Jed Byrne - Self-Publishing Your First Book
DH Jed Byrne
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Who Is Jed Byrne?
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Jonathan Stark: Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark, and today I am joined by guest Jed Byrne. Jed, welcome to the show.
Jed Byrne: Thanks, Jonathan. Glad to be here.
Jonathan Stark: We are going to talk about self-publishing today, folks. If you're a long-time listener, you know that I think that professionals should be speaking and writing on a regular basis, and writing a book is sort of the the peak of the writing prong there, the writing fork. And it is, you know, it's it leads to authority. Author, it's right there in the word authority. So, uh we're going to talk about that today and Jed's journey to publishing his first book. But before we do that, Jed, could you tell folks a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Jed Byrne: Sure. Uh my name is Jed Byrne, and my uh day job is business developer at a uh North Carolina-based general contracting firm called Barnhill Building Group. And so by day, I sell uh construction services. Um, with that, since kind of my profession and my hobby is all about commercial real estate, and I live in Raleigh, and I like to focus locally. Um, so I I think and uh interact with people pretty much 24/7 365 around Raleigh commercial real estate. A handful of years ago, I started, um, what I like to think of as as my little sandbox. So I have a side, it's technically an LLC, but I have a side project, uh, yeah, sandbox that includes all of my projects related to commercial real estate in Raleigh that aren't my day job. And so that has included uh a podcast, a blog, um, a website, consulting, uh, a book. And so anything that falls outside of the day job falls under the Oak City CRE umbrella because Raleigh is the city of Oaks. And um, that ultimately led to this book because as you mentioned earlier, the a smart guy that I know said that experts should be speaking and writing. And so again, per per your advice, um, there's there's opportunities to speak, uh, obviously for conferences and whatnot, but I didn't want to travel. I like to to be local. And so, you know, that limits that ability to speak where there are gatekeepers. Um, I've still had plenty of chances, but in an effort to not be kind of hemmed in by the gatekeepers, I said, okay, well, I can start a podcast. And so I started a podcast and um, that's been a great experience and started writing because again, while you can write for publications and there are various uh ways to do that including writing a book, that's not where I started. So that's where the blog came from, um, all that fun stuff. And and yet ultimately led to the release of uh my first and what I like to think of is hopefully my worst book, Start Small Selling. Um, and that's not really a sales pitch, but like all things, and especially in the world of expertise, I think one of the biggest hurdles for a lot of people is you're an expert in the thing that you do. So this idea of starting from scratch, right? And and learning a new skill or getting up on stage for the first time is really daunting. Um, so I just like to remind myself and everybody else, it's like, okay, well, you're going to do the thing, uh, but you're learning. So it's only going to get better from there, hopefully. And so while I think it's a great book, um, I think my second book is probably going to be better because of all the things I've learned along the way.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, it is amazing what the the learning curve on writing a book in the subject matter and just the the process itself is incredible.
Jed Byrne: Yeah.
The Hyper-Local Newsletter
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Jonathan Stark: Before we even jump into the book, tell tell folks a little bit about your Substack. When you say blog, is that what you mean or?
Jed Byrne: So, fair enough, I didn't even mention the Substack. No, so there there was a blog where I I published articles. The Substack is uh a weekly newsletter that frankly, I kind of uh stole the idea from Tim Ferriss. You know, he did his top five, or he does his five bullet Friday. Uh so in 2017, when I was first getting into this world of trying to create content, or as you as you say, help people at scale, um, I didn't think that I was a writer. And we that's a whole different story, um, probably more appropriate for my shrink than anything else, but I just I was like, well, I'm not a writer, so I can't do that. But what I can do, since I am reading the news, since I am staying on top of the industry, is I can pull together five interesting tidbits and share them with an email list. Um, and so again, back, you know, almost 10 years ago now, that started with it was a weekly, and it was on Friday, because I was lazy and I was like, okay, well, Tim sends his on Friday, he's pretty smart. You know, let's start there. So every Friday morning, um, I started sending out an email, and it was just that. I was blind copying people on an email list. I I pulled together through my contacts a list of like 40 something people and just sent them an email and said, hey, I'm going to start doing this thing. If you're not interested, let me know, and I'll stop sending it to you. But it was just it was just an email to uh a handful of people blind copied. The response was good. Eventually it morphed to other platforms. Today it's on Substack, but um, that list has grown to right around 2,000 people who get the email every week. And again, that's not a huge number, but since it's hyper-focused on Raleigh commercial real estate, it uh amazes me how many times I reach out to people or meet somebody at a conference and they go, oh, hey, you know, I think I get your do you write an email? And I was like, yeah, I do. Um, so it's it's it's amazing. And I know you think this way about about your daily list. It's like that's the last thing I would get rid of. That's the last thing I would stop doing if if all else fails, um, that's kind of the most valuable. In fact, I was at a coffee meeting this morning with an architect. I told her like that the most valuable thing I do with my week professionally is send that email. Um, it's just been this amazing project.
Jonathan Stark: Nice. Yeah, I I subscribe to it. It's weirdly, what's the what's the word? It's it's this is going to sound really weird. It's weirdly comforting, even though it's not about my neighborhood, it's very neighborhoody. And there's it made me want to start one for my neighborhood. But it's it's that would be totally ridiculous for me to do, but uh I wish there was one for my neighborhood, I guess is a better way to put it.
Jed Byrne: Well, I think all these things we do are totally ridiculous, so that's one point. But I mean, that's that's the intent, right? I'm not a super serious buttoned-up person. Um, yeah, it's it's meant to be that. It's it's meant to be an email to friends, whether I know you or not. Um, again, and I talk in the in the topic is above the fold. I talk about all sorts of stuff. Um, but I always keep the five things. Sometimes it's six, but it's always focused on Raleigh, it's always real estate. And again, a lot of the people in the um, who get the newsletter are in the profession, they're in the industry. And often they know 80% of the things, or I guess four out of the five links. They're already aware of it. So for them, it's kind of this comfortable, oh, hey, I already saw that, great. I must be up to speed. That feels good. And then sometimes it's this, you know, they find something that they didn't see, or there's I I include some random article from something that's not uh directly in Raleigh or North Carolina, but relates to Raleigh, um, in some capacity or some chart. And um, yeah, I think it's really helpful. And again, the the cost of it is very low. You know, Substack is free. I'm keeping up with the news anyway. Um, and again, it just scales. So whether I send one email, it it takes me an hour and a half every Tuesday morning. If I if I send it to one person or, you know, 10,000. It's it's been fantastic.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, it's it's there's something nostalgic about seeing hyper-local news. Yeah, it's just in general, even if it's not for the place where I live, there's something very uh old school about it. Yeah, so at any rate, maybe this will inspire other people out there to start ones for their neighborhood.
Jed Byrne: Well, I think they should. And and and quite frankly, this is a whole another conversation that I'm probably not equipped to have, but I I do think that local coverage has kind of gone away. Um, and I've I've run across people who have done similar things in other markets. And yeah, I I think it's you can do it for wherever. Um, and again, if if you're the person who gets to keep people up to speed on something in your neighborhood, in your town, in your, you know, Hamlet, whatever, um, I think it's a great position to be in. And and then you never know, you know, I didn't start it with the intent of writing a book one day. Um, I had no idea what was going to come of it. But I'll tell you what, and we'll get into it later, but with when the Kickstarter launched, having 2,000 people on an email that that know you, like you, trust you, that you can send that to is really stinking helpful.
Why Write a Book?
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Jonathan Stark: Yeah. Okay, so let's that's a perfect segue. Let's move over to that. So what was the uh I guess what take us back to the beginning when you were, you know, you're like, okay, I know at some point I probably should write a book. It'd probably be good for me professionally and personally. Uh how like what was the thing that you're like, okay, this is it. Like what was the sort of straw that broke the camel's back?
Jed Byrne: Um, fair question. And again, you said in the intro that, you know, writing a book is kind of the peak of the writing fork, I think is what you said. You know, it's it's the peak of the mountain, so to speak. And that wasn't what it was. You know, I didn't start and say, oh, hey, I'm going to do the biggest thing I could do, or hey, I've done everything else, I should do a book. Um, I've just throughout my life have been someone who learns really well by doing, and I also really enjoy making things. And again, there's a whole bunch of examples I could tell you, you know, I brewed beer in college, and the joy from that was one, you get beer, but two, you also get to give beer to somebody, and they get to enjoy it. And you see that, you know, that response where it's like, hey, I made this, you know, like Seth Godin says, I made this thing for you. You give it to somebody, and you get to see it. And um, it's just a cool feeling to be able to to create something and put it out in the world. And I I've done that a hundred different ways, but this is one tangible example. And so it was a desire to say, hey, um, I want to learn how to write a book, right? Like how how does a book get created? How does it get in the world? I want to learn about the editing process. I want to learn about um, ultimately, I want to learn about crowdfunding and Kickstarters and and things like that. So it was it was a desire to learn something new and to have a new project. Um, and that was that was the goal. I just said, hey, I, you know, one day I want to write a book. And then that was always in the background. The thing that kind of started it for me though was in my career, doing, you know, this this selling for a living in the AEC industry, which is architecture, engineering, and construction. I just ran into a bunch of people who I worked with, who were these amazing experts. Um, and I hear you talk about it here, um, a lot of people talk about how they're expertise. And and if you know someone who's an expert and you see them not sharing their expertise, and you get to witness all these people who are impacted by the lack of that expertise being shared. You know, there are people out there who have design problems. There are people out there who have construction problems. And when you see these people, they're like, man, you know, Sally could help you, but but Sally doesn't want to talk about it because Sally doesn't want to sell. It was just kind of like, man, this is a problem. And it felt like something that again, I'm not the world's foremost sales expert by any stretch of the imagination, but, you know, expertise is relative, and I feel like I could help get some people over the hump of of wanting to sell and feeling like they can sell, feeling it's it's not this like, you know, snake oil salesman, used car salesman. Um, it's always the men who are ripping people off. But, you know, it's not these it's not this like bad thing. In fact, I would argue that in the in our world, like not helping those people is hurting them. Um, so so I would put positive to say that not selling is a problem. Not selling is hurting, you know, is the bad thing. But anyway, so I I felt like I could do it. Um, I had a couple different ideas for topics, and that I think the big turning point was deciding ultimately to write it about sales, but not again, selling in general, very specific to my industry, and also the kind of zero to one. There there's lots of good sales books. Um, you've written several books that I think that I've given to people in my industry and said, hey, you should read this, right? So that's if you want to get better at selling, there's a thousand resources for you. But there aren't many that I could find in our industry that gets you, you know, it's kind of like the couch to 5K, right? You just get you started, get you on the path. And so I felt like there was a gap there. And then I actually tested the idea. Um, Noah Kagan has a has a book called Million Dollar Weekend where he talks about one way to test an idea is like get someone to give you an actual dollar. And so I'd narrowed it down to a couple ideas, and I was actually on vacation. Um, I don't think my wife's going to listen to this, but I was on vacation, and I I narrowed it down to uh how to network and like how to build a network in the industry or how to start selling. And I texted a bunch of people about the networking idea, and I got a bunch of, oh, that's awesome. I would totally. And then I followed up with, hey, I will come teach your group or whoever you want a workshop on this concept. All you have to do is is Venmo me a dollar. One dollar. And I was like, I'm not going to keep it. I'll give you the dollar back, but you got to do it. Uh and nobody everybody said it was a great idea. Nobody followed through. And then with the sales idea, same thing. Nine out of 10 people said, oh, this is awesome. We could totally use that. That'd be great. But when it came down to it, I I texted people back and said, okay, Venmo me a dollar and we can do a workshop. And two people actually did it. And I was like, okay, well, that's that's telling to me. Um, that it's real, you know, that there's something there. And so that was that was a very long-winded way of saying that's how it started and that's how I picked this topic.
Testing the Idea
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Jonathan Stark: Oh, that's a great story. It also reminds me of the mom test by Rob Fitzpatrick, who he has got three criteria to determine whether or not someone's just being nice or, you know, they're basically lying to you because they don't want to hurt your feelings, saying that's a great idea. Someone will probably love it. And his tests are, of course, if they whip out their wallet and like, can I buy that right now? Um, but the other two I think are really interesting and useful. Uh, one is if they are willing to set up a meeting, so spend time with you to dig more, uh, dig deeper into the idea. And uh, the last one is if they're willing to spend social capital by introducing you to someone who they think you should talk to. Um, anyway, great book. Both books are really good. I like the Million Dollar Weekend book too. Um, okay, cool. So that was a that was a great way to test the idea and you settled on start small selling. And I I got the hard cover right here. It says Kickstarter edition right on the cover.
Jed Byrne: Well, you you yeah, you're you're kind of uh I guess not not spoiling the ending, but right, I mean, back to your comment about, you know, why is Jonathan Stark on my Tuesday morning email list? I have no earthly idea, but he is. And so when it came time to do the Kickstarter, right, like that's how you got your copy because you are one of the backers who is now listed in the book. But again, that's um, that's for later.
The Writing Process
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Jonathan Stark: Yeah, so uh so once you once you had the idea, you're like, okay, this is the one. Uh what what was the next step? Did you have a title? Did you have an outline? What like what what was the first thing you did after that?
Jed Byrne: Sure. So the uh I did have a title. It's not the title it wound up being. Um, I don't think I started with an outline. I did and now because, you know, I was on the hook to to teach a workshop. Um, I created a workshop. And so I wound up doing probably four different in-person workshops. And again, that was a great and you know, this is not my advice. Lots of people will say this. That's a great way to test your material. One to see if you know it, right? Can you teach it? Um, to get feedback, where do you lose people? Where are people interested? You know, where are people telling stories about what you taught, you know, is there some sort of positive reaction at all or or does it just fall flat? So I wound up teaching a couple workshops around some of the concepts. Ultimately, the next step and kind of where the book process got serious was outlining. So I went through, uh, did a bunch of research and wound up, um, oh, who is self-publishing school? I know I was gonna forget his name. I was just listening to a podcast with him this morning. Um, now, now it is, hang on. I gotta look this up. It's gonna bug me. So, so one of the people is Tucker Max. Um, he has a publishing company and he actually, they, they give like a free 400 something page PDF book all around the process of writing a book and doing it yourself because ultimately they sell that service. But, gosh, you and Rochelle, I've been listening to your back catalog. You've talked about him too because she had the same, what is his name? This is bugging me. It doesn't matter. Um, they, uh, but the idea was write an outline, right? So get together, pull, pull your resources together, put it in an outline. And so that's what I did. I, I spent, I don't know, a week or two making just a massive bullet outline, um, doing sticky notes all over, what are the different topics, bundling those topics together into sections.
Jonathan Stark: Oh, that sounds like Pat Flynn.
Jed Byrne: It, it is Pat Flynn. And he, so this guy that I'm thinking, this is gonna annoy me. The guy that I'm thinking of was just on Pat Flynn's podcast, um, because I just listened to it the other day. But here we go. Chandler Bolt from South Carolina, and I know all this about him. Um, anyway, so Chandler Bolt has, uh, his self-publishing.com, self-publishing school. And they run through a similar process where it's like, hey, the first step is to write an outline, uh, pull together your ideas. So I did that and then I went through detailed. I mean, I probably had a five or six page bulleted outline. And then the next step for me was, okay, well, I have an outline, I have these topics. Is, is this anywhere close to enough material from a, for a book? And I know, you know, you're a fan of, of small books and you could write a short book, you can write a long book. I just did, I had no idea where it landed. So I kind of locked myself in the closet, put my podcasting equipment up and just talked through the outline. And then turned that into a transcript and counted the words. And I think I wound up at like 38,000 words or 40,000 words. I was like, okay, I guess this is, you know, this is something, right? It wasn't 2,000 words. Um,
Jonathan Stark: Right.
Jed Byrne: And so that that felt like a validation of, okay, there's enough material here to make it into a book. And then yeah, from there went through, uh, writing, rewriting, rewriting again. Um, that was, that was the whole crazy process. But yeah, that was what started. Big outline, uh, and then the audio test and then went straight into writing the kind of messy first draft.
Jonathan Stark: Okay. And how much of the messy first draft actually was, was you cleaning up the transcripts or was the transcript just a word count test?
Jed Byrne: That it was just a word count test. So I, I started from scratch and actually in, in hindsight, it was shocking. The, the writing the first draft was where I thought all the blood, sweat and tears was gonna be. But it wasn't. It, I wound up, and this is not a, you know, brag, but I wound up knocking it out in like 35 days. Um, And so I think I averaged a little over a thousand words a day. Um, but again, I knew the material and I just got up every morning and made it a practice to type and just typed and typed and typed and found time here and there. But, um, I'm pretty good about being disciplined with my time. So that wasn't an issue. I just get up early and knock it out for an hour and change or or less if I have to. But, you know, always kind of 45 minutes plus. Um, and in 35 days got the draft done. I was like, oh, well, you know, what's everybody talking about? This, this book writing is a breeze. This is easy. Um, and that was month one of, you know, or that was one month out of like a, you know, 16, 18 month process. So that's not where the hard stuff is, it turns out, at least for me.
Jonathan Stark: Okay. So while you were doing that, were you doing anything in parallel, uh, to to start to build like, a lot of people talk about building an author platform, like Tim Grall talks about that a lot. Or, uh, was it just you're just focusing on getting a first draft done and, uh, weren't really thinking about teasing it to the list or setting up a Kickstarter, making a video or whatever?
Jed Byrne: Yeah, no, I hadn't, um, I was mostly focused on writing, but because I have, you know, the, the Tuesday morning top five newsletter, I was always talking about it, you know, every week. But again, that was only like four weeks while I was writing, but I was talking about it and so I wanted to keep people up to speed of what I was doing. Um, but it was more about kind of setting the stage for, and again, fortunately, I had already done the hard work, right? If I had tried to build a list when I'd started writing the book, I would've had six people on my list. And, um, because again, it's not a huge, it wasn't, it's never been a fast growth thing. It's just been eight, nine years of a couple people here and there over time and people don't drop off because they seem to value it. Um, but so no, no, no really building a platform or anything like that. It wasn't trying to do too much on social media because I knew, I knew that I didn't need anybody else to publish the book if that makes sense. So like, the way I thought about it was, my goal here isn't to sell a million copies or a hundred copies or a thousand copies. It's, it's to learn how to write a book. And so what do I need for that? I need, uh, a manuscript. I need to spend some time editing. I need to be able to get it up on some, you know, some way of printing it. And, you know, Amazon can, there's lots of other options, but Amazon can take care of all that. And so really it was like, I need an ISBN, I think, and I think I needed, uh, a manuscript and I needed a cover file. And that's kind of it. Um, you know, I didn't, I've never written a book the traditional way and I, I didn't try to do this 30 years ago, but today that that's it, right? So an an ISBN, you can get that for a hundred bucks maybe if you're just buying one. And if you can, if you can put together a cover and I didn't use Canva, but I'm sure you could put together a cover on Canva. So like, it's effectively free, or it's a hundred bucks, let's say, to put a book into the world. Um, plus your time. And so I knew I could do that. And so that was the goal. It's like, get it to a place where I can self-publish before I even think about anything else. And then once I got to that place, um, and I, I used a, a paid for Atticus. I had like a $500 budget in my head. Um, because like we talked about before you started recording, I just didn't know how to think about how much to invest in a project like this because the, you know, while yes, you can publish it for a hundred dollars, you can also easily spend $50,000. And so that was the next big question. It's like, okay, now I have this manuscript and I can technically publish it today. What else do I want to do or how else do I want to make it better? Um, and so within my, you know, micro budget of $500, it was Atticus software to do kind of the layout because I thought that would be nice. Um, the ISBNs. That was maybe it. Um, yeah, not much, not much past that. Um, so that was it. And so I got to that point and then I was like, okay, well, if I want to do anything more here, I'm gonna need to, I'm gonna need a bigger boat, right? I'm gonna need to get some more money. So how are we gonna do that? And then ultimately, how do I determine if investing more in this book is worth it? And because again, I didn't have, there wasn't a business goal or a revenue goal. It was just to put it out in the world. So, so what would make it worth spending more money? And the answer to that was the Kickstarter because that one, I could use the Kickstarter to raise the funds and two, that would also be kind of proof positive that people are interested in this book, right? That was the test because if the Kickstarter didn't fund, everybody just gets their money back. And I learn, okay, well, people actually aren't that interested in this book. But if it was successful, I could say, one, okay, now I've got a bigger budget and two, people are interested. Um, and I guess I didn't say that, but the the whole point of the Kickstarter was to raise funds to funnel back every single dollar into producing the book and making the book a better finished product.
The Kickstarter
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Jonathan Stark: Hmm. Okay. So what can you tell folks who've never used Kickstarter before? I I assume everyone listening knows what Kickstarter is, but for people who haven't put a project up there, uh, how big of a lift was that?
Jed Byrne: Not huge. Again, having written the book, um, and being, I'm by no means technologically advanced. But like, I've done enough of these side projects, um, you know, again, I can write a little bit, I can record a simple video on my phone. I've got a tripod, I've got, you know, a light, a microphone. Um, So again, that wasn't that challenging. Um, putting together some basic graphics was easy with with tools online and tools that I already have at my disposal. Uh, or like free, you know, free software that you can download. Um, I like Inkscape. There's a handful of things that you can use to do basic graphics. So it wasn't a huge lift. It was a bit uncomfortable with the idea of like, hey, you're putting this thing out in the world. But that's again, always gonna be the case. So you just have to do it. Um, which nobody wants to hear, but that's the truth. It's like, okay. Um, but again, I've also had a, I've had kind of this breadcrumb trail of people finding it very valuable. So I had sent out early kind of copies. I had, you mentioned, um, Fitzpatrick. So his other book is, I think it's called write useful books or useful books. So he's got a software platform for beta readers. Uh, incidentally, did not get a huge, I got a bunch of people interested in being a beta reader, did not get a bunch of, um, results from that.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, it's hard. I I've It's really hard. What's the name of that platform? It's called help a book out or help help this book, something like that. It's the the platform that that Fitzpatrick has that went along with that book. And in theory, it's a great idea. It's kind of like, uh, for people who are not familiar with it, it's kind of like a Google Doc of the book, but with very specific, um, comment capabilities for people to jump in and kind of ask questions about, you know, at a sentence level, almost, well, not almost, but like at a sentence level. And it can you have has little emojis for like if they're confused or if they think it's amazing or if they think it's weak or whatever. And I did that, I think for you mentioned Corey Quinn for a second there. I think I did I signed up to do, uh, to help be a beta reader on his book and it is, it's a lot of work for the reader. It's a lot of work.
Jed Byrne: And to get through it again, it's so it's it's help this book.com and I think they do a good job of, especially because none of these people were professional beta readers. They kind of prompt you and give you ideas of like, okay, you know, was this confusing, right? Did you get lost? Do you not understand this? Do you need to ask a question? And so it helps you kind of, it helps I think the beta reader put information into the program and then on your side, you can kind of summarize and see. And so it'll show you, hey, all these people thought this one part was confusing or, um, so it was helpful. But yes, getting people to actually do it was was challenging.
Jonathan Stark: Before you move on from that, there's uh, you mentioned earlier that you taught uh, a couple of workshops to kind of road test the material. And I want to and I that is to me the the baller move because you get people in a room or in a Zoom call, they're there. It's an hour or two or however long it is. And they're engaged and it's not like, you know, you're rolling out chapters over, you know, week after week after week and the people have to keep coming back and back and back and like edit, you know, help you edit the book. It's like all at once, they hear each other. It's all I I I like the workshop approach. It's messier, but I like the workshop approach. I think it's more realistic and we talked quite about a bit about that with Mike McCallwitz on Business of Authority. So if folks want to hear he he does that with all of his books, which I think is a great idea. And he described the whole process. Uh, and that episode should still you should still be able to find that online if people want to hear that.
Jed Byrne: And there's this is not the Rob Rob Fitzpatrick commercial, but he wrote another book on how to design and teach us called how to design and teach workshops that work every time. So again, I used that to help, um, put together those workshops because I'm not a professional workshop, uh, teacher. But that was super helpful. Um, but then yeah, I mean, with the Kickstarter, the the process is not hard. The the challenge that I think anybody might find is again, I don't know universally. Um, and again, the whole idea is you, you set up, you put up a project, you you kind of advertise the project. And you set a funding goal. And for me it was $1,500 because I thought that if I could raise 15, if I could increase my budget by $1,500, that would at least allow me to get a good or a decent, um, editing team or, um, developmental editor. Because that was my biggest fear is like, I know this, I know the material is like true and right and helpful. But is someone gonna open the book and go, what the heck, you know, not like what does this mean, but like this doesn't flow, like this is out of order, like this makes no sense. And so I just wanted somebody to to take a high level view and say, okay, well, you know, move this here, cut this section, you don't give enough details here and kind of orchestrate the whole thing. So that to me was a developmental editor. So I set the goal for $1,500 and and people can pledge funds to the project on Kickstarter. And if you don't reach your goal, they never get charged. But if you do, then the project is funded and all that money goes, you know, after the 30 days into your account minus the processing fee, which I think is like roughly 10%. And so, uh, I was successful, uh, which was nice. And so my budget grew. I think we wound up closer to $4,000. But again, the challenge, um, I think, you know, you were in there. Uh, there was somebody from the Netherlands. Don't ask. I did. I I I emailed her and said, hey, just had a curiosity, how'd you even find out about this thing? And I don't know. I think she said she was just searching for projects that she liked on Kickstarter. Um, but everybody else, I think, was on my email list or, you know, linked to me on LinkedIn. Like very close connections. And so I think if you don't have the ability, um, to put it out to a large group of people, it's gonna be really challenging. But by the same token, I was just amazed the the level of support, both, you know, some people who you said, oh, yeah, you know, obviously they're gonna be a major supporter of this project. Um, where that didn't happen. Or people said, yeah, I'm totally gonna do that. Didn't happen. Some people who you haven't talked to in years, you know, some some of my, that's not true. But but some people donated or or funded with no reward. Because that was one of the options, just, you know, give a dollar, give as much as you want. And actually my my largest, um, backer was for no reward at all. They just they wanted to see the project succeed or wanted to support all the work I'd done on the newsletter over the last, you know, eight years. I don't know exactly. But, um, it was kind of crazy. And and that's a smart man once said, uh, value is subjective. Um, and so, so put it out there. But you know, some people just funded the project with for no reward because that was one of the options, just, you know, give a dollar, give as much as you want. And actually my my largest, um, backer was for no reward at all. They just they wanted to see the project succeed or wanted to support all the work I'd done on the newsletter over the last, you know, eight years. I don't know exactly. But, um, it was kind of crazy. And and that's a And and oddly enough, I don't know if it's funny, but it's it's odd. I wound up, uh, she's the only refund because after it had after it had the project had funded, she sent me an email and said, hey, by the way, for my taxes, can I get an invoice with, you know, showing VAT, I guess it's value add tax, you know, all this stuff. And I was like, oh man, I have no earthly idea how to do that. You know, you funded the project for $15. I was like, it's going to take me several hours to figure this out, and at the end of the day, I might mess it up and you might go to like Dutch tax jail. I don't know. I was like, I don't really want to mess with this. I was like, I'm going to give you your money back. I'll send you the book anyway, but like, just just let's not go down that road.
Jonathan Stark: Um. Yeah, it's worth more than $15 to you to not have to figure it out.
Jed Byrne: Correct. Again, because yeah, relative value. I was like, yes, I'm going to spend I'm going to spend several hours when when I need to finish this book. Uh, I don't need to be figuring out VAT invoicing for the Netherlands because I will literally, well, probably never do that again.
Jonathan Stark: Right. Okay, so you've got the, you know, $4,000 something dollars. Uh, what was the next thing that you did to to start looking for developmental editors and how did you do that?
Building the Editing Team
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Jed Byrne: So I I'd kind of, um, before launching the Kickstarter, put that together. I I'd created a little budget, um, document that just said, okay, what are the different options, right? So it's it's editors come in several different types of there's developmental, there's copy, there's line edit, there is proof reading, and then you've got graphic designers for the cover, then you've got photographers, you know, if you want an author photo, and then you've got, um, interior design people, then you've got layout people. So there's like all these different team members that you could have. And so the question was, and I've never done this again, but this was part of the value was learning all of those bits and pieces. So I spent a lot of time doing that research just because it was fun and that was part of the goal. It was like, okay, now I know all these things. That's probably going to be helpful in the future. Um, but so I put together a little budget list and then I spent a lot of time actually kind of force ranking and interviewing people of like, okay, well, if I only have, you know, because again, the total budget built out to, you know, between four and $7,000 depending on which people I worked with. Um, but I also asked them. I said like, if you only had X amount of dollars, oh, and there's also the whole world of like coaches. There are people who will coach you through the process. There are project managers who will manage all this, you know, so there's lots of things that you can hire out. Uh, you can hire the whole thing out too. Um, including the writing, which again, I wanted to write a book. That was the goal, not, uh, have somebody else write. There's nothing wrong with that, but that was not my goal. Um, so yeah, I put together the preliminary budget and that's also that was helpful for the Kickstarter because I needed to tell people like, hey, if we can raise this much money, you know, this is how the book's going to improve. And so, um, I'd interviewed a handful of editors and and editing teams. Um, there's Reedsy, R E E D S Y is a platform, uh, that kind of, you know, is is all things book related that you can hire freelancers. So it's kind of like Fiverr or Upwork, but specifically for, uh, people who want to write books. And then there's the, um, freelance, what is it called? Freelance. It's not like the freelance writers association, something like that. One one of the editors said, I said, hey, if you were looking for this, how would you find people? And they I think it's called the freelance writers association. They said, you know, um, again, like one of the things you always talk about is is there is there a conference for that? Well, yeah, there is. There's this group that that this is what they do. And so they have a job board basically that you can post, hey, here's what I'm looking for, or you can go on, they post their services. So there's a couple different avenues to find and hire people. Uh, went through a bunch of different interviews, informational interviews with people. Um, had some interesting experiences. Uh, one of one of the potential editors wound up, um, sending out an email that wasn't intended. I can't figure out if it wasn't intended to go to me or somebody referenced to sign there's apparently a Seinfeld episode where there was like an accidental on purpose email, but basically the person had emailed out to because we had talked about they knew some other freelancers who could help, you know, graphic design and, uh, proof read and all that kind of stuff. And so they sent an email to that group, uh, copied me and it was basically like, hey, I don't think this guy has any budget. I think he's just wasting our time, but I said I was going to send this email. And I was like, what do you do here? Uh, because one, I told you exactly what my budget was. Um, and again, I don't it's not the biggest budget, but it's not zero. Like I I felt like I was very transparent. I was like, also, how do you respond to this? Like, do I acknowledge? Do I, um, so I wrote back and I was like, A to C, you know, like, you know, if if you felt like I was pulling your chain, I wish you'd just said something, but like, I appreciate you doing this and whatever. It didn't work out. Long story short. But, um, it's it was a fun process, right? So I found potential people and then when the funding came in, uh, went through and and hired a a developmental editor. That was great. Um, went through and got the extra exterior graphic designer for the cover. Um, got my interior designer. And again, lessons learned there, right? One one of my, um, freelancers, the the cover designer was in London. The, uh, interior layout person was in Poland. Uh, turns out my bank does not enjoy me, you know, sending money to Poland. I had to jump through some hoops there, but it worked out. It was easy, but again, now I I know more things about that. Um, had a had a proof reader ultimately, uh, which worked out. Uh, other other side story about hiring consultants. One of the proof readers who I did not hire misspelled my name in the, um, in the contract proposal. And I was like, you know, I hate to do this, but that's kind of the job. Like I I need you to I need you to get the details right. Um,
Jonathan Stark: Wow.
Jed Byrne: And they were embarrassed and but again, I was like, I I could just not say anything, but I I was like, if it was me, I'd want to know and my hope is that, you know, they can say, well, that that was when the that was that was rock bottom and things turned around and things only got better from there. All because of Jed Byrne telling me that I I misspelled his name. I don't know.
The Timeline
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Jonathan Stark: Love it. Okay. So this sounds like, uh, give us a sense of time frame here because that sounds like a lot of stuff. You've got a full-time job.
Jed Byrne: Yep.
Jonathan Stark: Uh, so when are you when are you squeezing this stuff in and how much of a like how much calendar time did this eat up, not hours, but
Jed Byrne: Yeah, good question. I mean, it was probably soup to nuts 18 months from when I said this is going to happen, you know, did did those text message, you know, the, um, No Kagan test that would you send me a dollar until the book was printed. It was probably around 18 months. And the bulk of that though was the self writing or the the self editing, rewriting, reorganizing. I mean, I probably spent at least nine months because again, it just it takes a lot of time and reading through, um, you know, 45,000 words and, um, I'm not a professional, so it just it took a lot of time for me to get it work to a place where I really felt comfortable like, okay, if I could if I could hit publish on KDP tomorrow, I'd feel good about this. If I if I was going to give a copy to a, you know, architect in town, I would be happy with this. Is it the best? No. Do I know it can get better? Absolutely, but I would feel good about it. So that was probably at least half the time. Again, the writing only took about a month. It was the rewriting, editing, doing all that myself, printing it out, red lining, you know, retyping. Um, that took a bulk of the calendar time and a bulk of the just hours. Um, and then the Kickstarter was about a month.
Jonathan Stark: Okay. When at what point in that the editing process did the Kickstarter happen?
Jed Byrne: That was probably, I mean, a year in. So, so that was towards the end. Um, and then that last bit, yeah, took maybe six, eight months of just the the formal editing process, which was great. I mean, the team was great. They're professionals and and, um, you asked about when this would happen. Again, I'm I'm an early bird. I I get up early, basically the opposite of you, right? So I I get to bed super early, um, and then I wake up super early. And I love that because I think similar to you, it's like that's the time when the world is quiet and nobody can touch me. So, uh, whether it's for work or whether it's for for something else or for nothing. Like I can get up and just read a book. Um, I have access to a couple hours every morning if I need them to exercise, to, uh, work on stuff and and nobody no other reasonable people are awake. And so, um, I don't get emails at, you know, there there's nothing happening on social media because well, that's not true. Social media would be a killer, but I don't get emails, nobody calls, nobody texts. It's just my time, which I love. I think that answers that question about the the overall time and yeah.
Jonathan Stark: If if you were just but if you were just if you knew you had the budget, if you had $5,000 and wanted to produce a book,
Jed Byrne: I could think you could you could do it in, you know, six months. Um, certainly less than a year. It's just a matter of how much time you want to spend on it. And I and I didn't track my hours. Um, but it was I mean, it was it was a good amount of work, but it was, you know, an hour probably I can't even hazard a guess because if I said five hours a week, then you multiply that out. It's probably too high. But, um, yeah, a couple hours every week, um, for almost all those weeks and some weeks there there was nothing to do or some weeks I said, you know, took some time off, but outside of writing, that was every morning just because I knew that would get it done. So it was every single morning.
Jonathan Stark: And at what point, how much editing did you do on your own before the the team showed up?
Jed Byrne: Too much. Um, it was just again, it was like an inefficient process because I was doing it myself. Um, but I also think there was a benefit to that. So again, calendar wise, it took probably nine months. But one of the things that hit me is is about two-thirds of the way in, I completely restructured the manuscript. So I I like took it down, rewrote a bunch of stuff, took sections out, added sections in, broke it in, reorganized it. And I think that only happens if you really kind of sat and thought. Like I think if I tried to rush, like put the same amount of hours into a condensed period of time, I don't think I would have gotten there. I have no science to back this up, but I just think kind of mulling it over for for several months, putting it away for a little bit and then coming back to it. You know, at one point I got this idea and I was like, oh shoot, I think I'm complete and again, there was some feedback I was it, but I was like, I think it would be much better if I could chunk it into these five sections. Here's the order. Um, because originally the whole the whole thing was, you know, this constraints first selling method. Um, trademark, not really, but you know, that that that was the whole book. That was one that was the original title too, was constraints first selling. And then I was like, no, I think it's that's not it. I and that turned out to be kind of a long chapter, but just a chapter. And then the rest of it was like, okay, well, the goal isn't the method. The goal is to just get someone to start. And you know, there's things they need to know and there's things they need to believe if they're going to start. And then once they start, here's a here's a tool set that they can use. But it was that start small piece that kind of really unlocked, I think the final structure and manuscript. And again, that just took, I don't know that it needed to take six months to think that through, but, um, it did. It it just it just clicked one day and, um, so I think the time was necessary. I wouldn't I guess I wouldn't try to rush it unless there was a real reason to rush it. Um, but also I know I'm good at finishing stuff that I care about. I'm not good at finishing stuff that I don't care about. But I'm I'm pretty confident that I was like, I'll I'll get this thing, I'll get this project done. I'm not worried about that. So the flip side of that advice is if you're a really bad procrastinator, like it could easily take 12 years to write a book if you just let it dilly dally.
Working with a Developmental Editor
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Jonathan Stark: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's the the perfectionist slash procrastination angle is can be horrible in this case. But I think that's where that's where it's really useful to have somebody who's a developmental editor. So how much when the when the developmental editor came on the scene, how much did it change from that point or had you kind of banged it into a pretty good shape?
Jed Byrne: It was in it was in pretty good shape. So it was a lot of like, yes, this makes sense. And I and I told him the same thing. I was like, here's my biggest fear that the content's fine, but it's just all out of whack. And so it was a team and we went through in thirds and um, so no, they didn't they didn't kind of restructure the whole book. They were but there were a lot of good questions, a lot of good prodding. Um, but they were kind of a a developmental slash copy. So I would think more of their changes were on the, um, or I guess maybe it's line editing. So you know, kind of looking at the sentence structures and lines and saying like, hey, or this paragraph's too long or you're, you know, you don't have enough detail here. So it was more of that. It was a blend, um, of the services they offered, which was part of the the value too. Um, so yeah, it wasn't it wasn't huge structural changes by any means.
Jonathan Stark: Okay. All right, so how this is super mechanical question, but how did you communicate the changes back and forth without completely losing your mind?
Jed Byrne: Fair question. Uh, track changes. So we used word, uh, and they did it in thirds. So they would go through a third and comment everything. I would get it, make the changes I like, tell them why I wasn't going to do, you know, they they could give a comment and I'll say I'm not going to do this. Um, but I would I would make changes and track all my changes and and respond in comments kind of in a thread in Microsoft Word to them. And while I was doing that, they were working on the next chunk and then I sent it back to them. And so then I got the second chunk and we just kind of juggled all the way through the book thirds at a time and we probably went through two or three back and forth per third. Um, so again, it it took maybe 10, 12 weeks. Um, but it was a fine process and and the feedback I got, it didn't feel like I was doing this, but they made the comment enough that it must be true, where apparently some people that they worked with and I think authors in general would get feedback and be like, no, you're wrong. I'm not like I apparently was good at accepting feedback. I guess is the gist. Um, but I was also like, hey, you're the professional. Like I hired you for a reason. I'm going to if I didn't trust your feedback, I don't know what that what kind of sense that would make. But, um, apparently I was I was good at accepting feedback.
Jonathan Stark: Well, that the editorial process for people listening who haven't gone through it is really important. It's it uh, I've heard people say and I agree that if you only hire one person on your book project, it's it should be a good editor and it really haven't gone through the process with a, you know, a traditional publisher three times myself. Um, it it it does something that is very hard to describe, but they turn it in it sounds like a book after they get done with it. Even though it's still your words, they do stuff to it that is it, um, It's it's better. It gets better and it's really hard to say point to exactly what the thing is, but there's something about it that feels more solid and stable without removing your voice from it. Yeah.
Jed Byrne: And I think sometimes it might just be the confidence and I'm sure there's I've only done this once. I'm sure there's different types of editors. You know, sometimes they would make a comment. I was like, I need you to kind of write that out because I don't understand what you're trying to get at. And we this was asynchronous, we weren't in person. Um, but they certainly weren't going through and like rewriting whole things. I think sometimes people do that. It was just a lot of, you know, outside perspective and validation in some cases and sometimes they would ask a question. You're like, oh yeah, I guess okay, now I see what you're saying. Let's re-tweak this. Um, the hardest part honestly with having more than one person in the editing pool, like so my my development developmental/line editors were, it's actually a team. It was a three-person team. Um, didn't pay three times for that. It was great. It was like, this will work out perfectly. Um, but then later when I had, uh, the proofreader, who was also an editor, like they were making comments that kind of contradicted previous. And I was like, man, I don't know, you guys like, no offense to word nerds out there, but it's like, I'm sure you guys can argue about this all day long. I was like, I just this one feels better. I'm going to move ahead. Um, and so that that turned out to be challenging because I was like, I think you guys are probably both right, but I don't know that there's a and they, you know, my my first editing team was like, well, do you, you know, we use Chicago manual style. Are you okay with that or do you have another preference for the basis of, you know, I was like, I I don't know what that is, but like you're the professional. If if that's what you want to use, then great. We'll go with it. Um, so again, there's just there's a whole bunch of stuff out there to to get in the weeds on and again, that's why you hire an expert.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah. And it's it's it's not that expensive and it really makes the book a lot better. Um, one more thing I'll say to people who haven't gone through the process, because because now we're saying you should definitely use an editor. The to me, the the force and march to hell piece of the book is was when I was, you know, I was writing on deadline for a publisher, so I I was probably a little bit more rushed than it would have been otherwise. And when you are still working on your first draft of chapter nine and you're doing and you're getting edits back on chapter five, oh, man. It is like brutal. So if I was going to, I suppose if I was going to recommend anything to avoid that, it would be to get the whole manuscript done before. I mean, I suppose I I could argue this both ways, um, because well, you've gone through the process more recently than me. How much how final do the does the developmental editor want the manuscript to be or the book the the draft to be before they get their hands on it?
Jed Byrne: That's a good question. They didn't ask, um, and I was just done. In my mind, if if somebody was asking me, um, you know, someone here's this and listens, I'll I would give you know, emails me or something. I would say, write your manuscript out first, get it all on the page, maybe have someone if if the developmental editor will do this, like read through the whole thing and just say like, hey, okay, yeah, this is in decent shape. Let's roll. Um, because I what you just described, I couldn't imagine trying to write a chapter, you know, build the plan on the way down, feels impossible. Um, maybe again, for a for a second, third or fourth book, but for me, absolutely not. I I'd write the manuscript and and get someone to kind of bless the mess. But again, I I think the the biggest thing, because there's so many ways to do it. There's no right or wrong. The the biggest thing is I think just especially for first-time authors, it's kind of the thing I said at the beginning where it's like, this isn't going to be your best work and and you can't let that stop you because there's something you have to share with the world. Again, everybody listening to this is an expert in something. So, so you have something that is going to help people and you just got to admit like, yeah, this is I mean, think about literally anything else, you know, again, I don't code, I'm not a programmer by any stretch of the imagination. But I'd be willing to bet that every single person who has ever written a line of code is writing better code today than they were the first time they did it, right? And like, but you can't, you got to go through the beginning. You got to crawl before you walk. All those different analogies are true for a reason. Like, you just got to start and admit like, yeah, you know, if you if you if you didn't start coding until you were the best, like you you never would have done anything. Like you have to admit like, yeah, like, right, this I'm going to I'm going to create a program that says hello world. And and then guess what? Later I'm going to do better things, but today I'm going to create this simple thing. Um, but that's the start. So I mean, I wasn't joking, like I do think this is the worst book I'm ever going to write. I hope this is the worst book I'm ever going to write. Otherwise, I hadn't gotten better, which that's depressing. Um, but so yeah, you got you got to you got to just do it and, um, it's not going to be perfect, it's not going to be great. Um, but it'll probably be pretty stinking good because you care. Uh, but you you just got to you got to start and then you got to keep going. Um, hire help if you can, but if you can't, right? I mean, just putting something out into the world with no editing team. You just just do it. I think would if if and that's kind of the not to get into the the book, but the the constraints first method, excuse me, that's what that's all about. It's like, before you think about selling or how you're going to build your selling practice, like figure out what your constraints are because if you only have 10 minutes a day, you're not going to be, you know, organizing a conference. That's fine. Some people will do that, right? If you only have $100 in your budget, you're not going to be flying people to the Caribbean to go on boondoggle. Like, but you can look around and say, well, you know, SAS is doing these crazy trips with their, you know, how am I ever going to compete with that? It's like, you're not. You're going to do what you can do. So if if your book, I mean, that's I use the same process all my book. It's like, my constraint is $500. Is this going to be as as good as Jonathan Stark? No. Is this going to be as good as, you know, whoever else, Daniel Pink? No. Like, they're playing a different game and that's fine, but I'm going to make the best darn $500 budget book I can make because I know that's the first step. Um, and and if you but but if you try to go outside of your constraints, it just turns into like a it's a battle you can't win. Um, same thing with writing, like, okay, if you only have an hour a day, like, yeah, would it be better to to go to the mountains and write for 10 hours a day, you know, sure. But like, if that's not an option for you, it's not an option. Move past it. Yeah, it's just it's it's you can't. I mean, and again, I I think you probably have constraints that you've that are are real and or self-induced in your business that, um, you're like, yeah, that's that's fine, you know, I know you've talked about travel, it's like, right, I'm not going to be on a plane every week. And could my business be different or better if I was? Sure, but like, I'm not going to do that. So, doesn't matter.
Designing the Cover
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Jonathan Stark: Right. Right. So there's two more technical things that I'd like to squeeze in before we.
Jed Byrne: Hit it.
Jonathan Stark: Um, the cover, which is probably this is a is tied with something I would pay for. Uh, it's very difficult to to do your own book cover and have it not look ridiculous. And obviously, unless you have those kinds of skills, but uh, for most people, it's not it it's way better to get a professional. What what did that process look like for you once you once you found someone, maybe it was on Reedsy or uh, Upwork or Fiverr or whatever, I I've used those before and had decent results.
Jed Byrne: Yeah. Um, well, two two things on the on the book cover, two things on the book cover process. One, if you look up, uh, some sure some of your a good chunk of your audience is familiar with Derek Sivers. Um, he's written several books, but if you look at his books, which he's he's sold thousands and thousands of copies of, if you look at their cover and I actually know the firm, he does have a design firm, he does have an editor, like he has a production, there's a whole group. I talked to them. They were wonderful people. Um, Otterpine is the name of the people who produce their books. I don't know if they did the design on the cover or not, but either way, the spoiler is, it's it's I think it's just the name of the book. And that's it. It's like they're solid color. So there's like no, there's no complicated design. It's a solid color. It's got the name of the book. I think it says Derek Sivers on the bottom. And that's it. So again, back to the constraints, like, if you can't hire a cover designer, don't and be like, is this the best or you think not to get religious, but like the Holy Bible. You look at a lot of Bibles. They sold a lot of Bibles. It just says Holy Bible at the front. Like, that's not if if it's a good book, it'll work. If you give someone a gift and, you know, and in fact, there are probably books that are the fanciest editions that are just like blank covers because you're like, oh no, this is, you know, the Hobbit. This is my favorite and this is the collector's edition and it's just, you know, anyway. So so don't let that stop you. But to answer your question, yeah, found on Reedsy. Um, I looked through, you know, they have portfolios that they share and so I looked and I was like, okay, this is this guy can do the style that I like and he seems, you know, he does a lot of business books and and non-fiction books. And then the actual process, so, you know, you I forget if you bid or you say like, here's my budget and then they say, yes, we can do it. So, um, we agreed on kind of the the cost and then the process was, hey, here are a couple ideas. I I kind of explained, wrote out what I want, because again, it was asynchronous, it's all online. Wrote out my thoughts and like what I wanted to accomplish and gave a bunch of and all along I'd been kind of collecting covers that I like. So I sent him all those pictures and said, here's kind of what I like. He sent back four options. Um, I was like, well, I don't like that. I like this. I don't like this. I asked some some close confidants which they preferred. But we just kind of iterated into this simple style, um, that I like. And again, it's I think the cover is pretty pretty basic, but it it ties into the book. Um, and and I think you can tell that someone with skill did it, right? It wasn't I didn't do it myself. Um, and I think that's important. But again, like that that's I would rather I would rather see someone pay pay a professional so that it looks professional or or do plain text on a plain cover because I think it's the in between that gets you in trouble. Where where like if it's plain text, no one's going to believe that you hired, you know, the the world's biggest design firm to do it. And that's fine because that's not what you're trying to do. It's when you're trying to do more than you can accomplish that I think you get yourself in trouble.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, I I totally agree. It's like it's like go with someone professional or like military manual.
Jed Byrne: Yeah, yeah.
Jonathan Stark: You know, all caps, titled book. Uh, and Sivers is a great point because I mean, that's his whole aesthetic anyway, but uh, it is a really good point. Like ultimately.
Jed Byrne: It's not a deal breaker. Like again, you judge a book by a cover. There's a reason we talk about that, but like, it's not a deal breaker. Um, and right, I don't think I I bought all of his books and the cover design had nothing to do with it.
Jonathan Stark: Right. Right. You had one more question. There was a technical. KDP. So is is that you mentioned earlier that there are a lot of options out there. How did you end up going with with that and how difficult did you or easy did you find it?
Publishing with KDP and Lulu
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Jed Byrne: Uh, so KDP was simple, straightforward. Again, there's YouTube University. You can you can find out all the different processes. That's not that hard. The thing I know you've talked about that is annoying is somebody bought and this is not a brag, it's only happened once, but somebody bought 10 copies of the book the other day and I was like, I have no idea. I found out because it's a small world, but um, only because they had said we bought some books. Um, but so there there's, uh, yeah, lots of different services, um.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, the drag is that you don't know who bought your book is correct.
Jed Byrne: And you don't own the list. And so again, if you if you want to set up your own Shopify, I think there's and you've talked about, there's there's lots of good ways to do it yourself. Um, there is, oh my gosh, it's going to blank on me. There there's other companies that can do smaller prints of, um, uh, you know, hard covers and you can do, um, also, you know, Blurb is one of them. Who's the other one? Um, Lulu was the one was the other one I used. Yeah, L U L U. And so that's the hard cover you got was from Lulu. Um, so yeah, I mean, there's plenty of options. They're print on demand. I I didn't want to mess with warehousing and shipping. Although now I've shipped out a bunch of books for free to people just to give them away. Um, media mail is a wonderful thing. It's for, you know, $4 to send a book most places. Turns out it's $30 to Canada, but that's a different story. That's not media mail. But yeah, if you write a book and then again, you can just give them away. Um, I gave one to someone this morning. It's it's a great thing. You know, I think I pay KDP will let you buy kind of at cost. So I think I pay 450 for for paperback versions of of my book from KDP and they'll, you know, I just get 20 and so I have them on hand to give out if if I think somebody might want one. Um, so yeah, it's it's simple. Is it the best? No, but it's simple.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah. Is the uh, the hard covers are all from Lulu or do you have hard covers on Amazon?
Jed Byrne: No, all from all from Lulu. Um, I think there was a size discrepancy. I think Lulu could do the hard cover in the 5x8 that I wanted. I don't think that's an option on KDP. So I just did one bulk order for all of the, um, Kickstarter books and then shipped those out myself. But then yeah, from from here on out, I don't think I'm going to do that again. I mean, I could. Um, and I've thought about like where I'm talking to a local organization, uh, Urban Land Institute. They're in my industry, so it's it's not for everybody, but, you know, they have a big conference every year and I told the local chapter, um, executive director, I was like, if if you want to give them out, like read the book. If you like it and you want to give them out to everybody at the conference, we can just do it at cost. You know, we could even I could call my guy if if they want to pay, you know, a couple hundred bucks, he could probably make a custom cover for the conference. But now you're talking 800 books all at once. I was like, that would be and again, for for the conference, that they're looking at spending $20, $50,000 on a speaker for a keynote, you know, $3,000 to give everybody a book to take home. To me seems like a no-brainer. We'll we'll see. Circle back in a couple months, but um, again, to me, would I make any money on that? No, but that's not the point. Um, and I'm sure I could charge them, you know, some money. I'm sure I could, but they're they're my friends and I don't need to make money off them. Um, but I could, right? I think they would they would yeah, I think they'd spend $10,000 to give everybody a copy of a book and so then I get to take $5,000 home. I think that's totally within their value set. Um, and again, now there's 800 people in my industry who have a copy of my book. That would be amazing.
Start Small, Start Now
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Jonathan Stark: And the hard the hard cover came out great. I mean, obviously you know that, but um, that, you know, you've got the copies, but sometimes I've had, uh, when I ordered through KDP, um, uh, paperbacks, uh, they're pretty good. They're pretty good, but there sometimes there are inconsistencies. Uh, but like you said, it's it's so easy, you get it out there. The content is really what it's about. And it it really is pretty easy. I mean, the only problems I've ever had with KDP are just like, you know, the the cover PDF not exactly the right size. You just have the person resize it. It's no big deal.
Jed Byrne: Yeah. And that was again, I I I had the a first couple test versions printed and like my face came out kind of orange on the back cover and the guy was like, oh yeah, sometimes they're print, you know, it's whatever. There's technical reasons that that happens and he fixed it and sent me a new copy and it was perfect. So yeah, and then there's again, you can go way up market. I mean, you can do I think leather bound and you can do, you know, foil gold foiled edges. and spray edges and printed. Like there's all these things. It's amazing. Um, but you don't get to do any of that unless you just commit to starting and doing the thing. So that that's my advice is do it. And again, if you can, if you can start super small, do that. Right? Spend $150 to get a book into the world and I doubt you'll regret it. Um, but if you have the the bandwidth and ability to to invest more in it, by all means do. Um, but again, to me it's the the minimum viable minimum viable product was the kind of thought process that I wanted to leave everybody with of just like, think about what what's the the minimum thing you'd be happy putting into the world and then figure out a way to do that. And if you can do more, great. But if you can't, great. You know, you've accomplished your goal and that's going to be awesome. And then again, the next time, you might find that there's more value to it and you might invest more or you might have now a list of people that you can sell the second book to and, um, but you got to start. 100%. Yeah, that's a great place to leave it.
Jonathan Stark: Well, this has been amazing. I'm sure you're going to get emails from folks thanking you for all of this generous information that you're sharing.
Jed Byrne: Oh, I did have on that note for emails. I'm glad you said email. Um, if anybody actually wants a copy, not again, not to pitch the book, but if anybody wants a copy or is in the industry, they can email me at books@oakcitycre.com and I'll send them the KDP and PDF version. They could print it out, you know, if they want to print it out or or put it on a Kindle or any other device. Um, again, back to the self-publishing thing. I don't think, uh, O'Reilly lets you do that, but I'm happy to. So just yeah, book books@oakcitycre.com. Um, or if you've got any questions or or whatever, shoot me a note. That's the easiest way to get to me. But I'm happy to give anybody who's interested, um, a copy or even if you just want to see see it so you can see what, you know, a $5,000 budget and a first-time book author can produce, you know, I'm happy to send you the the digital files. That's no no problem at all.
Jonathan Stark: Amazing.
Jed Byrne: All right. Well, thanks so much. This has been wonderful. Thanks, Jonathan.
Jonathan Stark: All right, folks, that's it for this week. I'm Jonathan Stark, and I hope you join me again next time on Ditching Hourly. Bye.
