The Silicon Valley Press Way
So you’ve decided to solidify your thought leadership credentials by writing a book on a topic you know a lot about. You have something valuable to tell the world and have decided that a book is the best way to do it.
Here’s the reality: There are millions of intended books for every one that gets written, and thousands written for every one that gets published. How do you get beyond good intentions and get your book done? Silicon Valley Press has a plan for you.
Whatever your reasons for choosing to be a published author, the process for getting started is the same: Deep thinking about the foundational idea for your book and a point of view. Think about your idea, why it’s important to you, who the target audience is, and have an understanding of what you want readers to take away from the book.
Where do the ideas come from? You, the writer, are an expert on your topic. The purpose of a book would be to share what you’ve learned, experienced, and believe. And your point of view is critical. You don’t want to write a white paper; you want to share what you think and why.
To start, we like to meet with you one-on-one to learn the whys and wherefores of your book. In that initial meeting we share with you how our process works, all based on what we’ve learned in our 12 years and dozens of book projects. If we’re a match, we’ll create a proposal to make your book a reality.
Writing the Book
Our expert professional writers help flesh out your best ideas and get them written down, building upon your ideas, concepts, anecdotes and stories that you provide. Our writers are masters of word craft in your voice.
During our work together, our development discussions produce a more detailed outline or a draft table of contents that guide you toward the completion of the full first draft manuscript. Conversations will generally last 60 to 90 minutes and are ideally 1 to 2 weeks apart in order to keep up the momentum. Typically, we create a chapter draft every 1 to 2 weeks. During the writing process, our writer might return to you for additional, more focused conversations to refine points or to gain additional details and insights into specific ideas.
Once the first draft is complete, you will have an opportunity to edit, add, or remove content. Then, the writer will go through each chapter to incorporate your feedback. This copy editing stage also gives you a chance to revise the working draft before moving on to the final stages of the writing process. You will be asked to approve the work and offer suggestions for changes once the line edit is complete. There will be at least two rounds of copyediting to make sure that your manuscript is ready for submission to prospective publishers. This deliverable is a complete manuscript.
We know you have a life to live, and maybe a business to run. Silicon Valley Press has refined our process over the years to optimize your time. Once the initial conversations have happened, your involvement will average a few hours per week through the writing and revising phase.
Read more about The Manuscript
Getting Ready to Market the Book
We work with you to build out your pre-marketing program and help build your author platform, all informed by market research. Our research team examines the demographics and psychographics of your readers, determines competing titles and authors, and conducts competitive landscape analysis to inform strategic recommendations for your book’s official launch plan.
A formal launch plan can include website development, as well as a comprehensive PR plan to utilize social media and traditional PR campaigning, speaking engagements, and possibly publication of full chapters once the book is completed and published.
The Bottom Line
To summarize, our process consists of two phases. The writing phase gets the book written and edited, ready for submission to a publisher, and creates a pre-launch plan to understand the positioning and promotional needs of the book. The production phase takes the manuscript through all of the steps needed to turn it into a physical and electronic book and set up its distribution through retailers, and executes a detailed plan of promotion for both you, the author as well as the book. In our next blog we’ll review the production phase in detail.
You can become a published author of a masterfully written book. You bring your ideas and your time, and Silicon Valley Press would like to partner with you to make it happen.
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