What I Learned Writing an Ebook

Shortly after completing and publishing my ebook, “23 Ways You Sabotage Your Executive Job Search and How Your Brand Will Help You Land“, I sat down and pondered what I learned through the writing, publishing and promotion process.

This was an experience I know I want to repeat. I know I have more books in me. I narrowed down to a list of 10 things I learned, and hope to do better my next go-around, in a post at my Executive Career Brand blogsite.

Here are the first two:

1. Create a solid outline and table of contents, and get the book written … then worry about the title.

I slowed the process by fretting about the title from the beginning, spending hours and days toying with variations. Meanwhile, I wasn’t writing any content. I knew what I wanted to cover in the ebook. That was enough to map out the outline.

After wasting too much time, I finally got down to it and allotted time each day to writing the content.  In doing so, the table of contents came together and the title fell into place, just like that. Then it was just a matter of filling in some gaps and finishing up.

2. Prioritization and time management skills are critical.

It took me a while to figure it out, but I learned that I had to go straight to writing at the beginning of each work day, and put in a solid 2-3 hours (or more, if possible), before letting emails, social networks, or anything else distract me. I wrote a post about this, Say NO to Social Media . . . Sometimes.

Related posts:

Why I Wrote My Executive Branding and Job Search Ebook

Chapter 1 of My Ebook: 23 Ways You Sabotage Your Executive Job Search

Blogging and Twitter: How Tweet It Is!

Online Reputation Management: Relevance, Quality, Diversity, Volume, Consistency