design for that matter) is crucial from the outset.

TITLE DEVELOPMENT

Sometimes you have to write the entire book before you can give it a name or title. Maybe you can’t...

One of the largest questions I had when I thought about writing was not related to content so much, but more the process. I know many authors struggle with the content – both organizing it and defining what is useful or worthy of sharing. But, perhaps you are like me and need to know how the rest of the process looks to know if you can do it.

I’m all about knowledge. I get a bit fogged up when I don’t see the full picture. For some though this might be too much to know… or they just don’t care to know it and just want a book. But for those need-to-know folks like myself I wanted to do a quick podcast to discuss the process of registering a book and how that relates to its distribution.

After all the composing and editing…before you can make a book a book it has to get registered in a few ways. The first is with the unique identifier called an ISBN Number. The second is the with Library of Congress.

Let’s first talk about...

I’ve been asked many times by would-be authors whether or not their content is valuable and something people would want to read.

Now of course, my first thought or response is “would you read it?” My next response is that the content always depends on your motivation. Why do you feel compelled to write on that topic? And, what do you plan to do with after you’ve written it?

If you’re simply wanting to draw out your experiential stories and bind them into a book it might be a bit more like a diary or memoire. If you can relate to your reader or pose “what-if” questions you might better engage them. You can talk in terms of “you” verses “I”. But, when you write to your reader with an intent and provide them value and help give them what they want then you are creating an audience. But, as always, with any book you have to take it beyond the pages and get out from behind it.

Most writers don’t think when...

I want to know how many times you have considered writing a book, played out the ideas in your head and the response your readers would have, felt that longing to bang on the keyboard and tell your story and dreamt about being on stage sharing your experiences and gifts. And, I want to talk about the day you finally sat down to write and you had NOTHING TO SAY!

Writing a book seems like a great idea until you sit down to write and your stumped on how to fill the pages with content. In my book Let’s Get Your Book Published, I give you a few tools for writers block and these are pretty typical across the board for any kind of writing. But, these tools are not what I want to talk about today.

I want to talk about the...

Here is Nicole's profile: 

Nicole Gabriel

Angel Dog Productions

Book layout and design has been my specialty for the last 10 years. I work primarily with corporate clients and speakers with professional print. I am the author of several books and my most recent book (Lets Get Your Book Published) began a deeper dive into book publishing coaching. My training program specifically focuses on teaching authors to move out of the role of writer and the desire to get best-seller status and into a role of using the book to enhance their professional platform….learning to write the book with the idea of a return on investment outside the book. I prefer to teach my clients how to use the book to market themselves or to define their niche with their book. I also teach my clients how to move the book into an online training program. I feel it’s important that everything is clearly defined up front and that the design work I do is consistent with the goals and objectives and...

What Motivates Us to Write?

Good morning! It’s a beautiful sunny winter morning here in the great state of Utah…and I want to talk to you a bit about what motivates us to write…and what we should aim to create as an author.

Before you can get to a functional manuscript you have to have a bit more than just the yearning to tell your story and a few ideas.

You also have to have a bit more than a few vendettas to get even by outing someone and a bunch of wounds you want to bleed out over the pages. Yeah, trust me that grief and anger inspires more authors than you realize. I’ve been doing this awhile and trust me—I’ve been there and I’ve seen it more than enough. What I’ve also seen enough of is an author summarizing a bunch of quotes from their favorite leaders and honestly, this positions an author as a follower no matter what the subject!

Vendettas, wounds, and playing follow the leader aside…these do give us energy...

Hi Guys!

So today I want to talk about what I’ve been up to. I’ve been a bit MIA here for…well... a few years. (repurposed content from 12/03/19 podcast)

You see, there is this little thing called life that sometimes has another agenda when it comes time to either writing a book or building an online training program from a book…I finally can say that I’ve held steadfast to my goal and produced both my Let’s Get Your Book Published book and it’s companion online book publishing training program.

I want to talk about these challenges and what it took to accomplish my lofty goals I set out for myself….because every author faces some form of interruption.

So before I wrote my book I was living in the Hawaiian islands. I was in business with my partner and we were quite successful at it. I picked up and dusted off some old skills and learned some new ones in our partnership. You see, he was a sales guy and a coach for my design business...