I cannot believe it, but as this episode goes out live, my book is officially released to the world tomorrow, the 1st of November 2024. This is definitely one of my biggest personal and professional achievements, so I decided why not dedicate an entire podcast episode to the book. So today I'm going to take you behind the scenes of my whole year long book writing journey and I'm going to explore exactly what goes into writing a book.
I'm Becca Poutney, wedding business marketing expert, speaker and blogger and you're listening to the Wedding Pros who Are Ready to Grow podcast. I'm here to share with you actionable tips, strategies and real life examples to help you take your wedding business to the next level. If you are an ambitious wedding business owner that wants to take your passion and use it to build a profitable, sustainable business doing what you love, then you're in the right place.
Let's get going with today's episode. My debut book, Done is Better Than Perfect. Building a Profitable Wedding Business is officially out in the world and people have already pre ordered it. People have started to read it and I have to pinch myself every time I I see a picture of someone with it or someone makes a comment on the book. Because this book has been a journey.
That journey started in November 2023 and today in the podcast I'm going to take you through that journey because I think it's interesting for you to hear how I got to this point with the book and also maybe it's something that you might like to do one day and hopefully this will help explain the journey. Now, to explain why I started writing the book, I'm actually going to read an extract from the book itself. This is from page 12. It's part of the introduction.
I was going to read a section to you because I wrote it a lot more elegantly than I can ever say it. Honest the Podcast When I stepped off stage after speaking at a conference last year, one of the attendees came bounding over to me and enthusiastically asked me where she could purchase a copy of my book. I stared blankly at her. I don't have a book, I replied. Well you should, she replied. In that moment, I doubted myself. Could I ever write a book?
I am no wordsmith and I definitely never dreamt of becoming an author. As I reflected over the coming days, I remembered that phrase again. Done is better than perfect. If I can share my knowledge and help just one business owner with my writing, it will all be worth it. This book is an imperfect guide because as humans, we're all full of imperfection. There are certainly more polished authors out there, but I've learned that waiting until I'm perfect often means missing opportunities.
So I'm taking my own advice and sharing my knowledge with you. Even though it's not flawless, I hope this book becomes your companion and trusted advisor, perhaps even your secret weapon. You know, you're good at the creative part. Planning the wedding, arranging the flowers, taking the video, baking the cake. Now let's make sure you have the business side of things under control as well.
Yeah, I hope that whets your appetite and gives you a little flavour of what the book is all about and why I decided to do it. It was a challenge and the idea of writing it seemed very daunting. But as I explained in that intro, I knew that it would be worth it in the end. And as I sit here today, I am thrilled. But trust me, if you asked me six months ago, nine months ago, Becca, should I write a book? I would have said absolutely not. It's one of the hardest, awful things I've ever done.
The only thing I can compare it to is the time I ran a half marathon. Now, I decided to run a half marathon when I turned 30. Mainly my sister encouraged me to do it. And because it was in Disneyland Paris and if I was ever going to run anywhere, Disney is the place to do it. I am not a runner. I am not a fit person at all. That is not something I enjoy doing. But when I set myself a goal, I normally achieve it.
And so I decided to run that half marathon and I worked hard, I trained hard, it was not easy. I put all of my effort into it. I put a lot of time into it and I did go ahead and run it and achieve it and get the medal at the end. And the feeling of euphoria when I held that medal in my hand and said I did it was worth all of that hard work and horrible feeling even in the race itself. Trust me, I wasn't someone who enjoyed it.
And writing this book is the only other thing I've done that's felt very similar to that. It's been so painful at times, exhausting all the way through, it felt like I was never going to finish. But the moment I held that book in my hand and can say, I did it, I wrote a book. Everything else feels so much more worth it. So it's done. But it hasn't been easy. So I decided to write the book. So the first thing I obviously did was go and buy a notebook.
Anyone else like that you think, I'm going to start a new project. What I need is a new notebook, maybe a bit of procrastinating, maybe because I like buying nice stationery, But I got myself a notebook and I actually went and sat in a cafe where I thought I might have a bit more headspace. And I just started making notes about what I thought I could cover in the book.
I knew that I wanted it to be a guide that someone could hand over to anyone that was either thinking of starting a business, wanting to grow their business, or just wants to take their business to the next level, and it would very simply walk them through what they needed to do. I found when I started a business that it was a minefield. I didn't know what I needed to do. I didn't know that I needed an accountant or insurance or, you know, all of the basic things.
So I knew that I wanted to cover the basics, but I also knew I wanted to cover, like me more complicated things as well. Basically the sort of things I talk about on the podcast in my training sessions so that if someone took the book, it wasn't like they read it and then they needed to read the second edition. I wanted it to be a complete guide. So with that in mind, I sat down and I started to write out all of the things I could talk about.
So the things I talk about, I knew knew, would be marketing, the basic setup of a business, finance, sales, networking, because that's a big thing for me, all of that kind of thing. And also I wanted to talk a little bit about mindset, because more and more I realized that being confident and having a good mindset also helps you for business success. So I wrote all of these notes down and kind of arranged it into chapters. There was a lot too many chapters.
And in the end, I ended up combining some of the chapters together. What I then did was I took each of those chapter headings or ideas and gave them each a separate page in my notebook so that I could start formulating my thoughts. I am not very logical. I don't always find it easy to write something down. I much prefer speaking or answering questions or being on stage. So I knew that it was going to be hard to just dive into writing. So I decided to give each page the chapter heading.
And over the next kind of couple of weeks, every time I thought of an idea or an anecdote, I would go and write it on the page somewhere, not in a nice orderly fashion, but just somewhere, scribble it down and think, oh, yeah, that story would be good for this chapter of the book. Or, oh, someone just told me this. And actually that's a good example I'm going to use in this chapter of the book. Or maybe I read something online or read a study somewhere and, oh, I could quote that in the book.
So that's basically what I did. I created a page for each of the chapters and just started scribbling ideas down. Things that I talked about in the past, things from my presentations, things from my podcast, all sorts of different things, and made sure each page had a whole load of notes about it. So that when I sat down to write each chapter, I already had a whole bank of stuff go off.
Because I thought, right, I've got to include this story about when I went to Aldi and my daughter wanted to buy a teddy and why we didn't buy it and then why we did buy it. You'll have to read the book to get the full story. But I wanted to make sure I included all of those things. Now, the other thing is I wanted to make sure the book had lots of stories and examples in it because I think that's what makes the book interesting to read. It's the anecdotes.
Whenever I do my accountability Monday in the members lounge, quite often I will illustrate my points by talking about something that's happened in my week that's taught me about that, because I think it's easy to remember an anecdote and to understand it, rather than just the theory. So I wanted to make sure the book was peppered throughout with stories from my life, stories from my client's life, so that you could really understand what I was talking about in a very simple way.
So that was what I did next. So I had all of my notes in this notebook, and then I kind of just left the notebook for a while and was in denial about the fact I actually had to go on and write a book. Now, the working title for the book was the Wedding Business Book. I'm really not very creative when it comes to things like that, titles. And I thought if I for ages thinking about a title, I'm never actually going to write any words in this book.
So I made the decision to just call it Wedding Business Book, which obviously was never going to be the title of the book. But just to get myself past that hurdle, I thought, I'll come back to that later. That's not a now problem, that's a future Becca problem. And I just called it the Wedding Business Book. So for a very long time, in fact, up until about three or four months ago, it was literally just called Wedding Business Book.
And when I told people I was writing a book, they'd ask me what's it called? And I was like, wedding Business Book because it didn't have a title. Now I had no idea how to write a book. So I had this idea. I knew that I wanted to write the book because people had said I should. I decided it was a good goal to set myself. I started writing all these notes, but I didn't actually know anything about the process. Now, as you know, I always teach. It's all about who you know, not what you know.
And I was very fortunate because my brother in law actually is someone who works in publishing. He works in Christian literature publishing. So nothing to do with business. But he has a very good knowledge about how to write and publish a book, obviously, because that's what he does day to day. And I saw him at Christmas. So just a month after I'd been to Vegas and been to the cop and decided to write the book.
And I just asked him if he'd give me some help and advice when he set up a business a while ago. I'd given him a little bit of advice too. And so, you know, swings and roundabouts. It was time for him to help me. So he basically said to me, becca, don't get bogged down in it. Just write the book and then come back to me. I said, right, well, I've got a deadline. I want to be able to hold this book on stage in Las Vegas when I speak in 2024. November 2024 is my deadline.
So he said, okay, I'm not going to tell you anything else about it because you actually need to write the book before we can do anything else. So aim to have the book finished by the end of April so that we know we've got plenty time to get it published by November. And come back to me when you've written the book and then we'll talk about the next steps. And actually in some ways that was very freeing.
In other ways, as you'll hear later in the story, it was made my life a little bit tricky because I hadn't quite realized the costs and the all of the things that were going to be involved in writing the book. But actually he was right because he could have sat there and talked to me all about writing a book, but I may never have actually gone and written it. And there's no point thinking about those things. So you're actually at a stage where you can do it. So that's what I did. I took off.
I said, right, okay, I'm going to write this book by the end of April and then I'll come back to you. Now the next hurdle was I needed to actually start writing the book rather than just make notes in my notepad. And again, I was like, do I just write this in a Word document? And I'm in a little bit of a business mentoring group, just a peer to peer support group.
And I asked them because I knew a couple of the members of that had already written their book and they made a great suggestion to me to use a piece of software called Readzy that's spelled R E E D S Y and it's actually free to use. It's an online piece of software. And if anyone is thinking of writing a book, I highly recommend going to check it out. You set up a free account, but what it does is as you write it formats it looking like a book.
So it's a little bit more interesting to look at than just a Word document. But the other main thing that I liked it for was that you could arrange the book into chapters. So I already had my chapter headings, didn't I? Because I'd written them in my notebook. So I started putting them in the software so I could see where I was at. And then you went inside each chapter and started writing. But what it did was it tracked what you were doing.
So it would give me numbers such as how many words I'd written that day, how many words were in the book overall, how many words I deleted and how much progress I'd made. And it also let you put in deadlines, it let you put in a target for how many words you wanted to hit by, by a certain deadline. And it let you know how close to the deadline you were. Now, this was game changing.
I think it's much easier to look at it in that way for me, rather than just looking at a blank word document and saving it. And having those numbers in front of me really helped because sometimes I'd sit down and write and feel like I hadn't written anything and then look up and realize, oh, actually you've written 2,000 words today, Becca. That's actually quite a good achievement. That's a whole thing that you would do at university.
A whole assignment would be 2,000 words and you'd be really proud of it. I mean, up to this point, the longest thing I'd ever written was my dissertation. I think that was 12,000 words. And it felt Like a million bazillion words. It was like the hardest this thing I'd written before this book.
And so having it broken down into smaller chunks and thinking about it in those smaller amounts helped, rather than thinking about that massive 40, 50,000 word amount I needed to get to, which felt like an impossible hill to climb. So that's what I started doing. I started writing and putting words into each of those chapters and start tracking it along. And I kind of did that between January and May, ad hoc. Because if you know me, my life is incredibly busy with the kids and with work.
And I'm always off speaking at events, doing one to ones, doing the member lounge. And so I don't have loads of free time to just think, oh, I'm going to just sit and enjoy writing a book. And also, I didn't really enjoy writing it, so I found it hard to sit and write. I'd much rather do this podcast recording than write a thousand words. So it was getting a little bit neglected at the bottom of my to do list. And I was doing it occasionally, but not very many words were coming out.
And April was getting closer and closer and closer. But I did make a start. One of the things I wanted to ensure early on was that I had the right tone and style when I wrote the book. And when you read a book, you can almost hear the person saying it to you, especially if you know that person. And I didn't want to write a really formal, stuffy business book. Yes, I wanted this to be a really good business book that would help you start and grow a business and make it even better.
But I didn't want it to be like a boring, stuffy book that you would put down. And so I wanted to write it in a tone and style that sounded like me. It had, like quirks in it. It had ways of saying things that I would say, phrasing that I would say. I wanted it to have my personality in it. So I knew it had to mention things like Spice Girls, musical theater, Disney, all of the things I love to talk about.
I wanted it to talk about my family, because I talk about that a lot with my members and in my teaching. And I just wanted it to be really authentic and not showy offy, if that's really a word. I didn't want it to sound like I'm amazing and I know everything and you have to listen to me because that's not really how I am, that's not how I teach. I hope that's not how I come across So I wanted it to be much more down to earth. Practical, straightforward, easy to understand. Understand.
I didn't want there to be big business jargon that made anyone feel like they couldn't start a business, because I honestly believe anyone can start a business if they get the right help and the right understanding to do it. And so I really wanted to reflect that in the tone. And so when I did write, I just wrote how I would say it.
So I imagined I was on the podcast or imagined I was talking to a crowd, and I just wrote as if I was talking to someone rather than feeling like I was writing this formal book. And I think that really works. I think that comes across those of you that have started to read extracts of it. A couple of people have said, I can hear you saying these words as I read it. I can hear your voice in my head, which I'm thrilled about. And so I decided to keep that tone all the way through.
I didn't worry too much about making sure I was checking my spelling mistakes and grammar, because I knew that would come down the line. And I decided the priority was to just get the words out and then to fix any mistakes later on down the process. And that's exactly what I did. However, as it got closer and closer to April, I was struggling to get enough words written. I was way off my target. I knew that I had this fixed deadline, and I knew it didn't matter. I'd fix the deadline myself.
But I'm the sort of person that when I set myself a deadline, I don't want to miss it. And when I say that I want it written by the time I'm in Vegas, that means I don't want to turn up to Vegas without it, because I'd feel like I'd not done a good enough job. And I know things happen, but actually, it wasn't that anything happened. It's just that I was trying to get out of my own way and actually find time to sit down and write. So I tried a couple of different techniques.
I tried diarizing writing time so I would block out Thursday morning to write. But then sometimes something would happen on Thursday morning, or a child would be sick or I wasn't in the right headspace. And so sometimes that wasn't happening either. So I knew I needed to do something different. So again, I was chatting with my mentor group that I chat with, and I was explaining this to them, and we were coming up with different concepts. And then I had a brainwave.
And it was probably the best thing that I did in the timeline of writing the book in order to help me get it finished. And that was I decided to make myself accountable to all of you. So on the 9th of May, I started a small reel series about helping me to write a book. And I basically was very vulnerable and I've just watched back that initial reel, I was very vulnerable and I basically said, look, I've got this deadline to write a book. I'm not writing a book.
I need you to help me write the book. And what I meant by that is I need to tell you that I'm doing this because I need you to, number one, hold me accountable for getting it done, ask me for updates, find out whether or not I'm doing it. And it just gives me an outlet to talk about it and it gives me a bit of motivation to do it. Because if I do a reel saying I'm going to write a thousand words this week and then I don't, I feel like that's a little bit awkward.
Whereas it actually made me think, yeah, I want to do that. In fact, I want to do more than that so I can go back on my reels again and tell everyone that I wrote more of that. So the first reel went out on the 9th of May, and as I said, I basically said, look, I'm trying to write this book, I need your encouragement, please help me. This is day one of helping me to write my wedding business book. And you responded incredibly.
I had so many comments, messages, hind words, people asking me, people saying, you can do this, Becca, it's going to be amazing. And that's exactly what I needed to get me to the next stage of the journey, to get me finished. I was already past my April deadline that my brother in law had given me, so I knew I was up against it, but I knew it was still possible as well. So I basically kept going on to reels and TikTok and I shared that series.
You can go on my Instagram and watch some of those videos back. And I've just called it day three of helping me write a wedding business book. Day five of helping me write a wedding business book. And each time I did it, you encouraged me. And what I loved was people encouraged me in my day to day life as well. So people saw it on my stories and people would ask me.
I shared the story in my live podcast episode you might have listened to last week about my lovely cleaner and how she follows me on Instagram and every time she was coming around to clean my house, she was Asking me how the book was going and it really, really helped. Clients when I spoke to them, one to one were asking me how I was getting on, had I done enough words.
People were offering to get on the phone with me and chat to me and encourage me and give me ideas and it really was the boost I needed. So I'm really thrilled that I did that.
It was a bit vulnerable of me to go and start saying that it was putting myself on the line because once you've announced publicly that that's what you're doing, then it is harder if you don't hit that deadline to say, thanks everyone, but sorry, I never wrote the book in the end, but for me personally that was the accountability I needed.
So for you, if you've got a big project, a big deadline, something you want to achieve, I highly recommend keeping yourself accountable or finding what works for you. Because what works for one person doesn't always work for everyone. And for me, diarizing the time and setting myself targets wasn't working. But as soon as I shared those targets publicly with the world, it definitely put a rocket up me to get those words finished.
And I was able to diarise people said, try and write a thousand words a day. I was sharing screenshots of my readsies showing people that I'd done it and people were amazing. So thank you if you ever commented, mentioned anything, liked anything, anything. Your support really did help this book get finished. So fast Forward then to the 19th of July and I posted on Instagram to say, I've written it, I've done it, I've written the words.
So I was way past my initial deadline of the end of April, but actually I knew I still had a little bit of time and I was just thrilled at this point to finish it because I really never thought that I would finish it. And I put it on Instagram and then I contacted my brother in law and said I've done it. And I think he was a little bit surprised. I think maybe he doubted that I was actually going to go away and do it. And I said, I've done it, now what we need to have a conversation.
And true to it word, he did. He had a conversation with me, we talked about it, he said, send it over to me, I'll have a very brief look through. I let you know whether or not it's a load of rubbish or whether it's got legs and then we'll talk about the next steps. So that's what I did. I sent it over to him. Thankfully he didn't come back and say it was a load of rubbish. He did say it probably needed some shaping and it was a bit rough around the edges, but I knew that.
And he walked me through the next steps. So what he did then, he said, right, let's work back from November. You want it in November, so let's go forward like one or two weeks from the day you fly. You don't want it coming into your hand the day you fly to Las Vegas. You want a little bit of breathing space in case something goes wrong. So then work back from there. We need printing time, we need proofreading time, we need editing time.
And he basically put me through a timetable, write up what I needed to do. And that was really helpful because he wrote it all out for me. He told me what I needed to do at each stage, and he put a deadline next to it so that I could see what I needed to do by when. And that then set me off on the next path because I hadn't got a clue what I was doing. And he explained to me, and I'm going to walk you through that part now. So the first thing he said is you need an editor.
You've got this rough draft, but if you want to make it a great book, you now need someone who will clean it up for you. Essentially, you can edit it yourself, but often it's helpful to have an outside person. So he put me in touch with an editor, an amazing lady. I spoke with her on the phone. I talked to her about how I wanted it to sound like me. I didn't want her to, you know, neutralize my personality and my voice. But I did want her to shape the book.
My brother in law actually also came up with the title for the book. He said from having read it, that phrase really stood out to him and he liked it. And actually I say the phrase done is better than perfect. A lot of people know me for talking about that and saying that. And so I really liked that he'd pulled that out, and I decided to run with that. So the editor also had the job of making sure the thread of the title also runs through the book.
So obviously I hadn't got the title when I wrote the book, so there were places that hadn't really tied the concept together. And so the editor took my transcript, she made suggestions about how we can make sure that the narrative was threaded all the way through the book.
She talked about where things didn't make sense, she reworded stuff, she made lots of notes on where maybe I could add more or take stuff away, but she was so encouraging and she also said how much she enjoyed reading the book, which was a good encouragement to me. Now, that was quite a lengthy process. It was hard because once I'd written the book, I felt like I just wanted to say, right, great, I've written this, now move on. But actually the editing part is also quite hard.
It involved a lot of her sending me my Word document back with lots of tracked changes that I'd then have to go through and answer her questions or write more paragraphs for different bits of the book where she felt like I didn't explain things well enough or it needed more or less checking. All of the things that I'd quoted were accurate. Whether or not we could quote them, whether there was copyright issues like that was amazing and I'm so thankful I did use that.
I think the editor was one of the most important key parts of this book writing process. And if you are going to go down this route, I encourage you not to skip that. Yes, it's going to cost you money. I think it cost me about 800, 900 pounds to get it edited, but it was well worth it and it's why I've got such a high quality book. It's not that she changed what I wrote, it's that she shaped what I wrote. And that's a very different skill, not one that I necessarily possess myself.
I think sometimes it needs an outside voice to do that. So she took it, she shaped it, she helped me thread the narrative of Done is Better than Perfect throughout the whole book. She took a little bit out, we added extra stuff in and we got it to a place where we were really happy that we had a full transcript and it was ready for the next step. So by late July, early August, I had that full edited transcript and it was time to move on to the next stage of the book writing process.
So there were two parts to this. The first thing was I wanted to get some endorsements. I think it's really important on a book when you have people in the industry who've maybe said what they think about the book or that they like the book, you know what I mean? The kind of recommendation. And obviously you need to get those endorsements before you get the COVID designed, if you want to put them on the back cover like I did.
And also that means you need to send them the book before it's actually a book. So now I had my edited PDF, I decided it was time to send out the PDF version of the book to a couple of people to endorse it. Now, I'm thrilled that the first two people I asked if they would endorse the book or at least read it and decide whether they were happy to endorse it, both said yes. So I wanted people in the wedding industry that were experts.
I wanted people who people might know or who had some levels of authority, and also people that I had relationships with as well, who knew me, knew my style, knew my way of speaking, that kind of thing. So I decided to choose one person in the UK and one person in the US because I want to make sure I can resonate with both markets. And so in the US I went with my lovely friend Megan Ely, who is a wedding publicist and I've worked with her a lot.
She was a big factor in helping me get on stage in Las Vegas. She's an incredible publicist. She helps people get amazing pr. She's incredible speaker, and I knew that she would be a great person to endorse the book. So I wrote to her and she very quickly said she would happily, happily have a look at it and do it for me. And then I also wanted someone from the uk.
I've built up a great relationship with the team at Guides for Brides and the lovely Nikita, I've known her for quite a few years now. We've spoken on stages together, we've worked together. She knows my teaching very well. I know she enjoys it and I love what they do at Guys for Brides. So I asked her if she would also be willing to have a look at it and endorse it on behalf of Guys for Brides. And so they did. I sent it off to them. They both read it.
They both sent me back a paragraph and said, you can use this where you want to in the book. And they both were really complimentary about the wording, which I was so happy about, because that was really nerve wracking. That was the first people outside of the editor to actually read anything and they're both industry professionals. So I didn't want them to come back and say it was terrible.
Now, what was interesting, obviously the lovely Nikita from Guides for Brides, she actually had some really good feedback about the wedding directory section of the book and I actually implemented some of the things she suggested. So there was a little bit where I added a few extra lines in based on what she said. And, you know, she's the expert in that part. And I was really thrilled what she said. I agreed with what she said that I could write a little bit more about wedding directories.
And so I added a little bit to that section thanks to her. So thank you, Nikita, for that. At the same time as getting these endorsements, it was time to move on to the actual look and feel of the book. So again, I've been given the name of a lovely person called Hannah who was able to typeset my book and also design the COVID Now, obviously, the COVID design was something I was familiar with. You know, that phrase, don't judge a book by its cover, but everyone does.
So I knew the COVID was really, really important. I wanted to get a professional to do it who could understand it. Now, Hannah that I was put in touch with had a background in the wedding industry as well as doing what she does now. And so that was the perfect fit for me to understand the industry that we're in. So I understood the concept of the COVID design. What I had no idea was this concept of typesetting.
Now, it makes complete sense to me now, but I hadn't thought about it at the time, and that is that you can't just give it someone. A book with loads of words in it actually has to look nice when they open the page. You know, different fonts, make sure that you've got the right headings.
There's places where I have things called pull quotes, where they pull a little bit of the book out, things where there's numbers, diagrams, all that kind of stuff to just make sure when you open the book, it actually looks like. Like a book rather than just, you know, a word document. And that again, expensive but worth its weight in gold. She took the words and she typeset them into a format.
She talked about the design for the headings as well on the book to make sure that we had little tips that went in line with the actual book itself. She made sure we had all of the copyright page done, you know, all of the interesting things that I probably wouldn't think of myself. And that's her job to think of it. So she went off and did that. That took her her a few weeks. And alongside that, she also started the COVID design.
So with the COVID design, I'd given her my brand colors, my brand fonts, all of those usual things. And then I just let her run with it. She sent me back. I think it was about six or seven initial concepts for the COVID design for me to decide which direction I wanted to go in. Now, when I first looked at them, I was a bit overwhelmed with choice. Sometimes it's hard. Like there was A couple I definitely didn't like, but there was quite a lot that I wasn't sure which one would work best.
So what I actually did was I thought, you know what, I'm going to outsource the thought process on this because otherwise I'm going to go round and round in my head. So. So inside my lovely Wedding Pro members lounge, which is my wedding membership for businesses, I shared those initial concepts in the group and said, can you help me narrow this down? What do you think? What do people think is the best win one? What do you think works? What do you think doesn't work?
And actually, almost everyone went for the same design, so that really nailed it down for me. But they also had some really interesting thoughts about that design. So they felt that the initial design had too many words done on it. I mean, I've still got a lot of the word done on here, but not as many as I did. They felt like the title got a little bit, bit lost. And so with all that great feedback, I went back to the COVID designer. I asked her to have a look at that concept.
I wanted to work on it in more detail. I wanted to make the colors more relevant to my brand, and I wanted to take in the feedback that my members had given me. So she did that, she took it away, and then she came back with the COVID design that we have today. And I'm really pleased with it. Lots of people have commented on the COVID design, that it stands out, that it's clear people love the tick boxes, because in the wedding industry, we love to tick off our to do list.
And, yeah, I'm thrilled with it. She also sorted out the back of the book as well to make sure. Sure it had me on it, had my bio. I wanted quite a lot of information on the back of the book. So it took us a while to fit it all in and make sure it looked good as well. And I also wanted those endorsements. Now, we couldn't actually fit the full endorsements on the back of the book because of all the information.
So we just took a sentence out of each of the endorsements for the book, and then inside the book, you can see right on the front page, we put the full version of those endorsements as well. So if you want to look what they had to say, go and look inside the front page of the book. So now I had a book cover. I had a book that was typeset. I had people that were sending me endorsements, endorsements for the book. I was really, really on track to make this book happen.
But what I was realizing very fast was that this book was costing me a whole lot more money than I'd realized. I had not budgeted properly for this book. When I came up with the concept of writing a book, I didn't think about how much it would cost me to produce it, how many I would need to sell, cash flow, any of that stuff. And unfortunately, my money is not endless. And it was starting to get a little bit like, I don't know if I can afford to finish this book in time for luck, Vegas.
That's when I came up with the idea of the Kickstarter. Because I shared a lot with everyone online about the book. People had bought into the idea, people knew I was doing it and I'd been vulnerable all the way along. So I decided, you know what, I'm going to be vulnerable about this as well. And just say I'm struggling financially to make this book happen. I want to see it through, I want to do it amazingly for you.
In order to help me with it, I'm going to start this Kickstarter, which essentially means you can pledge towards the book to say you support the project and you will then get an early copy of the book, maybe some other other treats along the way as well. And it will also give me some money up front in pre sales so that I can go ahead and actually finish getting this book done with all the costs that are involved. Because it has been quite costly.
Quite a few thousand pounds have been spent making this book. So I did. I set up a Kickstarter. The lovely Rachel, who works in my team, helped me massively get it set up because I was so busy. It was the beginning of the school summer holidays and I knew I needed to do it, but I didn't have a lot of time. So she really helped me get it going. We came up with a few different ideas of different reward values.
Now, the hardest thing was I had to decide my target because on Kickstarter I didn't realize if you don't hit your target, you don't get the money. So I wanted to set the target high enough for it to be near what I needed because I know once you hit a target, sometimes it's harder to go over it. But I also didn't want it to be so high that I never hit it and all of the people pledged and then nothing ever happened and it was a fail.
So I decided on 800 pounds for the initial target, which felt scary because that's still quite a lot of books to sell to get to 800 pounds. But also it did feel so huge that it wasn't possible. We set the length of the Kickstarter, I think, to either six weeks or two months. Can't remember to finish in the middle of October. And I recorded a video explaining the Kickstarter. I set up all the different packages and I put it into the world. And you guys again were incredible.
I had so much lovely response to my Kickstarter campaign. We hit the initial 800 pounds, which was a massive relief to me because it meant that I knew that the project was a success, we could go ahead. It showed that people back to the concept of the book and we actually ended on about £1,400, I think, by the end of the Kickstarter. And I'm thrilled now that I'm already being able to start rewarding the people that had ordered those books for me. And it's great.
The first books that have arrived with people are people that supported the Kickstarter campaign. So if that was you, thank you so much. It really did make the book happen. There really was a time when I wasn't sure I was going to get it done in the deadline.
I knew it would happen eventually, but, you know, the cash flow was a struggle and I didn't want to run out of money and I wanted to make sure I could pay all of the people involved in helping me with the book and pay their invoices as well. So the Kickstarter was definitely worth doing. It helped me pre sell the books.
Now, if you were looking at this from a author perspective, this probably isn't what people would teach you to do, because often when people tell you to write a book, they say you should try and get the Amazon bestseller. And to get the Amazon bestseller, you basically put your book in a really niche category on Amazon, tell everyone to buy it on the first day, and you get the bestseller badge.
Now, I could have done that, but quite honestly, I'm not that fussed about being the Amazon bestseller. And this meant that I could actually pre sell the book on my own terms. Amazon don't get loads of the royalties for it. And also I could offer other treats and incentives along the way. So thank you to everyone who pledged and that's the reason that I did it. So now we're well underway. I've sold quite a few copies of the book. I've made money in pre sales to help me pay for the book.
The COVID was confirmed, the typesetting was confirmed. It was now time to Go off to the proofreader. Yes, it turns out there was another stage of this process and someone else to pay. However, again, really, really important because the typesetter could have made some mistake. There are things the editor might not have picked up on.
And the proofreader is like a ninja when it comes to English and understanding where you should have commas and full stops and all of the things that I'm absolutely terrible at. And it was amazing. So I sent her the final, final, final version of the book to check and proofread, and there were still mistakes in there. She found commas, missing, capital letters that should have been capitals, capitals that shouldn't have been quote marks that should have been different.
And I learned a new phrase from her called dangling participle. Now, I didn't know what a dangling participle was, maybe you don't, but apparently I use dangling participles quite a lot. So I thought I'd explain to you right now what the definition of a dangling participle is. According to Barbara, my lovely proofreader, in a dangling participle, the acting person or thing is not the same as the actor in the main sentence, which can lead to misunderstandings. Therefore, it has to be avoided.
The actor in an introductory phrase of a sentence and the actor in the main clause have to be the same person or thing. Either have marked phrases as danglers and often given a suggestion about how to rephrase it. Like, I had no idea what a dangling participle was. I'm not sure if that helps you at all. It doesn't really help me. So basically I just said to Barbara, you know more about this than me.
If I've done a dangling participle and you have a better example, just put your better example in, because I don't really understand what you're talking about. But she was incredible. Her attention to detail was phenomenal. She did spot lots of things, which we then have gone on and changed as well. And yeah. So thank you to the brief reader. Again, not a step that you want to skip in the journey.
It's tempting to skip these things because it's more money, but actually, if you want a really decent quality product at the end of it, well worth making sure you do that as well. I'd much rather Barbara spotted my dangling participles rather than one of you, if you'd even spot it in the first place. Surely this journey's nearly done. Becca, you're thinking, I know. I felt the same thing. It's a whole year and a whole Lot of work.
So I wanted to talk about it on today's episode and I was nearly done. And then my brother in law said, Becca, there's still more things that you need to pay for. Which I was thrilled about, as you can imagine. So the next thing he said that I needed before went to print was the ISBN number. So all books have an ISBN number and it turns out you have to pay for one. So I had to go online and register my book as an ISBN and I got the ISBN number.
Then you also need a separate ISBN number apparently for the ebook. So I also then bought another ISBN number for the ebook and I think it links the book together around the world so people can go and look at the ISBN book number and then find it anywhere, something like that. It also meant that I could create a barcode for the back of the book. So if it was to ever be sold in bookstores, they can in fact sell it.
And I now have a lovely barcode with said ISBN number on the back cover of the book. So next time you pick up your copy of my book, look at that lovely barcode and that ISBN number and realize how much time and effort and some money went into creating that little detail that quite honestly I wouldn't have even realized was important. But turns out it is quite important. So I bought my ISBN, I bought my ebook ISBN.
We made sure they were added into the COVID design and also into the typeset version. And now finally we were ready, we had the book, it looked great. It was time to get some issues printed. Now. My brother in law again sent me to a great printer who was so good. And if anyone wants any recommendations for someone to print a book, I highly recommend them. They were good value and I basically decided I was going to buy up front 400 copies of the book.
I think it was 400, maybe it's 200, can't remember. Anyway, I've got lots of boxes of books, put it that way. I think it was 200 copies of the book originally so that I could first of all give them out to people. Also I could go ahead and fulfill all of the orders. But also I wanted a whole stack of books so if I go and speak at an event I can sell the book after my stage talk. That was one of the reasons to do it in the first place. And this is the most cost effective way of doing it.
Now obviously it's expensive because you've got to pay for all the copies up front before you actually sell them. And there is a chance that I could have 150 copies of my books sat in my house for the next few years, but hopefully that won't happen and hopefully I'll get out there and sell them. I also wanted to do signed copies for people on the Kickstarter and so by ordering them to my house, I could go ahead and do that.
Now, first of all, the printer sent me one copy of the book and that was an emotional day when my first copy came. It's the copy that is the most worn because I keep taking it everywhere with me. I took it to my London event. I've been showing it to people everywhere I go, but it was just to check that I was happy with the size, the paper quality, the paper thickness, all these different things that you don't realize you need to know for a book.
Like, who knew that the paper thickness and color was so, so important? But it does make a big difference when you're handling the book. I was thrilled with it. I said, yes, please. And then all of the copies arrived in these big boxes and came to my house, which was another very exciting day. I also had to pay to get an ebook version of the book so that I could sell it for Kindle and ebook readers.
So that was a little bit of an extra cost to my typesetter because obviously it's a different shape on there. And also we needed a different cover because the COVID size isn't the same as the ebook. But there is now an ebook version that will also be released tomorrow. So if you are a Kindle fan or you like an ebook and you want to grab a copy of the ebook version of the book, you'll also find that tomorrow.
So I've got boxes of books in my house that I'm going to be selling direct on my website. And although the book doesn't officially go on sale till tomorrow, as of today, as a podcast listener, you can order it directly from my site and I am going to give you a discount code where if you use the code podcast at checkout for the book, it will take off the cost of your UK delivery. So if you are in the uk, it will give you free delivery on the book.
If you're outside the uk, it will take off the cost of the UK delivery, so you'll just pay the difference for your delivery as well. So it is available on my website, but I also needed it to be available in other places. And as I was self publishing the book myself, I had choices about where to go.
So the decisions I've made in is I've self published the book initially on IngramSpark, which is an independent publishing company that allows independent bookshops to order copies of the book into their store. So if they want to, then they can order copies of the book and it can go into their shops.
I also am making it available on print on demand on Amazon, but I didn't want them to have the publishing rights to it because I wanted to keep it for myself and I didn't also want to give all my money to Amazon. Now obviously, when you buy the book off Amazon, which it will be available on tomorrow, it will be speedy to you. You'll probably get your free delivery.
It will be a really easy way for me to ship the book out to people because they do it themselves, but also Amazon take quite a big cut. So I didn't want to put all my eggs in the Amazon basket, as it were, although I know that Amazon will be a great tool for me. And if you have bought a copy of the book on Amazon or if it allows you, please do leave me a review on Amazon because that's really going to help when the book goes live.
So it is available on IngramSpark, where publishers can get it or bookshops can get it. I should say it will be available on Amazon and it's also available on my website so that I can post out the print copies to you. Obviously, the benefit when people order the books directly from me is that I've been able to put a little special touch on them.
So the weekend before recording that, me and the children decided it was time for us to start getting ready to send the books out to the people who had pledged in the Kickstarter. And I wanted to make these extra special for people because I am really thankful that you've ordered the book. And I want it to be more of an experience rather than just a book arriving from Amazon in your post box. So I got some tissue paper. I managed to find some tissue paper in a similar color to my brand.
I got some stickers printed with my little BP logo on it. And so me and the children set about. I signed the books. I wrote personalized messages in all of those books. It took me quite some time. We wrapped them in the tissue paper, we stuck the little Becca Pountney sticker on there. And then I got my children to write some little note cards. So they love getting involved. One of them is 10, one of them is just turned 8.
They love getting involved in the business and they asked if they could write on the postcards. Thanks for Buying the book. Now, I was happy for them to write thanks for buying the book, except for I did think, well, if you don't know me very well, you might wonder why my handwriting looks like that of an 8 year old when you receive my book.
So we decided actually it was better if they wrote thank you for buying mummy's book, so that it was obvious that it was written by the child and not by me with my slightly scruffy handwriting. And so that's what we did. And actually I'm really pleased they loved doing it. They were all personalized, so some of them, they drew pictures, they signed them, they wrote their initial on them, they wrote little messages, thanks for buying mommy's book.
And so each of the Kickstarter books that we've sent out has included one of their little personal postcards in it as well. We then wrapped them in brown paper, taped them up, wrote the addresses on them, and took them to the post office to send out. And that is what people have started receiving.
And so if you have ordered the book directly from my website or directly from the Kickstarter, you will get that little extra personalized touch where I can sign it for you, write you a little message, and me and the children can wrap it for you as well. So if you want that version of the book, yes, you can get it from Amazon and it will be easier. But if you want the little personal touch, it helps me out because I get more of the money and Amazon takes less of it.
Please go and order your copy on my website. Use the code podcast as a loyal podcast listener to get that delivery for free. And I promise me and the children will put those special little touches in for you so that it's extra special when it arrives. So that's where we've got to. That is the book writing journey. I hope you found that interesting. I hope you didn't think I was indulging too much, but I think sometimes you see the finished product.
Becca wrote a book, but you don't realize the time and effort, love, energy, exhaustion that goes into it. And maybe writing a book is on your bucket list. Maybe it's something you've considered, considered yourself. And I would say it's hard, cost it up, work out the cost of it, but it is well worth it. And I guess in three, six months time, I'll be able to do another podcast episode and let you know the impact it's had on my business, hopefully, and how people have found reading it.
Once the book is out there in the big wide world. I hope that people enjoy it. If you've got a copy of it, I also hope that you will use it as a tool to grow your business. Don't just put it prettily on your shelf, actually dive into it, write on it, highlight it, and start using some of the tips and things inside of that book to make a difference to your business. Because for me, that's exactly what it's all about. So what's next?
Well, for me, obviously selling copies of the book as of the launch day tomorrow is going to be important to me and I want to get the book in as many people's hands as possible. I will be selling it every time I speak where I'm allowed. So if you do hear me speak at a conference, you'll be able to grab a signed copy directly from me. There are also a couple of other things in the pipeline.
A lot of people have asked me about an audible version of the book and audiobook and this is something I'm very keen on because as you know, I love audio. I do a podcast. I also listen to audio books more than I read books myself. So I know how important it is. I know people find audiobooks really helpful. The reason I haven't done it initially is twofold. One is time. It takes a lot of time to read a whole book and get it all recorded and secondly was money.
As I told you, it's cost a lot to do this book and the audiobook will cost me more to get it all sorted and edited so that it's clean audio. So I'm hoping to do it down the line. I'm hoping it won't be too much longer, longer to wait. So yes, it is in the plan. I do hope to do an audio version of the book asap, but it unfortunately isn't going to be ready just yet.
But of course when it is out there in the world, I will let you know and I will be recording it with my voice saying it because I think it would be strange to have those back risms without it. The other thing is a couple of people have asked me about doing a non wedding version of the book. Now this is interesting because out of the people who've read it and a few people have read it now who aren't wedding businesses, they've said to me how great it is.
Any business, any small business that wants to grow and well that is an idea and maybe one day I'll do a non wedding related version of the book. Again. Right now I just don't have the time to do it. The thought of rewriting some of it as well right now, when I've just finished it is also difficult. But maybe it's something to look for in the future.
But bear in mind, even if you're not a wedding business or you know someone that wants to start a small business from home, this is a really helpful resource to them. Yes, there are some wedding specific things in there, but a lot lot of it is kind of for any business, really. Any small business that wants to get started. So it may help you or your friends even if it hasn't. Even if it's not a wedding business.
So watch this space maybe I'll do a Done is better than perfect building a profitable small business at some point, but it's not coming any time soon. Okay, I thought I'd finish today's episode with one final extract from the back of the book to whet your appetite for it. Do go and grab your copy and if you've already got a copy, leave me a review and let me know you thought of it. Here we go. This is from the section Final Thoughts we made it. I honestly never thought I would get to this point.
Writing a book has been hard. There have been days when I wanted to give up, days when I doubted my ability, and days when I was regretting the day I ever thought that writing a book was a good idea. But here we are. It's done. And as we all know, done is better than perfect. As you start to build your wedding business, you'll probably go through similar emotions. Some days you'll question your life choices or consider throwing in the towel and going back to an office job. Keep going.
Work through your to do list. Get the next task done. Your business won't ever be perfect. Nothing ever is. But it is possible to make it a success and to be profitable in the process. So don't give up. I'll see you next time.