How I Wrote a Book: Step by Step

1. Had the original idea for the book 2-3 years ago, but didn’t know it yet.

2. “The book” started off as a blog. That lasted for about 4 months until I ran out of gas to write it.

3. After a few months of dormancy, I thought “Hey, I should write a book.”

4. Book writing turned into overdrive once I read an inspirational post via James Altucher.

5. Started writing in Google Docs. Less than ideal, but I had a good start with writing about 250 words a day.

6. In trading emails with Aaron Goldfarb, he mentioned Scrivener. That changed everything. I couldn’t imagine writing the book without it. It’s possible, as many people have. But with all the organizing that took place, it would have been a major headache without a program that’s so easy to use.

7. Took everything in Google Docs and dropped it in Scrivener.

8. I was able to organize the chapters effortlessly. With a book of essays, this was incredibly valuable. Made it easy to rearrange and delete essays.

9. Set a goal of writing 250 words a day. I was able to keep up with that for the most part. Some days I wrote less. Some weekends I wrote 2,000 words in a day.

10. Once the first draft of the book was written, I had the extreme joy of going back to do edits (note: sarcasm).

11. Fixed typos and grammatical mistakes.

12. Sent off book to a friend for review.

13. Change structure slightly per friends feedback.

14. Came to the realization that I write too passively. Went through the entire book to make the writing more active. I think CS Lewis has advice on this. This process was grueling.

15. Took the cover photo pictures. The book cover was heavily influenced by The Domino Project books and the necessity of working around my strengths. I know good design, but I can’t design for squat. My wife is an excellent photographer though. So I decided that the cover for the ebook would use just her photo.

I wanted the cover to be focused on a singular thing. One image that represents the whole book. After brainstorming 20 different covers, I chose melting ice cream. After about 50 different pictures and getting ice cream all over my pants, we picked the photo below.

16. Sent the book to my wife’s brother to review. He came back with a list of grammatical issues to fix.

17. Fixed grammar mistakes and gave the book another comb through.

18. Researched ebook conversion and CreateSpace conversion.

19. Decided I’d outsource the formatting through Odesk.

20. Placed an ad on Odesk and received about 10 applicants.

21. Picked a guy in the Philippines, sent him the files and patiently waited.

22. Got the ebook file back and requested a few tweaks.

23. Received the ebook with changes made. It was good enough, but I didn’t want to settle.

24. Decided to learn how to format the book myself with Scrivener. Couldn’t find any YouTube tutorials on so I decided to do some trial and error.

25. Within 30 minutes I figured out how to adjust the margins and spacing to my liking in Scrivener. The $89 on Odesk was largely useless.

26. Exported the book from Scrivener in .mobi format.

27. Signed up for Amazon Direct Publishing.

28. Added the cover, book description, previewed how the book looked.

29. Chose price of $3.

30. Hit submit and got an email 8 hours later saying the book was live in the Kindle Store.

See the comedic book on Amazon: First World Problems: 101 Reasons Why The Terrorists Hate Us

31. Hire an Editor. Do it. Don’t let your work be judge on grammar.

32. Resubmit to the Kindle Store.

That’s it. Definitely not easy to do the work in writing a book, but if you want to, you can. Writing a book is a grind, but publishing on Kindle is extremely easy.

Follow me on Twitter: @BenNesvig and read my book.