Bill Sheridan is chief communications officer and a veteran blogger for the Maryland Association of CPAs award-winning blog, CPA Success*. He and I worked together to cull from over 1,000 blog posts on topics related to the evolving CPA profession, identify themes and put together a short book that turns Bill into a professionally-published author.

Below, Bill and I talk about his lessons learned going from idea to eBook.

DW: You started with over 1,000 blog posts to draw upon, what was the biggest challenge going from existing content to finished eBook?

BS: The biggest challenge was the shear volume of material that I had to draw upon. I had been writing for CPA Success for more than five years at the time I started compiling the book – that’s a lot of content.

I really had no idea which direction the book would take when I started, but as I reviewed our archive, those four buckets – Look, Lead, Love, Learn – quickly became apparent. From there, it was fairly easy to identify which posts belonged where. That’s a wordy way of saying the biggest challenge was deciding how the content should be organized. Once I did that, the actual act of organizing it was pretty easy.

DW: What is your goal for your eBook?

BS: I’m an incredibly lucky guy. My job sends me all over the country to cover some exciting events that are aimed at helping CPAs succeed. My job is to share what I’ve learned with our members. That’s the purpose of our blog, and that’s the purpose of this e-book, too.

I simply want to share what I’ve learned over the years with our members so that they can out-learn the incredible rate of change. As (MACPA CEO) Tom Hood says, the single most important skill we need going forward is the ability to learn new skills. If I can help our members do that – even in the smallest of ways – I’ll count this e-book as a success.

DW: Choosing a killer title is a real challenge. How did you come up with yours?

BS: As I reviewed our blog’s archive, I noticed a pattern. Our posts seem to focus on leadership, learning, and looking ahead to the future. I immediately liked the “L” alliteration, so I zeroed in on that as a possible title. It just seemed to naturally fall into place.

DW: What is your best advice for other aspiring business eBook authors?

BS: Write about what you know. We’re all experts at something. Find out what that something is, and then – here’s the really important part – figure out why it matters to other people. In his book Start With Why, author Simon Sinek puts it best: People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it. Figure out your “why.” The rest will fall into place.

DW: What’s your next eBook?!

BS: The CPA profession is on the verge of a tipping point. The old guard is fading away and a new generation of CPAs is stepping in to take its place – and they’re doing things much differently than their predecessors did. We call it “The Movement.”

I want to write about “The Movement” and help the profession find its footing in a world that is changing radically, almost before our very eyes.

Publisher’s note: huge congrats, Bill!

* Full disclosure: I worked with Bill Sheridan and Tom Hood six years ago to help MACPA launch their CPA Success blog. Needless to say, they are among my most successful corporate blogging clients.

In my case, it’s back to finding sizzling prose for my short eBook – in progress – on the topic of How to Write a Short Business eBook.

I’ve just returned from a week in Puerto Vallarta with my family (husband, three children, spouses and three grandbabies). It was lovely. Lovelier than expected, in fact. We all got along very nicely.

Two highlights: grilled fish for lunch at the Ocean Grill Restaurant, accessible only by boat. And ziplining* in the jungle 700 feet up.

Not as scary as you might think.

Our three young Mexican guides provided a steady stream of patter. Their silly, good-natured jokes filled in those millisecond gaps when you might balk at zipping off into thin air.

And yes, there’s a lesson in there when it comes to writing.

just.do.it.

Whatever you are working on, stop worrying and start writing. Let your preconceptions go. Don’t think about failure (aka “falling”). Don’t think about perfection (there is no “perfect form” on a zip line).

Keep it simple. Concentrate on getting from here (an idea, even if it’s ill-formed) to there (a sh*tty first draft)… just as you think only about zipping from one platform to another.

And enjoy the ride. You might be surprised how much fun it is to let go.

*We highly recommend Los Veranos Canopy Tour. They run a seamless operation: great guides, margaritas when you zip into the restaurant at the end, a tequila tasting and swimming in the nearby river.

“The habit of writing every day controls doubt and prevents quitting. Maybe it’s only writing a paragraph, massaging your outline or refining your vomit. [Ed note: this is Guy’s term for what Anne Lamott calls the shitty first draft.] If you wait for the perfect day when you’re financially set; the kids are clothed, fed and making straight As; your house is in perfect order; and global warming has stopped, you’ll never write.”

Guy’s real writing ritual

What he really does is as follows. To paraphrase his answer on the Webinar:

“I get up and check my email and Google+ and Facebook. Then I decide to follow up on a couple of things. And before you know it, it’s 10 AM and I need to eat breakfast. Then it’s time for ice hockey practice. And I gotta pick up the kids from school. And eat lunch. So now it’s 3 PM and I need to help with dinner. And then it’s after dinner and finally it’s about 9 PM and maybe then I can sit down and start writing.”

Guy, I love you. You are human. You have always been one of my favorite author celebrities.

Click here to download or listen to the MP3 file. Or you can download the edited transcript of our 55-minute conversation for a nominal fee. Beta Authors get the edited transcripts as part of Beta Author Boost. 

Jeff is a popular blogger, writer and speaker who has both self-published and traditionally published several books, including Wrecked and the forthcoming The In-Between. He is especially interested in voice in writing.

In Jeff’s words, you know you’ve discovered your writing voice when it represents “the intersection of what deeply satisfies you as a writer and what resonates with (your) audience.”

That is a very provocative statement. It means that you need to be striking a chord in your readers with what you are writing. You can’t just write about what you are interested in if you want to be a successful blogger or author.

Why writers need a worldview

We also talked about:

- Why you need a worldview as a writer. It’s what makes your topic stand out even if you’re writing about sales and marketing as thousands of other writers do.

He gave Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell as two examples. Seth’s worldview is that “the system is broken and we can fix it.” Gladwell’s is: “There is scientific proof for any phenomenon that we see in the business world.”

- How to identify and articulate your worldview (it’s not what you think)

- Why he self-published his first eBook, You Are a Writer Now (So Start Acting Like One)

- How he wrote the eBook (this will surprise you)

-How he crowdsourced the cover, editing and formatting

- How he got over 30,000 downloads of You Are a Writer

- What percentage of his income comes from selling information products vs. writing books (over half)

- Why he does not write every day

The perfect mix of grace and discipline

And my favorite comment from Jeff: “What sustains any writer is the perfect mix of grace and discipline.”

He also pulled the curtain on his writing process. In our interview, he explains how it finally dawned on him that he should write the book that people were asking him for – rather than continue to think about a Big Idea for a full-length book.

He explains his “love-love” relationship with editors and how he used material and content he was creating in other formats – for a presentation, for example – to create his book.

He talks about how the eBook took off because it went live on Amazon at least two days before he expected. As of today, Charlie’s new book was #1 in Entrepreneurship in Kindle eBooks, ahead of Chris Guillebeau’s The $100 Startup.

Click here to listen to our Q & A. Or right-click to download the file to your desktop and listen later.

Thanks, Charlie, for a great interview.

Full disclosure: Charlie and Pam Slim were the leaders of the Liftoff retreat that I attended in 2011. It was an amazing experience.

But this call was different. Seth was looking for a co-author for his next book, he said. And he wondered if I had the time to help him out.

OMG. Yes. What other answer could there be?!

Did he need me to drop everything and take the next train to New York from DC?

Did he need me to research topics or titles?

Did he need me to mop the floor or take out the trash?

Yes, of course I was available…

Ha! April Fool’s. Did I get you?

On April 1, 2010, Bill Gates called to hire me for Twitter coaching.

And on April 1, 2006, Bill called to ask me to ghostwrite his blog.

April Fool’s jokes are a tradition on my blog. I couldn’t resist and I hope Seth won’t mind.

If you are like most Americans – or anyone anywhere, for that matter – you have dreamt about writing a book. It’s on your bucket list for one reason or another.

One study shows that 81 percent of Americans want to write a book.

For most, I suspect, it’s the lovely, anticipatory thought of becoming a published author. Of holding that volume in your hands and admiring your name on the cover. I am an author. It rolls nicely off the tongue, doesn’t it?

For others, it’s the lure of becoming a sought-after expert and being invited to speak at swanky destinations. Or perhaps you hope to make a lot of money from your book. You picture your title as a $1.99 Kindle eBook downloaded by a million readers.

Good luck with that one. It has happened for a tiny handful of genre authors, notably Amanda Hocking and John Locke. It’s not likely to work if your genre is nonfiction or business.

So what does published author mean exactly in the age of Kindle and digital, weightless books?

Oops, I stopped writing just now to Google Paris cooking schools. I may be your typical writer AND reader. I’m finding that the urge to multitask, to fling myself into the rabbit hole of Google on the slightest provocation, is overwhelming. Not that there’s anything wrong with thinking about attending a cooking class in Paris. In fact, my husband and I have that on the list for our planned sabbatical.

The point is that in this age of short attention spans and fractured thinking, the definition of book has changed. Credible books can be digital only. Credible books can be short.  And short books can be self-published and still respected.

With the right approach and with impeccable prose and cover design, your book can be smart and stylish and every bit as professional as the eBooks being published by publishers such as The New York Times, Byliner and Amazon’s Kindle Singles.

That is a lot of good news. It means you can take advantage of the publishing revolution to fulfill your lustful dream of writing a book – without investing months or even years of your life searching for a literary agent and/or a contract with a big New York publisher. If your initial goal is to write a short eBook and publish it to Kindle, that is entirely within your reach.

The bad news is that there is still some work involved. There are hundreds of thousands of crappy eBooks available on Amazon. If you don’t care about stylish, intelligent writing – or grammar or punctuation, for that matter – please stop reading right here. I am not the right guide for you and you will become very annoyed when I tell you that the shape of your sentences and the arc of your prose matters.

That is why I am writing this short book. I care passionately about the craft of writing and I want to help you write a short, terrific book. In the following pages I will illustrate how you can write a short, nonfiction book in eight weeks. I will give you a step-by-step roadmap leavened with tons of inspiration, practical tips and wisdom from writing teachers like Peter Elbow, Natalie Goldberg and Anne Lamott.

Your book may not make you rich or famous, but it will turn you into a published author, one who can proudly roll that phrase off your tongue.

The book is a terrific collection of his essays, mostly written for his blog. Scott is also the author of several other books, traditionally published. My favorite is Confessions of a Public Speaker. Mindfire topics include:

• The Cult of busy
• Why smart people defend bad ideas
• Street smarts vs. Book smarts
• The secret motivation of death
• Creative Thinking Hacks

The updated digital edition of Mindfire is available free on his site, ScottBerkun.com, for 48 hours, beginning at 9 AM PST on Wednesday March 20, 2013. You can download it as a PDF, a .mobi file for Kindle or ePub file for everything else.

DW: What made you decide to re-release Mindfire?

SB: The first edition released with more minor issues than I wanted. The plan was always to do an update, I just never thought it would take this long. Walt Whitman updated Leaves of Grass a dozen times over decades, and I wanted to avoid doing that. But many authors wish their publishers would update their books, and since I self published the choice was mine.

DW: Is this kind of control over your book the reason you decided to self publish Mindfire in the first place?

SB: Absolutely. I have no excuses. All the things a reader dislikes about the book are my fault, but so are all the things they do like.

DW: It’s been almost 18 months since the original pub date of Oct. 11, 2011. Why 18 months between editions? Did it just work out that way or do you have a formula??

DB: The primary reason was I spent 18 months working at WordPress.com as research for my next book, The Year Without Pants, which comes out this September.

DW: You say over 100 changes: Did you add new material? Did you update the preface or introduction?

SB: There is no new material – all the changes are quality control in one way or another: typos, grammar, accuracy and layout.

DW: Did you use a copyeditor again to go over all the material in the updated edition? A proofreader? Any advice on that?

SB: Yes. I have some very generous fans who love to find typos, but I also hired a professional proofreader to give it the final pass.

DW: Will the updated edition say “updated” on both the e-cover and the paperback cover?

SB: No. I’d only do that if there was new material warranting people who have the first edition to buy the new one. The Printing History is listed in the open pages and says 1.1 for anyone wanting to confirm which edition they have. Since late last month Amazon has been selling the 1.1 edition so many people may have it without even knowing it.

DW: Are you using CreateSpace for the print on demand (POD) version of the softcover? Any pros and cons you can offer about using CreateSpace?

SB: I used LightningSource for the print edition and BookBaby for all digital editions. LS had more flexible pricing than CreateSpace when I made the decision in 2011 – things may have changed by now. CreateSpace has many good things about it.

DW: I love the cover. The orange really pops. What advice would you give to new authors who are self-publishing about their cover designs?

SB: You get what you pay for: hire a great designer. Look at their portfolios and contact them early enough for the good ones to fit you in (the good ones won’t be available on a moments notice). You can read a great behind the scenes story of how the cover for Mindfire was designed here.

DW: What are your plans for promoting MindFire this time around other than the free download starting March 20, 2013 from your site. Great idea, BTW, and I like the way you’re asking people to help you spread the word.

SB: I have a large email list I use to stay in touch with fans. The promotion asks people to join the list. Giving the book away on Kindle makes that impossible to do. I might do that as well at some point, but a free book for joining a mailing list seems a fair deal.

Useful

Read interview with Scott Berkun on O’Reilly FYI:  Scott Berkun Answers Proust’s Questions