How to Market A Book

A few weeks ago, we finished the first marathon and sent our manuscript to the printer. We immediately had to decide how many books to print in the first run. This felt like a really consequential decision for us and we did not have a solid basis for choosing a number – 2000, 5000, 10,000? We did not want to have stacks of unsold books that would gather dust in a California warehouse. Nor did we want to print too few books and not be able to fulfill orders if sales exceeded our expectations.

We gathered as much intel as possible from our editor, the sales team and our own research and assumptions and put our best guess on paper. That decision positioned us on the starting line of our second marathon, introducing Wonder Year to the world and activating channels to sell our book.  

Whoa, where to begin? Should we start slow with a jog or hit it hard from the beginning? According to book marketing wiz, Naren Aryal, “to be a writer today is to be a marketer.” Looks like marathon #2 would be just as important as marathon #1. He argues that authors should start building their platform yesterday. Oops. 

We’d have to establish Wonder Year as a brand and the three of us as authors. We’d have to associate Wonder Year with long-term family travel and worldschooling. And then, connect with people who are curious about family travel to the book. 5-4-3-2-1: let’s go! 

Miles 1-3:

Establish a Website. For many authors, the website is the foundation of their platform, and this was certainly the case for us. We launched a fairly basic website in March 2022 and built out many more features over the following year. Our site had a book landing page, pre-order buttons, a blog, contact page, newsletter sign-up form, photos, and branded artwork. We wanted to be sure the

website did more than promote the book. It was important that it was also a valuable resource for current and prospective traveling families.

Miles 4-10:

Consistent Quality Content. With the website launched, the next order of business was to load it with helpful information about relevant topics. We are writing about topics like making the decision to travel, funding long-term family adventure, closing up home life, working on the road, and what it feels like to be a long-term traveling family in motion. We brainstormed topics of interest, like destination inspirations, a discussion on how to choose destinations and created a schedule to publish blogs, with a goal of posting at least one per week.  

Miles 10-14:

Social Media Platforms. The matter of social media was definitely a hard nut for us to crack. Each of us maintained a blog during our respective travels, but none of us was particularly active on social media anymore. We did not have thousands of followers. We had some moments of doubt and insecurity about putting ourselves out there so publicly, seemingly self-promoting, which felt antithetical to our purpose with Wonder Year. Yet, we knew it was imperative and we understood how effective it is to share information and build community through social platforms. 

We pushed on and picked up our pace a bit. We found joy in sharing tips, tricks and wisdom, knowing that our content was designed to inform others rather than spotlight ourselves. We diversified our posts with videos, photos, motivation Mondays, Tips Tuesdays, Where in the World Wednesdays. Later, we learned how to effectively present information in a variety of formats on different platforms.Now, we have started to see steady, organic growth across several months of concerted effort. 

Miles 14-18:

Strategic Partnerships. Wonderwell, our publisher, provided us with a framework to organize our partner outreach campaign. We brainstormed a long list of organizations, nonprofits, and influencers. We looked for those who share an interest in one or more of the Wonder Year themes–travel, education, family, inclusivity, global community, outdoor adventure and sustainability–and began reaching out. The process of building partnerships is a bit improvisational, more art than science. Our goal and hope is to find shared purpose with a set of public, private, nonprofit, and individual partners and appeal to their customers, stakeholders and members together.

Miles 18-22:

Media and Publications. Many authors, including us, use a public relations professional to assist with outreach to traditional media. Publicists know the ropes and how to pitch a story. However, because we are family travel and worldschooling experts, we expanded the media/publications list by identifying specialty outlets in these sectors. We are thinking broadly about local and national outlets including magazines, podcasts, radio shows, news sources and other print or digital media sources that connect with the Wonder Year journey. 

Miles 22-26:

Pre-launch. The six weeks before book launch are going to be dizzying. Testing our endurance, we’ll have to dig deep and keep running toward our goal of bringing a book to the world that will inspire and help families to get on the road together. We’ll be calling on partners, followers, and our personal connections to help spread the word about Wonder Year. We’ll ask folks to follow, like, repost, refer a friend, tag, pre-order and otherwise put good Wonder Year juju out there.

On September 5, 2023 Wonder Year: A Guide to Long-Term Family Travel and Worldschooling will hit the shelves. We appreciate your cheering from the sidelines and your encouragement along the way. We just have one more question for you: Have you ordered your copy? If not, you can right here!

Opportunities abound! Podcasts, magazine features, social media events, as well as the traditional book tour!

The post How to Write a Book: The Second Marathon appeared first on Wonder Year Travel.

Our first book marathon, that is. There’s a saying that writing a book is actually like running two marathons: the first is writing the book, and the second is getting news of that book out to audiences who might find it helpful and interesting.

We recently sent our book off to the printer – a milestone that capped years of endurance training and learning new skills. For each of us, Wonder Year is our first book, and every step in the creative process has required massive amounts of new learning. Close friends and family have kindly asked us about the process of how to write a book, and others have expressed curiosity because they, too, have an idea that keeps them up at night thinking, “maybe I need to write this book” (check out our blog Birth of a Book). Maybe you have an incredible story you’d love to get published. In response to those inquiries, we thought we’d shed some light on what the process of writing a book has been like for us.

The race course was a tricky one because there were so many routes from the start line to the finish, and sometimes we didn’t know which direction to run. Plus, writing a book with co-authors meant that during some stretches, one of us was ready to sprint while another needed to rest (here’s a blog on coauthorship). And the number of published books has exploded in the last several years, making for an increasingly crowded field. That said, there are a slew of resources (a few of our faves are Jane Friedman, Jen Louden, and the Write Life) out there to support would-be authors. 

Miles 1-3: Ideation

When we three authors first came together, we had much to discuss: our respective trips, what had gone well, what hadn’t, what we wished we’d known before leaving, and what we learned while traveling. We also journaled together and captured our thoughts about the experience. We then brainstormed and considered our potential audience. What problems were we trying to solve for others? Who were our future readers and what needs do they have? Through those reflective discussions, a draft outline of key ideas and interconnected concepts started to emerge…the beginnings of eventual book chapters.

Miles 4-12: Writing

This stage was all about getting ideas onto the page. Our goal was for what Annika, via author Annie Lamott in Bird by Bird, calls a “shitty first draft.” Exact words and correct punctuation weren’t important yet–ideas and creativity and voice were. Finding these meant writing, researching, writing, discussing, writing, and writing some more. Oh, and keeping track of sources as we went, so we wouldn’t have to hunt them down again later. 

Co-authorship brought a twist to the writing process. On the one hand, it was incredibly helpful to divide and conquer, and we divvied up the chapters based on our backgrounds and strengths. On the other, whatever was written then had to be shared to ensure we were literally on the same page. A lesson learned: we left each author to figure out the direction of her chapters, and it would have been more efficient to outline a direction together before launching into writing. Nonetheless, we were well aligned on what felt important to share with readers.

Refueling Station

Once we had a rough draft of several chapters (note: not all!), we evaluated ways to bring our book to market and decided to send out submissions to potential publishers. We’ll talk more about that process in a future blog post. We ultimately decided to sign with a publisher who showed great enthusiasm for our book, Wonderwell Press. Since joining forces at the halfway point, their expert team of editors, project managers, designers and marketers have been supporting our journey. 

Miles 13-23: Editing

Book editing is typically divided into three major stages – the developmental edit, the substantive edit, and copyediting. 

Developmental edit – This is a review of the major elements of the book and their construction. Our editor provided the first read-through of the manuscript by anyone outside our little team, and we awaited her feedback with bated breath. Through an editorial letter and a series of collaborative discussions, she shared that she liked our direction and found our messages resonant. She also suggested that readers needed more opportunities to connect with the three fellow travelers guiding them. We had initially leaned away from this, thinking we didn’t want the book to be “about us,” but her perspective was helpful and we added several new sections as a result: more descriptive biographies, background on why we each took a Wonder Year, and the “Stories from the Road” vignettes that now appear throughout and help anchor the book.

Substantive edit – For a non-fiction book like ours, the substantive edit looks at the organization and flow of ideas, assessing it to ensure messages are clear, consistent, and engaging. With three authors co-writing, we also had to make sure we didn’t unwittingly repeat material or contradict ourselves across chapters. Recognizing a desire for readers to be able to easily carry our book while traveling, a sharpened page count goal prompted significant content-cutting (exactly why it’s not worth spending too much time on grammar and punctuation in those early drafts). This reworking and revising also delivered a smoother blend of our three writing styles. We had worried that switching voices between chapters could be jarring to readers, but as we traded edits and helped each other with rewrites, it became difficult to tell who had written what (in fact, our editors still don’t know to this day).

Copyedit – This is the nitty-gritty phase: the line-by-line, word-by-word edit. Like whether the H in hector’s dolphins is capitalized or how to stylistically include words from other languages like khang bed. We worked with another talented editor for this round. The four of us tracked a maelstrom of changes, comments and suggestions over several iterative rounds, and collectively worked through every. single. one. Under tight deadlines. Let’s just say it involved a lot of red, and sometimes that red seemed like real blood oozing from blisters inside our running shoes.

Miles 24-26: Proofreading

Although we did our own review and passed along suggestions, this phase was primarily out of our hands and left to our publisher’s proofreading team. They made final corrections and ensured consistent use of spelling, capitalization and punctuation rules according to their selected style guide. After everything was complete and we all signed off on the manuscript, it was passed like a baton to our designer for next steps!

Mile 26.2

The (first) finish line! We wrote a book!!

Part two of this series will look at the next marathon–the one we’re running right now: building an author platform and marketing the heck out of our book.

It sure is nice to hold it in our hands.

The post How to Write a Book: the First Marathon appeared first on Wonder Year Travel.

The conversations made the final product more than the sum of its parts.

What does the collaborative writing process look like? We started with individual brainstorms for what information we wanted to include and bullet points of what would go into each chapter. Then we combined, refined, and created an outline. It was uncanny how in sync we were. After we talked through each chapter, adding anecdotes and stories, we divided them up to write our–as writer Anne Lamott famously coined–“shitty first draft.” Then, we gave each other extensive feedback, interviewed other travelers and influencers, and incorporated new information and fresh perspectives into the second and “less shitty” draft. Next we sought outside feedback, beginning the long march toward publishing.

Web conferences made the meetings convenient while we could share screens and have multiple documents open.

 How do you blend the voices of three writers? We wanted our book to read like advice from encouraging and experienced friends. Friends who are willing to take off the Instagram veneer of ecstatic travel and show the underbelly–the obstacles and the

perseverance required to take a dream and turn it into a Wonder Year. In our minds, multiple voices and points of view are the benefits of a collaborative piece of writing. In the final drafts, we each inserted a bit of our own voice to the text. Even if a chapter wasn’t first written by Angela, if we decided that it needed more of her organization and clarity, she would rewrite sections. Another chapter might need a bit more of Julie’s humor. We found that collaboration helped fill out our advice and stories. 

The paybacks to collaboration are many. First, I got to spend time with two inspirational women who share my passion, urge me on when I doubt myself, and keep me on task. Collaboration is joyful when it’s a shared passion project. In many ways, the writing of this book has been another Wonder Year for me.

Oh so many drafts!

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