Tour & Giveaway: Don't Write A Crappy Book! by James M. Ranson

Book Details

Book Title: Don't Write a Crappy Book by James M. Ranson
Category: Adult Non- Fiction, 210 pages
Genre: Business, Authorpreneurship
Publisher: Master Wordsmith Media, in association with Thanet House Books
Release date: Oct 1, 2018
Tour dates: Oct 8 to 31, 2018
Content Rating: PG for occasional mild swearing (hell and damn, mostly, one instance of "shitty")

Book Description

A great book can launch your business into the stratosphere. Unfortunately, most self-published business books rank somewhere between “meh” and “flaming pile of crap.” But your book doesn’t have to suck!

In “Don’t Write a Crappy Book,” editor and entrepreneur James Ranson unpacks the most common–and toxic–mistakes that first-time nonfiction authors make. Peppered with wisdom from a panel of industry experts, this book debunks the dangerous myths that can torpedo your text and offers clear, practical guidance for writing a book you’re proud of. This is the resource for the aspiring authorpreneur who wants to write and publish a book with minimum hassle and maximum results.

This book will teach you:

- How a self-published book can make or break your business (and the THREE factors that determine which it does)

- The biggest blind spots no one tells authors about (and how to look for them BEFORE it's too late)

- How to write a first book that will get positive reviews on Amazon (and why that’s a better goal than becoming a bestseller)

- When writing a business book is the right move for you (and when you should NEVER write one)

- How to self-publish on Amazon to actually get good results for your business (a lot of it happens before you even start writing!)

- What NOT to do when you’re looking for an editor (and how to find a great one)

- Why trying to write and publish a book in 90 days or less is a recipe for disaster (and why no one tells you that!)

- How to avoid do-overs, sunk costs, and other self-publishing headaches (and how to get out of them if they sneak up on you)

Stay out of the crap pile! Discover the secrets to creating a highly valuable book that will expand your influence and grow your business for years to come.

To read interviews and guest posts, please visit James M. Ranson's page on iRead Book Tours.

Guest Post

Title: A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Second Draft

The funniest experience in creating this book happened when I started synthesizing a lot of external content into what I thought was my own voice. 

I started this book by interviewing 26 other book professionals, so it wouldn’t just be me giving my own opinion. That ended up being really helpful, not just because it added a lot of insights to the book other than what I had to say, but it also supported a lot of the things I was already wanting to say. So I knew that the book was moving in a really good direction. That was really helpful for me. But some of these people I interviewed are really pretty high profile. I talked to Dave Chesson from Kindlepreneur, Zach Obront from Scribe Media, Jennie Nash from Author Accelerator, Derek Doepker, Lise Cartwright, Dale L. Roberts…lots of people who really know their stuff! And I got really excited about all of the amazing things that they were sharing with me.

So when I made my outline, I outlined it around quotes and insights from all of these brilliant people. And when I turned the outline into the first draft, I kept a lot of the quotes in that first draft. I was super stoked about all the insights I was sharing from these amazing people! Then when I sent the book out to my beta readers and my first editor, overwhelmingly what they all said was, “Yeah, James, this is great! But this is a whole bunch of other people. There’s not a whole lot of YOU in this book.”

And I immediately went, “Damn,” because they were right! What I’d been thinking of as “my book” was really a scrapbook of everyone else’s ideas, with me as something of a literary announcer for them all. I realized that I had been getting so excited about what everybody else was saying that I had frankly forgotten to make sure that this was, at root, MY book. What’s even funnier is that I actually have a chapter in my book about writing your own book rather than someone else’s. I was clearly my own biggest blind spot on that issue!

So a lot of the editing and rewriting work that I did with my first editor was going back through and finding where I could write more as myself. Anywhere I didn’t absolutely need a quote, we worked to build the other person’s insight into a larger point that I would make myself. And I felt a lot more confident in the second draft that was mostly me than I had in the first draft that wasn’t. 

I can laugh pretty hard at myself for making that mistake now, but I definitely dodged a bullet in fixing this issue before the book came out. And that’s a good lesson for any would-be author: it’s always better to get painful constructive criticism from your editor before publication than it is to get it from your readers because you didn’t hire the editor in the first place! 

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Meet the Author

James Ranson, The Master Wordsmith(TM), is a Wall-Street-Journal-bestselling editor, ghostwriter and book coach who has helped over 200 consultants, coaches, speakers and other thought leaders create high-quality books. Clients of his have gone on to sell thousands of books, receive book deals from publishing houses, and be featured in regional and national media outlets. In addition to his own clients, James is a writer and book doctor for Thanet House Books, and is on recommended professional lists for Scribe Media(formerly Book in a Box), My Word Publishing, BrightFlame Books and Authors Unite. His second book, Don’t Write A Crappy Book!, will be published on October 1, 2018. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, James lives in Atlanta, GA, with his fiancée and a very needy cat.

Connect with the Author: Website ~ Twitter ~ Facebook

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Ends Nov 7, 2018

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