Just Write Something Remarkable

Recently I went down a rabbit hole on marketing. This time, I was trying to understand the strategy or tactics or whatever you want to call it—rules maybe?—to marketing from Seth Godin.

Years ago I bought his book This Is Marketing—an unassuming small orange book that made me feel smart for the purchase. I needed help understanding marketing and so I picked up a copy and Barnes and Noble and put it on my bookshelf. A few times I’ve picked it up to read, but I never got very far.

Most recently, I took another approach. I started watching interviews with Seth where he explains his five steps to marketing and what he means by the term strategy. I’ll be honest that I’m still a little confused on what he means by strategy—it’s definitely not tactics—but I think I’m beginning to understand what he thinks I should do to market my books.

This year I decided that to was going to write several short books and I’ve done that. I also planned to sell those books, but I haven’t had much success there. Hence, my trip down the rabbit hole.

So, how can I, as a struggling self-published author, market my books using advice from Seth Godin? Here is what I learned. 

First, I need to write books worth writing about. They need to be good! He says there is no point in producing mediocre products. So, assuming my two new books are any good, and I think they are, I am ready to move onto the next step.

Next, I should identify who my book is for. Let’s take my poetry memoir for example. In May, I published “A Father at Forty.” It’s the story of the year I turned 40 and my firth child was born told through poetry. I’m pretty proud of it, but so far I’ve only sold a copy to my parents.

I wrote it for fathers and parents like me. Whenever I have shared my poems, people have really responded. I thought other parents would be able to relate and see themselves in the poems and stories.

That’s my market.

Godin explains that you aren’t really trying to convince your market of anything. You want to find someone who already believes they need your product. You won’t have to convince them. You just need to help them to see that it’s what they already want.

 Next, according to Godin, I need to wrap it up in a story. In my search I’ve also read several marketing books from Donald Miller. His entire business has evolved from teaching people who to tell stories about their products. I took notes and promptly forgot all the ideas I had as I read the books. Now that I’m trying to figure out how to tell the story of my books, I’m reminded of Donald Miller.

Assuming I figure that step out, I’ll then need to spread the word about my books and keep doing it. But here Godin differs from popular wisdom. He doesn’t use social media. His recommendation isn’t even to buy ads. He feels that customers, or word of mouth, should do the marketing for me.

If I am able to effect my wrap up my books into a story that provides value to my readers, the hope is that they will then pass that story along to others. That’s marketing. 

It makes sense, but it also sounds like I’m going to need a lot of patience. I need to tell the story of my books over and over again to get the ball rolling and then ride the momentum that will come through word of mouth marketing.

I had originally planned on pushing my book for Fathers Day so people who use it as a gift for their dads, but I failed to do that. I tried to read and share poems from my books. That had a little momentum, but it fizzled out fast. Now, I need to build up that momentum again.

If I understand Godin correctly, I need to package my book (or parts of my book) in a way that removes as much friction as possible. I need to help get it into the metaphorical hands of my market so they can share it with others. And I need to keep doing it indefinitely.

It sounds good on paper. It sounds good in my head. I might even have the motivation to try. I hope I can get the motivation to be patient enough for it to work.

Oh, and if you are interested in checking out my poetic memoir on parenting, A Father at Forty, you can check it out here. Thanks for reading!

A Father at Forty: Poems and Stories

https://a.co/d/5jyHsLl

I started to post online about my upcoming book, Co-Teaching with Robots: Being Human in the AI Assisted Classroom, but I wasn’t prepared to talk to people in person about it.

Knowing how I have reacted in the past to these sorts of conversations, I should have expected it. I am horrible about talking about these things.

I’ll have friends and acquaintances ask me about something I’ve posted and I get incredibly uncomfortable. I try to minimize what I’m doing and I try to end the conversation as quickly as possible. I don’t know if I feel like I’m boring them or if I really am afraid to talk about my writing.

Are you the same way? Are you afraid to talk to friends, family, or even strangers about what you write?

Maybe I’m afraid of sharing my work and feeling rejected if they are bored by it or maybe I am really just uncomfortable with the attention.

There is this safety in sharing thoughts and ideas online. I have time to think about what I am going to say (or not say). I can choose when to login or not to login. I don’t have to be in the room with someone as they read what I’ve posted.

It’s much more intense to have a conversation about my book on AI when someone asks me about it.

And more and more that keeps happening. It is nice to have so many people responding to my work, but I also realize that not every book I write on their the next year is going to have the same audience, much less my friends and family.

This first book is for teachers. If you aren’t a teacher, then you really aren’t the target audience for it. It doesn’t mean you couldn’t or shouldn’t read it, but it’s not for you.

How do you talk to someone about a topic that you know they don’t NEED to know about?

And maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I’m just uncomfortable, because I expect them to only care about the topics I think they care about.

Whether we think we are talking to much, we don’t have anything interesting to say, or we’re just anxious, we need to practice talking about what we write. We need to believe in what we write. We need to trust that others might be interested in what we have to say.

If we don’t, we’ll never get passed these self-imposed barriers that stop us from connecting with each other. We can’t market that way. We can’t grow as authors if we live in fear of someone actually being interested in our work.

I’m going to work on this. I might even role play so that I am prepared when the opportunity arises. You might consider doing the same. I hope for your sake, you do better than me.

Good luck out there! I’ll see you next week.

—Jacob

At the beginning of this week, I started to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I made a list of all of the chapters that I needed to finish and I planned out the days to complete them. As I checked each box off, I started to gain motivation and before I knew it, I only had two chapters left.

Yesterday, I finished those two chapters and now I have a complete rough draft.

Now what?

I could take a victory lap and pat myself on the back. I think that’s important, but my real goal isn’t to write just a book in a month. My goal is to write a book a month for at least a year.

I’m a week ahead of schedule. Kind of two weeks actually, because I gave myself five weeks for this first book.

I have mixed emotions as I scan the horizon from here.

There is a part of me that wants to plow ahead and take advantage of the lead I’ve given myself.

There is another part that is worried about burning myself out if I don’t pace myself.

What would you do if you were in my shoes? You’ve completed a big step in a project. You’re a head of schedule, but there is still a lot left to do. What would you do?

As I walked to work this morning, I asked myself what I wanted to do next. I have a very detailed plan in place, but it is a tentative plan. I thought I could start to work on revising my book or I could do the more fun project and start to outline the next book. That would mean I would need to commit to which book would be next.

My original plan was to write the second book in my series on Co-Teaching with Robots (teaching with AI). But there is another part of me that thinks it might be invigorating to switch gears.

I could jump ahead in the schedule or throw my plan out the window altogether.

Then, I start to ask myself why I want to change my plan already. What was wrong with the plan? Am I afraid that I’ll lose momentum again.

The second week of this project had several dips in motivation. Maybe I’m just afraid that next week I’ll run out of gas because I made the wrong decision.

I’m conflicted.

Part of this project is to challenge myself to do new things—to improve my writing—to challenge myself. Another part of this project is to actually make money. That might be the part that scares me the most.

As much as I may struggle to motivate myself, I can’t control whether other people buy my book. That scares me. I can market it till I’m blue in the face, but that is only influencing a purchase. I can’t buy it for them.

I’ve reached a milestone—a benchmark—but maybe this is also a plateau. I can go up from here, or I can stay where I’m at. I’m not sure if I’m brave enough to keep climbing.

I guess I’ll let you know next week.

Thanks for reading.

—Jacob

As I start this year long project to write a book every month, my biggest fear is that I am going to lose my motivation. I love being creative and coming up with ideas, but my ADHD brain also loves to jump from project to project. That has made focusing on one book at a time really difficult.

As I write this, I have about 70 pages completed for my first book in the series: Co-Teaching with Robots: Being Human in the AI Assisted Classroom. I am pretty happy with what I’ve written. The more I write, the more confidence I gain that I am going to finish this book and be able to keep this project going.

This week I only wrote a few thousand words, but I was able to launch the pre-order for the book on Amazon. I was nervous to launch it because I don’t know if anyone is going to buy it. 

Even though I just launched this project with its new newsletter, YouTube channel, and podcast, I was hoping I would have more followers and subscribers by now. I’m trying to be realistic, but it has really challenged my motivation.

Because I have been worrying about being able to focus and trying to keep going with a small following, I have been thinking a lot about my motivation. That’s when I realized I need to believe in what I write.

I know that I need to improve in my marketing. I have tried, but I haven’t been successful—yet. Still, I need to believe in what I write.

We can’t know if we’re going to be successful or not. That’s not a reason to stop or to give up. We need to believe in what we write.

As I started to think about this, I was reminded of how athletes approach competition. As a fan, I know that sometimes my team is going to get destroyed by their competition, but that doesn’t stop them. They may even go into the game believing they can succeed. Sometimes they do—against all odds.

How? How can they ignore when they are outmatched and still believe that they can win? I’m sure a sports psychologist could explain this better, but in short, because they have to believe. They simply can’t do their job if they don’t believe they can win. It’s a job requirement. As writers, we need to adopt a similar mindset. We need to believe against all odds that we can succeed—because we can.

At my doctoral graduation, the guest speaker was WNBA legend Lisa Leslie. During her speech, she told the story of growing up in Compton, California. Against all odds, she believed that she could succeed. Why? Because, she said, “Why not me?” Someone had to succeed, why not her?

And so I ask the same question: why not me? Why not you? Why not us?

It may not happen now. It may not happen soon. But, why not?

As long as I keep trying, even if I fail along the way, the only sure indicator of failure, is giving up.

I have struggled to be motivated, but I’m not ready to give up. It’s too soon. Too much is possible.

As I share what I’ve written so far, I have had a good response—in person. That encourages me. Seeing myself complete more pages encourages me. Knowing that I’m getting closer to my goal encourages me.

Why not met?

Why not you?

Why not us?

Let’s keep going. We can choose the measure for our own success. Right now, continuing means success for me. Let’s keep going.

I’ll talk to you next week.

—Jacob

Well, I did it. I started writing my next book.

My goal was to write 3,000 words in my first week and then report back to you. I was able to write 8,000 words.

Why such a lofty goal? Well, I wanted to try to write a book in a month. After hearing Michelle Kulp’s strategy, I decided to try it out for myself. She was able to write a book a month for an entire year. By the end of the year, she was making $3,000 a month in royalties. Since my goal with this project is to see what it takes to make a living as a writer, this seems like a great place to start.

So I did.

I started by writing a rough outline of the topics I wanted to write about with a thesis and a story for each chapter. Then, I started to write.

Some days were easier than others. I started to find my voice and the words flowed easily. Other days, I really struggled to find my motivation to write.

My goal is to turn this into an ebook, paperback book, and audio book. I want it to be a little more than 100 pages so that it’s easy to consume, doesn’t take too long to write, but is still (probably) long enough to justify someone buying it.

That’s my goal.

If all goes to plan, then I think I’ll have a rough draft in about two weeks. Here’s hoping.

After that, I think that I’ll try to spend about a month soliciting feedback while I start working on my next book. It’s hard to tell how long that step will take. I’ve heard others recommend giving people at least a month.

Since each of my first few books will be on similar topics, I’m a little nervous about asking too much of my beta readers. Asking them to respond in a month is one things. Asking them to do it three months in a row is another.

I can feel myself getting impatient even as I try to approach this situation realistically. I want to keep the momentum I’m building up without burning out myself and everyone around me—like I usually do.

But so far, the future is looking bright. I made progress and I am confident going into next week.

So what do you think? Do you want to try to write a book in a month? If so, what would you write about? I’d love to hear about it.

Until then, happy writing.

—Jacob

I have always been one to jump from project to project. Lately, I’ve been trying to understand why.

The answer is actually very simple. I have ADHD. I was never diagnosed as a child, but the signs have always been there. Now, as an adult, it manifests in a number of ways—one of which is my constant pull from project to project.

I have started countless projects that I haven’t finished because I jumped to the next. For this reason, I have been trying to understand how I can focus my creative mind.

Over the years, I have developed a system for taking notes on each of my ideas. It has made it easier for me to follow my passion. If I get an idea for a new story, I just need to open up Notion (my notetaking app of choice) and write it down. When I need it, I know where to find it.

Once, my best friend asked what our version of a Christmas movie would look like. Within a few seconds I was able to respond with two movie ideas. How? I had already written them down. I just had to pull out my notes.

Which brings us to now.

This week I have been reading about writing short books to start a writing business. In Michelle Kulp’s book, Write Your Way to $100K, she outlines two paths: either write a book to drive sales to your business or write a ton of books to drive sales of your books. Right now, I’m leaning towards the later.

Kulp started her writing business by challenging herself to write 12 books in 12 months. That’s right. She wrote one book a month for a year—and it paid off. She was able to build up a passive income of several thousand dollars a month. Since that’s my goal, I am considering trying her strategy.

She recommends a few strategies. One, write books in a series. This helps to iterate on an idea instead of starting from scratch each time. It also helps to build an audience of readers. Second, alternate writing longer and shorter books. I have outlined several books—some of which are relatively short.

In a video from BookLaunchers, I forget which one, she said something that caught my attention. She suggested that authors of nonfiction books should write about a topic they want to be known for. That made me think. What do I want to be known for?

My interests are all over the map. I have outlined two novel series, a series of poetic memoirs, and many nonfiction books. I have struggled with this question for over a year. What do I want to focus on? But because of my ADHD brain, I don’t want to focus! I want to do it all!

I have also been thinking what book ideas I could write quickly so that I can start to build up a catalogue of work. Yesterday, I figured it out.

For the past two years, I have been training my colleagues at work on how to use AI in their classrooms. I have already worked out a lot my ideas on the topic. I just need to write them down.

So, I came up with the idea for a book: Co-Teaching with Robots: Being Human in the AI Assisted Classroom. Here is a mock-up cover I might use:

I like to develop projects out of order (no surprise), so I made this cover to inspire me. I started to outline the book and I started to think I could actually write this in a month.

Then, I kept reading Kulp’s book. She asked what series our books could fit into. So, I started to think how I could build this idea into a series. After some work, I came up with two more books ideas (I’m not going to share everything right now though).

So, I have some ideas and I’m motivated. What could be wrong? Right? RIGHT?

Well, remember I said I have ADHD? My concern is that I’ll get started on this project because it’s the latest shiniest idea in my head, but when I get a new idea, I’ll quit and move on. I don’t want to do that.

Which brings me to the title of this article. If you can’t decide what to write, maybe because you don’t have any ideas or you have too many ideas, write what you can finish.

A lot can be learned by working on a project, even if you don’t finish it, but if your goal is to publish—then publish.

I’m talking to myself as much as I am to you. I need to take this advice too.

So, my plan for the next month is to put my head down and focus on writing a short 100-ish page book on AI in the classroom. I have a plan. I am motivated. When I start to lose that motivation, I’m going to try to push through.

What are you motivated to write? Maybe we can do it together?

I’ll update you on my progress next week. Until then, thanks for reading.

—Jacob