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  • By Laura Schaefer

Why Haven’t You Written Your Book?


You’ve been saying it for years: “I need to write a book.” But something is stopping you, and it’s probably the fear that it’ll just take too much time. Good news: I’m here to help!

It’s true, writing a book takes some time—hours you’d rather spend with your family, time you need to devote to working or building your business. Nevertheless, if a project or goal is important to you, you’ll make time for it. And your book is important. That’s why the idea keeps tickling you brain, month after month, year after year. You have something important to say, and an incredible amount of value to give. You can’t hold it in any longer. Moreover, having a book will help you build your brand and establish relationships with the people you want to help.

Writing a book is a supremely worthy endeavor.

Fortunately, it doesn’t take NEARLY as much time as you think it will. You can have a whole book completed, albeit a short one, in as few as 15-20 hours and as little as one month. Don’t believe me? Well, here’s how this process would look in real life:

1. Project kick-off (1 hour): You and I speak on the phone or meet in person. We talk about your book, your audience, your goals and your timeline. We bat around several chapter ideas. After that call, I put together a project proposal for you and work to create a preliminary table of contents.

2. Voice memos: (30 minutes per day for 2-3 weeks for a total of 10 hours): You record your thoughts for me using your phone. This can be done over your morning coffee on the porch, during your commute, or even over your lunch hour. This is where you explain the main points you’d like to convey and tell me the stories that fully illustrate your ideas. Send the voice memos to me via email.

Another option for this portion of the project is to simply write out everything for me in a rough draft or in simple bullet points. I’ll clean it up and organize.

3. Initial draft review (2-3 hours): After I receive all of your voice memos or written materials, it’s my job to transcribe or make sense of them. I organize your ideas and write the book. I maintain your unique voice and do the necessary research to ensure everything flows. Trained as a writer for the web, I prefer to create short paragraphs and lots of subheads. Trust me, readers like subheads.

Once I’ve written the first draft of your book, you’ll need to devote 2-3 hours to reviewing my work and answering the questions I have about the material. For example, perhaps you started telling a story and didn’t quite finish it. It’s my job to advocate for the reader to ensure every point makes sense and every story you’ve told has a clear resolution. Each sentence should fit into the larger thesis—main argument—of the book.

4. Final draft review (1-2 hours): After integrating your feedback and answers, I complete the final draft of your book and copyedit the text. You’ll want to review this final draft, then take the time to either post your book to Amazon’s self-publishing platform (which is free and easy to do) or use it to grow your mailing list or provide value to your customers as a free gift.

Now that I’ve allayed your fears about time, let’s talk about cost. It’s true that hiring an experienced ghostwriter for a full-length 50,000-word+ manuscript will cost between $25,000 and $100,000. However, that's not the full story.

I find I enjoy working on shorter projects and ebooks in the 10,000 to 25,000-word count range (this equates to 35-70 pages). Because these projects are so much shorter and generally don’t require in-depth research, my rates are more affordable than you may imagine. Let’s talk! You could have your book written in just three months.

You’ll love the process and the result so much, we’ll be starting your second and third book before you know it.

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