Walking the talk!

I have been talking about writing an ebook for some time. It was originally triggered when I first bought an iPad and was inspired by the new distribution channel it created, both in terms of global spread and also take up by managerial and professional level people. My thinking was how amazing it would be to have thousands of copies of something I wrote with my ideas distributed all over the world. Who could possibly guess what exciting opportunities that might create.

This formed my original thought of distribute high volumes cheaply or indeed for free.  I was not looking at creating a booklist bestseller.

A short time before I had decided to start blogging as I was curious to see what that was all about and to practice an set of skills, ie writing and communication, that was identified at school and college as a weakness. While more recent testing has suggested that my skills are much better and in fact high percentile amongst my professional peers, the suggestion that I am not good is deep rooted. Side note: It is quite scarey how those things stick with you, even 30 years on!

I came across an american contact who had written interesting newsletter articles over the years. I approched her to see if she had thought of publishing these as an ebook and found that I struck a chord. We worked together for a while, pooling our content and producing an initial draft (all done via email and skype!!) before the differences between our aspirations became too great.

As I said I was look for high volume, low price, good (but not necessarily a masterpiece), door opener from which I would learn and build, while she was looking for the capstone to her career wanting that #1 position on a booklist and for the book to generate an signifcant income stream by itself. We decided that our interests were not compatible and amicably agreed to part.

That was about 18 months ago. Since then I have learnt more about the creation of ebooks, both the technical aspects and the business ones. There are some great free tools available and some interesting webinars, as long as you can resist signing up to the "products" that are ineveitably being promoted. I have learnt how easy it is to create an app for the new Android platform and continued to develop my ideas on what the book could or should look and feel like.

This has not been wasted time, but instead it has been interesting, if unproductive.

So what now? Well I think it is time to pull the proverbial finger out and get something produced. AND to take my own medicine ie plan for this rather than just hope it will happen.

I have arbitrarily picked next January to launch my "book" whatever that is. I have no idea how realistic that is, but one needs a target and I can start planning around it. I have started drafting a plan using some software I like called Swiftlight (see initial thoughts below) and decided to use this blog as a form of self governance. I will look to blog about thoughts, achievements and plans at least once a week. This will create a degree of discipline and, as is the vogue these days, transparency.

I am very happy for comments or offers of help. I have given myself until the end of August to make this plan good enough and come up with the initial product design template....so ten days!

Wish me luck.