Writing Better Books, the Agile Way

The craft of writing and marketing a book has changed significantly over the past 10 years. It is no longer enough to just write a good book; you have to write for a specific audience and connect to your readers long before the book hits the shelves. Releasing part of your work early allows you to make adjustments to your book—or even discard your project to invest your time instead into a better book idea.

Using modern project management methods, you can organize your work into individual steps ("user stories"), and re-use them to market your book. Organizing the book properly into logical sections helps you to create preview materials for blog posts or newsletters. In addition, this will ensure that you make steady progress with your book, avoid getting lost in the details and achieve high quality consistently throughout your book.

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Do you recognize yourself in one of these people?

This book is for "Peter."

• First-time author.
• Has a "complete" script, "had a friend look at it," and now wants to publish it.
• Might need (unsolicited) advice to properly edit it instead of just going through a "self-edit."
• Needs to be reminded about the difficulties of selling a book. Has no idea about marketing.
• Has not worked with an editor.
• Creates his own book covers.
• Would benefit from a "pep talk."

This book is for "Mary."

• Writes novels in Word but now wants to write a non-fiction book.
• Undecided about what tools to use.
• Works with an editor, but she and her editor have no real work structure.
• Does not know how to market, find market niches, etc. Her past successes were random and she never knew if her latest novel would sell or not.

This book is for "John."

• Professional editor seeking to expand his services from merely editing Word files to helping release books online.
• Also is looking for better project management techniques to better guide an author along the way.
• Often works in the scientific field and thus has to manage a lot of bibliographical references.
• Spends lots of time indexing books.
• Is OK with a LaTeX template but seeks to get a head start by making adjustments to it.

This book is for "George."

• LaTeX expert who wants to publish his work as an e-book.
• Needs basic direction and then figures out the rest on his own.
• Plans to do a series with a glossary and often needs to re-use text blocks.
• Needs some help in terms of book design, polishing, and graphics.
• Loves to share work and collaborate with others.

This book is for "Tina."

• Professional self-publisher who is looking for additional ideas to improve her existing publishing process.
• Looks for ways to establish herself as a brand and create a network of readers.

This book is for "Clara."

• Wants to write a book about her profession but has no idea where to start.