A few traps can catch you, even after you’ve created the content for your book. The biggest one – is endless editing.

After years of experience, we know the biggest challenge people face is letting go and getting their book out there, in front of people. The temptation to edit, tweak, and edit some more can be overwhelming. Months can pass, and you still don’t have anything to share.

Remember, your book is not the product, and in this post, we talk about some of the standard editing traps people fall into and how to recognize them. 

The Process

To describe our process briefly, we have discovered the most effective way to create the content is by recording it. It’s difficult to record it yourself because talking into a dead mic is difficult. The easiest way is to have someone interview you and have the structure defined, so they’re on a single recording from start to finish. You work through the content and end up with something encapsulating and capturing your best ideas and thinking on this subject.

So what you end up with, then, is copy that is transcribed from the call, and when you receive that back, even after several rounds of editing, preferably by someone else, not you, because otherwise, you sink into this trap sooner rather than later. It’s actually pretty difficult. It’s like marking your own homework. It’s actually pretty difficult editing your own content immediately because that first pass that comes straight from a call recording is always not rough in terms of the content but rough on the eyes a little bit.

After all, it has all of the breaks in the speech, all of the unfinished sentences where you jump around a little bit. it’s difficult to edit it yourself because you’re too vested,

So if you’re not working with us to go through the process, if you’re reading this thinking about doing it yourself, that would be one word of advice, when the transcript comes back, get someone else to edit it first, and then you just deal with the piece after that.

Remember

The book’s purpose isn’t to make money from it directly or to win some literary prize. it is, first and foremost, a lead-generation tool, and we should treat it as such. this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t provide value between the pages, but we must be aware that the content we provide is to further prod the reader into buying the service or product we provide.

click here to listen to Stuart and Betsey explain in detail the ways to avoid getting caught up in the editing trap.