Tag Archive for: writing

7 steps toward picking your self-published financial book’s formats and formatter

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book cover: Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients

I learned some lessons as I struggled through getting my book formatted.

When you self publish your book, you get more control over the final product. The downside? You must sink time and money into the production process, starting with choosing your book’s formats and formatter. I learned firsthand about this when I published Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients.

So many format choices

Do you want to publish electronically, produce a physical product, or do both?

Electronic formats include PDFs; formatting for the most popular e-readers, the Kindle and the Nook, and many other less widely used formats. As for physical producers, you can choose between paperback and hardcover as well as print-on-demand vs. printing and buying a batch of books before you sell them. The choices can feel overwhelming.

Step 1. Ask readers for their preferences

In the beginning, I thought I’d publish Financial Blogging as an e-book. After all, they’re the wave of the future. I figured I’m a dinosaur in my preference for printed books.

However, I dutifully surveyed my social media connections after a savvy friend suggested I ask whether people read “how to” books as e-books, PDFs, or printed books. I was surprised by the enthusiasm expressed for printed books.

Step 2. Consider your book’s demands

The nature of your book may influence its format. For example, an interactive book won’t work if it’s printed on paper.

In my case, my book included multi-page worksheets and special layouts that work best on 81/2” x 11″ paper. They wouldn’t display well on e-reader screens. This is what drove my decision to produce two versions of my book—PDF and print-on-demand paperback—formatted with 81/2” x 11″ pages.

Step 3. Decide on DIY vs. outsourcing

It’s possible to do it yourself, especially if you’re creating a text-only mini e-book PDF. My annual Investment Writing Top Tips compilation in PDF format is a DIY job, except for the professionally designed cover.

E-books are more complicated. I had my virtual assistant convert Investment Writing Top Tips 2012 to the Kindle and Nook formats following the instructions the the string of blog posts by Guido Henkel that starts with “Take pride in your ebook formatting.” It took her roughly 9.5 hours to complete.

You can also try automated formatting, following the instructions on Kindle Direct Publishing or Nook Press for the Nook. However, you may run into format glitches. Plus, the quality of your layout in the e-book will be limited to the quality of the layout and coding in your original.

I’m not an expert on the DIY approach, so please do research before you pursue this approach.

If you’re a busy financial professional, you should outsource. Fighting with formatting wastes your valuable time.

Step 4. Ask for recommendations

I’m a big believer in the power of recommendations. However, I suggest that you get specific in your recommendation request. Tell your colleagues the formats you’re targeting and whether your book involves any challenges, such as the inclusion of images or other complex formatting.

Step 5. Investigate pricing and turnaround times

Pricing varies greatly for formatting your book. The ultimate price will depend on factors including:

  • Your page count
  • Special formatting requirements
  • The need to convert from one format to another—for example, my designer prefers to format for print publication before he converts to an e-book format
  • How many edits or other changes you make after you submit your manuscript for formatting
  • Timing—if you have a rush job, your designer may charge a premium price
  • Your book cover requirements—prices vary greatly depending on your source of cover images
  • Nature of services included—the designer I initially hired included consulting on book page size, pricing, and other marketing services in her flat price, but most designers don’t offer such services or charge a la carte.

You may find it hard to compare designers’ price estimates for your book. In my experience, few designers quote flat fees that include everything you want. Instead, they may say $x per page and $y per hour for services such as inserting images or designing graphics.

In “The Real Costs of Self-Publishing a Book,” Miral Sattar says you can pay $150-$3,500 for cover design and from $0-$2,500+ for print and e-book formatting.

By the way, if you pick a book formatter who won’t design your book’s cover, you can pick up tips from “Your Book Cover is Like a Highway Billboard” by Scott Lorenz.

Step 6. Ask for references and samples

If I had been more diligent about Step 6, perhaps I could have avoided my book designer fiasco in which my designer quit partway through the design process because she wasn’t up to formatting mind maps and sidebars.

You should look at samples of work your designer has done in your genre and with formatting challenges such as photos and graphs. Do you like how they look? Also, ask for references so you can learn about the designer’s responsiveness and other characteristics.

However, even good references are no guarantee. After all, nobody gives out names of people who disliked his or her work. In my case, my initial mistake stemmed from relying on the assessment of a consultant who’d had great experiences with the designer who let me down.

What’s the worst that can happen?

I had a book fiasco. My book designer quit without warning, making it impossible for me to launch my book at my May 2013 flurry of speaking engagements. That was a big disappointment.

However, with the help of my book consultant, I hired Jerry Dorris of AuthorSupport.com to design my book’s cover and interior. He did an amazing job. His design is far superior to that of my original designer. My book came out three months later than planned, but it wasn’t the end of the world.

Step 7. Take the big leap

Once you complete Steps 1 to 6, it’s time to hire your designer and move closer to sharing your book with the world. But you have more work to do.

In a future post, I’ll write about managing the book design process.

 

If you’d like to see the book design I ended up with, check out Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients. You can peek inside the book on Amazon to see the great work Jerry did on the interior design.

 

Finding your article’s focus with Roy Peter Clark

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Identifying their focus is one of the biggest challenges for many of my blogging class students. I try to help them by asking “What problem do you solve for your readers?” I found additional helpful techniques in the “I don’t know what my story is really about” chapter of Roy Peter Clark’s Help! for Writers: 210 Solutions to the Problems Every Writer Faces. I discuss some of them in this post.

1. “Write a six-word theme statement.”

If your idea requires more than six words, it may be too big. A six-word theme may still be too broad. For example, consider “More women than men reach ninety,” one of Clark’s sample themes. However, at least it provides a starting point.

My theme for this blog post is “Tips to focus your articles.”

There are two ways to use your theme. First, as inspiration for your article. Write to explain your theme.

Second, use it to narrow your article. Pare away anything that doesn’t relate to your theme.

2. “Cut the elements least supportive of your focus.”

Use your best material and lose the rest. As Clark says,

Not all evidence is equal. If you can identify the weakest evidence, what is left—your strongest stuff—can support a sharp focus.

The saying “less is more” often applies to articles, blog posts, and more. By deleting flabby evidence, you sharpen your main focus.

Clark lists eight characteristics that make evidence weak. Two of them often apply to financial pieces.

  1. “It will appear in the story only because of your interest in it.”
  2. “It is impossible to write it clearly and quickly for a general audience.”
The next time you read a poorly written post, ask yourself if it suffers from #1 or #2.
……  

3. Use the funnel

Putting your ideas through a metaphorical funnel may also help. As Clark suggests on his book’s back cover:

See your work in the form of a funnel. You pour everything in at the top, but as the funnel narrows, you must become more selective, reaching a point where you can leave things out with confidence.

Alternatively, think of yourself as a sculptor with a block of marble. Only by cutting away stone can you reveal your masterpiece.

How do YOU find your focus?

There are many ways to identify the focus of an article, blog post, or other written communication. What’s your favorite technique?

 

 

Dear husband, please stop

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You can learn a writing lesson from my dear husband.

It drives me crazy when he says to a restaurant’s hostess, “You don’t have a table for two, do you?”

I nag him afterwards, saying “Ask a positive question, not a negative one! It’s easier for the listener to understand what you want.”

The “go positive, not negative” rule applies to statements as well as questions.

Here’s an example of a negative statement that sticks in my mind due to my having earned a Ph.D. in Japanese history.

“The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage…”

This is how the Japanese emperor announced in 1945 that Japan had lost the war. Did you understand that?

The Japanese prefer roundabout sentences. Americans do not.

Simplify and clarify to write better

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how to not write bad ben yagoda“The road to not writing badly starts with simplifying and clarifying,” wrote Ben Yagoda in “In Writing, First Do No Harm.” Yagoda is the author of How to Not Write Bad: The Most Common Writing Problems and How to Avoid Them.

Here are some steps you can take to apply Yagoda’s advice to your writing:

  1. Use the first-sentence check method to make sure your article flows logically.
  2. Ask yourself if every sentence of every paragraph supports the paragraph’s topic sentence.
  3. Shorten your sentences.
  4. Delete excess words.
  5. Replace jargon with plain English.
  6. Test your writing on a member of your target audience.

 

Bust the clutter in your writing!

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My writing is better organized than my personal possessions, so I sometimes read books about organizing. But I unexpectedly found an insight for writers in Julie Morgenstern’s SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life.

Here’s the quote that caught my eye:

Something doesn’t have to be disorganized to be clutter. A perfectly arranged dresser filled with clothes you haven’t worn in years is still clutter.

The same goes for writing. Perfectly punctuated, grammatically correct content that is irrelevant to your readers is useless. Toss it.

For example, let’s assume you’ve written a compelling, plain-English blog post about the need to use low-cost mutual funds or exchange-traded funds (ETFs). This post won’t benefit from a long, technical explanation of the origin of ETFs. You may be intrigued by the topic, but your readers won’t give a darn.

Yes, I know you may be emotionally attached to that content. After all, you probably slaved over it. But it’s not doing anyone any good. Not you, nor your readers.

Of course this is easier said than done. I’ve been reading books about clutter for years, and I’m only slowly seeing improvements at home. However, every little bit helps.

Image courtesy of Bill Longshaw / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

“Turn signals” and good writing

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“Use ‘turn signals’ to guide your reader from sentence to sentence,” suggests Kenneth W. Davis  in The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course: Business Writing and Communication (p. 24).

I like Davis’ analogy, but I think it’s even more important to apply it at a higher level than sentences. Every time your article, blog post, or other written communication changes direction, you should signal that to your readers.

Two key “turn signals” for writers are headings and topic sentences.

Headings show that a new section, typically running more than one paragraph in length, has started.

A topic sentence is the first sentence of a paragraph. It sums up or introduces the topic of the paragraph that follows.

Here’s a test to see if you’re using a writer’s turn signals effectively. Read out loud your headings and topic sentences in the order in which they appear. If a listener can grasp the gist of your argument from them, you’ve done your job.

Let’s submit this blog post to the test.

  • “Use ‘turn signals’ to guide your reader from sentence to sentence,” suggests Kenneth W. Davis  in the McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course: Business Writing and Communication (p. 24).
  • I like Davis’ analogy, but I think it’s even more important to apply it at a higher level than sentences.
  • Two key “turn signals” for writers are headings and topic sentences.
  • Headings show that a new section, typically running more than one paragraph in length, has started.
  • A topic sentence is the first sentence of a paragraph.
  • Here’s a test to see if you’re using a writer’s turn signals effectively.

What do you think? Do turn signals help?

 

Blog post vs. white paper: How do you decide?

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An Iranian watercolor struck me as a way to show the difference between a blog post topic and a white paper topic.

“A School Scene,” which you see in the photo above, is beautiful. But it has too much going on to be a blog post.

Blog posts should focus tightly on one topic. Like the painting section below, which shows three men sitting below a tree.

A white paper is the longest piece most advisors will write. Its length means it might be able to accommodate the entire painting.

Like a blog post, a white paper should focus on a single theme. However, it offers more opportunities for depth and diversions.

In a white paper, the painting section in the upper right-hand corner would dominate. You’d work in the other areas of the painting to the extent they support the dominant section’s theme. An area with a weak, yet useful connection might become a sidebar, isolated in a box so it wouldn’t disrupt the main argument’s flow.

Some of the decorative elements in this painting might be too much for a white paper. They might be appropriate for a scholarly article, fiction, or a full-length book.

If this analogy helped you, please comment

Sometimes pictures make it easier to understand concepts normally explained using words. Did these two pictures help you? Do you have an image that helps you write better? Please share.

If your firm needs help with writing or editing white papers, please contact me. To learn more about what makes for a great white paper, read “White paper marketing: Walk a fine line.”

 

Focus your blog post or lose your readers

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“I’m trying to frame the hawk,” said my husband pointing

My husband's best shot of the hawk

My husband’s best shot of the hawk

our camera at a spot high above the Cape Cod Rail Trail. He didn’t want a teeny-tiny bird image to get lost in a big landscape. His comment made me think about how bloggers need to do something similar.

A photo in which a hawk is a tiny speck won’t draw the viewer’s eye. Similarly, a blog post that deals in generalities, and fails to get specific, will lose readers.

Hawks and financial bloggers

What might this mean for a financial blogger?

For example, you can’t cover all of international investing—the entire “sky”—in a single blog post. Instead, focus on one “hawk,” such as the role of non-US stocks in a portfolio or how developed-market stocks differ from emerging-market stocks.

Need help finding the hawk in your blog post?

If you have a hard time finding the focus of your blog posts, you’ll benefit from my blogging class for financial advisors, investment and wealth managers, and the professionals who support them. Check out “How to Write Blog Posts People Will Read: A 5-Lesson Class for Financial Advisors.”

 

 

Blog like a Sasanian

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You want to distinguish yourself from other advisors. One way you can achieve this in your blog posts is to learn a

Sasanian coin 1

Sasanian coin 2–if my photos were better, you could contrast this crown with the other

lesson from the Sasanian kings of ancient Iran, as I did when I visited “Feast Your Eyes: A Taste for Luxury in Ancient Iran” at the Sackler Museum in Washington, D.C.

Sasanian kings put their images on coins. To ensure that one coin didn’t look like another, each king adopted a distinctly shaped crown.

You can put on a metaphorical crown by showing some personality in your blog posts. This will ensure that no one confuses your blog posts – your metaphorical coins – with anyone else.

If you don’t know how to inject personality into your posts, check out my two posts on the topic, “How to add personality and warmth to your financial writing: Part one” and “How to add personality and warmth to your financial writing: Part two.”

Guest post: “Peter Lynch Went Grocery Shopping With Me At Whole Foods The Other Day”

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I chuckled, and then I thought, I must ask this author to guest-blog for me, after I heard some of the blog post titles−for example, “How A Threesome Can Improve Your Retirement“− created by Ted Jenkin, co-CEO and founder of oXYGen Financial. I’m glad his co-CEO Kile Lewis introduced us at an FPA Experience cocktail party so Ted can share with you his ideas about how to come up with catchy titles.

Peter Lynch Went Grocery Shopping With Me

At Whole Foods The Other Day

By Ted Jenkin

For the past three years, I have been an avid personal finance blogger discussing everything from managing your wealth to mitigating your tax liability. No matter how substantive the topics I wrote about in the personal finance sector, the big question was whether someone would actually read my content. As bloggers, we often believe that our most recent post will change the lives of millions, but in reality only a handful of people may click through your e-mailed link to read your weekly blog post. The art of creating effective titles is incredibly important because if your title and opening paragraph are catchy and interesting, your readers are more inclined to check out the rest of the article.

Take the title I opened up with in this article. Did it make you at least a little bit curious about what happened when Peter Lynch went grocery shopping with me at Whole Foods the other day? Or did you think that it couldn’t possibly be true that he actually went grocery shopping with me? Perhaps I won some sort of investment contest to get the great Peter Lynch to go grocery shopping with me. In all seriousness, what I would have written about in an article like this where I threw a catchy title like that at you is how picking stocks in companies you know is better than choosing ones that you don’t know. The article would have gone on to discuss the importance of believing in the brands you buy, and said that perhaps some of your next best stock buys are the very items that you put in your grocery cart when you go to the market. It worked 30 years ago for Peter Lynch in his prime and that philosophy probably wouldn’t be a bad one to apply in today’s rocky stock market environment.

So here are three tips from one blogger to another about my thoughts on how to write catchy titles:

  1. THINK THE ENQUIRER– As the saying goes, “Enquiring minds want to know.” But it’s more like people want the dirty laundry gossip about what is going on in the lives of others. What the National Enquirer does in a most brilliant fashion is to deliver hard-hitting titles that make you want to pick up a copy at the store while checking out your groceries. Top stories during the week that I wrote this post included LATIFAH WILL DROP LESBIAN CONFESSION ON LIVE-TV, MILEY CRUSHING FOR PORN STAR!, and IS IT TRUE WHAT THEY’RE SAYING ABOUT DIANE SAWYER, BOOZY or BEAT? If you saw Diane Sawyer after the election, you surely might read the Boozy or Beat article. I know I would pay a $1.00 just to check that one out. The first point of writing good lead-ins to your blog posts is to make sure you hit your audience hard with something that may get them engaged in the first paragraph.
  2. LATE NIGHT GOOGLING– The second idea behind writing smart headlines for your blogs is to think about how people may go about searching for your content. One of the interesting things about human beings when they begin to Google is often they aren’t 100% certain what they are really looking for when they begin searching on Google. So, using intros in your headlines with phrases like “How To,” “Top 10,” and “Big Mistakes” are all beginnings to how a person may search for content. Remember that Google likes to index popular searches so try typing in a few different phrases around the content of the article you are writing to grab some ideas. This may also allow your article to rise to page one more quickly within a Google search.
  3. SEX SELLS- Whether or not you like to admit it, everyone quickly perks up when they see something hot and steamy. This is why public sex scandals and extracurricular activities become so viral in the news we read every day. How many of you quickly homed in on the recent story of David Petraeus, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, getting busted for having an extramarital affair? Would you open an article with the headline that read, “CIA Director Wants More Than Just A Google Hangout?” I recently incorporated a great “sex sells” headline in an article I wrote about pensions: “How A Threesome Can Improve Your Retirement.“ The title raised some eyebrows but got my emails more than a 50% open rate.

If you are a frequent blogger, writing ongoing content can be a challenging process especially when you’ve written more than 500 to 1,000 posts. Sometimes, if you can create yourself a juicy headline it can actually spur on the creative writing process to produce a really high quality piece of content your readers will enjoy. You don’t have to draw people in by telling them you were abducted by space aliens, but it doesn’t hurt to drop a little Kim Kardashian or Britney Spears . . . As long as you aren’t exposing any body parts 🙂

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oXYGen Financial, Inc. co-CEO Ted Jenkin is one of the foremost knowledgeable professionals in giving financial advice to the X and Y Generation.

TED JENKIN IS SECURITIES LICENSED THROUGH INVESTACORP, INC. A REGISTERED BROKER/DEALER MEMBER FINRA, SIPC. ADVISORY SERVICES OFFERED THROUGH INVESTACORP ADVISORY SERVICES, INC. A SEC REGISTERED INVESTMENT ADVISORY FIRM. Linked sites are strictly provided as a courtesy. Investacorp, Inc., and its affiliates, do not guarantee, approve nor endorse the information or products available at these sites nor do links indicate any association with or endorsement of the linked sites by Investacorp, Inc. and its affiliates.