Guy Kawasaki's Talk on APE - New Book on Self Publishing
APE Talk by Guy Kawasaki
Menlo Park Public Library
March 2, 2013
Author, Publisher and Entrepreneur (APE), Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch, Nononina Press, 2012.
Self publishing pros and cons:
| Pros | Cons |
| Total control | No advance |
| Short time to market | You have total responsibility |
| Royalty up to 70% | Loneliness |
The following ten points communicated the highlights covered in his book, which mapped out a process very similar to the one that Jeanne and I used to write “Innovate Products Faster”.
- Write for the right reasons
- Use the right tools (Word, InDesign, Evernote, Dropbox, Yousendit)
- Write every day (writing is like vomiting)
- Build a marketing platform (you can get 5000 followers in a year)
- Start with Kindle eBooks
- Tap the crowd to write the book
- Hire a copy editor
- Hire a cover designer (ensure it will look good on Amazon)
- Test your eBook
- Never give up
Other tidbits from the talk included that he wrote the book because Penguin only offered $500K - $1M for a two book deal, and he was rejected by another publisher. He recommends using Word style sheets from the beginning. He highly recommends Evernote as a universal capture system. He sells 3-4 x Enchantment in print versus eBook. He got 250 people to sign up to give feedback on the manuscript, and 60 actually did it.
They plan to issue a new version of the book each month to improve it and fix typos. Guy estimates that he has sold about 130,000 books. Also, he has an exclusive with Kindle, called KDP select so you can actually borrow the book.
Check out apethebook.com for downloads and more information.