How To Make $12,246 in a Day, Part Four: Other Ebook Stuff

Well, it’s been quite a week. We’ve covered figuring out if you have a market for your ebook, we’ve covered how to write an ebook, and we’ve covered how to sell the damn thing. So why are we still here? Because you’d be really surprised by all the extra stuff that comes along with it.

You read about people who get book deals talking about how their whole life falls apart in the process of trying to get the whole thing to come together. You wouldn’t think that would transition over to a document of fewer than 100 pages that you’re publishing yourself. Well, maybe you would. I sure as hell didn’t.

With that in mind, here are a few parting thoughts.

Get an accountability partner.

There are not a lot of things that I know for sure in this world, but here’s one. I can tell you with absolute certainty that my book would never have seen the light of day if it weren’t for Charlie Gilkey of the mostly as-yet-undiscovered Productive Flourishing. He’s my fucking guru. He runs a little semi-secret service that he calls “UnAss Yourself consulting” and without it, I would be a lot poorer right now. (Yeah, not so semi-secret anymore, is it? Sorry dude, but I promised full disclosure.)

The whole premise here is that creative types don’t often handle the whole get-off-your-ass-and-write-the-fucking-book thing very well. Charlie, on the other hand, waves his little productivity wand and makes it happen. (I have a feeling that his incredibly soothing Southern voice helps tremendously. Things just don’t seem so overwhelming when he goes all uber-calm-yes-ma’am dude on your ass.)

(SIDE NOTE FOR THE LADIES AND GAY MEN OUT THERE: I really don’t recommend looking at his picture when you’re talking to him. It’s, um, distracting. Don’t succumb. There’s plenty of time to drool when the book’s done.)

Seriously, though. Go to Charlie, go to your mom if he’s busy, go to whoever, but if you have trouble getting big projects done, you NEED someone like this in your life. Pay whatever it costs because the ROI is unmatchable.

Get someone to do what you can’t.

I was lucky to have a team of very nice people helping me with all the crap I didn’t understand and didn’t want to understand. The by now famous Dave Navarro helped with set-up stuff. My husband was instrumental in figuring out images and stuff. The point here is, you can’t do everything and you’ll waste your time trying.

If you don’t have a team of people itching to help you in exchange for you saying nice things about them on your blog and you’re not a graphic designer, you’ll want software. eCoverGenerator and eBookGenerator are the Mac Daddies in this capacity. Buying them together (which I pretty strongly recommend) will run you about $!60. (I think they have a sale on.) No self-respecting graphic designer will do it for less than triple that, and once you own the software, you can use it as many times as you want.

While I’m all for giving the graphic designers of the world extra work, if you don’t have the cash, you don’t have the cash. Invest in the software. (If you do have the cash, my mom is a graphic designer and she’ll probably do it for about a thousand bucks, depending on length. Email me and I’ll give you her info.)

Be prepared to re-release.

I have not sent out a second version of SEO School because I’ve taken it down, but if that wasn’t the case, I’d send out something spiffier. (Although if I get one more angry email from some pissed off stranger saying I’m a dirty filthy Marketing Type for taking it off the market I’ll put it back up there just to shut them up and damn the consequences.) But there will be stuff you’ll forget or screw up or whatever. A couple of my links were broken. Everybody and their mother thought the book would’ve been better if I’d had a linkable table of contents. Some of the paragraphs could’ve been laid out a little better.

If you plan to release any product or service ever, I very strongly recommend you read Nick Cernis’ One Month Launch. The first bit is about his new product — and I’ll be reviewing that soon so you can probably just skim it — but after that he gets to some very important and inspirational stuff about just shoving your stuff out there and getting on with making money. Very good stuff. Do it now. Fix it later. Gmail’s still in beta, for God’s sake. If it’s good enough for Google, it’s good enough for us.

If the things you need to change are little — broken links and stuff — you can also take an interim step and email buyers to give them corrections. Just Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) them so you don’t end up giving out everybody’s email addresses like cheap wine at a gallery opening.

Support: Objective Vs. Encouraging

If you’re anything like me at all, you’ll find your first product launch to be incredibly emotional. (If you’re more even keeled than me, that might not be the case.) For all I know, this emotionalness extends into every subsequent product but good holy Lord I hope not. Or I at least hope I get used to it.

Here’s the thought process life-cycle of product launch:

10:14 am: “This is going to change the world of ebooks. I’m going to be so fucking rich it’s ridiculous.”

10:17: “Nobody’s bought it yet.”

10:23: “OHMYGOD someone bought it.”

10:23:09: “Fuck, what if they’re the only one who buys?”

10:25: “Maybe if nobody buys through affiliate links the affiliates will think it’s THEM that sucks and not me.”

10:27: “You know what would be cool? If we sold like, ten grand worth. Do you know how much we could do with ten grand?”

10:28: “I can’t believe we’ve only sold three copies. This is bullshit. Do they not KNOW?”

10:30: “Oh my God, my book is crap.”

10:37: “YAY!!! Someone reviewed it!!!”

10:37:27: “That motherfucker said he thought the price was high. I’ll fucking kill him. I will find him and I will kill him using only my hands and a chair leg. I’m not joking. I swear to God, I’ll fucking do it.”

10:37:42: “Oh. Never mind. He said he thought it was well worth the money. That was nice. Wasn’t that nice? That was totally nice.”

I’m sure you get the idea. The fact that I am still married after all of this is a testament to my husband’s incredible patience.

The point is, the whole thing will fuck you up and that’s totally normal. You’ll need two types of people on hand. You’ll need people to hold your hand and be excited for you when you succeed or hold your hand and cry with you if the universe doesn’t recognize your genius. And you’ll need someone to tell you you’re being totally ridiculous. Neither is optional and having them be the same person is not recommended.

That’s it. That’s all I got. Fire questions if you’ve got ‘em or email me if you want. I aim to please. (OK, that’s not totally true. I am to make as much money as possible so I can spend three quarters of my waking day tipsy, but the only way I’ll get there is by pleasing. So I guess, in a roundabout way, I really do aim to please.)

By Naomi Dunford