We've been wanting to take you through writing e-books for a long, long time. We wanted it so much that actually, we did it: our
2015 Summer Project detailed every step right up to the one key thing we could not cover –– and now we can. We weren't messing around with this, we wrote actual new books to publish; we didn't regurgitate Apple's instructions, or use sample text. Yet it was only with the much later production of the
MacNN guides for new Mac and iPad users that we finally got to really experience the tricky last stage: we hit problems with Apple's iBooks approval process.
We'll tell you all about that next Friday: for now, let us enjoy the moment, and high-five you with having got through what turns out to be a quite fair, yet terribly perplexing, process. It's the same process that developers have been telling us they go through with apps, and it does point both to how Apple curates its stores well -- but could be clearer about it.
Throughout next week, Pointers is going to step you through each bit of the process of writing and then publishing e-books, including this approvals process. It won't just be iBooks either, as we'll show you how and why to do Kindle titles at the same time. It won't be all technical either, as there's plenty of financial and even personal issues to discuss too.
What it won't be is us writing another book. Give us a break, would you? For the Summer Project, we wrote
The Blank Screen: Blogging, and then at the exact same time also
Pixels & Paper, a whole book about how to write whole books. We can't stress this enough: the things you learn from actually doing, actually following along with this Pointers, are the things that will most benefit you as you write and publish your own books.
So today's Pointers is like a foreword that sets out what you and we are going to do next Monday to Friday. It will involve every scrap of software you already have on your Mac or iOS device, plus new apps that we tried and relied on, tools that we now know to grab at the start of every book project.
Monday is for planning and writing
You can get so hung up on the production of a book that you forget it has to be about something, and it's going to end up with an awful lot of words. You can run straight into writing it all, but that's when you're going to trip up and add to the pile of unfinished books. On Monday, we'll prepare you for the long haul with how to make that haul shorter, how to get you ready for how you're going to manage a book without going mad.
Well, without going very mad. We'll concentrate on non-fiction on Monday, because it gives us the opportunity to explore certain specific tools, but the entire week also applies to fiction.
Whether you're researching a topic or you're making up stories, we can't tell you what to write -- but we can show you our recommended ways of getting words down onto the page. That does include word processors, but also so much more, including outliners and reference tools.
Tuesday is for work
On Tuesday you're just going to research, write, and edit a book. That's all. We've learned a lot about the best ways to gather new information, like interviews, or explore new fiction plans, and on Tuesday we'll funnel the lot into producing a book. So we'll just do that and that's it, job done.
Wednesday is for relaxing
Before you take the day off, take your book and fix it instead. It will need fixing. It will need editing, it will need rewriting. When we did this over the summer, this was the point at which our project totally fell apart, and it was the single most disastrous thing we'd ever tried, and why did we ever think we could pull off writing books over two months? Wait until Wednesday, when we'll tell you how to do it in a week instead.
This is one of the points in book writing where you will need new tools, new resources, and some of them are unexpected. Some of them are about as far away from technology as you can imagine.
Thursday is for publishing paperbacks
This whole Pointers series is about producing and publishing e-books, but face it, there is nothing like having a paperback in your hands. You can't always do it: for one thing, paperbacks need to be over a certain length, or they physically can't be printed like regular books. We'll explain that, and also detail what you need to do to get your book ready to be published in paperback.
It is different to e-publishing, but the skills you learn here and the state you get your book into will help you hugely with the final stages of preparing and publishing e-books.
Friday is the day
This is the day you'll be waiting for throughout the whole time you're making a book, and it is the day we've been waiting for too. This is when we'll detail exactly what you have to do to get an e-book on sale on iBooks and Kindle, plus the best ways to exploit the benefits of these ways of publishing.
It's also when we'll cover the approvals process, and compare what both Amazon and Apple say they do with what they actually do in practice. You'll be equal parts pleased and frustrated, impressed and not impressed. Yet you'll also have a book and, trust us, there's nothing like that. Each of us at
MacNN who are published book authors will tell you that it is a very special moment when your book is finally in your hands. We just want you to have that special moment, too.
Follow our whole week-long Pointers on writing and publishing e-books through
Part One,
Part Two,
Part Three,
Part Four,
Part Five, and
Part Six. It's an entire course in how to make books including the writing stage and all of the software that
MacNN recommends after months of testing and several books in the making. Now that we've completed the series we can also –– small spoiler, sorry –– reveal that we pulled it off: we did write and publish a new book in this week and you can
buy Pointers: iWork Pages, Numbers and Keynote on iBooks right now.
-- William Gallagher (
@WGallagher)
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