How To Turn An Interview Into A Book Fast With Jim Edwards

Hello! Welcome to another episode of Real Fast Results. For this
episode, I have somebody that I really look up to and have for a
very long time. I also follow him. I believe you should follow him
very closely as well. That's my good friend and mastermind partner,
Jim Edwards. In today's episode, we're going to cover how
to go about putting together and writing your book, your eBook or
your Kindle book, in 3 hours or less. Let's face it. We
want a book and hardly any of us have the time to actually write a
book. Anything that can manifest that result quickly. In other
words, have a book that represents you and your company and your
ideas well, and do it quickly. That's what we're all about here at
Real Fast Results. Jim has a very streamlined process that has this
ability to crank out a high quality piece of prose or a high
quality manuscript that's suitable for publishing as an eBook, a
Kindle book, etc. People Publish Books For Different Reasons I
think the number one reason why you want to have a book might be
different for different people. However, it comes down to increased
credibility. Everybody respects somebody who's got a book. If
you've got a book and you can hold it up and show it to somebody.
Here is my most recent one. Making Money with Kindle Books: Myths,
Misconceptions, and the Truth Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know. The
gist of it is that if you're a coach, it gives you the credibility
to attract new coaching students. If you're a speaker, it gives you
the credibility to be speaking on a topic. If you're an info
marketer, it gives you something to sell. If you're a
professional of any type in business, it gives you massive
credibility. Example I'm going to tell you a real quick
story about my very first book that I self-published. The
reason I self-published it, was not to sell the book, but it was
actually to use it to help me get business. At the
time, I was a real estate agent. I wrote a book on how to sell your
house yourself. The whole reason I created the book was to be able
to use it as a tool to meet people who were trying to sell their
house themselves. I would give them a copy of my book. Show them I
was an expert. If they ended up not being able to sell their house
themselves, or once they read about exactly how to do it and they
decided, "Hey, I don't actually want to do this." Then I was able
to successfully list a lot of their houses because they trusted me.
I ended up being an award-winning realtor and winning tons
of different listing contests because I was able to leverage that
book. There are a lot of ways to use a book. It really
just depends on whether you want to use it to sell it to make
money, use it to build your list, use it to increase credibility,
get more clients or a host of other reasons. Nothing bad comes from
having a book that you can hold up and show somebody, "Hey, I've
written a book. I have a book on this topic." Especially if they're
in your target market. 8 Steps To Turn An Interview Into A
Book One quick thing before I give you the steps. You need to
reprogram yourself. Stop thinking in terms of writing a
book, and start thinking in terms of creating a book.
Writing a book is hard. It means sitting down and typing at 40 to
50 words per minute for days and weeks on end and driving yourself
nuts. When you think of creating a book: creating a book means that
you create the content. We'll do that by actually just talking the
book out. Literally talking it out by having a conversation with a
friend over the phone. Something all of us have been doing since we
were 5 years old and figured out how to dial the phone. On
overview of the 8 Steps: 

Step one is to define your audience.

Step two is to prepare the interview that's going to become
your book. Your book's content is going to be created as an
interview.

Step three is to order your book's cover before you even
create the content. We'll talk about why.

Step four is to actually record the interview for free using
your phone. I'll show you a couple of ways to do that.

Step five is to have that conversation, that recording
transcribed.

Step six is to do a light edit of that transcription.

Step seven is to hire somebody to format that transcript and
turn it into a book format, which is only going to cost you 5 or
10 bucks.

Step eight is actually pretty anti-climactic because you're
just going to upload a couple of files to Kindle. Poof or I
should say presto. Not poof. Presto, you are a published author.
There are a couple of other things you can do to actually turn
that Kindle book into a print book that will cost you not very
much at all.

Step 1 - Define Your Audience Step number one is define your
audience. People talk a lot about audiences and segmentation.
It actually comes down to just 3 simple
questions.  Who are you creating the book
for? Who? Who's the audience for this book?
What are you creating the book about? What's
the topic? The best topics to create books around are problems. To
solve somebody's problem is the number one thing you want to do. I
don't know the exact statistics, but I think it's four times
as many people will act to solve a problem or to avoid pain than
they will to get a result. Your best topics are solving problems.
What do they want? What's the payoff that
they're looking for? It should be something that's pretty severe as
far as the problem goes. I like to use this metaphor: If somebody's
in a chainsaw accident, they're not going to ask the ambulance
driver how much is this ride to the hospital going to be or how
much is that tourniquet going to cost me. That's a real problem as
opposed to somebody who's got a hangnail. They're comparison
shopping for band aids at the Walmart while they're sipping their
double latte cappuccino. That is not a problem. You want a
severe, pressing, painful problem that you really want to solve.
It's a very specific audience that you're targeting. Step
2 - Prepare The Interview Step two is you need to prepare the
interview. That's really 2 parts. Part 1 - You want to have an
angle for your interview. Number one, you want to have an angle for
your interview. Are you going to be talking mainly about mistakes?
Are you going to give people a road map? Are you going to give them
a beginner's guide? Are you going to give them tips, tricks, and
secrets? You need to have a track that you're going to
run down for doing an interview. It can't just be a series
of random questions. It's got to have a track, so that it
takes them from A to B to Z in an organized way that makes sense.
That's how books are put together. Part 2  - Put together the
questions. The second part is to put together the questions.
Most people talk between 110 and 150 words per minute. Which means
a 60 to a 90-minute interview is a perfect length for a Kindle
book. A good length for a Kindle book is somewhere between 4,000,
5,000, and 10,000 words. Let's say, between 4 and 10,000 words,
which typically comes out to be an hour, hour and a half of talk
time. Parts of an interview:

Your interview needs to have an introduction that obviously
introduces you, who you are and why they should listen to you.

You have the body of the interview, which is basically just a
series of questions, again, along a track. What's the first
mistake people make? What's another mistake that people make that
cost them time? What's another mistake that people make that they
think is actually the right thing to do, but is the worst thing
they could ever do? Those types of things.

You have a conclusion. The conclusion is basically, "Thanks
for joining us. Here are some instructions for how to get more
results or take the next step." That's where you really want to
drive people to your website and get them to sign up with you.

Step 3 - Order Your Book Cover Step three is to actually order
your book cover before you actually do the interview with your
friend over the phone. The reason you do that is twofold. Number
one, it keeps you from having to wait to get your cover once you've
done the interview and have the book ready. Number two, it
helps you to build momentum. I order my covers from Fiverr.com. At
Fiverr.com, Kindle covers will cost you $10 or $20
depending on the options that you use. If you know you want
to turn your Kindle book into a print book, there are a lot of
people that'll do a cover for you that's a Create Space cover and a
Kindle cover. You kill 2 birds with 1 stone. That'll cost
you about $20 or $30. The only caveat to that is if you're doing
Create Space, you're going to have to write some back cover copy.
One of the easiest ways to do that, is just to tell people, "These
are the questions we're going to answer in this interview." They're
the bullets for your back cover copy. You don't have to make it
tough. This really helps you build momentum. Step 4 - Record The
Interview Step four is to actually record the interview for free
using your phone. You do the interview as a conversation over
the phone. There are 2 methods you can use:
You can use your smartphone. Smartphones
actually have amazing microphones in them. There's an app called
the RINGR. It works on iPhone and Android. The gist of how it works
is, you get on the phone. Your friend gets on the phone. You push a
couple of buttons. RINGR will record both sides of the
conversation. When you're done with the conversation, both phones
upload the recording to the RINGR website. RINGR emails an MP3
file, an audio file of both those mashed together. It sounds really
good, almost as if you two were in the same room. It's absolutely
free.
FreeConferenceCall.com. If
you don't have a smartphone, then you can log on to
FreeConferenceCall.com. You can create a free account. You have a
phone number and a PIN number. You both call in. You're on the web
at the same time with your little interface on
FreeConferenceCall.com. You hit the record button. You talk. Ask,
answer questions. You're done. You hit stop. You download the MP3
file. It's super easy and simple. Everybody can talk on the phone.
If you can't talk on the phone, you probably can't write a
book. I'm assuming you can talk on the phone. Don't try
and do it with Skype. Use the phone because you can talk on a
phone, and everybody has a phone. It takes between 60 and 90
minutes to have the interview conversation. Step 5 - Have The
Interview Transcribed Step number five is you send that MP3 audio
fileto a site called Rev.com to have it transcribed. I like Rev.com
because it's really easy. Some people ask, "Why couldn't I go to
Fiverr.com?" Or "If I've got this" or "I go to that" etc.
Rev.com is like the Walmart
of transcriptions. They have a bunch of people doing
transcriptions. If you have a problem, you can get it fixed. They
charge a dollar a minute. If you're going to do a 60-minute
transcription, then it costs you $60. You'll know exactly how much
it's going to cost you because when you upload it, they'll see how
long it is and they say, "It's 61 minutes. Give us $61, and we'll
have it transcribed." Daniel and I have both
used Rev.com a lot. They are an excellent  service.
Step 6 - Lightly Edit The Transcription Step six is you do a light
edit of the transcript when you get it back. Now, here's the thing.
I have seen this is where a lot of people get derailed. You
need to understand that the way you talk is different than the way
you're going to write.  You're not going to
rewrite what you've spoken. What you're going to do is go
through the transcript and check for spelling and punctuation. Or
if you have a friend who's better at spelling and punctuation than
you are, then do that. I always like to just hit F7 in my Word
because that's a spelling and punctuation and grammar check from my
buddy, Bill Gates. The other thing I like to do is break up what I
call "chunky paragraphs." With eBooks and books now, the
rules of paragraphs and grammar learned in high school don't
apply as much as they used to. I like to break up anything
that's over 4 lines into its own paragraph, 4 or 5 lines. I don't
worry about proper paragraph structure. I just break them up,
especially for Kindle. A very important thing you need to do
is add your author bio. You're going to want to add a call to
action. A call to action is basically "go to my website and
register" or "this book is one of the easiest things" or "go to my
website and get a video" or "one of the easiest things you can do,"
etc. Here's a cool tip. I wasn't actually planning on
revealing this. Listen very carefully because this is
super cool. The whole reason you're writing a book, in many cases,
is to get people onto your list. We have created this book by doing
an audio interview. Therefore, the audio book version of your book
is already done. You have the audio done. What you can do
is offer the audio book version for free, if they will go to your
website and register. That's a neat little tip. You can
offer that right at the beginning of the book. One of the important
things you want to do is add a cover letter that explains to people
right at the beginning of the book, "Hey, I just wanted to let you
know that this book was originally created as a live interview.
That's why it reads as a conversation and maybe a little different
than what you're used to with a regular book." As soon as people
read that, they go, "Oh, okay. I understand. Now, this reads like
we're having a conversation," as opposed to "Hey, this doesn't read
like a book." If you just add that simple little cover
letter and explain that it was done as a live event or a live
conversation or a live interview, people are totally fine with
it. That's an important thing to remember. Don't forget
the cover letter that it's a live interview format. Step 7 - Hire
Someone To Format Your Book I like to think of this like a bobsled
run. We're coming into the homestretch because now that you've got
this thing edited, all you have to do is get it formatted for
Kindle. That's we're going to go back to Fiverr.com. Where we got
our cover made. We're going to hire somebody to do formatting.
You just do a search for Kindle formatting or a search for
Create Space formatting. If you're going to have
somebody format it for Create Space, which is Amazon's print
on-demand arm, then you can often find people who will do a 2-for-1
deal. "I'll format for Create Space and Kindle for $20."
$10 or $15. I don't know. Whatever it is. It's usually based on
the number of pages. Typically though, doing an interview for
60 or 90 minutes, puts you at the lower end to the mid-range of
what people are charging. It's not very much money. Here's
the tip. Make each main question in the interview
a chapter. That's how you have a book with chapters. Each
question is a chapter. Now, it might only be a page or 2 pages long
when you get it back from Rev. However, by the time somebody
gets through formatting it, it can turn into 5, 6, 7, 8 pages in a
print book. In a Kindle book, they really don't have
pages. They just have percentage finished in the book. That's
key is to make sure that each main question is a chapter when
they're formatting the book. Step 8 - Upload Your Files Once you
get that back, it's as simple as you log on to KDP.Amazon.com. If
you don't have an account, you can sign up for one. You just upload
your Kindle book. Like I said earlier, it's anti-climactic.
It is because all you're doing is just copying and pasting
stuff in.

You paste in the title of your book.

You paste in the description of your book.

You paste in the 5 keywords or the 5 keyword tags that make
the most sense.

The one thing I would tell you is that typically, when they
ask you to choose 2 categories for your Kindle book, they'll make
no sense because the ones you think it should be in, they won't be
there. Kindle or Amazon will assign you categories later.
Don't spend a ton of time on the category thing because it
never works out. I've never had anybody said, "They had
the perfect category right there for me, Jim. It was amazing." That
takes 5 minutes. All you're doing is just uploading files by
selecting them from your hard drive. It's super fast. If
you want to upload to Create Space, it's equally as easy.
You're just copying and pasting in the forms. Literally, uploading
and publishing on Kindle takes 5 minutes. Congratulations.
You are now a published author with a new, original book.
The Interview Process Is One Of The Fastest Ways To Create Content
Thank you, Jim for sharing those incredible 8 steps. The main thing
I want everyone to understand is that the interview
process is one of the fastest ways to create very valuable,
compelling content very quickly. I'd like to highlight a few
things Jim discussed so you understand their importance.
The cover letter at the very beginning of the book that lets
people know, "Hey, this really is a conversation,"  "that's
what this book is." It does save you lots of time trying to rework
the prose and what not. That's one of the reasons why you
can do this whole process in 3 hours or less total time.
That's a very important thing I wanted you to understand. The
other thing that I really want to highlight here is the cover.
Having that cover created beforehand, also very crucial in
my opinion, gives you a lighthouse, a target to aim at as you
actually produce the rest of your book. As you do your
interviews, as you set up your questions and so forth. Super
important. I love the tip Jim gave of taking and using the
audio book. The audio that you created to create the book, as your
opt-in. That makes perfect sense. I've been saying all
along, within the Real Fast Results podcast, that you need to
be using your digital publications to not only create revenue and
royalties, but also build your list. Build your platform
and your community. This is a perfect way to not only create the
book quickly, but also have something to give away on the back end.
It's form-fitted to that particular audience. It's not like, "Would
they be interested in this other thing that I might have? Maybe and
maybe not." You know for a surety that they're interested in the
content that they just received. Chances are very high that
they will take you up on that offer to get the audio book version
because they're already reading text of that same
material. That's masterful. Thanks, Daniel! One cool thing
that you can do, if you know you're going to use the audio for
free, when you're having your cover made, you can have one of the
those starburst or seals that says, "Bonus: Free audio book
version available." Kindle Wizard by Jim Edwards What we have is a
piece of software. It's called the 3-Hour Kindle Book Wizard. It's
available at 3HourKindleBookWizard.com/Daniel. What it does is it
makes this whole process even easier because all you do is fire up
the software on either a PC or a Mac. Basically, it walks you
through some steps, asks you some questions about your audience,
about yourself, about your topic and other things. It creates
everything for you. It has 11 different interview tracks that you
can run down that'll create all the questions that you need to have
somebody interview you. It does the intros and the conclusions and
everything. It writes all your sales copy for you.
It writes all of your back cover copy for you. It creates all the
emails that you need to announce your book to your list, to get
other people to announce your book to their list. It'll
even create an entire Power Point slide deck that you could use if
you wanted to present your interview as a webinar. It
writes all your ads for you for your book. It literally does
everything you need to prepare to do this process even down to
writing the thank you note. Thanking the person who interviewed
you. It's that level of detail I would definitely tell you to go
and check out that link: 3HourKindleBookWizard.com/Daniel, because
you can see how the software works, what's entailed, all that good
stuff. Literally, in 10 to 12 minutes, you can fill out the
software and have every single piece of the puzzle done and ready
to go for you to then jump on the phone with your buddy. Have them
interview you. Order your cover, and you're on your way, and all
the other stuff that you need for this process. It is pretty
amazing. Thanks, Jim! The software is awesome. It actually
takes what you've taught us here today to a whole other
level. One of the things that I personally love about it is
the fact that not only does it do all this other great stuff, as
you say, but it actually writes your Amazon description. All of
this stuff is done for you. By the way, the link that Jim gave
you is my affiliate link, for full disclosure. To keep the
lights on around here, we're giving you that affiliate link.
Daniel's Real Fast Results Tips: Turing An Interview Into A Book

When you're doing your interview, just have a conversation.

Make sure you know your target audience and what problems
they want solved.

Whether you'll look into Jim's software or not, what you
learned was completely A to Z. You can definitely do it with what
you learned here.

Resources Software Program - 3-Hour
Kindle Book Wizard Book by Jim Edwards
- Making Money with Kindle Books: Myths, Misconceptions, and
the Truth Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know. Order
Covers - Fiverr.com Free Recorder For
Your Phone (Find in the App store) - RINGR App
Free Online Recorder
- FreeConferenceCall.com - 
Transcription Service - Rev.com
Kindle Digital Publishing
- https://kdp.amazon.com/ -