Judy Weintraub is an accomplished entrepreneur, business executive, and attorney and is a bestselling author of The Essentials of Negotiating Effectively and the author of How to Build Successful Business Partnerships.
She is the founder of SkillBites, providing book writing and publishing services designed to help business owners and professionals get their books written and published easily and quickly.
In addition to SkillBites, Judy runs Weintraub Legal Services, providing dispute resolution services and corporate law services to small businesses.
Tips:
- If you want your book to reflect well on you, you should get publishing services from professionals. This includes having it professionally edited, having a professional layout designer create your book layout and a professional cover designer design your cover. I emphasize the word “professionally.”
- I’ve had clients come to me with their “edited manuscript” that they had their secretary edit, or they had an edit done by a friend of theirs who is a good writer, and I take a look at it and I can tell it’s not been professionally edited; the flow isn’t there.
- Frankly, if your book has errors, then it’s going to detract from your reputation, not enhance it. That’s really a shame because that’s not going to help you.
- I’ve had a lot of people come to me with their covers that were designed by their daughter, or a graphic artist. They may be good artists, but if they don’t know cover design, then the cover is probably not going to work as well for you. It may not even meet the printer’s specifications.
- A good cover designer can help you create powerful content for the back cover. The back cover is important because people look at the front cover. Then they typically turn the book over and they want to see what you’ve got on the back. You can have testimonials, which are pretty powerful. You could have a description of your book, a photo headshot of yourself and a little author bio. You want it to look good and you want the content to be enticing.
- You can get layout templates. The problem, of course, is that thousands of people could be using the same template. That makes your book not unique.
- People think that once they have their manuscript written, then it should be able to be published in a few weeks. That just doesn’t happen for a book in the 100-120 page range. You should plan on a good four months to get the work done.
- Certainly you can do all the work yourself, or spend your time finding professionals to do the work for you. If you haven’t published a book before, chances are it will take you much longer to get your book out, and it may not possess the quality you want. You would be better off hiring a publisher like SkillBites to get your book done quicker and more professionally than if you were to self-publish.
Website: SkillBites
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