Today marks the ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY (Birthday?) of The What When Wine Diet! It’s been an incredible year, and I am truly blown away by the response: 20,000+ Kindle downloads, and 400 audiobooks sold! The best part? Reading and answering the weekly emails from readers, who so enthusiastically provide their own testimonials and questions about the Paleo, Intermittent Fasting, and Wine world. I’ve made new friends through this whole process, and am so grateful for everything. I want to share all I’ve learned!
So do you want to write a book? All I can say is… YOU CAN DO IT! Seriously. My only regret in this whole process, is not starting sooner!
HOW IT BEGAN
The main reason I wanted to write The What When Wine Diet, was slightly selfish. I had reached a point of near obsession with the science of a whole foods diet, coupled with intermittent fasting. The health, energy, and life benefits were unparalleled. Yet people had a tendency to kinda freak out on me when I said I was fasting, or raise an eyebrow at my cake refusal. (Oh come on, you can have just one bite! ) I wanted to have an easy, comprehensive reference where I could just be like: HERE’S WHY GUYS.
As for the motivation to actually, well, DO IT? Well, one of my dearest friends just so happens to be an insanely talented, (originally) self-published author who built a large audience, and subsequently gained actual book deals (oh hey Harper Collins!) and TV/Film right negotiations from such. Check out his amazing books like Angel Killer, or its recently released sequel, Name of the Devil. He’s my ultimate mentor in this whole crazy process, and I just did EXACTLY what he told me to do. And it worked. So from him to me, and now me to you! (Thank you Andrew!!!)
HOW TO WRITE THE BOOK (Scrivener)
So I’m not going to tell you how to actually write the book. That part is up to you! My personal approach involves a lot of wine-fueled-stream-of-consciousness-night-writing, followed by caffeine-fueld-editing the next morning. With research in between (Confession: Most of my blog posts work this way too. I kinda just throw it all out there in my inspired wine state, then clean it up the next morning. OH HEY TYPOS.)
As for the mechanics of it all, I suggest writing in Scrivener. Andrew bought it for me one day, and was just like “Ok now write the book!” So I really had no choice. Scrivener is pretty fantastic. It lets you freely write in chunks which you can easily drag around. You can also make notes and annotations, compile research, etc. It’s pretty epic. If you already have a manuscript in Word or other word processing software, you can easily copy and paste it in.
The Wonders of Scrivener!
Scrivener’s shining beacon, is its “Compile” feature. This allows you to write your material, and then easily (relatively speaking), export the material in various formats for Amazon Kindle, CreateSpace, etc. So rather than formatting the source document itself, all the formatting comes at the end, in the export process. (Kinda like Avid or something, for all my film peops!) Of course, the actual compile process can be a bit of headache, with lots of trial and error. You’ll be compiling and viewing and editing and compiling and viewing and editing and compiling and viewing and editing for probably 100+ times. But guess what, you’ll figure it out! I suggest checking out How To Format Your Novel For Kindle, Nook, the iBookstore, Smashwords, and CreateSpace… in One Afternoon. Completely worth it.
HOW TO PUBLISH WITH AMAZON
So you write your book. You use Scrivener to compile the book for Amazon Kindle. You’ll need to download Amazon’s Kindle Previewer app to preview the versions of your book, and make sure it looks awesome. You also need to generate cover artwork. I shot my own cover with my most amazing and talented friend Carmen Emmi, and then edited it in Photoshop. You can do it yourself, or hire someone.
When you’ve got everything the way you like it, you simply create an Amazon Kindle account, and follow their easy upload process. After the craziness of writing, fine tuning, compiling, and cover creating, the actual publishing is kinda a breeze. It’s very step-by-step with Amazon, and they have tons of helpful “click here!” buttons to explain things.
Some Personal Recommendations:
- You can list your book in two “categories” at any given time. I recommend listing in one “actual” popular and relevant category, and one “slightly applicable” niche category with little competition. Even if it just barely relates. The former is where you ideally want to be in the top “best seller” category, and the later is where you can actually possibly rank in the beginning, due to a lack of competition.
- For the price, you can use Amazon’s built in KDP Pricing Support program, which analyzes trends to determine the maximum bang for your buck, price wise, as well as predicted downloads. The cool thing is, as your book starts selling more and more, the recommended price will go up! I also tend to err on the more-downloads-but-slightly-less-profit side, because I’m more interested in building an audience, rather than making tons of $.
- I’ve mostly been publishing with Amazon Kindle Select. This puts you in an exclusive contract with Kindle for the digital version. This means you can’t list the book on Smashwords or anywhere else. In exchange for your bonded loyalty, you get promo days, where you can either do price countdowns, or days of “selling” the book for free. This was SUPER important for me when I secured a campaign with BookBub, which was really a game changer. The contract goes in 3 month cycles, so it’s not like you’re signing away your life forever type thing.
- If you enroll your book in Kindle Book Lending, you can let people “borrow” and read your book. I like this approach, bec
ause I’m more interested in spreading the Good (Paleo) Word, and building an audience, rather than generating pure sales. You can also see how many pages the “borrowing” people are reading per day, which is pretty nifty!
HOW TO RECORD THE AUDIOBOOK
Thankfully, I had already recorded audiobooks prior to The What When Wine Diet. I use ACX, an online production platform for creating Audible books (the Amazon audiobook company). 
Recording from your home is surprisingly easy. I use the USB AT2020 Desk Mic, with a windscreen and desk stand. I edit in GarageBand. By recording my own book, I maintain the highest possible percentage of profits. You can, however, use ACX to list your book for artist auditions, and then have someone else record your book (and split the profits).
HOW TO RELEASE A PRINT VERSION
Creating the The What When Wine Diet print edition was also a slight headache, although holding the physical copy was so worth it. I debated for eons on which service to use, but since, at this point, I was using Amazon for everything, I figured stick with what works. CreateSpace is the self publishing print branch of Amazon. They make it fairly easy to use, and since you’ll already have the source files at this point, you can just use Scrivener to compile for CreateSpace. The worst part? Unlike the instant proof-approval ability of Kindle, you have to manually order physical copies to approve. Which is time & $$. The best part? You can list the book as an Amazon Prime order. And who doesn’t adore Amazon Prime?? Like really.
HOW TO PROMOTE
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f course, once the book is out there, promotion is key! I have all the book info on the back of my business cards. And I’ve definitly seen a direct correlation between my blog posts/youtube videos and book sales. Also, if you can secure a campaign like with BookBub, it could be a game changer! When I did my BookBub campaign, The What When Wine Diet hit #1 in multiple categories. It was pretty thrilling. At one point it was the #1 Paleo Book on Amazon, and #8 out of ALL free Kindle Books at that moment. I almost cried.
HOW TO GET AN AGENT
Well… that’s where I’m at now. I’m about to start work on my next book (which will be all about Intermittent Fasting!), and I’d love to secure representation, or a book deal, this time around. We shall see! Hopefully in a year, I’ll be writing a post on how to actually do that. Goals! 🙂
Write, Paleo, and Live On! You Got This!!
