JANUARY 10, 2025

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Welcome to The Tilt, the newsletter for content entrepreneurs from Tilt Publishing. Together, we're redefining what it means to be a publisher.

7 Tips for Writing a Book To Expand Your Revenue Streams

Writing a quality nonfiction book doesn’t involve asking ChatGPT to turn your thoughts and notes into a tome. Writing a book that attracts an audience to buy it and prospective clients to be impressed by it requires the work of a human.

To help you do that, we asked some authors who produced their books through Tilt Publishing to share their tips. Here are the first seven:

1. Do it. Don't wait. Everyone has a topic they want the world to understand, and it is so very validating to prove to yourself that the idea has merit. – Jenny Magic, Change Fatigue: Flip Teams From Burnout to Buy-In​
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2. Commit to writing in small/manageable chunks of time. The first words/drafts might be rubbish. It doesn't matter. You'll find your groove and your voice by writing. As William Zinsser says, we write to learn. – Alexandra Howson, WriteCME Roadmap: How to Thrive in Continuing Medical Education with No Experience, No Network, and No Clue​
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3. Have an outline to start. – Pam Didner, The Modern AI Marketer in the GPT Era: How to Get Ahead with AI and Advance Your Digital Marketing Skills​
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4. Remember that you don't know what the book will become, even if you have an outline. Don't fall into the trap of editing for quality until you know that part of the manuscript will even survive all the cuts you'll make. I wasted months editing bits and pieces before I had clarity on what the book needed to be. Write for that discovery first. Edit for quality second. – Austin L. Church, Free Money: Nine Counterintuitive Moves for Life-Changing Freelance Income​
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5. The biggest thing I found is that writing a book is simply about "time in the lab." Even when I didn't feel like writing, I knew that if I sat down in front of my computer and started working, I would be "good." So, for me, it was just a matter of getting started. Flow state follows the action of starting; make it about the daily action of working on the manuscript, even for 10 minutes, if that's all you have. – Michael Becker, Content Capitalist: How to Create a Content Business so Exclusive Customers Beg to Buy (and Never Want to Leave)
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6. Start earlier than you think you need to. – Brian Piper, Epic Content Marketing for Higher Education: How to Connect with Students, Alumni, Faculty, Staff, and Others to Build Trust and Reach Your Institutional Goals​

7. Anyone can do this. I feel like a lot of people don't have confidence in themselves to write a book, or they don't know what to write about. Everyone is a subject matter expert in something. You just have to find your "zone of genius" and begin thinking about how a book could complement your overall personal brand or business strategy. I would not recommend using a ghostwriter if you're SERIOUS about this. It has to come from you. – Michael Becker

– Ann Gynn

​Read the full article to get six more tips, from practical to thought-provoking, from these authors.​

Ready to start your first (or next) nonfiction book? Reply to this email or explore The Tilt Publishing hub.

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• Get together … Podcaster and author Joe Casabona crowdfunded $15K for his book. [Lulu]
• Deliberate deal … Random House sees the power of a well-known name in its new imprint with Today’s Jenna Bush. [Today]
• Down to business … Every potential business book author can benefit from knowing these things. [Forbes]
• Riddle solved … Mystery writer reveals how her fiction books helped her foray into nonfiction. [Writer’s Digest on Yahoo!]
• Grab sales … It’s all in the marketing, and here’s what the plan should include. [Lulu]

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