Advice

Sometimes The Best Ambition Is Less Ambition

by

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Lately, a lot of my friends have been going through “job issues.”  Losing them, not happy with them, being pressured to trade up, and so on.  Listening to them I realized that there’s something important to say:

It’s OK to not have ambitions for a “better” job.

Yes, that’s right it’s me, Mister Geek Job Guru telling you maybe you’d be happier staying where you are, or getting a lower paying job or whatever.  Radical? Unexpected? Extremely un-Steve like?  No, it’s about things more important than getting a “better” job.

The benefits are worth it.  One friend of mine had some health issues, and their job has great benefits, so they’re not planning to move on or up at least for the time being.  This is fine.  If a job gives you benefits like great health, training, etc. it’s perfectly OK not to change.  A job that has good benefits may be worth staying at even if it’s not as high paying or lacks prestige or whatever.

It’s lower stress.  Look moving up is all fine and good, but maybe a job is going to have less chance of killing you.  Fine, worth staying with as opposed to getting a job that will put you in a grave quicker.

It lets you do other things.  Your job or future job may give you more time to socialize, build that art career, take care of kids, whatever.  Perhaps it’s less work or a shorter commute – that’s great.  No need to change.

It’s cheaper to do.  A job you’re at may cost less to commute at, require you to spend less on things like businesswear, and so on.  That’s fine.  Sometimes the money you save beats any pay raise you may have.

It works into your life plans.  You don’t have to go get the biggest title or highest paycheck if the job fits your life goals.  Maybe the job will let you retire quicker but isn’t as prestigious.  Perhaps your current position means you get to stay in a place you like.  That’s fine.

You’re tired of career stuff.  Maybe your current job is a placeholder intentionally, and that’s also fine.  Maybe you got laid off, or are changing careers or just moved.  Good, enjoy your placeholder, maybe set a time to re-review your priorities, and chill out.

It’s a placeholder.  Maybe you’re moving or going back to school or something and the job is there so you can earn money.  Great, don’t worry.

There are many reasons not to look for the better job, the best job, the highest-up job or whatever.  That’s totally fine because your career goals have to serve your life goals.

If you aren’t sure about this, let me remind you that you have permission from me, the guy who writes all sorts of career books to not think about the biggest paycheck or coolest title and just do whatever.

-Steven Savage

Steve’s Writing Advice 8/7/2018

by

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

I’ve been giving a lot of advice lately on writing, as well as processing some of my most recent experiences. So what I decided to do is write down my basic advice on what to do. I’m keeping it positive, and I hope to update it over time.

What To Write

  • Obviously you should write what you like, but you may want to target to a market.
  • There is almost inevitably a market for something you’ll want to write, but the question is how many sales you want to make (and if you cary).
  • There are inevitably other authors to learn from and study.

How To Write

  • It’s likely if you want to write you already know how. It’s just a matter of getting it into professional shape – or acceptable shape.
  • There are a lot of books on writing efficiently and effectively. Chris Fox’s books are very well regarded.
  • When possible join a writer’s group, meetup, or team to help you out.
  • There’s nothing like practicing, so keep writing!

Editing

  • Have an editor. Period. Pay them or reimburse them somehow.
  • Having beta and pre-readers helps, but an editor is hard to replace (though you may find one with betas and pre-readers)

Book Covers

  • A book cover is a great sales tool, and makes a real difference in if people buy it.
  • Different genres and audiences have different cover expectations.
  • There are various sites and tools that will help you make covers.
  • You can also get premade covers from several sources like www.goonwrite.com.
  • For major, important works you want a professional-level cover.
  • You can learn to do your own covers, but it will take effort if you don’t have much graphic experience. There are online tutorials.

Book Covers – Doing it yourself

  • You can do book covers yourself, as noted, but it takes time and effort to learn.
  • You can get good paid stock art and photos at www.canstockphoto.com and www.shutterstock.com
  • For practice (or to save money) you can get free stock art and photos at www.pixabay.com and www.unsplash.com
  • The Non-designer’s Design Book by Robin Williams is indespensible to learning good design skills. There’s other advice online.

Formats

  • Unless you have a reason (or format) not to, a book should be in ebook format no matter what others you choose.
  • Physical books may or may not interest your audience. It’ll be up to you to decide that.
  • eBooks will usually outsell physical books, but physical books are also great for gifts and holidays.

Formats – eBook

  • eBooks can be formatted by publishing sites (like www.Draft2Digital.com) or on your own.
  • The best tool to format eBooks is www.jutoh.com – it’s powerful enough to write a small book in it.
  • Your formatting will usually be mobipocket (Kindle) or ePub.

Formats – Physical books

  • Physical book formatting is more complicated than eBooks, because you have to worry about page breaks, page facing, and more.
  • Covers will also require careful formatting because of sizing and colors (hint, save in CMYK).
  • You’ll probably have to run a few copies of physical books to ensure they’re set up right.

Formats – Audiobooks

  • Audiobooks are a forgotten format – and if you can get your book into audio format, then you have an edge over others.

Publishing

  • There’s many places to publish, however you want to make sure whatever service you use you end up on www.amazon.com – for obvious reasons.
  • To easily publish on multiple sources, www.Draft2Digital.com is a mainstay.
  • Many services like the above do physical books, and www.Lulu.com

Pricing

  • Pricing affects sales, and cheaper is not always better. People will be concerned that a cheap book isn’t worth it.
  • Most smaller eBooks are best priced at $2.99.
  • Larger books seem to center around $4.99, but some go higher.
  • Physical book pricing is inevitably much higher than eBooks, and often you make more on each physical books.

Promotion – General

  • Good promotion ties into each other. Your books mention your website, your website points to your newsletter, your newsletter mentions new books, new books go on sale, etc.
  • You’ll want to read up on promotion. Though a lot of promotion advice is repetitive, that’s because a lot of it is always new to someone.

Promoting – Website

  • You will want an author’s website, period. You want your own domain, and can set up a website in wordpress.
  • If you’re on Amazon and/or Draft 2 Digital there are author pages there as well. Set them up and link your website back to them and vice versa.
  • Mention your website in all of your books.

Promoting – Social Media

  • Writers should have a Twitter, Facebook presence, and blog to establish a presence. At the very least a blog and twitter is needed.
  • You may only have so much time, so make your best call.
  • Hootsuite is a great way to manage social media.
  • Mention your social media in all of your books.

Promotion – Newsletters

  • Have a newsletter. Www.mailchimp.com is a perfect place to start.
  • Send out your newsletter at least monthly if not more (but I’d avoid more than one a week). Mention books, give samples, etc.
  • If you want to get more people on your newsletter use www.InstaFreebie.com for giveaways or giving out samples.

Marketing – General

  • Marketing is an inevitable part of book writing. You can’t avoid it – but you can outsource it.

Marketing – Amazon

  • If you’re publishing things at Amazon, use Amazon Marketing Services (AMS). It’s pretty much point and pay and (hopefully) sell.
  • If you’re amazon exclusive, you can do book sales and promotions.

Marketing – Reviews

– Steve

The Brainstorm Book: Finishing Up And Following Up

by

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

We’re talking how to solve your creative challenges with a Brainstorm book!  Last time I discussed how to record your ideas and track them.

Of course I assume you’re actually getting things done during this time by whatever method of productivity you choose. So let’s talk what to do to follow up once you get things done.

Signoff

Make sure you have a way to look at one of your projects and say “yeah, that’s done at least for now.” This way you can confidently say you’ve completed what you set out to do. This could be something as solid as a published book, or as ephemeral as a website update you know you’ll change tomorrow. Learn how to say “this is done.”

Defining “Done” means you can complete work. You can evaluate. You can deliver a product. You can relax. “Done” is vitally important to define – so do it as early as possible, including as early as possible when you’re maintaining your lists of all these ideas.

When you do decide something is “Done” have your Brainstorm Book handy – that “Done” will probably inspire other ideas.

Plus you get the peace of mind of something being over.

Retrospectives

It’s important to have a regular Retrospective – a review of how things have gone. I recommend two times to do them – in fact, I recommend both:

  1. First, do a retrospective after any big project completes.
  2. Second, do one after a period of work. For instance if you plan things out by month, then review every month.

On a Retrospective review the following:

  1. What went well?
  2. What did you have problems with?
  3. What work took more effort to do than expected and what work did you miss?

After this review, you should actually ask what concrete actions will you take in the future to make things run better. This could be doing things you did right more, it could be fixing things, it could be staying aware of issues.

Retrospectives help you understand how you brought ideas to life, and how work went from a scrawl in a Brainstorm Book to being real. They spawn new ideas and help you understand your creative process.

Plus each time, you get better.

Success List

Finally, keep an success list. Every month list out what you achieved that month to move your plans forward. That should include:

  • Any major achievements and successes in your plans.
  • Making distinct progress in one of your projects.
  • The completion of a project.
  • Anything you’re particularly proud of.

Reviewing your successess helps you see the results of your actions, appreciate them – and provides you reminders that you can get these things done. It builds habit of self-reinforcement.

All those ideas in your Brainstorm Book? This is when you see that you can make your dreams real.

You’re Not Done Until After You’re Done

Always remember that your brilliant ideas aren’t done when they finish. You want to take time to figure out how to end them, how to review them, and how to learn. That helps tie together all you did and all you learn and all you do at the end.

It’s important to have these kind of closing rituals to know you’ve ended things correctly. And of course, you’ll come up with new things to do or tweak my ideas – good.

Keep learning because even though things are done, creativity doesn’t end . . .

– Steve