Your Six-Figure Book Journey

Two things.

First, I know a lot of those people and companies — either personally or by reputation. I’ve worked with a few of them, and I’ve worked for several more. I know what they value, how they work, how they define success for their clients, and so on. And I will tell you right now that as good and valuable as many of their services can be for some business authors, they do not serve everyone. There’s a pretty big hole that they don’t serve, in fact — and a big reason I’m here is to help the people who don’t fit well with them. That’s why my packages are slow and thoughtful rather than fast and frenetic, why they focus on business growth rather than Amazon sales, why they serve a handful of authors at a time instead of hundreds, and why they help you write your own book rather than writing it for you (just to name a few differences).

And second, it’s a sad truth that a lot of companies and coaches out there simply don’t prioritize the quality of the books they help authors like you create. Instead, they prioritize how many authors they can drive through their systems, how famous their founders can get, or how high their annual revenue can rise. And I will tell you straight up: none of those things matter to me. Yes, this business affords me a lifestyle I love, but I couldn’t care less about hitting 1000 clients or $20 million in revenue, because to me those things mean sacrificing my ability to personally help biz owners like you write truly excellent books. My ONLY priority is making sure your book is fucking awesome. Everything else serves that goal. And not everyone else in this industry can say that.

For real though, if one of those other companies or coaches feels great to you, then go work with them! But if not, know that with me you won’t get a watered-down copy-and-paste version of any of them, or a flashy guru who cares more about your credit card number than your final text. You’ll get, as Monty Python famously put it, something completely different.

Every book mentorship package takes you from the first idea and strategy all the way through a finished, published book. Here’s what that looks like:

• 3 training calls with me per month (weekly for the first three weeks; the fourth week is reserved for deep work on your own)
• 3 half-day virtual strategy retreats (one each for writing, rewriting, and marketing)
• Access to me via a private Slack channel 
• Direct feedback/editing from me at 4 different points in the writing process (completed outline, completed first draft, completed rewrite, final review)
• Peer feedback from 6-12 people in your audience and/or industry
• A copy and proof pass from an editor who isn’t me (and thus will see the text through fresh eyes)
• Cover and interior layout done for you
• Guidance in writing your title, subtitle, book description, marketing pages and author bio 
• Guidance in creating your book’s bonus material, opt-in and upsell products
• Intro to Morgan James Publishing and work alongside their publishing team to publish and distribute your book if they pick it up; full done-for-you self-publishing package if they don’t
• 1:1 marketing strategy consultation for your book’s first year of publication

The investment for this package is $25,000. Payment can be made in full up front, or via a $5,000 deposit up front and the remainder in installments over the next 12 months.

• Longer weekly calls with me (up to 3 hours)
• Done-with-you book marketing, featuring direct guidance on choosing and implementing the right marketing tactics for your book
• Done-for-you book marketing, where an experienced book marketing expert implements those tactics for you
• Done-for-you audiobook creation, including narration, production, and publication
• Companion workbook to go with your book 
• Online course to go with your book
• Done-for-you book description, marketing pages and author bio
• Done-for-you bonus material, opt-in and upsell products
• Done-for-you professional PR and media campaign
• In-person strategy and writing retreats with me in Atlanta (lodging and food included)

So you get to choose your own adventure! Depending on what you add on, the investment can range up to $75,000. Payment can be made in full up front, or via a $10,000 deposit up front and the remainder in installments over the next 12 months.

There is an agreement that goes with all of my packages that says, in essence, that if you hold up your end, I’ll hold up mine. If you do the work and put in the effort to complete your book, I will work just as hard to support you and make sure you’re happy with your results. So in that sense, there is a satisfaction guarantee.

That being said, the nature of my services is such that you’ll be paying for my time, expertise and support more than anything else (not to mention the time, expertise, and effort of other contractors). So all fees paid for my packages, programs and consulting services are non-refundable.

Not all of it! Trust me, you do NOT want me designing your book cover. 😉 And by the time we’ve both spent several months looking at your text, we’ll be too close to it to miss obvious typos — hence the second editor I mentioned. The point is, my strengths lie in helping you write an amazing final draft. But just having a final draft doesn’t help you make money.

So I’ve partnered with some of the most qualified, most experienced, and most fun book professionals I know to make sure that you get the editing, design, publishing and marketing guidance you need to not only WRITE your book, but also publish and monetize it. These awesome people work with us throughout the process, both during and after you write your drafts, so that by the time the book text is ready to go, everything else about your book is ready, too.

The weekly calls are for training and mentorship, so their first priority will be to teach you how to do that week’s book creation task–for example, how to craft your outline or how to rewrite based on peer feedback. We will also spend time reviewing writing assignments such as your outline or the next chapter of your draft.

At higher levels of mentorship, weekly calls will also include dedicated coworking time. You can use this time as dedicated space to write, additional review and discussion time with me, and/or time to ask me questions and pick my brain about the process.

There are three call lengths you can choose from in your mentorship package:

• 45 minutes (30min teaching or review, 15min Q&A)
• 90 minutes (30min teaching or review, 15min Q&A, 45min coworking)
• 3 hours (30min teaching or review, 30min Q&A, 2 hours coworking)

All calls take place via Zoom, and are recorded for your future reference.

There are two answers to this question: a short one and a longer one.

The short answer is, as they used to say in Texas, the only way to drive cattle fast is slowly.

The longer answer is that the biggest problem I see with every single book creation and self-publishing program on the market today is they’re all trying to go too damn fast. Here’s why that’s a problem:

• Writing a great book requires deep thought, and you can’t think deeply in a hurry.
• Writing a great book also requires outlining, organizing, rewriting, revising, editing, and polishing…all of which take time, and none of which work well when you’re rushed. (Most programs reduce outlining to a couple hours, editing to a couple weeks, and don’t talk about rewriting or revising at all!)
• A great book is not a short-term project, it’s a long-term one — not just in how long it takes to write, but in how long you’ll use it to grow your business after it’s published. A few months more or less now could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars more or less over the next ten years.
• Perhaps most importantly, putting speed first puts quality second. The faster you try to go, the more mistakes you’re likely to make and the more corners you’ll be tempted to cut…and the crappier the final book will be.

Now to be clear, all of my packages have a schedule, and believe me, that schedule is plenty aggressive. You won’t have time to worry about how long things are taking, because you’ll be too busy working on the aspects of a heroic book that shorter programs don’t cover. And there’s plenty of urgency around sticking to that schedule and staying on task.

But if just getting the book done in the time it takes to rewatch all 14 episodes of Firefly (too soon?) is your goal, we won’t work well together.

The 11 months of our work together are divided into three major phases: the first draft phase, the revision and editing phase, and the design, publishing and marketing phase. Each of these phases runs for three months, giving us approx. 90 days to achieve the major objective of that phase. So for example, in the first draft phase, we will go through the strategizing, brainstorming, outlining, and writing to get you a completed first draft within those three months.

Now let’s do some quick math: three phases of three months each is nine months, not 11. So what’s up with the other two months?

Those two months are what I like to call intermission months, where you as the author get to take a break from writing or rewriting, clear your head, check back in with your business, and re-energize for the next phase of the process. The first intermission month comes between phases 1 and 2, the second between phases 2 and 3, and both of them give you a break from weekly training calls and head-down writing work.

But don’t worry, you’re not paying me for two months of doing nothing! Each of these intermission months includes vital parts of the book creation experience — they just don’t happen to be writing-related! The first intermission month is all about getting valuable feedback on your book from the most important people in your orbit — colleagues, peers, mentors, clients, and audience members. This powerful feedback will kickstart the rewriting and revising phase of the project. The second intermission month is dedicated to working with an external editor to put a final polish on your text — which gets it ready for interior design and the technical side of publication.

So to put all of this together, the 11 months alternate between three months of focused work and one month of active recovery, so your heroic book journey is both challenging and energizing.

Writing a heroic book is the equivalent of getting a part-time job or taking on an active side hustle. Between weekly calls and office hours with me, and individual work on your own, you’ll likely put in 5-10 hours a week. During heavy writing times, you may put in more; during lighter, more feedback-oriented times, you may put in less. And every author works at a different pace, so the exact number of hours you need will depend partially on you.

It is possible to write a great book if you’re really busy. You’ll still be running your business while we work together, after all. But if your business and/or life are leaving you no bandwidth for additional projects (or for things like sleep, relaxation, hobbies, and family time), I’d encourage you to fix that issue before starting a book project.

I did used to ghostwrite, but I don’t anymore. (I got majorly burned out on it.) So if that’s what you’re looking for, I’m not your guy — in fact, I’m here specifically for the business authors who DON’T want to use a ghostwriter, who want to stay hands-on and work with a great partner rather than dropping the whole task on someone else’s desk.

If a ghostwriter is really what you’re looking for, though, I’d recommend three excellent business ghosts I know: Joshua Lisec (entrepreneurswordsmith.com), Michelle Stampe (blackhillsfreelance.com), and Derek Lewis (dereklewis.com). All three are talented, hardworking, experienced, and trustworthy. Drop my name, and they’ll give you a crisp high-five.

I gotta be honest…I used to hate this idea. “Speaking your book” has traditionally been pitched as a “let’s make the writing process stupid easy” hack, a way to write a book without actually doing any work. Most companies and experts who teach this technique WAY oversimplify it. They say that all you need to do is talk for a few hours into a voice recorder, get that recording transcribed, and publish that transcript as your book. And in the words of Han Solo, “that’s not how the Force works!”

Speaking your book doesn’t actually create a finished draft. It creates a long, conversational mess of words that needs a LOT of editing to turn it into a readable first draft — and that’s before any of the peer feedback and rewriting and editing that will turn it into a final draft. So while speaking may save some time and effort on the front end, it creates a hell of a lot more work on the back end. So for a long time, I was 110% against this idea of “speaking your book.”

But here’s the thing. Some authors need to speak their books rather than write them due to accessibility issues. Others are really good at speaking and want to speak rather than write. And some simply feel like writing 50,000 words isn’t workable for them, that they know themselves well enough to know that if they have to sit down and write, they just won’t do it. I’ve learned there’s a lot of potential value in speaking your book if you feel like that’s the best way for you to work.

So I’ll tell you what: if you want to speak your book when you work with me, you can…as long as you turn the transcriptions into readable draft content yourself. I’m not going to do it for you. But as long as you complete your draft assignments on schedule, you can write or speak, whichever works better for you. So the choice is yours. Sound good?

One of the core values of this business is making sure every author gets WAY more personal attention and direct guidance than they can get anywhere else. So I only work with 6-8 authors at at time, to make sure that each one not only gets everything they need from me, but feels like I’m here to help them more than to run 1000 authors through my system or build an eight-figure company.

Right now I only work with authors 1:1, but I am planning on building out group mentorship packages in the future (once I figure out how to do that while maintaining high levels of personal attention). If you really like the group package idea, feel free to sign up here to be the first people I tell when those packages are ready!