The Church Answers Podcast
So You Want to Write and Publish a Book? Part 1: Just How Do You Write a Book? Jess Rainer
Welcome to the Church Answers podcast presented by Chaney & Associates. Chaney & Associates are the accounting firm for the church. Now get ready for fast-paced insights on key issues affecting the local church today. We release three episodes each week, so make sure you've seen or heard them all. And now, here is the CEO of Church Answers, Tom Rayner. A week doesn't go by, but I don't get some type of requests related to book writing. Today, I got a request from someone who wanted me to endorse their book. We have requests to publish books. We have requests for forward for books. We have requests to, well, how do we write a book? Well, we are joined today by Jess Rayner. He is the founder and CEO of Craft Book Publishing. And Jess, I think you have a lot to say about this because you've been doing publishing with Craft and its predecessor, RP, for some time. And you've also written a book. As a matter of fact, let me just advertise your new book, how to launch a new church site. Great book. I'm using it right now and some work I'm doing, so I already had it out. Congratulations, by the way. Well, thank you. Yeah, it was pretty cool. It was my first solo book that I've written. We co-authored a book years and years ago, and I've had a chance to contribute to some other books as well, but it was pretty cool to actually go through the whole writing process from start to finish. I'm trying to catch up to the number of books you've written. I think I only have like 800 more to go to catch up to you, so... Not exactly. Not exactly. Well, we always want to thank Chaney and Associates. And as I mentioned many times, whether you're watching us on YouTube or you're hearing us on your favorite podcasting out, stay chaney is just a friend. He's not just a friend. He's a business partner. He's a ministry partner, but he's also a friend and we love those folks. They're the counting firm for the church. They're the best accounting firm, whether you need bookkeeping tech work, whether you need anything related to finance, cloud-based software of Chaney and Associates is for you. They have 1,100 plus church clients, small, medium, large, they're for you. We love them. Just let's get into this so you want to write and publish a book. We're going to do three parts because these are so brief. We're going to talk about just how do you write a book, the mechanics. Okay, I want to write a book. What do I do? So that's what we're going to cover today. And then because you've had so much experience with this and you've been a publisher, considering how young you are, you've been a publisher for quite a while and gone through a lot of books. Would you even guess how many books you've published in between RP and Kraft? Over a hundred for sure. It is a lot. But we will be talking about his company, Kraft Book Publishing. You can see that in the show notes. URL is jazz help me now. What's craftbookpublishing.com? Well, that makes sense. Craftbookpublishing.com, they're by far the best self-publishing company that is out there. You get most of your business by referrals just because people like their experience so much. So you get a lot of that repeat business. So if you're looking to publish a book, self-publishing book, check out craftbookpublishing.com. Okay, Jess, I'm just going to throw it out there. How do you write a book? See, I feel like this is backwards. I feel like I should be asking you this question given the number of books you've written. And so the people that are going to be listening and watching this are probably going to know what's going on in your mind because I've watched you write books and it's not fair. Okay? It's not fair to people like me who have to really work at it. You have something that's going on in your head and it just flows. I don't even think you know how to articulate what's happening inside your head when you write. It's a work of art. It really is. It really is a work of art. But to begin to articulate it, I guess we have to assume whoever's writing has a topic that they're writing about, that they're passionate about it, something they've experienced. There's a message that they want to relay. I think one of the major things when starting to write a book is trying to understand the market, trying to understand the books that are already out there in the topic that you're wanting to pursue and write about. I think a little bit of market research can go a long way not to influence your writing, but maybe to help you understand how you can add to the genre or to the topic that you're already discussing. Yes. And if you... No, go ahead. Good. In the old days, back when there was no internet and I was writing books because I wrote a lot of books before there was internet, I used to... my first typewriter was a Selectric typewriter. And I had to use white-out, I tell you how old I am. I would actually have to go to bookstores, usually Christian bookstores, but also secular bookstores and just go down the shelves and see what's on there. There was no Amazon. Jeff Bezos was just not there at that time. And now you go to Amazon and you can search in a particular genre and it pops up and you can see all the different areas. So I know I interrupted you, but it's a lot easier to find out what's out there right now. Right. Right. And I remember the sounds of that typewriter coming from the basement. You and the dogs down in the basement. Right. Right in those books. I remember that early on. On a car table. I did. The glamorous life of an author. Exactly. But yeah, so I think one of the great things when starting off is figuring out how can you get a unique message out there? Be careful not to avoid a very wide reaching topic. Try and get near it down as much as possible. Try and find a little nuance. Maybe that's not in the market. That's a great starting point. For me though, the very first thing that I have to do before I even put any words on paper is I have to set myself a deadline. I think that is absolutely the biggest thing and I think it's the first thing you should do. Even if you're self publishing a book, even if you don't have a, you know, a traditional publisher that's giving you the deadline, you have to set a deadline. So you start by kind of figuring out what's my message and then go to the very end. You know, when do I have to finish this? Because inevitably it becomes an ongoing process. Authors never feel like their books are finished. And so if you can set a deadline at the beginning to least get you, you know, you have to be almost complete by this point, you're actually going to be able to start writing. That's from what I've gathered from you from all your books. You tend to say, I'm finishing right now at this deadline. And then I go backwards, I say, how long is my book going to be? It's not page count, it's word count. And so back in the days when I was writing in the basement with two dogs and card table and a Selectric typewriter, my word count was 60 to 80,000 words. Somebody made a recommendation to me to do a smaller book. I think that was you. And I did that book. It was called, I am a church member about to approach two million in sales. Thank you very much, son. And I did that smaller book. And if I recall correctly, it was about 15,000 words. Most books today would be 25,000 that from a ministry perspective, maybe 30. The 70 and 80, for the most part, you're starting to get it. And so you go backwards. You take your words, your word count, and you say, okay, if I'm going to have the book done in six months, how many words do I need to write per each of the weeks in that six month? That's one way to do it. Yep. Yeah, and that word count, it makes a pretty big influence on actually how your book is delivered, on how your book is received. I'm, again, I'm a big proponent of smaller books, because I believe the way we consume as a culture right now is in smaller bite-sized chunks. And I know somebody like, well, I got this really long message. Break it into three parts. Break it into two books. Exactly. It's going to be much more received through audience if you can kind of think of it that way. I tend to think it's better that 25,000 is a pretty good, 25,000 word count is a pretty good target. You know, you can go less. You can go more. That's a good general rule of thumb, working back. And then once I do that, my next step is just to create an outline of, I believe you have to have a roadmap of where you're going. And I know that may be seemed like, obvious, yeah, you should do that, but that some don't. And often what's happened is they lose sight when they're writing. So creating that roadmap, creating those outlines, understanding where you're going is a really important step for me next. I've seen you do it. You typically grab an envelope and write your outline in the back of the envelope. Why an envelope? Why isn't you always create your outlines on an envelope? Back in the days when I had access to some kind of paper, it was this big stack of unused envelopes that your mom said she didn't want anymore. And so I started grabbing them and I just got in the habit. Now I've got hundreds and hundreds of sermons on envelopes. I've got book outlines on envelopes. I saved some of them. Some of them I did not. Boy, you're bringing up memories of old age. All right. So Jess, here's where we are. We've got them writing a book coming up with a topic by determining the number of words, by doing the outline and doing the calendar farther. Those are some of the mechanics of writing a book. We're going to come back in the next two episodes and we're going to talk about, all right, do we take this self publishing or what's usually called commercial publishing? And in the last episode, we're going to talk about some things that most authors needed to know, but nobody's ever told them, we're going to talk about four of those things. So I know this has gone quickly, but we're going to come back very shortly. Yeah. And just to kind of wrap this up, one final thought, when it comes to writing a book, the best thing you can do is just start writing, just start writing. And so you outline it, you get prepared, you do it, the end of the day, just start writing, just getting those first few words out can just get the ball rolling. I like it. Back, hey, if you're watching us on YouTube, our YouTube channel is growing. We're grateful because you're making us grow. Give us a thumbs up. A thumbs up for the, if you're on audio, you can't see this, my thumbs are up right now. Oh, wow, I didn't mean to do that. Look, those of you who are on YouTube just got a firework show, subscribe to our channel, subscribe to our channel as well. Hey, if you're on the audio app, give us a rating review. Those aren't just words, they're pleased to you so that we can get this thing traveling further and give it that ministry that it deserves. Thank you as always, Chaney and Associates. Stay tuned. We've already got it ready for you. The next episode on, so you want to write and publish a book, part two, you can download it and listen to it and watch it now. See you later. You have been listening to the Church Answers podcast presented by Chaney and Associates. Chaney and Associates are the accounting firm for the church. We need to focus on ministry, Chaney will focus on finances. Also please subscribe and give a review to the Church Answers podcast on YouTube and on your favorite podcasting app. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)