Lindsay - November 26, 2020Our guest this week is Honoree Corder, an executive and strategic book and publishing coach, TEDx speaker, and the author of dozens of books including You Must Write a Book and The Prosperous Writer series. She’s also the co-author of The Nifty 15: Write Your Book in Just 15 Minutes a Day! with Brian Meeks. For a few more days, you can pick up the Nifty 15 book in the NaNoWriMo Tools StoryBundle.
Today, we talked to Honoree about writing and selling non-fiction, building a platform as a non-fiction author, whether you need to coach or create courses to make a living with non-fiction, how much author mindset plays into our success, and (of course!) how to write a book when you’ve only got 15 minutes a day.
Here are the specific questions we asked her:
- Why don’t you tell us how you got into indie publishing?
- What is the number one thing an author of non-fiction can or should do to market their book?
- What types of advertising are you finding effective for non-fiction?
- For Amazon ads, is it hard to break even with one book, and should non-fiction authors strive to come up with a series and hope for read-through?
- Non-fiction is a bit of an oddball for marketing, because you seldom see all forms of fiction lumped together when talking about marketing, but frequently “marketing non-fiction” is a single topic. Do marketing tactics differ when the umbrella covers things as varied as cookbooks, self-help books, travel guides, and text books?
- If you’re publishing non-fiction, how important is it to also do courses/coaching/speaking/etc. Is it hard to have a career purely as an author?
- When we talk about non-fiction, the phrase “building authority” often comes up. How important is it to establish yourself as an expert, and how does one do so?
- Non-fiction can often tolerate higher prices for shorter books. What do you recommend for authors when it comes to pricing? Is it niche dependent?
- It seems like a lot of non-fiction blurbs and covers will use very firm, assertive language. Is it important to depict your book as being definitive on its given subject? Can you still succeed with offering your non-fiction up as an option or alternative to other books/techniques?
- The first time I heard someone mention affirmations was on an entrepreneur and business podcast called Entreleadership. I’m not much into abstract ideas or trying to change outcomes by attacking our thoughts, but I decided to give affirmations a try… and they really helped. I broke through my burnout phase and wrote some of my most successful novels in the year that followed. Can you explain why that is, and how having a positive mindset affects productivity and success?
- Some of the platitudes about writing can feel self-defeating or demoralizing if you start to slip. “You aren’t a writer if you don’t write every day,” and “You can’t succeed without frequent and consistent releases.” How does one balance motivation with becoming overwhelmed?
- For people who have tried and didn’t feel they had enough success… how can they change that? Do they tell themselves there’s a code you can crack and keep trying?
- You co-authored the Nifty 15 book with Brian Meeks. How did that come about? Who came up with the idea, and how did you execute it together? Is co-authoring something you recommend?
- A lot of authors use quotas to make sure they’re making progress. Some use word counts. Others use time. It sounds like you’re indicating a time quota. How do you assess your progress during a time-based quota to make sure you’re moving forward at an appreciable clip? I know I’d end up staring at the corner of my monitor trying to get my brain started for the first eleven minutes.
- Do you find it’s difficult to get into the flow and become more efficient when you’re short on time?
- I am more efficient when I plot out the scenes the day before – do you recommend something similar? Outlining each chapter?
If you want to hear more from Honoree or check out some of her books, you can visit her website or find her non-fiction on Amazon. Also, the Nifty 15 book is available in the NaNoWriMo StoryBundle.
Thank you for listening, and thank you to Joshua Pearson for producing the show!
