Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and for many of us, that brings a time of family gatherings, delicious food and reflection on the things we’re thankful for. Identifying what we are thankful for is something that we ought to do much more frequently than once a year on Thanksgiving. Scientific research has shown that expressing gratitude improves mental, physical and relational well-being, resulting in greater optimism and happiness.

In particular, it increases one’s self-esteem, strengthens the heart and immune system, and decreases blood pressure, stress, anxiety, depression and headaches. Not bad for something you can do in just a few minutes a day!

The most common method for cultivating gratitude is by keeping a gratitude journal and recording experiences for which one is grateful. Such experiences could include observing a beautiful tree or flower, or a good cup of coffee, or the feeling of the sun on one’s face, or a pleasant conversation. Try to take notice of at least three positive experiences every day, and see how that affects your mood. If you can record those experiences, you are more likely to have sustained positive results. As you cultivate the habit of thinking of positive experiences, you’ll find your focus shifting from what is lacking in your life to the abundance that already exists. Let me know how this is working for you.

1. My Gratitude For You

I sincerely appreciate your membership in the SkillBites community. As a token of my gratitude, I am offering a huge discount on my book writing course.

For those wanting to write a book or struggling to get one written, SkillBites has an online course called Book It! Learn to write a profitable non-fiction book that provides a detailed roadmap for getting a business book written. The course consists of four modules:

An introduction, which covers such topics as the biggest obstacles and how to overcome them and frequently asked questions;
Creating the foundation for your book, and why it is so important to identify your objectives, your target readership, and the best topic for your book BEFORE you start writing;
Preparing to write, which discusses various book formats, how to develop an outline, how to organize the content you’ve already developed and why you need to include case studies and stories; and
Writing your book, which covers a myriad of tips to make the writing easier as well as some strategies for expediting the writing.

The registration fee for this course is $495. During the month of November, 2022 you can save 90% of the registration fee and just pay $45. Click here to read more about the course and to enroll. Use the code Gratitude2022 at checkout to get your $450 discount.

2. The SkillBites Show

Each month, we bring you an expert to help you get your book done, leverage your book, grow your business or improve your life. The shows are recorded, and you can listen to the recording by clicking here.

On our next SkillBites Show, my guest will be me! I’ll be talking about the biggest mistakes I’ve seen authors make. I’ve helped hundreds of authors during the past 10 years and have seen a lot of mistakes that have caused undue frustration, wasted time and reduced profits. Tune in so you can benefit from the hard knocks of others and learn to avoid making these mistakes.

Last month, my guest was Tony Guarnaccia. Tony shared tips on creating your media kit so that you can get guest appearances on podcasts and spread the message of your book to the audience of the podcast host. Tony offered some valuable gifts to listeners of this episode, providing you with the ability to create your own media kit and search for podcasts that will get you in front of your target audience! If you have a podcast or are thinking of starting one, you’ll definitely want to take a half hour to listen to Tony’s tips.

You can listen to it by clicking here. You can also click here to read a blog post on 9 ways that getting guest appearances on podcasts can help you promote your book.

Do you have expertise that you believe would benefit the SkillBites community of entrepreneurs and authors? If you would like to be the guest on the monthly SkillBites Show, contact me at judy@skillbites.net or 610-783-4519. If there is a topic you would like to hear on the podcast, let me know and I’ll look for an expert to cover that.

3. Resource Center

SkillBites offers various marketing services to help our authors get the results they want from their books. To make it even easier for authors to find the resources to help them promote their book, get speaking engagements, get media interviews and create funnels to get more leads and clients, SkillBites has created a Resource Center where authors can go directly to respected service providers. To access the Resource Center, click here or go to https://skillbites.net/resource-center/.

4. Free Resource

For anyone who is struggling with getting their book written, I’ve included a free eBook on my website called Write A Book Easily. The book contains a simple roadmap to help you get your book written, and you can download it for free at https://www.skillbites.net/.

5. Tip of the Month: Determining your page count

Over the years, I’ve had authors who wanted to make sure their page count was large enough for the spine to have sufficient width to have the title and author name. For authors looking to use their book to get speaking engagements, it is important to have legible text on the spine, as event coordinators prefer to hire speakers who are authors with “proper-sized” books. Books that are too skinny for text on the spine are not considered “proper-sized”. Amazon recommends having at least 130 pages for text on the spine, although I have enabled authors to get text on the spine of books that were just 110 pages.

I’ve also had clients who wanted to reduce the number of pages of their book, so the book wouldn’t be as lengthy. Amazon bases its cost of printing on the number of pages, so a longer book will cost more than a shorter book.

How can you determine the page count that you are looking for? The page count is based on several factors:

the number of words in the main body of the manuscript
the font type and size of the text
the number of charts, graphs or other images, and the size of those images (e.g., full page, half page, quarter page, etc.)
the number of front matter pages (e.g., the title page, copyright page, Dedication)
the number of back matter pages (e.g., Author bio, Resources, Index)
the trim size of the book (6” x 9” is one of the most popular for non-fiction)

The easiest way to get a sense of the number of pages your book will be is to adjust the page size of your manuscript in Word to the size book you think you want. To do that, go to the Layout tab in Word and click on the arrow under Size. Then scroll to the bottom and click on More Paper Sizes, and adjust the height and width to the size you want. For instance, let’s say your manuscript is 27,988 words, and you want it to be in 6” x 9” with a Calibri 12 pt font. In 8 1/2” x 11”, it’s only 82 pages; but in 6” x 9”, it’s 151 pages, counting the front matter and back matter.

A smaller page size, such as 5” x 8”, will yield more pages than 6” x 9”. Likewise, a larger page size, such as 8 ½” x 11”, will decrease the number of pages. There are other ways to increase or decrease the number of pages. If this is an issue you are encountering, give me a call and I’ll share some more tips.

Thanks for supporting SkillBites. If there is anything you think we ought to be doing better or anything we should be doing that we’re not, please let us know. We value your input.

Cordially,