Be clear about your expectations upfront. I want an editor to fix all the grammatical, spelling and punctuation mistakes. For content editing, I usually rely on my early readers. They will let me know if sections are missing or parts of the book are boring.
When my editor is finished going through my manuscript, he will send back a Word document with every change marked. Word has a featured called "track changes" that lets you see every modification made to a document. Once I receive this file, I go through and manually approve each change. I then copy each section back into Scrivener, and now I have my final proof.
My editor is as fast as me and can process around twenty thousand words a day. He edited Breaking Orbit in under forty-eight hours, and he'll be editing this book as well.
The ultimate test of any editor is your readers. If you get bad grammar reviews after hiring an editor, don't use them again. I have yet to receive an email or review pointing out errors in Breaking Orbit. That's the ultimate proof that my editor is amazing.
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Action Steps
Track your finances and establish a budget for an editor based on how much money you have now, not on predicted sales.
Check out a few links to editors from the 20K page.
Bring in an editor only after your early reviewers have sent in their feedback.
If you can't afford an editor at this point, that’s ok. The 20K Editing Process will protect you from “kiss of death” reviews.
Part XXXVII
Wisdom for New Writers
The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.
- Lao Tzu
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Listen to the Feedback
A few early reviewers and coaching clients sent in some questions that didn’t really fit anywhere else in the book. This chapter is a collection of my final words of wisdom before launching you out into the world as a 20K writer.
316
Author or Seller
Plenty of books out there will tell you to write about any topic as long as you are passionate about it. And while writing something is better than writing nothing, I don’t believe in this advice. I would never be the first person to write about a brand new topic. If you want to be creative and write a book backward or put the chapters out of order, then I'm not the person to come to for advice. I can think of a few great movies that use this technique. But they are the exception, not the rule.
Misspelling words or creating strange meanings to add a bit of whimsy to your work can overwhelm your readers. Only amazing authors can use these types of techniques effectively, and I am not one of them. I'm not an ivory tower author. I'm out in the streets, getting dirty and writing with my fists. I don't have a silver tongue.
There is a lot of advice out there for authors. You should only take advice from someone you are in alignment with. If you think my writing is pedestrian and that I don't use nearly enough multisyllabic words, then you shouldn't follow my systems. Find a leader who writes the way you want to.
This book is about writing fast, but it's also about so much more. It's part of my entire Serve No Master series. It's part of a larger structure. As much as this book is about writing fast, it's about writing books that will sell and people will read.
I want you to make money from the books you write. My previous book in the series, Breaking Orbit, teaches you how to publish a book and launch a bestseller on Amazon. This book is designed to dovetail with that.
This book is so long because I want to share everything I know about writing fast with you. But that is not enough. I don't want you to be a struggling artist. What good is writing fast if you can't pay the bills? I know that you want to write fast as a means to an end. This book is about hitting your real goal.
317
Are You Not Entertained?
If you start with an idea without doing any market research, you can use the 20K System to write a book very quickly. Unfortunately, you might not sell a single copy, and I want to prepare you for that possibility.
We are near the end of this book but I don't want you to forget the beginning. My method for writing is very simple: find out what people want and give it to them. Researching before you write ensures that there is an audience ready and waiting to read your book. There are certain topics that do amazing in the direct response realm and do terribly on Amazon.
I don't write relationship books for Amazon because no one buys them. It's not a market where people buy a lot of relationship books. People always want to break into the relationships space on Amazon, but there is simply no money to be made. That's not where most people buy their advice these days.
Some authors out there will say, “Hey, write about whatever you want to write about,” and I think that's very disingenuous. You can write about whatever you want, but be aware that if you write about a topic in a brand new way that no one likes, you might not have any readers, and it can be very lonely out there.
Sometimes authors join my coaching group with a book already published. They released a book five or ten years ago and have sold less than a dozen copies in that time; they are not happy.
Who wants to write a book that no one reads? As much as I think it's a tool to get people motivated, the whole “Write whatever you feel like. Trust your instincts,” thing takes it too far. It's going to leave you disappointed in the end.
I'm more interested in your end result. I can make you happy right now or happy long-term, and I'd rather you write a book series that people like. Whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, research is critical. Before I write the first word of an outline, I want to see people on Amazon interested in the topic. I only write books for categories where there is enough money to be made for it to be worth my time.
I mentioned earlier that I wanted to write a book about email marketing. I didn't intend to cover this topic until next year. I hadn't even considered a book on writing fast, dictation, and my editing process.
I was excited about writing a book on email marketing because I've been thinking about it a lot over the last month and working on some big email projects. In my research, I discovered that no one cares. Books about email marketing don't sell on Amazon. If I wrote the best email book in the world, the profit would be around one hundred dollars a month. That is just not worth my time right now.
Later on down the line in the series, I might cover the topic, but for now the books I write are driven by my readers' passion, not my own.
It doesn't make sense to write a book that no one wants to read.
318
Build the Editing Habit
If you are a creative person like me, you will discover that editing is far harder than writing. I would much rather write. During the editing process, you must be very strict with your emotions. Remember those chapters on habit.
When you get upset at errors in the book or a negative email from an early reviewer, you are falling into that trap again. Do not attach negative emotions to any part of this process. If you attach a negative emotion to early reviewer emails, you'll stop sending out early review copies. Better to publish an incomplete book than get a bunch of emails hurting your feelings.
Attach positive emotions to the act of trying. Every time you put in effort, you should feel good about yourself. You should say, “I did a good thing. I tried hard and I'm proud of myself.”
Train yourself to think this way, and you will become a limitless author. You will write amazing books and continue to improve with every word you write.
Be proud when you catch a mistake. Don't focus on not catching it earlier. You found it now, and nothing else matters.
Let's say you're on the final edit and it's the day before the book comes out. You find a mistake in the first sentence of your book; you used a comma when you should have used a semi-colon. You could say to yourself, “I'm such a loser. I forgot. I missed this. I can’t believe I missed this. I'm not a real author.” Or you could say, “I'm proud of myself because I caught this before the
book went live.” We can apply a positive spin every time we run into an error.
Do not turn random errors into systemic problems. Even big mistakes and plot holes do not make you a terrible writer. Do not question your writing. Don't call yourself bad words.
Remember what I've taught you and always attach a positive emotion. Say, “I tried and caught this mistake now before it's too late. I did a good job. That's all that matters.” The more you can do that, the more you will succeed.
Even if you get a bad review six months after publishing your book, use that as a learning experience. Fix that mistake and make your next book even better.
319
Trust Your Instincts
There will be parts of your book that you are on the fence about. You can't decide if that section is good or if you should chop it out. Maybe you need to rewrite a chapter. You think, “I kind of like this, but it's not great.” This happens to all of us. Whenever I have one of these, I send that to someone and ninety-nine percent of the time they'll say, “That part's terrible.”
If you are unsure about a part of your book, most likely your audience will hate it. Trust your first instinct. Almost all of my negative feedback is about things I was unsure of myself.
This is when you'll catch those big mistakes. We have this tendency to notice things that are fifty-fifty and think, “I'm not sure if I want to keep that or not.” And then when we think about it. We go, “Oh, I'm probably just overanalyzing. I'm being overly critical of myself. I'm a perfectionist.” Our first instinct catches the mistake but then our second instinct stops us from fixing it.
Trust your first instinct more than your second instinct. Whenever you have one of these moments, err on the side of making a change. Bring in an outside opinion to confirm, but be ready to fix it.
Over time, you'll discover that your first instinct is pretty much always right. I read books every day, so I have a very strong feel for story flow. When I'm in writing mode, I might not notice a problem with my book's pacing. But when I'm proofreading the final version of my book on a Kindle, I'll catch those tiny errors that were niggling at the back of my brain.
320
Roll with the Punches
There comes the point that the book goes out into the world, and you will quickly discover that writing is a democracy; every single reader gets a vote. They get to vote with their dollars and with their reviews.
You give your best effort in the book, do everything you can to tighten up the story, and then get as many early readers as you can. When you get a bad review, adapt and update the book. If you need to add in some new sections, do it. If you get a bunch of negative reviews about a particular character in your book, fix them.
If your book is live and you are getting bad reviews, update the book and then change the description. You can say that it's now version 2.0 of the book; it's been updated, and the grammar has been corrected. Make it clear that those bad reviews are about a book that no longer exists. Clean the slate.
I've seen a book description start with, “Now professionally edited and no more grammatical mistakes,” because they got a bunch of bad reviews. They used their book profits to hire an editor. If you can't afford an editor upfront, this is a great alternative.
No problem is unfixable. There might be sections in the book where you get stuck. Sometimes you'll feel painted into a corner, and that happens, but you can fight your way out.
The 20K System has a very strict structure for how we prepare, write, and edit so that you can consistently release fantastic books. Stick with the process, and you will write and edit books very quickly. You will be very proud of every book you finish.
321
Smooth is Fast
Writing faster does not mean writing worse; it does not mean rushing yourself. I never want you to feel pressure or nervousness. Anxiety and stress will damage your writing.
You should never drive a car so fast that you can't see what's happening in front of you. Don't write that fast either. If you can't tell what you're writing about, slow down.
The 20K System is really about speeding up the time between your thoughts and putting words on the page.
As an early writer, I suffered a great deal. That pain forced me to write faster. I had no choice but to become a 20K writer. While I was writing, my thoughts would be several seconds ahead of my hands, and it would drive my crazy. My body and mind were out of sync.
With my thoughts ahead of my hands, I would continually lose my train of thought. I would lose ideas before I could get them onto the page. I would be writing about A and thinking about C, and I would often forget that B idea in the middle. My train of thought was derailing all the time.
As a writer, I was meandering. I felt lost and confused in the desert. I was miserable with my writing process. I trained my hands to write as fast as my brain could think.
Right now you speak much faster than you write. And you think even faster than you speak. The 20K System is about catching your body up to how fast your brain is working. It is not about writing so fast that your quality suffers. You have to write unbelievably fast to outpace your thoughts.
As long as you follow the steps in this process, you will be very successful. Problems occur when you start skipping steps or getting creative. This system is strict because that will maximize your results. Following each step in the correct order will turn you into a 20K writer who can live off the words you write. The order of chapters in this book is not random; stick to the correct order.
Whenever you feel like you are drifting off course, reread that section of this book. Stick with the exercises and systems to get back on track.
322
Action Steps
Jump to the end of this book and leave a 5-star review. Uploading pictures or videos is an excellent way to get on my radar and get additional personal advice when you reach out to me.
If you noticed any grammatical, spelling, or punctuation mistakes, please email me. Allow me to improve this book for the readers to follow.
Make a plan to become a 20K writer. Stick to your plan until you hit your goal.
Work your way through all the action steps and exercises in this book.
Visit ServeNoMaster.com/20k to find links and a boatload of free bonus content.
Grab your free gift before it’s gone.
One Last Chance
Thank you so much for reading 20K a Day. In case you missed it at the start of the book, here is my special gift to you. This is a long book and I put together a Top Secret Cheatsheet with all the most valuable information. You can grab it by clicking this link.
ServeNoMaster.com/cheatsheet
Found a Typo?
While every effort goes into ensuring that this book is flawless, it is inevitable that a mistake or two will slip through the cracks.
If you find an error of any kind in this book, please let me know by visiting:
ServeNoMaster.com/typos
I appreciate you taking the time to notify me. This ensures that future readers never have to experience that awful typo. You are making the world a better place.
About the Author
Born in Los Angeles, raised in Nashville, educated in London - Jonathan Green has spent years wandering the globe as his own boss - but it didn't come without a price. Like most people, he struggled through years of working in a vast, unfeeling bureaucracy. And even though he was ‘totally crushed' when he got fired, it gave him the chance to reappraise his life and rebuild it from scratch.
Since 2010, he's been making a full-time living on the Internet - helping brick and mortar business owners promote themselves on the Internet, helping men and women find true love, ghostwriting best sellers for some of the biggest publishers in the world and much, much more.
Thanks to smart planning and personal discipline, he was more successful than he could have possibly expected. He traveled the world, helped friends and family, and moved to an island in the South Pacific.
Now he's passing his knowledge onto the rest of the world as host of a weekly podcast that teaches financial independence, networking with the world's most influential people, writing epic stuff online, and traveling the world for cheap.
His hobbies include kayaking, surfing, and building empires. He currently has a loving girlfriend, and two wonderful kids who love the ocean (almost!) as much as he does.
Find out more about Jonathan at:
ServeNoMaster.com
Books by Jonathan Green
Serve No Master Series
Serve No Master
Breaking Orbit
20K a Day
Control Your Fate
Habit of Success Series
PROCRASTINATION
Influence and Persuasion
Love Yourself
One Last Thing
When you turn the page, Kindle will give you the option to rate this book and share your thoughts on Facebook and Twitter. If you found value in this book, I would appreciate it if you would take a few seconds and click the FIVE STARS icon and share with your friends. If they desire to write faster, they will be grateful for the recommendation.
20K a Day: How to Launch More Books and Make More Money Page 34