Voici un bouquin qui n'a pas été écrit par n'importe qui :
Guy Kawasaki est un des "évangélistes" qui a brillé aux premières heures d'
Apple ... Tandis que les
lobbyistes font un travail souterrain, l'évangéliste est là pour se mettre en avant ("porter la bonne nouvelle" : lors de congrès, de
shows politiques, auprès de décideurs dans les grandes entreprises, etc. ... dans le but de promouvoir la philosophie et l'usage des produits
Apple ... Bénéficier de son expérience pour savoir comment publier et qu'attendre exactement du monde de l'édition, comment faire sa promotion etc. Voilà qui ne se refuse pas ... jugez plutôt :
Guy Kawasaki is the co-author of APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur–How to Publish a Book
with Shawn Welch. The book’s thesis is powerful yet simple: filling the
roles of author, publisher, and entrepreneur yields results that
rival traditional publishing.
"If you checked the list of what people want to do before they die,
you’d see that many want to write a book. This is a good thing because
the more people who write books, the more enlightened the world will
become. It just so happens that technology has made the process of
writing a book easier than ever. Still 'easier than ever' is not the
same thing as 'easy.' I wrote a book called
APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur to help you write your book. Here are my top ten tips.
1.
Write for the right reasons. Writing is an art form, and a
book is an end in itself—don’t write a book solely because it is a means
to an end. The good reasons to write a book are the desire to enrich
people’s lives, to further a cause, to achieve an intellectual
milestone, and to get something off your chest. The bad reasons are to
make a lot of money or to increase your consulting or speaking business.
2.
Use Microsoft Word. It’s true that Word is a bazooka, and
you may only need a fly swatter, but everyone in the industry uses a
bazooka. You can save a few bucks and avoid the Microsoft hegemony when
you’re in the writing stage, but when lots of people (editors,
reviewers, designers and online resellers) need to use your file, you
may regret using another word processor. Two fine points: first, save
your Word documents in the .doc, not .docx, format so that people using
old versions of Word can open your file. Second, format your entire book
using Word’s 'styles.' This will make layout and conversion much easier
down the road.
3.
Write every day. I’ve written twelve books. If you had
asked me if I thought I would write twelve books back when I started, I
would have told you that you were hallucinating. How did I do it?
Writing a little bit every day. Don’t ask yourself, 'How will I ever get
to 60,000 words?' because it will make the task seem insurmountable.
Just write something every day—even if it’s only a paragraph. One day
you’ll wake up, and your book will be done. If you wait for that perfect
time when the kids are asleep and making straight As, you may never
start (much less finish).
4.
Build your marketing platform. The hardest part of making a
book successful may be marketing (not writing) it. Unless you have a
great publicist with a powerful publisher, you are the 'vice president
of marketing' of your book.
It takes a year to build a marketing
platform, so get started at the same time as you’re writing. If you wait
until your book is done, it’s too late. My recommendation is to spend
two hours a day writing and one hour a day on
Google+, Twitter,
Facebook, or LinkedIn.
5.
Start with a Kindle ebook. First, Amazon’s Kindle service
might amount to 80-90 percent of your sales. If your book is successful
on
Amazon, it will succeed elsewhere. If it’s not successful on
Amazon,
it probably won’t succeed elsewhere. Second, start with the
ebook
format. If it takes off, then you may want to go to print. But there’s
little reason to go to print immediately unless you are writing, for
example, a photography book.
6.
Tap the crowd. The crowd is a beautiful thing. It’s full of
people who know more than you do and are willing to give of themselves
freely and unselfishly. They will provide content ideas, editing, and
word-of-mouth marketing. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Many people
will contribute to your efforts for the intrinsic joy of helping a
writer. The crowd will help you finish your book, which is another
reason to start building your platform immediately.
7.
Hire a copyeditor. If you’re going to self-publish your
book, the worst way to try to save money is by not hiring a professional
copyeditor. Copyediting is a specialized and refined skill—to use a
medical analogy, only a fool would self-diagnose and self-medicate in an
emergency. The goal is to produce a book that is as good as, or better,
than a book from a large traditional publisher. You cannot do this
without a professional copyeditor.
8.
Hire a cover designer. The second worst way to try to save
money is by designing your book cover. Like copyediting, design is a
special skill that takes years of training and practice. People are
going to glance at a postage-stamp size image of your cover next to ten
others on
Amazon. You have less than a second to convince them to click
on your book to learn more and read reviews. They won’t click unless
your cover is effective.
9.
Test your ebook. In a perfect world, what you upload from
Word and what online resellers deliver as an
ebook would match. Every
page, image, line break, and font would be right. This isn’t a perfect
world.
The bugs and glitches that can appear because of the conversion
process from manuscript to ebook will shock, depress, and enrage you.
You need to test your ebook on every platform that people will read it
on: computer, tablet, reader, Macintosh, Windows, Android, and iOS.
Don’t assume that any conversion process is 100% accurate.
10.
Never give up. There are qualities that every published
author shares: first, they wanted to give it all up. Second, they didn’t
give it all up. Writing a book is one of the most difficult tasks in
life. Fortunately, or maybe because it’s so difficult, it is also one of
the most rewarding tasks in life. When you feel like you can’t type
another word, can’t re-read another draft, and can’t face another
rejection, remember that every author goes through these phases. It’s
only the successful ones who never give up." (
Source)
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